Robert Peters wrote:

>Can you imagine Beethoven or Wagner laugh?

Darn right.  I can imagine Beethoven laughing in almost any scherzo.
In the final movement of his violin concerto.  In so many of his string
quartets and other chamber works.  And, in his own way, in the Grosse Fuge
and then again in the movement he substituted for it.

Wagner? Meistersinger, beginning w/ the Prelude and through the Dance of
the Apprentices, parts of Siegfried.  And doesn't the *Siegfried Idyl*
evoke smile at least?

Walter Meyer '48