Earworms- those fragments of melody you can't ... get... out of ... your... head. (Or so I understand the term to mean :) )
Well, I had one going for awhile. I finally decided that it had to be the opening of Tchaikovsky's Symphony inspired by Byron's "Manfred", and was looking forward to hearing that work again. (I did, and it wasn't.) Which left one of a few other works probably inspired in turn by that Tchaikovsky piece (among others by that composer... and others!...) - and I just turned one of them on on iTunes, as it happens... - Feliks Blumenfeld's symphony, "To the Dear Beloved". (Recorded during the Soviet era and released on CD a few years back, probably no longer available. Like most everything like it... though it might be reissued. Inspired even more by the Pathetique (impassioned, that means, by the way... not "pathetic"...) 6th of Tchaikovsky's numbered symphonies, slow finale and all...)
The part I remember best is the slow, scale opening of the Blumenfeld... (in C minor -
something like... after a brief phrase in the basses, (this begins the first movement slowly before a fast main movement; second movement, slower- larghetto movement; third "scherzo" movement; then the slow finale)
Eflat F G Aflat Bflat C
F G Aflat Bflat C Eflat D------ C B(natural!) C
(and so on- but the first ten or so notes, and their rhythm and orchestration, convince me that that's what I'd been looking for...and it is atmospheric and memorable.)
Jersey Girl