Thread by @AntonPrince7

Many people have a tendency to consider classical music as something very serious, by which one is to be moved, rather than entertained. Of course many works primarily aim to move us, yet humour abounds in classical music, even in places where one would scarce look.

1/18

For Haydn and Beethoven, humour was an integral part of musical style. They often employ imitations of errors in performance to this end.
In Haydn's “Zerstreute” we find a point in the finale where the music suddenly stops and the strings “retune”.

2/18

The piano sonatas of Beethoven are rife with instances where the hands are “not together”—a parody of poor pianists. The right hand is played just a little before the left. A prime example is the opening theme of Beethoven‘s sonata Op. 31/1

3/18

A more modern work in a similar vein is Hindemith‘s “Ouvertüre zum "Fliegenden Holländer", wie sie eine schlechte Kurkapelle morgens um 7 am Brunnen vom Blatt spielt”

4/18

In this piece, Hindemith imitates, in an incredibly dissonant manner, a mediocre performance of Wagner‘s great overture—even dissolving halfway into a waltz by Waldteufel (part of “Les Patineurs”)

5/18

It cannot remain unmentioned that Saint-Säens included pianists in his “Carnival des Animaux” alongside a parody of critics as “people with long ears”.

6/18

It may be clear that composers have often taken to mocking their performers and do not spare them one whit in pointing out and exaggerating errors for comic effect.

7/18

Of course imitation of other subjects, like real animals, as in pieces by Rameau or Clementi can be as amusing as imitations of incompetence.
Such an imitation can be illustrated by Bernstein's “Turkey Trot” from his “Divertimento for Orchestra”.

7/18

Imitations do not have to be funny however; they can be deadly serious. In the last movement of Mahler‘s Fourth Symphony, we find the bleating and lowing of a lamb and an ox imitated by oboe and horn, respectively.

(Lamb: 2:20 ox: 2:37)

8/18

As the poem speaks of the slaughter of these animals, this is no laughing matter. Nevertheless, there is a certain ironic undertone in the fact that a song about the beauty of heaven should so graphically describe the suffering of animals in that celestial Paradise.

9/18

But it would be a serious misconception to think that Mahler's music is humourless; in his First Symphony, he presents a very gloomy version of Frère Jacques as a funeral march and alternates it with cheerful Klezmer-like music.

9/18

This type of humour is much subtler than imitation, it satirises through incongruity—we do not expect to hear a children‘s round in such a gloomy guise; in fact it seems almost incompatible with the loftiness of the concert hall...

10/18

It is however a great mistake to condemn Mahler for bringing folk music into the concert hall, as his contemporaries did.
Mahler's example is not without precedent, as Beethoven too quoted popular songs, such as in the scherzo from his Op. 110

11/18

Here Beethoven quotes, first, a little popular song of his time called “Unsre Katz hat Katzerln g´habt” (a song he also arranged earlier).

12/18

And then states, shortly after, a theme based on a song for which I cannot find a recording but one can imagine the text to these notes; “Ich bin lüderlich, du bist lüderlich, wir sind alle lüderlich”.

13/18

Of course there are many more examples and an infinite variety of humorous instances in music, of these I would like to name only one more—Shostakovich‘s Ninth Symphony.

14/18

As Mr Bernstein explains here, a Ninth symphony was deemed daunting to a composer; a Ninth symphony had to be an absolute masterwork—and then of course there was the “curse of the Ninth”; that no composer should write a Ninth and live.

15/18

Shostakovich, ever defying expectations, composed a tiny, Haydenesque symphony filled with classical devices of humour such as accented “wrong” notes, a trombone that keeps coming in too early—and keeps trying, a sort Spanish-sounding trumpet solo etc.

16/18

Finally, in the fourth movement, Shostakovich quotes part of Beethoven's Ninth to highlight the fact that he is parodying the gravity often ascribed to a Ninth symphony.

(The first notes of the bassoon imitate the passage in Beethoven at 1:50)

17/18

Let me close this thread with a last piece of that comic master Haydn; a lighthearted little movement. This particular performance is made especially amusing because of the way in which it is conducted—lending new meaning to the term “Augenmusik”.

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