Today I listened to a radio feature on my favourite classical music
channel.  The title was "The Shadow of Laughter".  Laughing in classical
music.  I heard Kundry laugh, I heard the Pagliacco laugh, I heard Aeolus
laugh (in the Bach cantata), I heard Berlioz' Mephisto laugh, I listened to
fine humour by Satie, to grim humour by Shostakovitch, to sarcastic humour
by Couperin, to strange humour by C.P.E.  Bach (a trio sonata displaying
a dialogue between a sanguine and a melancholic person:  very weird), to
hidden humour by Josquin.  It was an entertaining and informative feature
but it left me wondering:  is there no innocent laughing in classical
music?

What do I mean by innocent laughter? The laughter of infants.  Friends
of mine happened to become parents for the second time some months ago.
Laurenz, the new baby, is a fantastic jolly chap of good humour and mild
manners.  When you look at him, when you touch him, he instantly begins to
laugh.  He doesn't smile, he doesn't grin:  he laughs.  And he laughs for
sheer joy, he doesn't laugh about someone else.  His laughter is so free
of irony and cynicism that it makes me happy and sad at the same time.

Classical music is highly sophisticated art made by grown-ups who obviously
can't laugh like infants anymore.  And it is a very serious matter, taken
deadly earnest.  Can you imagine Beethoven or Wagner laugh? Well, I can
imagine them laughing about someone else (especially Wagner was very good
at that) - but the both of them just laughing, in good humour, just because
life is good, the weather fine and love a reality? It seems a sacrilege
against our expectation that the real master is a serious and tragic
person.

I can easily imagine Mozart laughing.  And it is his ability to be a
"normal" person and not a 24-hour-deadly-serious-artist that makes him look
dubious especially in German eyes.  Someone who has fun cannot be a serious
musician.  There have been a lot of attempts to metamorphosize Mozart into
a demonic, serious, tragic person.  Well, he just wasn't like that.  Here
it an excerpt from one of his letters, written two months before his death
that, so the legend-writers tell us, "already hung over him" like a black
cloud:

"Constanze!  Immediately after your departure I played with Mr Mozart (the
one who wrote the opera for Schikaneder) two games of billiards.  Then
I sold my old horse for 14 ducats.  Then I had Joseph call Primus for me
and had black coffee; while I drunk it I smoked a fantastic pipe of fine
tobacco; then I made the instrumentation for almost the entire Rondo for
Stadtler."

Where is the deadly serious Mozart, fatigued by the approaching illness,
in constant g-minor-mood, depressed by poverty? He is a legend.  The real
Mozart wrote humorous letters, played billiards againgst himself, enjoyed
coffee and tobacco and made a fine deal with an old horse.  And wrote
deeply touching music.  I can see him in the cafe over his cup and pipe.
He is laughing.

Robert Peters
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