# Comedy in Music



## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Do you think music and comedy mix?

I've recently been discovering the music of Poulenc, which strikes me as being full of jokes (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). Much of the humour in neo-classicism comes from the deliberate perversion of classical conventions, e.g. prolonging the build up to cadences or modifying familiar chord progressions. I thoroughly enjoy (and sometimes genuinely 'LOL' at) the way Poulenc plays with the audience's expectations for great comic effect:






But sometimes musical jokes can come across as a bit tacky, e.g. the quotations in Shostakovich's 15th symphony grow tiresome rather quickly and (in my opinion) spoil what is otherwise a decent piece.

So does anyone else have an opinion on this matter: do you like it when your favourite composers try their luck as comedians? If so, which composer is the funniest? 

Feel free to share examples...


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

I've played that Poulenc before. It is fun and funny


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

The weird trumpetsolo in Shostakovitch' pianoconcerto #1 always makes me smile. Dunno if this was intended by the composer.....
I have a recording of this concerto with Shostakovitch himself playing the piano, I'll play it this evening !!

And ofcourse there is the Frank Zappa album "does humor belong in music" .

Cheers,
Jos


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)




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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

^That Mozart piece has been making me laugh for a few years now. It's amazing that a young fellow could that even after a couple of hundred years. This has gone a long way toward my appreciation of him.

Much as I am a Beethoven fan, I find his musical humor a bit tedious at times. Rage Over a Lost Penny, the Turkish March as comic relief in the Symphony No. 9, and most of all the ostinato overstaying its welcome in the Eroica Variations are not my favorite Beethoven moments.

I too find the Shostakovich piano concerto to be quite funny, but this is also a fantastic compositional tool. When the piano and orchestra all suddenly turn majestic and in unison in the middle it is one of the most awe inspiring moments I've heard in 20th century music.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Beethoven is among the most humorous of composers -- and much of it is subtle. Wildly off the wall instrumentation (the double bass in the trio of the Fifth, the tripping bassoon lines in the outer movements of the Fourth), rhythmic dislocations (main scherzo theme of the Opus 18 no.6 Quartet, scherzo of the Opus 95 Quartet), the wild pizzicato and grumbling base figurations in the variations of Opus 131, and, to my mind, best of all: the point at the end of the dance movement of Opus 131 where it sounds as if the players have lost the thread entirely and the performance is breaking down. I don't laugh out loud at performances, but I don't mind breaking into a broad smile.

George


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Here's some more Shostakovich. This is about as funny as it gets. The Polka from his _Golden Age_ ballet suite:


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Celloman said:


> Here's some more Shostakovich. This is about as funny as it gets


For me, it's not funny at all. Sounds like soundtrack from annoying children cartoons made behind the iron courtain between 1950's and 80's.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Here's one of my favorite musical gags: Satie's _Embryons desséchés_ No. 3, a mere 90-second piece that ends with a parody of a Beethoven coda (starting around 1:06 in the following clip):


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Eschbeg said:


> Here's one of my favorite musical gags: Satie's _Embryons desséchés_ No. 3, a mere 90-second piece that ends with a parody of a Beethoven coda


The coda takes up a third of the piece, and it's only a minute and a half! :lol:


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Richard Strauss has humorous bits in Don Quixote.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Malcolm Arnold"s overture, Tam O'Shanter. I've seen a Prom audience laugh out loud during it.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Thanks for all the contributions so far.

Mozart's "Musical Joke" is a good example! It contains some good slapstick moments, such as the complete collapse of tonality at the very end, and also a great deal of parody (and perhaps just a little bit of self-parody?).

I agree that Satie is one of the funniest composers, or at least one of the goofiest. His collection "Sports and Divertissiments" comes to mind, with its delightful movements titles, such as "Golf," "Fishing" and "The Octopus."

I'm not so sure about the humour in Shostakovich. I think I agree with Aramis that some of it sounds just a bit forced/contrived.

I think that humour is generally one of the hardest things to pull off in music. Comedy relies on an element of surprise, which is of course lost on the second hearing, and who wants to hear jokes if they already know the punchline?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Winterreisender said:


> I agree that Satie is one of the funniest composers, or at least one of the goofiest. His collection "Sports and Divertissiments" comes to mind, with its delightful movements titles, such as "Golf," "Fishing" and "The Octopus."


