Pop Goes the Orchestra-Part X

Anderson with Arthur Fiedler

Anderson would occasionally appear on the Boston Pops regular concerts on PBS to conduct his own music while Fiedler would sit on the sidelines. For The Typewriter, Fiedler would don a green eyeshade, roll up his sleeves, and mime working on an old typewriter while the orchestra played.

Fiedler performed Anderson's Fiddle-Faddle so much that Boston audiences began calling it Fiedler Faddle.


Published in 1947, Anderson wrote the piece as one of a number of pieces commissioned over time by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Written in classic "song-and-trio" form, it is based on the childhood nursery song Three Blind Mice. It was recorded many times in the late 1940s and early 1950s by a variety of musical ensembles. Prominently featuring the violins, as the title would imply, the opening and closing sections rely on rapid sixteenth note passages, followed by pizzicato playing in the trio.

Watch Danny Kaye conduct the New York Philharmonic in Fiddle Faddle. I had the pleasure of playing under Kaye's baton as a music student. It was for an ABC-TV special, celebrating the opening of Disney's EPCOT Center in the early 1980s. For someone who is not a trained musician, he is amazing. And he was a very kind gentlemen, too!