Negation Day

I let it slip past, but yesterday was Negation Day, 9/9 (a little bilingual joke), which ought to be celebrated by linguists. Certainly it should not go uncelebrated.

The catch phrase for the day is, of course, “No, No, Nanette”:

On ths blog on 7/24/17, in “No moths, no squirrels, no rats”, with a brief section on “No, No, Nanette” (with illustrations in #7 and #8). More detail from Wikipedia:

No, No, Nanette is a musical comedy with lyrics by Irving Caesar and Otto Harbach, music by Vincent Youmans, and a book by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, based on Mandel’s 1919 Broadway play My Lady Friends. The farcical story involves three couples who find themselves together at a cottage in Atlantic City in the midst of a blackmail scheme, focusing on a young, fun-loving Manhattan heiress who naughtily runs off for a weekend, leaving her unhappy fiancé. Its songs include the well-known “Tea for Two” and “I Want to Be Happy”.

During its 1924 pre-Broadway tour, No, No, Nanette became a hit in Chicago, and the production stayed there for over a year. In 1925, the show opened both on Broadway and in the West End, running 321 and 665 performances respectively. Film versions and revivals followed. A popular 1971 Broadway revival, with a book adapted by Burt Shevelove, led to the piece becoming a favorite of school and community groups for a time.

In the French chamber-music version: “Non, Non, Nonet”.

One Response to “Negation Day”

  1. astraya Says:

    There is a classical music joke to the effect that Luigi Nono wrote a work for a group of nine instrumentalists.

Leave a Reply


%d bloggers like this: