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 [log in to unmask]