Transcript Music & Humor - Humor in America

HUMOR AND ICONICITY
IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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HISTORY OF HUMOR IN
MUSIC
• In the 1600s, the Italians developed their
“Opera Buffa,” leading the way to comic
opera, which in France became the “Comedie
Française” and in Germany the “Komische
Oper.”
• Karl Haas says that in England it led to John
Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera,” (1728), and in
the 1850s and 1860s to Offenbach’s satirical
masterpieces.
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• In the 1870s through the 1890s this led to Gilbert and
Sullivan’s operas which include:
• “The Gondoliers,”
• “H.M.S. Pinafore,”
• “Iolanthe,”
• “The Mikado,”
• “Patience,”
• “The Pirates of Penzance,”
• “Prince Ida,”
• “Ruddigore,”
• “The Sorcerer,”
• “Trial by Jury,”
• and “The Yeoman of the Guard.”
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 213)
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A MUSICAL CIGARETTE HOLDER
• Phyllis Diller chose her signature prop of a cigarette
in a long holder to portray a certain type of woman.
• But she soon found that she felt comfortable using it
in much the same way that a conductor uses a
baton: She could signal for attention, puncte the
end of a joke, point at someone, express hostility,
and control the audience in general.
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 215)
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SHOOTING THE KEYS
• When Chico Marx played an arpeggio on the piano,
he would play all of the notes but one, and then
would point to that key with his index finger and
using his thumb as a “trigger” he would “shoot the
key.”
• Harpo Marx would also “shoot the keys,” but he was
famous for playing glissandos (sliding music), and
for getting his finger stuck between the keys.
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 215)
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GETTING LOST IN THE
MUSIC
• In the middle of one of Victor Borge’s piano
concertos, the conductor lost his place in the
musical score.
• Borge stood up from his piano bench,
walked over to the conductor’s stand,
pointed to the right place in the score, and
then returned to his piano bench to finish the
concerto.
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• One of Borge’s musical gags was to
look befuddled as he examined a
musical score and tried to play it. After
some false starts and pondering, he
realized that it is upside down, so he
turned it over and played it masterfully.
• Another musical trick of Borge was to
shift slyly from a piece of classical into
a piece of popular music.
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• Borge also liked to play pop culture music pieces like
“Happy Birthday to You” as it would have been
composed by Bach or Brahms.
• He also engaged in much wordplay. For example, he
said that a particular piece he was playing by
Rachmaninoff was written in four flats.
• This was because the composer kept moving while
he was working on it.
• Another piece was written by Bach, but he couldn’t
remember whether it was Johann Sebastian, or
Jacques Offen.
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 216-217)
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MUSICAL PARODIES &
SATIRES
• Tom Lehrer is a Harvard Professor who has written
more than forty musical parodies and satires. He
has written songs about poisoning pigeons in the
park, hometown perverts, and charred bodies in a
nuclear holocaust.
• But his most controversial piece is “The Vatican
Rag” with its “bow your head with great respect
and—genuflect! genuflect! genuflect!”
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 217)
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• Mark Russell also writes musical parodies
and satires. During Reagan’s presidency, he
took the tune of “My Bonnie Lies over the
Ocean” and changed it to:
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“My ship of state’s practically grounded
for want of a policy plan.
I deny all the charges—unfounded—
since the state of my ship hit the fan.
Bring back. Bring back. Oh bring back my
Teflon to me, to me….”
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 217)
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• P. D. Q. Bach is another composer who writes
musical parodies and satires.
• He is purported to be the last of Johann
Sebastian Bach’s 20-odd children.
• He was “discovered” by Peter Schickele, the
first person to occupy the “General Electric
Chair” at the University of Southern North
Dakota at Huppel.
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• Peter Schickele keeps unearthing various
P.D.Q. Bach “schleptetas” and
“pervertimentos.”
• When people hear the music of Mozart or
Beethoven they get an inferiority complex, so
Schickele reasons that P.D.Q. Bach has a
wider appeal than these other classical
musicians because they feel they are capable
of writing something just as good.
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 217)
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Spike Jones and his City Slickers also did
musical parodies.
For example he did a parody with Humer
and Jethro called “PAL-YAT-CHEE.”
http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/son
g_details.aspx?SongID=8092
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ICONICITY IN MUSIC
• Examples of composers making their music match
the plot are the popping staccatos of Mozart’s
“Popagano-Popagana” duet in “The Magic Flute,”
the flourishes and strikes in Rossini’s “The Thieving
Magpie,” the “bump de bump de bump de dadada”
of Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” and the
expressively cross-sensory sounds of “The Painted
Desert” in Antonin Dvorak’s “New World
Symphony.”
