Mikael Rasmusson wrote:

>Dear List members, your views on humour in music.....

OK, I'll jump in here.  Shakspeare once wrote that you shouldn't trust
anyone who has no music in him(her).  One might add "never trust a musician
without a sense of humor." Humor is a part of life (now more than ever is
it needed!) and since music reflects life it's natural for it to reflect
humor.  There's cosmic humor (the funniest joke being that we should exist
at all), high humor, low humor, sick humor and puns.  If Haydn isn't Haydn
without the humor can one be said to truly love Haydn if one doesn't love
the humor? Perhaps those who claim not to like humor in music are reacting
to humor that doesn't quite come off.  At the risk of drawing some fire
I might suggest that the Academic Festival Overture of Brahms might be an
example.  Going further, one could say that the scherzo of that master's
4th symphony is a failed attempt at "Olympian" humor a la Beethoven
(although I still think it's a good piece).  I also don't have a lot of
patience for the type of humor that exploits the weird sounds that most
instruments are capable of (burping bassoons and flatulent tubas).  The
humor of Mahler (1st symphony, slow movement) and Strauss (Till
Eulenspiegel, parts of Don Quixote)--is that humor? I think there's a
sinister component to it.

I will list a few pieces I think are very humorous and tell why:  (not in
any particular order)

1.  Mozart:  A Musical Joke.  Obviously intended to be humorous--a lampoon
of any number of bad 18th-century composers, it is full of inside jokes
that only people who know something about the classical style would
appreciate.  The famous ending in 3 or 4 keys at once may be optional (an
ossia is given but I can't recall if it's Mozart's).  Funniest moments:
the wrong notes in the horns in the minuet, the first violin cadenza (with
its minor third cadential trill) in the slow movement.

2.  Haydn:  The "Joke" String Quartet, with its use of rests at the end of
the finale (I once attended a performance where the violist turned a page
just before the last two measures.)

3.  The false re-entry of the theme by first horn at the recapitulation in
the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.  Is this humor--or
something else?

4.  The whole finale of Beethoven's 8th, but especially the intrusive C#s.

So as you can tell I'm probably describing wit more than humor, with the
exeption of the Mozart.  I would call Haydn witty in the most cosmic of
ways.

Chris Bonds