_Sports et Divertissements_ contains another of my favorite gags, though one could argue that it's a verbal joke rather than a musical one. Each movement has bits of dialogue written into the score (it's not clear whether the pianist is supposed to read them aloud while performing the piece), and in the eighth movement, "Yachting," the dialogue reads: "The sea is rocky... This isn't fun... Go fetch me a car." I like to think this is a jab at Debussy's _La Mer_.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

I like that ambiguity in Satie. With some pieces, it is not at all clear what you're supposed to do with them. His "Vexations" is wonderfully eccentric but its purpose/meaning is open for debate! The instructions: "In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities"

I tried to listen to a Vexations marathon once but realised it would take 22 hours, so quickly gave up.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

re: humour in Poulenc (and the same could possibly apply to Satie?). I watched a documentary on Poulenc where one of the commentators basically said that Poulenc's humorous style is the result of a deliberate flaunting of his lack of ability.

Here is the clip (starts around 35:34):





anyone agree with this?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Would any discussion of Satie be complete without the "Sonatine Bureaucratique," a derangement of the well-known Clementi sonatine for beginners?


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Humour and no Haydn? C'mon,






(4:50 - 5:20)


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Leroy Anderson: The Typewriter






I can officially say that this is the greatest piece ever written for typewriter and orchestra.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

I find humour (that I suspect and hope is intentional) in Rachmaninov's arrangement of Kreisler's Liebesfreud. It's the clash of styles that's amusing. The original is such a light piece, but Rachmaninov makes it into this big bravura thing with more advanced harmonies etc. It does sound like he's 'messing around' quite a bit.


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## Wandering (Feb 27, 2012)

The Doktor in Wozzeck is horribly funny to me, a man long lost in his own koolaid. Maybe other similarly characatured characters in opera might be telling as to how humor sounds?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Winterreisender said:


> re: humour in Poulenc (and the same could possibly apply to Satie?). I watched a documentary on Poulenc where one of the commentators basically said that Poulenc's humorous style is the result of a deliberate flaunting of his lack of ability.


It doesn't sound like the commentator is talking specifically about Poulenc's humor; he seems to be talking about the arguably predictable nature of his style--a style that is humorous, yes, but that seems almost secondary to the broader point the commentator is making, which has to do with Poulenc's overall ability to generate original musical ideas.

In any case, I don't think the humor of Poulenc lies in the light-heartedness of his early style (which, as the documentary mentions, disappears after the mid-1930s). His pre-1930s works sound playful, but playfulness in itself does not equal humor in my opinion. The real essence of Poulenc's humor (much like Shostakovich's) is in his clever allusions and quotations.

Take, for example, the third piece from _Un soir de nèige_:






If all we're listening to is the music's surface style, then there's very little humor in this piece. But the first two words of the piece, "Bois muertri" ("wounded forest"), are set to a chord progression (a triad descending by tritone to another triad, and then the sequence repeats with another pair of triads a whole step beneath the first pair) that is a quotation of Ravel's _L'enfant et les sortilèges_, where the same progression of parallel triads moving by tritone appears in the scene where--wait for it--the trees are singing about being wounded.

_That's_ an example of Poulenc's humor, in my opinion.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

There's a paper to written on "Humor in Tristan und Isolde" -- but it would be short.


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## Wandering (Feb 27, 2012)

GGluek said:


> There's a paper to written on "Humor in Tristan und Isolde" -- but it would be short.


Randomly place ugly coach pics throughout article.


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

I think Stravinsky's 'A Soldiers Tale' is pretty humorous.


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Eschbeg said:


> It doesn't sound like the commentator is talking specifically about Poulenc's humor; he seems to be talking about the arguably predictable nature of his style--a style that is humorous, yes, but that seems almost secondary to the broader point the commentator is making, which has to do with Poulenc's overall ability to generate original musical ideas.
> 
> In any case, I don't think the humor of Poulenc lies in the light-heartedness of his early style (which, as the documentary mentions, disappears after the mid-1930s). His pre-1930s works sound playful, but playfulness in itself does not equal humor in my opinion. The real essence of Poulenc's humor (much like Shostakovich's) is in his clever allusions and quotations.
> 
> ...


