# A Musical Joke" ("Ein Musikalischer Spaß")



## ldiat (Jan 27, 2016)

just viewed this, if any one is interested. the fellow analyzes WA Mozart's Ein Musikalischer Spaß. talks about Haydn and other items.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Mozart predicting Schubert.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

I find it interesting that this was the first piece Mozart composed after the death of Leopold. Its like his own musical raspberry to his father.


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## Littlephrase (Nov 28, 2018)

eugeneonagain said:


> Mozart predicting Schubert.


Yes, Schubert was indeed amateurish trite. Only geniuses such as ourselves (and Hammeredklavier) perceive this self-evident reality.

The rest must be delusional!


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> Mozart predicting Schubert.





Littlephrase1913 said:


> Yes, Schubert was indeed amateurish trite. Only geniuses such as ourselves (and Hammeredklavier) perceive this self-evident reality.
> 
> The rest must be delusional!


Count me among the delusional, please.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Me too. I am regularly totally deluded. And I don't want to be cured.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

I salute these brave confessionals. I foresee no cure. You will have to live with this horrible ailment. Topical application of some skilled counterpoint and invention (see above composer) may relieve localised symptoms of delusions.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Littlephrase1913 said:


> Yes, Schubert was indeed amateurish trite. Only geniuses such as ourselves (and Hammeredklavier) perceive this self-evident reality.
> 
> The rest must be delusional!


Count David C F Wright among the geniuses :lol:

https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/schubert.pdf

_"A famous conductor once said, "you never find excitement or enduing sparkle in Schubert!" with which his orchestra readily agreed."_ :lol:


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## CR Santa (Mar 31, 2019)

I am fond of Edward Elgar's musical joke (or jape as he would call it). In 1899 he challenged the world to solve his "enigma" in his Opus 36, Enigma Variations (Variations on an Original Theme). No one solved his joking riddle for over 100 years. Now we know that he composed his original theme from combining three hints at the mathematical constant, Pi. He started his theme with the first four notes being scale degree 3-1-4-2 in the first measure. That is why he often said the solution was simple and he expected his enigma/riddle to be solved upon first hearing. 3.142 is a common approximation for Pi and is a useful constant when dealing with mathematics of a circle, circumference, area, volume, etc. He very cleverly his fractional Pi, 22/7, in the first four bars by placing two drops of a seventh after the first eleven notes: 11 x 2/7 = 22/7. He did not expect that to be easily found unless one was looking for confirmation that Pi was the solution. His enigma hints also referred to a "dark saying" and by that he incorporated a line from "Sing a Song of Sixpence" which says, "Four and twenty BLACKbirds baked in a pie (Pi)" This was a pun on a nursery rhyme (something he was known for doing). He included this hint in the first six bars by using 24 black notes and ending them with an "unnecessary" double bar. Since no one put it all together during his lifetime, he wrote three more seemingly innocuous sentences about the music but each sentence contained a hint at Pi. This solution was published in the journal "Current Musicology" by Columbia University a few years ago.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

eugeneonagain said:


> Mozart predicting Schubert.


Wholeheartedly disagree, but thanks for the laugh!


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

hammeredklavier said:


> Count David C F Wright among the geniuses :lol:
> 
> https://www.wrightmusic.net/pdfs/schubert.pdf
> 
> _"A famous conductor once said, "you never find excitement or enduing sparkle in Schubert!" with which his orchestra readily agreed."_ :lol:


 I'm sure readers will also enjoy David Wright's "warm" and "insightful" reviews of Chopin and Debussy... Debussy who, according to Wright, has "no original voice" as a composer.  And of course, Schubert, despite Wright's hatchet job, remains as one of the immortals for his inspiration, lyrical genius, and spirituality, especially for his _Winterreise_, which has been recorded by so many world-class musicians and vocalists that it's hard to keep up, keeping in mind that there's never been a composer who didn't have his or her shortcomings. All anyone is looking for is some kind of tact and decency in discussing them, rather than some wholesale dismissal by those who can find nothing to praise or appreciate about him.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Boo hoo....someone said something about a composer I like.


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## MusicSybarite (Aug 17, 2017)

CR Santa said:


> I am fond of Edward Elgar's musical joke (or jape as he would call it). In 1899 he challenged the world to solve his "enigma" in his Opus 36, Enigma Variations (Variations on an Original Theme). No one solved his joking riddle for over 100 years. Now we know that he composed his original theme from combining three hints at the mathematical constant, Pi. He started his theme with the first four notes being scale degree 3-1-4-2 in the first measure. That is why he often said the solution was simple and he expected his enigma/riddle to be solved upon first hearing. 3.142 is a common approximation for Pi and is a useful constant when dealing with mathematics of a circle, circumference, area, volume, etc. He very cleverly his fractional Pi, 22/7, in the first four bars by placing two drops of a seventh after the first eleven notes: 11 x 2/7 = 22/7. He did not expect that to be easily found unless one was looking for confirmation that Pi was the solution. His enigma hints also referred to a "dark saying" and by that he incorporated a line from "Sing a Song of Sixpence" which says, "Four and twenty BLACKbirds baked in a pie (Pi)" This was a pun on a nursery rhyme (something he was known for doing). He included this hint in the first six bars by using 24 black notes and ending them with an "unnecessary" double bar. Since no one put it all together during his lifetime, he wrote three more seemingly innocuous sentences about the music but each sentence contained a hint at Pi. This solution was published in the journal "Current Musicology" by Columbia University a few years ago.


Wow! If this is true, I think it wasn't straightforward to guess at all!


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## CR Santa (Mar 31, 2019)

Only the first four notes being scale degree 3-1-4-2 was easy. The rest took a lot of research, discussions, and luck. I sang in choirs for many years and my conductors would often warm us up by singing do-re-mi-fa-etc as 1-2-3-4-etc. so when I heard that the variations were about his friends and he said it was "simple", I thought of his "circle" of friends and wondered if it could be related to Pi, the constant in a circle. So I do-re-me'd, the 3-1-4-2 and eureka, the opening notes. Once I knew it was Pi, a theme that was not played but was off-stage, I looked for 22/7 after Elgar suggested "The two drops of a seventh in the third and fourth bars should be observed". That gave me 2/7 and I "observed" they were preceded by exactly 11 notes. As to the nursery rhyme, although I was raised in Baltimore and remembered my family reading to me and reciting "Sing a Song of Sixpence"'. I was pretty sure that was the dark saying but only later did I realize that there were four and twenty black notes before the suspicious double bar. I kept looking for these things because people were hesitant to jump on the 3-1-4-2 bandwagon. I writing up my research, I looked up a good definition of Pi, and luckily stumbled upon the Indiana Pi bill of 1896. That was the kind of jape that Elgar enjoyed. He even rolled on the floor laughing at similar japes according to Dora Penny's book about her days with Elgar. Anyway, I am glad you took the time to read my post and I am determined to keep this truth alive even though the editor of the Elgar Society Journal refused to print any of my research even when other members asked him to share the information with his readers.


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