• Ogden Nash added words to Saint Saens’s iconic
“Carnival of the Animals.”
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IRONY IN MUSIC
• In Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” Rossini’s “The
Barber of Seville,” and Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the
Underworld,” dramatic irony comes into play as characters
become victims of Tricksters and suffer from misidentifications
and misunderstood events.
• An extra irony in relation to Offenbach’s “Orpheus” is that one
of its musical sequences was so lively that it became famous
throughout Paris and the world as “The Can Can.”
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 212)
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HUMOR IN CLASSICAL
MUSIC
• Humor in classical music has a long
tradition as shown by such playful
vocabulary items as the French
“gavotte,” which like the Irish and
English “gigue” or “jig” is music for a
fast-moving dance.
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• A “scherzo” is a musical joke.
• A “cappricio” is a composition that is irregular
in form and usually lively and whimsical.
• A “divertimento” is a light and entertaining
instrumental composition.
• And a “rondo” is a composition whose
principal theme is repeated three or more times
in the same key, interspersed with subordinate
themes.
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 211)
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•Here are some
classical composers
who are famous for
their humorous
musical
compositions:
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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
• In his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Godel,
Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,
Douglas Hofstadter compares artist M.
C. Escher’s fascination with visual
loops in which a waterfall, for example
appears to become its own source to
Johann Sebastian Bach’s fascination
with acoustic loops.
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• In his “Endlessly Rising Canon,” Bach seems to be
drawing to a conclusion but instead slips out of the
key of C-minor and into D-minor. This false “ending”
ties smoothly into a new beginning where Bach
repeats the process and returns in the key of E, only
to start over again.
• Hofstadter says that “these successive modulations
lead the ear to increasingly remote provinces on
tonality, so that after several of them, one would
expect to be hopelessly far away from the starting
key.
• And yet, magically, after exactly six such
modulations, the original key of C-minor has been
restored?”
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 211-212)
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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Beethoven satirized local musicians in his “Pastoral Symphony” where
he portrayed a sleepy village in which the musicians doze off, wake
up, play a few notes, and then doze off again.
BEETHOVEN’S PASTORAL SYMPHONY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM8RlCZP0KQ
(Nilsen & Nilsen 211)
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FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN
Franz Joseph Haydn was distressed by the
number of people who fell asleep while
listening to his chamber pieces.
So he wrote “Symphony Number 94” (The
Surprise Symphony) in the key of C using a
slow tempo and soft and repetitive
sequences.
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At the end of each stanza, he modulated the music to the key of G and
ended with a resounding fortissimo chord guaranteed to wake up
anyone who might be dozing.
HAYDN’S SURPRISE SYMPHONY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDWh9F3Vig
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Haydn’s “Farewell Symphony” is another example of Haydn’s humor.
Haydn wanted to tell the audience that musicians were lonely for their
wives and wanted to go home for the summer.
As the symphony draws to its end, various musicians put out the lights
on their music stands and depart from the stage.
Haydn’s audiences were amused at the gradual diminishing of the
performing force, but they also got his other message.
This same technique of a diminishing number of performers was later
used in “The Sound of Music” as the von Trapps left the stage and
were smuggled out of the theater past the Nazi guards.
HAYDN FAREWELL SYMPHONY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXY4DaF9d9Y&feature=related
(Nilsen & Nilsen 211)
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JOSEPH HAYDN’S MUSICAL JOKE:
Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet Opus 33, Number 2 is called “The Joke.”
This is because it has so many false endings:
PRESTO MOVEMENT FROM JOSEPH HAYDN’S “THE JOKE”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDkWBzH6dkE
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!WOLFGANG AMADEUS
MOZART
• Mozart was a contemporary of Haydn,
and his “The Village Musicians,” also
known as “A Musical Joke,”
burlesqued the nonprofessional
playing that was done by amateur
community bands of his day.
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 211)
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CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS:
In his “Carnival of the Animals,” Saint-Saëns parodies
the “can can” melody from Jacques Offenbach’s
Orpheus in the Underworld.
The can-can is normally performed at breakneck
tempo, but in the “Tortoises” parody it is played
painfully slowly by low-register strings.