Thank you for your very detailed reply. You have mentioned an interesting allusion which I imagine would provide great comedy to a highly learned audience, but I personally see more mass appeal in the humour of Poulenc's earlier works, such as the sonata I mentioned in the OP. In my opinion, great comic effect can be achieved through toying with audience expectations, and that is what the neo-classicist style is all about. Poulenc might begin with some neat, balanced periodic phrasing, but then take us in a few very suprising directions before a slightly crude perfect cadence is reached.

In other words, the young Poulenc was hardly a Wunderkind and probably lacked the ability to write elegant Mozartian sonatas. But this is not a problem for him; instead he embraces this "lack of ability" (as the man in the documentary says) by writing something which is a bit silly. Instead of following the rules, he makes fun of the rules.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

The humor of the Russian composers knew no bounds. They wrote scherzos like no other.

A favorite funny moment in Prokofiev's oeuvre:





1:26 the romping about begins. :lol:

This here is just corny. Obvious depicting of HEE HEE HEEEEE!:


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

In the first movement of the Shostakovich first piano concerto, there is a place where the trumpet plays for a bit, then the piano plays a fairly low-pitched "wrong chord". Sorry I can't be more specific, but if you're familiar with the piece, you may know what I'm referring to.



Jos said:


> The weird trumpetsolo in Shostakovitch' pianoconcerto #1 always makes me smile. Dunno if this was intended by the composer.....
> I have a recording of this concerto with Shostakovitch himself playing the piano, I'll play it this evening !!
> 
> And ofcourse there is the Frank Zappa album "does humor belong in music" .
> ...


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

"Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" is filled with humor from start to finish.


GreenMamba said:


> Richard Strauss has humorous bits in Don Quixote.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I find it interesting to see Shostakovich appear so often in this thread. One tends to associate his name with sorrow and anguish - Leningrad, obtuse bureaucrats prescribing and threatening, pouring all his most profound musical thoughts into string quartets in the hope that Comrade Stalin wouldn't notice, etc. etc. 

But he had a most delightful sense of musical humour. His ninth symphony comes to mind. Mind you, there is sometimes something slightly hysterical about his humour, like someone laughing his head off after a narrow escape. 

Perhaps in the Soviet Union you either learned to laugh, or you went completely nuts.

To add to the parade of musical humour, I need but to think of the phrase "bassoon concerto" to break out in a goofy grin.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> I find it interesting to see Shostakovich appear so often in this thread. One tends to associate his name with sorrow and anguish...


Has anybody mentioned Tahiti Trot? :lol:


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Winterreisender said:


> re: humour in Poulenc (and the same could possibly apply to Satie?). I watched a documentary on Poulenc where one of the commentators basically said that Poulenc's humorous style is the result of a deliberate flaunting of his lack of ability.
> 
> Here is the clip (starts around 35:34):
> 
> ...


Don't believe anything you read----what do YOU think ?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

More Shostakovich humor: The story of Orango, an ape-human crossbreed who becomes a wealthy and evil newspaper baron. What? Well he only wrote the prologue to the opera, which was recently discovered and is now available. It's funny enough by itself, with the conductor playing a toy piano at the podium in between baton waves...


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Jos said:


> The weird trumpetsolo in Shostakovitch' pianoconcerto #1 always makes me smile. Dunno if this was intended by the composer.....
> I have a recording of this concerto with Shostakovitch himself playing the piano, I'll play it this evening !!
> 
> And ofcourse there is the Frank Zappa album "does humor belong in music" .
> ...


Humour and music certainly go together and they have done innumerable times leaving opera aside completely.
The trumpet concerto is supposed to be funny with the trumpet constantly interrupting proceedings.
One of the funniest compositions is Dohnanyi's "Variations On a Nursery Theme", things start off in the most portentious way you could imagine and then "Baa Baa Blacksheep" appears or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"--whichever--the same tune that Mozart used in his "Ah,vous dirai-je ,Maman" variations. The whole thing is a delight.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

GreenMamba said:


> Richard Strauss has humorous bits in Don Quixote.


