The purpose of the project is to
Identify music references in the P. G. Wodehouse Novels and Short Stories (Owing to PGW activities in the Show Business, we have excluded the autobiographical books in our search) ;
Collect scores for the identified pieces ;
Generate Music Videos from these scores, allowing us to hear the music and read the lyric.
Up to now (August 2024) we've found nearly 500 music references. Some of them are fully explicit, others are more subtle, even questionable. In the subtle ones we have quote of the refrain or catch phrase of a song, just in passing (e.g. 'There is nothing like a Dame'). Among those questionable are the poems set to music - as Wodehouse quotes many poems, it's difficult to know whether the reference is to the original poem or to its musical adaptation (e.g. Danny Deever or Mandalay from Rudyard Kipling texts) .
Some pieces recur in several works, so over 200 different pieces have been found. There's a wide variety of musical genres: classical, folk, religious hymns, national anthems and patriotic songs, to name but a few. One category predominates: operas and musicals.
The collection can be approached from several angles :
by title of the novel or collection of short stories 📚;
by the title of the musical piece 🎹;
by name of composer or lyricist 🎩;
by musical genre 🗃️.
A set of references could not be solved or found. The Wanted Scores section lists them. Any help in identifying references or finding missing scores is most welcome (see Contribute).