Musical Humor

After several rather heavy theoretical posts, time for some fun. I call this "musical humor" rather than "humor in music" because they are different things. Here is humor in (or perhaps with) music:

Lots of possibilities in making fun of the formality of classical music. Take the Marx Brothers, for example:

But my favorite has always been Victor Borge:

There is a little known piece by John Dowland "for two to play on one lute" that is just as funny. Not for the music itself, but the contortions involved in the performance. Just as the audience settles down to enjoy the music, the players switch parts and more hilarity ensues:

Alas, most performers don't let themselves enjoy the comic aspects of the piece! But I have performed this in public and it can be nearly as funny as the Borge performance of Liszt. And this was written this way! Good set-up line: "hands off my G-string!" How about some more Victor Borge?

It's the incongruity that makes for the humor: famous virtuoso pianist can't get it right, but every backstage blue-collar worker can just toss it off, even wearing gloves. Lots more Borge on YouTube for you to watch.

But we also have musical humor. There are only a few composers really good at musical humor and probably the best is Haydn. Here is a minuet that is so rhythmically twisted that the first rehearsal is likely to be pretty hilarious for the players:

Then there is his famous quartet from op 33 nicknamed "The Joke" because the last movement has multiple false endings, each tempting members of the audience to burst into applause before the piece is actually over:

That almost worked! I think audiences nowadays are so cowed by the tsk-tksers that they live in fear of clapping in the wrong place--even when the composer tempts them. Another composer with a sense of humor--though rather dark at times--was Shostakovich. Here is his setting of "Tea for Two" which he re-named "Tahiti Trot" and orchestrated for his ballet The Golden Age:

Here is a polka from that same ballet, arranged by Shostakovich for string quartet:

Another humorist in music is Beethoven, but I'll save that for another post as it takes a bit more context. But this post was inspired by a post on Norman Lebrecht's blog about a recently discovered letter from Beethoven. The letter was written to a composer named Stockhausen--alas, not Karlheinz, but a Franz Anton Stockhausen, living in Paris. Norman comments, "As usual, Beethoven complains about his health and living conditions. He does not, sadly, offer analysis or criticism of Gruppen." That sounds like good material for another post!

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Alex Ross' Concerts of the Year

One of the most interesting writers on music is the New Yorker's Alex Ross who summarizes the year's concerts in this piece. While the topic is supposed to be the best performances of the year, and there is a list of such, he prefaces it with an essay about the political and social relevance of classical music in 2011. Well, ok. He makes the point that the big pop stars are more part of the "1%" than classical musicians.

Pop stars and their parent corporations are the true élites of the cultural sphere, reaping vast rewards from a winner-takes-all system.

He mentions that investigating the sources of corporate support for classical music reveals that much of it comes from places that we now consider unsavory like the financial and tobacco industries. He goes on to cite instances of composers supporting the popular causes of the day such as protection of the environment, being anti-war and civil disobedience. He ends with this:

Over the centuries, classical music has been allied with wealth and power, and it has also caused trouble for wealth and power. Its present marginal position gives it, at least in theory, critical distance from the materialist excess of pop culture—the ruthless equation of monetary and aesthetic value. Tellingly, classical music in America reached its maximum popularity in the nineteen-thirties and forties, when the country came closer to disavowing the capitalist faith than at any time in its history. One measure of the levelling spirit of the age was that millions across the land could tune in to NBC radio and listen to Beethoven symphonies. Are d.j.s blasting Beethoven in the V.I.P. lounges of the Second Gilded Age? Not that I’ve heard.

This is perilously close to proclaiming that classical music is a kind of epiphenomenon of socialism. I suppose I could add more evidence such as the enormous popularity of the symphonies of Shostakovich in the Soviet Union. But while there may be some correlation here, the actual causation seems weak... Those very Beethoven symphonies that Ross cites were the product of an aristocratic society, after all. As was the music of Haydn, Mozart and Bach. Actually, all that we call 'classical' music from the Middle Ages well into the 19th century was patronized by and listened to very largely by the nobility and the elite of the Church.  I would agree with Alex that the "ruthless equation of monetary and aesthetic value" is one of the great problems of popular music today. I just think that this is a problem having more to do with the problem of cultural values in general than with music in particular. The give-away word is "tellingly" because he doesn't tell us what it tells: socialism causes people to listen more to Beethoven while materialist excess causes people to listen to Jay-Z?

Interesting list of concerts, though. The one that I most wish I had heard is Ian Bostridge and Thomas Adès performing music of Dowland, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Kurtág, and Adès at Carnegie. Here is Adès' arrangement of the great song by John Dowland "In Darknesse Let Mee Dwelle":

And here is the original:

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Odd Pairings

Ok, which of these is not ridiculous:

• Metallica does late Beethoven
• Rostropovich plays the Beatles
• Lady Gaga does Faure chansons
• Sting does John Dowland
• Lang Lang plays Duke Ellington

Almost had you with the Lang Lang, didn't I? But the correct answer is Sting does John Dowland. Here is the album. Here is a performance of one of Dowland's most famous songs:

I have to say, I admire Sting for taking a chance and doing this kind of music. I don't see anything wrong with his kind of voice in this repertoire. It is certainly more appropriate than, say, an operatic tenor. Sting has dipped a toe in classical music before:

There is a longer version of this that begins with a couple of minutes of them both warming up--he with yoga. Now if I were uncharitable I would say this is a student-level performance of the Bach with so-so sound, iffy slurs and so forth. But I'm not! I think it is great. Play Bach! Everyone! You can do no harm. Just like the Dowland, this is a sincere performance and I would rather hear it than the best jaundiced professional with no heart.

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