He has lot's in "Till Eulenspiegel ".


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

spradlig said:


> "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" is filled with humor from start to finish.


I didn't notice your post,but at least it shows that great minds think alike !!!


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Nobody going to mention Charles Ives,so much comedy eg : "0ld Songs Deranged" and "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven".


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

Another example is the ending of his second symphony. I have heard differrent versions, but I have a recording (I think Bernstein conducts) in which I think the final chord contains all twelve tones of the chromatic scale.



moody said:


> Nobody going to mention Charles Ives,so much comedy eg : "0ld Songs Deranged" and "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven".


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

spradlig said:


> Another example is the ending of his second symphony. I have heard differrent versions, but I have a recording (I think Bernstein conducts) in which I think the final chord contains all twelve tones of the chromatic scale.


Eleven, actually; every note except the tonic!


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Bartok's send up of Shos 7 in the Concerto for Orchestra is hilarious


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

@Mahlerian: Thanks again! How did you know that? I have the CD, and of course this detail was not mentioned. I heard another recording which seemed to contain fewer tones in the final chord, and I didn't like it as much. I don't know what Ives actually intended.


Mahlerian said:


> Eleven, actually; every note except the tonic!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

spradlig said:


> @Mahlerian: Thanks again! How did you know that? I have the CD, and of course this detail was not mentioned. I heard another recording which seemed to contain fewer tones in the final chord, and I didn't like it as much. I don't know what Ives actually intended.


It's written in a number of liner notes and such. I forget where I read or heard it first.

Ives actually wrote both versions. There are a number of inconsistencies that arise out of his various revisions at different points during and after his composing career (that is, before performances).


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

moody said:


> Don't believe anything you read----what do YOU think ?


I've already given my opinion on the previous page and I am largely in agreement.


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## spradlig (Jul 25, 2012)

I'm pretty sure he wrote two versions of _The Unanswered Question_. The "question" which the trumpet asks is different. One of them seems to be a lot more popular than the other. The popular one sounds "right" to me.



Mahlerian said:


> It's written in a number of liner notes and such. I forget where I read or heard it first.
> 
> Ives actually wrote both versions. There are a number of inconsistencies that arise out of his various revisions at different points during and after his composing career (that is, before performances).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

dgee said:


> Bartok's send up of Shos 7 in the Concerto for Orchestra is hilarious


Speaking of which, I have never actually heard the Leningrad. I notice on YouTube that it is very long, and I have a cap on my data (internet is monstrously expensive here in Dark Africa).

So the question is, is it worth it? It seems to be one of his most popular symphonies, but I have also heard it criticized.

Any opinions?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> So the question is, is it worth it? It seems to be one of his most popular symphonies, but I have also heard it criticized. Any opinions?


Opinion FWIW: Listen to it when you have some unused time at the end of a billing period. Not before. I don't think it's considered a "popular" symphony these days.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> Any opinions?


It's overblown trash. Shostakovich could and did write far better.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

Mahlerian said:


> It's overblown trash.


Even "overblown trash" has some artistic merit. I've only listened to the 7th a couple times, and some parts of it are quite good. It certainly resonated with audiences of the time, who saw it as a symbol of defiance against Nazist Germany. The _Bolero_-like sequence in the first movement is one of the highlights, I think.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Celloman said:


> Even "overblown trash" has some artistic merit. I've only listened to the 7th a couple times, and some parts of it are quite good. It certainly resonated with audiences of the time, who saw it as a symbol of defiance against Nazist Germany.


Indeed, but I am worried precisely that the circumstances of its composition might outweigh its merits as music. 

Anyway, I'll get around to it in due course. I have been known to enjoy some very trashy music, so who knows...


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Celloman said:


> Even "overblown trash" has some artistic merit. I've only listened to the 7th a couple times, and some parts of it are quite good. It certainly resonated with audiences of the time, who saw it as a symbol of defiance against Nazist Germany. The _Bolero_-like sequence in the first movement is one of the highlights, I think.


I agree, actually. The part of the first movement that bugs me most is the section immediately following the repetitive theme, where the first theme is brought back in the minor. It sounds like something Max Steiner would write on an off day...



brianvds said:


> Anyway, I'll get around to it in due course. I have been known to enjoy some very trashy music, so who knows...


