Tomoko has a lifetime love of driving. She bought her first car
when she was studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and she kept
driving to the school during her fifty+ years teaching there.
Composers have also loved cars and used them to inspire
their compositions. Here is a sampling of those works.
Probably the best known composition, which has been arranged
for piano, is George Gershwin’s 1928 “An American in Paris.” Not surprisingly,
the piece was inspired by Gershwin’s time in Paris when he studied with Ravel.
The original composition was a jazz-influenced orchestral piece, which even imitated
street noises such as taxi horns.
Another French-inspired piano composition, “L’omnibus
automobile,” was written by Eric Satie. This
cabaret song, with piano accompaniment, evokes a Bastille Day when an empty bus
carrying plaster drove through a crowd.
Frederick Converse was inspired by the early Ford cards in
his imagined “The 10 millionth Ford Flivver” orchestral piece. Most of instruments
are wind and percussion ones, but an organ is also played.
Even car companies have used classical compositions when
naming their models. For instance, Bach’s “24 Preludes” was the inspiration for
the Honda Prelude.
Of course, lots of rock and roll music featured cars, such
as the Beach Boys and Chuck Berry, but car-inspired music is as class as the
cars themselves.
