Mysterioso Pizzicato
Jens Bodewalt Lampe
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Browse piano sheets by Jens Bodewalt Lampe on Zen Virtual Piano. Jens Bodewalt Lampe was born in Ribe, Denmark, to Christian and Sophia Lampe; his family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1873, and there his father took over leadership of the Great Western Band. Ragpiano.com says he was a child prodigy, particularly on the violin, who also quickly took to trombone, cornet, clarinet, piano and many other orchestral instruments. Having trained with Frank Danz, he became first chair violinist for the Minneapolis Symphony at age 16. A boy raised around his father’s band who took up so many instruments suggests a musician who learned the working of an orchestra one instrument at a time, and who was ready for a seat in a symphony while still a teenager. In the early 1890s he moved to Buffalo, where he began composing and publishing his own music and led a dance orchestra. There he published his first two compositions under the label of The Lampe Music Company; the second was a march written for the local Buffalo News newspaper. What the Wires Tell to Me (1893) is one of his earliest known publications. A march for a local paper, printed under his own company’s name, suggests a young bandleader who was ready to publish for himself and to write for the people around him. In 1900 Lampe self-published his most enduring hit, Creole Belles, a cakewalk with a chorus melody that was easy to remember, and ragpiano.com says it was quickly picked up by the Detroit publishers Whitney-Warner because of recordings by John Philip Sousa’s band under co-leader Arthur Pryor. German Wikipedia counts it as the second big hit in ragtime after Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag (1899), with sheet music selling in the millions. His other hits include Dixie Girl (1903), Happy Heinie (1905) and the Turkey Trot (1912). AllMusic adds that his typical melodic gestures almost unconsciously incorporate ideas derived from Danish and German folk music, and that he sometimes used the pseudonym Ribe Danmark, the name of his hometown. A pseudonym borrowed from his birthplace, set beside hits for the dance floor, keeps a thread back to where he came from. From 1907 he created an enormous number of arrangements, and later arranged for the orchestras of Vincent Lopez, Paul Whiteman and Edward B. Marks. In 1921 Lopez hired him to create contemporary arrangements for the Hotel Pennsylvania Orchestra and to teach him the art. He contributed arrangements or compositions to musicals including The Chocolate Soldier and Honeydew, and to the Passing Shows of 1919 and 1921, and he was one of the founding charter members of ASCAP. He also collected Mysterioso Pizzicato, a piece of photoplay music whose main motif became a standard cue for stealth and villainy, and may possibly have composed it. A career that ran from dance bands to musicals might be heard as a craft useful wherever there was a stage, from the dance floor to the theatre.
Browse piano sheets by Jens Bodewalt Lampe on Zen Virtual Piano.
Jens Bodewalt Lampe was born in Ribe, Denmark, to Christian and Sophia Lampe; his family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1873, and there his father took over leadership of the Great Western Band. Ragpiano.com says he was a child prodigy, particularly on the violin, who also quickly took to trombone, cornet, clarinet, piano and many other orchestral instruments. Having trained with Frank Danz, he became first chair violinist for the Minneapolis Symphony at age 16. A boy raised around his father’s band who took up so many instruments suggests a musician who learned the working of an orchestra one instrument at a time, and who was ready for a seat in a symphony while still a teenager.
In the early 1890s he moved to Buffalo, where he began composing and publishing his own music and led a dance orchestra. There he published his first two compositions under the label of The Lampe Music Company; the second was a march written for the local Buffalo News newspaper. What the Wires Tell to Me (1893) is one of his earliest known publications. A march for a local paper, printed under his own company’s name, suggests a young bandleader who was ready to publish for himself and to write for the people around him.
In 1900 Lampe self-published his most enduring hit, Creole Belles, a cakewalk with a chorus melody that was easy to remember, and ragpiano.com says it was quickly picked up by the Detroit publishers Whitney-Warner because of recordings by John Philip Sousa’s band under co-leader Arthur Pryor. German Wikipedia counts it as the second big hit in ragtime after Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag (1899), with sheet music selling in the millions. His other hits include Dixie Girl (1903), Happy Heinie (1905) and the Turkey Trot (1912). AllMusic adds that his typical melodic gestures almost unconsciously incorporate ideas derived from Danish and German folk music, and that he sometimes used the pseudonym Ribe Danmark, the name of his hometown. A pseudonym borrowed from his birthplace, set beside hits for the dance floor, keeps a thread back to where he came from.
From 1907 he created an enormous number of arrangements, and later arranged for the orchestras of Vincent Lopez, Paul Whiteman and Edward B. Marks. In 1921 Lopez hired him to create contemporary arrangements for the Hotel Pennsylvania Orchestra and to teach him the art. He contributed arrangements or compositions to musicals including The Chocolate Soldier and Honeydew, and to the Passing Shows of 1919 and 1921, and he was one of the founding charter members of ASCAP. He also collected Mysterioso Pizzicato, a piece of photoplay music whose main motif became a standard cue for stealth and villainy, and may possibly have composed it. A career that ran from dance bands to musicals might be heard as a craft useful wherever there was a stage, from the dance floor to the theatre.
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Jens Bodewalt Lampe
Common questions
Jens Bodewalt Lampe was a composer, arranger, performer and bandleader, born in Ribe, Denmark, who grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota.
It is a cakewalk Lampe self-published in 1900, which Whitney-Warner quickly picked up after recordings by John Philip Sousa’s band.
From 1907 he created many arrangements, later for the orchestras of Vincent Lopez, Paul Whiteman and Edward B. Marks.
It is a piece of photoplay music that Lampe collected and may possibly have composed, whose main motif became a standard cue for stealth and villainy.