I'm all for people forming their own opinions. Don't take mine at face value, I may be biased!


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## Sudonim (Feb 28, 2013)

Speaking of Shosty, how about Symphony No. 15, with its quotations of the William Tell Overture? Or the 9th, which seems to be thumbing its nose at the whole "Curse of the Ninth" myth?

And then there is Schnittke's 1st ...


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Sudonim said:


> Speaking of Shosty, how about Symphony No. 15, with its quotations of the William Tell Overture? Or the 9th, which seems to be thumbing its nose at the whole "Curse of the Ninth" myth?


As I mentioned in my OP, I think that the William Tell quotes ruin the 15th Symphony a bit. Quotations are fine when done subtly (e.g. the possible allusions in his 5th Symphony to Boris Godunov), but I'm not sure about quotation as a source of humour, especially when quoting a piece as well known as William Tell. In fact, the second movement of Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem reminds me of William Tell, and I find that a bit awkward.

I'm surprised that so much of the discussion on this thread has been about Shostakovich because he is, in my opinion, one of the least funny composers. Whenever he tries to do humour, it just sounds a bit forced.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Winterreisender said:


> I'm surprised that so much of the discussion on this thread has been about Shostakovich because he is, in my opinion, one of the least funny composers. Whenever he tries to do humour, it just sounds a bit forced.


I have to agree with you there, for a similar reason but possibly not what you had in mind. I too hear the light-hearted moments of his works as sounding forced, and I think there is a very sobering reason for that: he _was_ forcing it. Knowing what was at stake in his music, he had to try very hard not to take any "missteps," and I think the pressure to do so is quite palpable in his works. So for me personally, Shostakovich's music is anything but humorous. It's downright chilling.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Eschbeg said:


> So for me personally, Shostakovich's music is anything but humorous. It's downright chilling.


Even those snippets of William Tell...are we supposed to laugh or worry about what's going to happen next? For me, the first movement of the 15th is very effective. BTW the 15th seems to be showing up in concerts more frequently, just an impression.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

The slow degradation of a seemingly innocent theme is simultaneously funny and scary. Schnittke did it humorously with (k)ein sommernachtstraum, Shostakovich did it gravely with his 15th symphony and third string quartet (first movements).


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## Winterreisender (Jul 13, 2013)

Cheyenne said:


> The slow degradation of a seemingly innocent theme is simultaneously funny and scary.


Good point (even though I disagree about the artistic merits of Shostakovich 15).

But, to give another example, I think there is some terrific black comedy to be found in Berlioz's Fantastique as the Idee Fixe becomes transformed from something graceful and romantic into something vulgar and grotesque.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Winterreisender said:


> But, to give another example, I think there is some terrific black comedy to be found in Berlioz's Fantastique as the Idee Fixe becomes transformed from something graceful and romantic into something vulgar and grotesque.


Yes, Shostakovich came to the same methods via Mahler, who learned from Berlioz.

I hadn't mentioned Mahler to this point because pretty much all of the humor in his music is black or at least dark-tinged, but there are a few exceptions among his earlier lieder.

Here a dialogue between a soldier and the woman he's leaving entirely callously is portrayed with march rhythms for the one character and weeping figures for the other. Everyone involved knows the guy's never coming back, which is why the word "aus!" (out!) is repeated so many times at the end.
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=4463 (No translation, sorry!)





In this song, the donkey judges a singing contest between the nightingale and cuckoo, and chooses the latter because he found the song of the former too difficult to understand (the satire on music critics is pretty broad). The head motif made its way into the finale of the Fifth Symphony.
http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=4526


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

J. Haydn, Sonata No. 60 in C Major, III. Movement (6:27 - 8:24).






The confused starts and stops make the performer seem to not know what he/she is doing .

Piano Sonata No. 62 in E flat Major (1st movement):






when is Haydn going to hit you over the head? 1:57, 7:47

Georg Philipp Telemann, Alster-Overture:






(8:32 - 10:58) - this is what it would sound like if those Budweiser frogs would have gotten together and thrown a concert .

Antonio Vivaldi, Il Gardellino:






Some humourous tone-painting by Vivaldi.


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