In the Hall of the Mountain King: Trolls, Metal, and The Social Network

The Imperfect Enjoyment sounds like a polite complaint about dinner. It is actually a seventeenth-century poem about premature ejaculation, impotence, wounded pride, and a man becoming so furious with his own penis that he starts addressing it as a military deserter. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, wrote the poem in the 1670s. It begins with two eager lovers and every expectation of spectacular sex. The narrator finishes almost immediately, cannot recover, and reacts as though something much more serious than disappointing sex has occurred. Corinna, who has considerably more reason to complain, is remarkably patient. What makes the poem funny is the gap between the problem and the response. Rochester’s verse remains elegant and controlled while his narrator completely falls apart. This short bonus episode follows the disaster from optimism to shame, rage, treason, and one extraordinarily generous proposal for solving Corinna’s problem.

One of the most familiar piano pieces in the world may have the wrong woman's name on it. Beethoven wrote the piece we call Für Elise around 1810, but he never published it. The manuscript later disappeared. When Ludwig Nohl finally printed the music in 1867, he said it was dedicated “Für Elise.” Perhaps he read it correctly. Perhaps the page actually said “Für Therese.” Nobody can check. This episode follows the mystery of Elise, but also the stranger life of the melody itself. Those first few notes have escaped the piano lesson and turned up in Charlie Brown, French chanson, Giorgio Moroder, Italian pop, heavy metal, Whitney Houston, Nas, K-pop and Jon Batiste. Almost everyone who borrows the piece keeps the same little turn between E and D sharp. It is hesitant, instantly recognizable, and apparently impossible to kill. Along the way, the episode asks a simpler question: why did this tiny unpublished bagatelle become one of the melodies everybody knows?

A thank-you to Courtney Love for sharing our In the Pines episode on Instagram.

You know Ode to Joy. You may know it from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a church hymn, A Clockwork Orange, the European anthem, Sister Act 2, or possibly a few suspicious seconds of Mr. Brightside. What is strange is how quietly it begins. Before the huge choir arrives, Beethoven gives the melody to the cellos and double basses: a plain little tune that hardly seems capable of carrying everything later piled onto it. This episode follows that melody from Schiller’s 1785 poem and Beethoven’s Ninth through Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, the Seekers, Miguel Ríos, Wendy Carlos, Rainbow, Leonard Bernstein, Lauryn Hill, Bright Eyes, the Piano Guys and ATEEZ. Along the way, Ode to Joy becomes hymn, pop song, electronic nightmare, political anthem, guitar riff and K-pop spectacle. The tune survives all of it because Beethoven made something unusually simple: a melody that a single cello can whisper and thousands of people can sing together.

Most people know Cotton Eye Joe as the 1994 Rednex hit: fiddle, banjo, enormous dance beat, and a chorus capable of making an entire wedding party regret its knees the next morning. But Rednex arrived very late. Cotton-Eyed Joe was already circulating in the American South in the nineteenth century, long before recording technology could capture it. Nobody knows who wrote it, what its first melody sounded like, or even exactly what “cotton-eyed” means. What survives is the accusation: Joe arrives, takes somebody’s lover, and disappears. This episode follows the song from early fiddle recordings and western swing through Nina Simone’s mournful 1959 performance, Terry Callier, Asleep at the Wheel, the Chieftains and Ricky Skaggs, and finally Rednex. Along the way, the same tune keeps switching between heartbreak and party music. Slow it down and Joe becomes a ghost. Speed it up and everybody dances. Maybe that is why the song survived. It is barely fixed enough to be broken.