Humour

You're forgiven if you momentarily mistook the above excerpt for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. In fact it's a parody of the work entitled 1712 Overture, written by Peter Schickele, a composer best known for the comedy music he has written under the pseudonym of P.D.Q. Bach. He frequently parodies well-known works or styles of classical music by exaggerating or distorting elements in a ridiculous manner, or by combining disparate works or styles unexpectedly. In this excerpt from 1712 Overture, he pokes fun at Tchaikovsky's use of percussion and repeated identical chords. Additionally, the main theme has been changed to the tune of Yankee Doodle (which happens to have the five first notes in common).

I don't have much interest in such music and would normally not seek it out, but I must confess that in listening to a bunch of P.D.Q. Bach as research for this article I was actually provoked to laugh a couple of times. The music is somewhat analogous to the Scary Movie films; it's somewhat satisfying to be able to recognise the source material being referenced, and occasionally funny to see them twisted to extremes, but mostly there's nothing really clever or subtle about the humour employed.

However, there's plenty of highbrow humour to be found in serious classical music. Of course, what's considered to be "highbrow" or "serious" is entirely subjective, and "humour" is by far the most subjective of all. Nonetheless, disclaiming to presume whether others will find these amusing, I would like to discuss a few examples of wit in classical music which bring a grin to my face.

The first movement of Beethoven's Symphony no. 3 ("Eroica") is a paramount example of the sonata-allegro form. After two welcoming chords, the exposition begins with the cellos playing the main subject in the symphony's key of E flat. Remember, the exposition section of a movement is about getting lost in the wrong key, and the development section is about finding the way back to the tonic. So we'll know we've gotten to the recapitulation when we hear the music leading us back to that main subject in E flat. Let's hear how that happens in the Eroica:

After an odyssey through a multitude of keys, the violins finally settle on a B flat dominant seventh chord — aha! Perfect for resolving to the tonic of E flat! Hearing this, the horn proudly enters with the main subject. But he enters alone! The violins are still playing that B flat dominant seventh chord; the horn has clearly jumped the gun. Embarrassed, the rest of the orchestra quickly tries to cover up his mistake by angrily drowning him out and then arriving at the actual recapitulation as elegantly as posisble.

I love this "mistake" from the horn, because Beethoven is breaking the fourth wall and playing with our expectations of the sonata-allegro form. Another punchier example of pulling the rug out from under our expectations comes at the very end of Ives' Symphony no. 2:

I think that one speaks for itself!

Shostakovich completed his Symphony no. 7 ("Leningrad") in 1941, and it enjoyed a huge popularity over the next few years. The centrepiece of the enormous first movement is a set of variations on a theme, stated at first quietly then building to a tremendous climax over ten minutes or so. Here are the first and last statements of this theme:

Bartók wasn't too impressed with the work or its popularity, and in 1943 wrote his Concerto for Orchestra, whose fourth movement included the following notable segment:

Interrupting the rather lyrical music come the scales from Shostakovich's Leningrad theme, repeatedly and thickheadedly trying to take over. But each time it crashes and burns. It seems like Bartók is deriding the concept of such an inane theme managing to come in and dominate the music as it does in Shostakovich's symphony. In the end, after the offending theme has been laughed away, Bartók's music continues as it was before the rude interruption.

Next up is another example which references another work, but this time not for the purpose of parody. The second movement of Simpson's Symphony no. 2 is a scherzo with an enormous amount of energy and momentum, full of tension and sudden outbursts and pounding timpani. Here are two excerpts from the first section of the movement.

Most scherzos, including this one, are in ternary form, with a contrasting "trio" section in the middle. Let's hear the transition into the trio:

After all the chaos which has preceded, we are suddenly confronted with the strings playing this peaceful saccharine tune, in an abruptly conservative tonal framework. This absurd juxtaposition always tickles my funny bone. It's like the music got so crazy that it finally reached 88 mph and travelled two hundred years back in time to the early classical era. And, in fact, the trio is a quotation from Haydn's Symphony no. 76.

The funny doesn't stop there. As the trio progresses, the rest of the orchestra tries to nudge the strings — gently at first, then more and more forcefully — back to the twentieth century, by introducing dissonances which don't belong in a classical symphony and disrupting their sedate character. It takes a lot of work, as the strings seem to be quite oblivious and continue in their serene fashion.

Eventually they succeed in uprooting the incongruous interlude, and yank the strings back into the character of the scherzo opening for the final section of the movement.

Finally I'll leave you with an excerpt from a very playful piece of music which deserves an article all to itself — Berio's Sinfonia. I'll be writing about this work next time!