TORTOISES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHvqaRaDzQE
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!!RICHARD WAGNER
• Even in the most serious operas, composers include
light moments for comic relief. For example in his
“Ring Cycle,” Richard Wagner has the young
Siegfried turn the brown bear loose on Mime so that
he and the audience can relish in the dwarf’s fright.
• And one of the funniest lines in all of opera is the
dramatic irony when Siegfried slices open
Brunnhilde’s breastplate with his armor-piercing
sword, and exclaims, “Das ist kein Mann!” (“This is
not a man?”).
• (Nilsen & Nilsen 211)
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!!!HUMOR IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
1812 OVERTURE WITH CANNONS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-4SRvGUtn8&feature=related
3-YEAR-OLD JONATHAN CONDUCTING BEETHOVEN’S 5th SYMPHONY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0REJ-lCGiKU
“Ave Maria” by The Dentist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCNHhrv_qzc&feature=related
BLACK SWAN (FROM TCHAIKOWSKI’S SWAN LAKE BALLET):
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3985807385/
DANSE MACABRE BY CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcOZmtbLRP0&feature=related
DOMINICK ARGENTO: “MISS MANNERS ON MUSIC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OThlAi9ovk
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BACH’S ENDLESSLY RISING CANON:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsgdZFIdmeo
BALLET TROCADERO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIQyZo1PeFA
BOB AND RAY & PETER SCHICKELE: CLASSICAL MUSIC AS
COMPETITION:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0vHpeUO5mw
VICTOR BORGE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcV19rylSZc
CLAUDE FRANK “HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEDLEY”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD8COH-7Bug
“HOEDOWN” FROM AARON COPELAND’S RODEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9e-IdKfyA&feature=related
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ANTONIN DVORAK’S “NEW WORLD SYMPHONY”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yctfXIqugXc
IGOODESMAN AND JOO:
http://cartoonando.blogspot.com/2008/04/1000-posts.html
SCOT JOPLIN’S PEACHERINE RAG ON RECYCLED BOTTLES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k26nt3Y4cmg
LAUGHING SONG (JOHANN STRAUS’S “DIE FLEDERMAUS”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLZNoRoH2M&NR=1
MARS: BRINGER OF WAR (from GUSTAV HOLST’S “THE
PLANETS”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bcRCCg01I
MozArt Group: Polish Music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYgVbVRoqk&NR=1
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PACHELBEL RANT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM
PAPAGANA/PAPAGENO (MOZART’S MAGIC FLUTE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87UE2GC5db0
PIANO JUGGLER # 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07brW206D84
PIANO JUGGLER # 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwgjw68TZWg
ERIK SATIE: “AIR DU RAT” & “AIR DU POÉTE”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fil1SngtOY
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PETER SCHICKELE (PDQ BACH):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY0CFaracVE
POLISH MUSICIANS PLAYING CLASSICAL MUSIC:
http://www.mozartgroup.org/video.htm
SILENT MONKS SINGING “HALLELULIA”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU&feature=related
“SLEIGHRIDE” BY LEROY ANDERSON:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OATi34PKNPw&feature=related
SNOWFLAKES (FROM THE NUTCRACKER SUITE BY Tchaikowski):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBeUxXSNiFc
SORCERER’S APPRENTICE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XChxLGnIwCU
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SPIKE JONES & HIS CITY SLICKERS:
http://www.ilike.com/artist/Spike+Jones+%26+His+City+Slickers?src=one
box
THREE LITTLE MAIDS FROM SCHOOL (GILBERT & SULLIVAN):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXWkIZUPmDY
“TYPEWRITER” BY LEROY ANDERSON:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/803796/the_typewriter_song/
AARON WILBURN (If My Nose Was Running Money”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egCeIwjIuZM
WONDERFUL WORLD (SACHMO ARMSTRONG):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WlbQPmXg08
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References:
Ellis, Iain. “Resistance and Relief: The Wit and Woes of Early Twentieth
Century Folk and Country Music.” HUMOR: International Journal of
Humor Research 23.2 (2010): 161-178.
Haas, Karl. Inside Music. New York, NY: Bantam, Doubleday, Dell, 1984.
Horowitz, Susan. Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol
Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women. New
York, NY: Gordon and Breach, 1997.
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of 20th Century
American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.
Schrader, Valerie Lynn. “Wicked Witch or Reformer?: Character
Transformations Through the Use of Humor in the Musical Wicked”
Studies in American Humor New Series 3.23 (2011): 49-66.
Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Life. New York, NY: Knopf, 1988.
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