Trouts, puppies and prayers

Since a couple of months, my husband and I have got this new washer and dryer set from Samsung. When purchasing we didn't know that the machines play little tunes when their cycles are finished. After having heard it a couple of hundred times I realized that the tune felt familiar to me - no, it hadn't start feeling familiar. To figure out what piece it might be, I started listening more mindfully to the tune. Like a loopy laundry lady I would stand humming the tune while my machine announced it had finished its task. Finally, my mind had connected some dots: It had to be something by Franz Shubert. Unfortunately I could piece together which one it was so I had to throw my towel in the ring and look it up online. It turned out to be Die Forelle by Franz Shubert (1817). The song was inspired by the poem of the same name written by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1783). Franz Shubert edited the text a bit and added music to it. It seems the song was also the basis for the theme of the fourth movement of Piano Quintet in A Major (1819). This is why it's also known as the Trout Quintet. This got me thinking on what other music-themed pieces have interesting backstories.

Woman at a piano by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1875 - 1876)

I had recently watched KAWAII♥PATEEN's Innocent World Documentary series on YouTube. In its first part they showcase Innocent World's designer Yumi Fujiwara's design process. It seems Yumi Fujiwara favors realism in her work. She does this because Innocent World's standards of calm and elegance. In the video Yumi Fujiwara explains how she used her favorite teddy bear as a reference for the Marine Bear series from 2014. Furthermore, she used a similar design process for the Ceský Krumlov series, where she edited pictures of the cityscape of the same name to "create an original "Innocent World City."" She does this by adding bows, hearts and frills to the buildings. This is why I assume Innocent World might have some releases based on music pieces. Luckily this turned out to be correct as they have over a dozen of music-themed JSKs and OPs. The series that immediately caught my eye were Petit Chien, A Maiden's Prayer on a Starry Sky and Musical Score, since they had parts of sheet music printed on them. 

A young woman at a piano by George Goodwin Kilburne (1880)

A couple of years ago Raine Dragon shared on Lolita History that there's quite the interesting story to Innocent World's Petit Chien series from 2004. She and some other Lolita's had decided to look into it since they thought it was rather strange that none of the pieces have a dog (chien is French for "dog") on it, but do have music notes on the skirts and some segments of sheet music on the collar. After doing some research, it seemed that the embroidery on the garments is from the Waltz in D-flat major, Op. 64, No.1 by Frédéric Chopin (1847). The waltz is more commonly known as "Valse du petit chien" (English: "Waltz of the small dog") as Chopin got the inspiration for it when he was watching a small dog chase its tail, according to Camille Bourniquel, a biographer for Chopin. And isn’t that just the cutest image to get inspired by? However, in English this waltz goes by another name: "the Minute Waltz." This is because it's one of Chopin's shortest waltzes he had written during his life. Over the years its meaning has changed to the word's homonym, meaning sixty seconds. Some pianists even took this quite literally and try playing the whole piece in one minute, which wasn't the intended way.

Woman at piano by Giovanni Boldini

A Maiden's Prayer on a Starry Sky was easier to identify because of its Japanese name 星空と乙女の祈り which translates literally to "the starry sky and the maiden's prayer." This made it clear that it was a reference to the music piece A Maiden's Prayer by Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska (1856). It seems that this composition is quite popular since the Meiji era in Japan as it's used when platform doors of the Central Japan Railway close, East Japan Railway uses it when they approach certain stations and it was part of Sumomomo, Momomo: The Strongest Bride on Earth's background music. In the West it's popularized in 1941 by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys who used it as the basis for his own song with the same name, with vocals by Tommy Duncan. It seems that the lyrics to this song might have also inspired Yumi Fujiwara since she added a starry sky to her design.

Madelaine-Aimée Lacour au piano carré by Pierre Lacour the Elder (1800)

Musical Score series was not that easy to identify because the print is a bit messier; blame it on all those details. Luckily these details might make the identification of the composition a bit easier, as frillSquid figured out it might be a string quartet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Unfortunately, it seems that in editing so it could fit on the dress they left out the time or key signature, meaning identifying it might be impossible. Luckily, I don't give up easily and I had my mind set on identifying what composition it might be. I posted it on r/ClassicalMusic's weekly "What's this Piece?" thread. Sadly, someone who might now has yet to find my comment it seems because I haven't gotten a response yet. However, I won't give up hope and I will keeping posting it to the weekly "What's this Piece?" thread. Hopefully persistence truly is key.

Thank you, and take care.