Will Rowe

Piano

Composer's Note:

Though still used here and there, the heyday of the jingle in advertising is well behind us. Growing up, my parents kept a VHS tape of commercials they grew up with from 1950s and 60s television at my grandma’s house. More often than not, it got popped in the VCR whenever we visited and even now, over 20 years later, many of those earworms still live rent-free in my brain.

What strikes me now is that these jingles, while brief and written for a very specific purpose, were still music all the same. Some even found their ways outside of advertising – the “stronger than dirt” tagline of some Ajax jingles (alternates to the one featured in this piece, “the foaming cleanser”) was even buried as an easter egg in the final chords of The Doors’ “Touch Me”.

Commercial Études seeks to similarly give a handful of my favorite old jingles new lives outside of commercialism. Each jingle has been deconstructed, riffed on, and extrapolated in various ways to transform them into concert etudes that still embody elements of the products they were written to sell (e.g. greasy guitar slide glissandi in Brylcreem, a coffee-jitter tremolo chorale in Maxwell House, etc.). Whether on TV or in the concert hall, there’s music to be found everywhere.