# What music makes you laugh and why



## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

Offshoot of the exchange in the "why music" thread.

For me, I find hilarious certain places in Elgar cello concerto. Can probably come up with a few other examples; how about you?


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Great topic, I was thinking just a few hours ago, "Why does this all have to be so life and death serious? It's music, not war!" 

The first time I heard Crumb's Black Angels, I'm sure I laughed out loud. 

Corigliano's Seven Poems of Bob Dylan probably did it too. 

Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire is still funny. 

Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, and Brahms' too. Sooooooooo melodramatic. Along those lines, the "dying" in Britten's Serenade for Tenor. I've laughed at all that. 

Might be cheating a bit, but the arrangement of Purple Haze for Kronos Quartet.... 

The point in Stockhausen's Stimmung when the uberserious woman breathily declaims, "The male is basically an any-male." I think I've never heard that without laughing. 

I've probably laughed about Messiaen's Catalog of Birds. 

Ives intends to be funny, and I think he succeeds. Such as in Central Park in the Dark. I don't laugh, but I smile.


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## Zabirilog (Mar 10, 2013)

Offenbach's can can...


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Conlon Nancarrow has a lot of pieces that make me laugh, the same is true of Stravinsky and Ligeti. I can't quite put my finger on it, I think it's mainly a matter of attitude.


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Non-vocal Music can hardly make me smile (only Rossini and Paganini). Well, very epic and proud symphonies can make me smile too.
Some weak music can actually make me laugh (that would be the last time I was listening to them though!)

As for the vocal Music if the meaning of words has irony, sarcasm, comedy, etc. they can make me laugh.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

The finales of Beethoven's Piano concerto no.1 and Mahler's Symphony no.5.

Franz Reizenstein's Variations on "The Lambeth Walk".


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

There is also an interesting variation to this topic of laughter in music. That is, an interpreter can MAKE the otherwise serious music funny (by adding some "schmaltz" or otherwise).

The only two composers whose pieces are immune to that are J.S. Bach and Schostakovich - as far as I know. Mozart is such a fair game, and Rossini & Co. are just unexhaustible!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'll add Berio's Sinfonia. Like several that I mentioned before, he's trying to be funny, and he succeeds.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

erik satie's parade,


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## FLighT (Mar 7, 2013)

Some of variations in Elgar's "Enigma Variations" always bring at least a smile to my face and one an outright laugh as I've always associated some of them with personal friends of mine. When I hear "their" variation I see their face in my minds eye.


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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

Haydn String Quartet Op. 33 No. 2 "The Joke" IV. Presto


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

La Monte Young's Fluxus compositions are pretty silly.


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

^^^^

I ain't got a clue what's goin on there..


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

MichaelSolo said:


> ^^^^
> 
> I ain't got a clue what's goin on there..


Puts plant matter on the piano, then waters and feeds it. Off the top of my head, I guess it's symbolic of the idea that music is essential for life. Or something. I don't really know.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I cracked up when I heard this the first time:






Shostakovich and Prokofiev make me laugh quite a bit, they were very clever when it comes to music.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

*Schubert* "Trout", *Poulenc* Concerto for Two Pianos, *Bernstein* Candide Overture, *Mozart* Figaro Overture, *Saint-Saens* Carnival of the Animals, *Scriabin* Symphony 3. Much of *Delius *orchestral makes me smile, if not laugh. Playing it now. Some of Gulda's *LvB* Sonatas and *Mozart* PCs has similar effect. As does GG's *Bach*. An artist's enthusiasm can be catchy, don't you agree.

Don't forget *Gershwin*, *Ravel*, *Shostakovich*, and many others. CM is often serious, which makes the lighter moments all the better. Much like life, don't you agree.:tiphat:


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## MichaelSolo (Mar 12, 2013)

Crudblud said:


> Puts plant matter on the piano, then waters and feeds it. Off the top of my head, I guess it's symbolic of the idea that music is essential for life. Or something. I don't really know.


Neither do I.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Vaneyes said:


> *Schubert* "Trout", *Poulenc* Concerto for Two Pianos, *Bernstein* Candide Overture, *Mozart* Figaro Overture, *Saint-Saens* Carnival of the Animals, *Scriabin* Symphony 3. Much of *Delius *orchestral makes me smile, if not laugh. Playing it now. Some of Gulda's *LvB* Sonatas and *Mozart* PCs has similar effect. As does GG's *Bach*. An artist's enthusiasm can be catchy, don't you agree.
> 
> Don't forget *Gershwin*, *Ravel*, *Shostakovich*, and many others. CM is often serious, which makes the lighter moments all the better. Much like life, don't you agree.:tiphat:


Yeah, a lot of music makes me smile (laughing is to be avoided if possible - it drowns out the music).


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Comic relief in Beethoven, esp. in the c-sharp minor quartet.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Dohnanyi's Variations On a Nursery Song is very amusing and certainly makes me laugh,so does Hary Janos and Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana because it's very clever.
Add the comic operas of Donizetti and Rossini along with those of Mozart ,but I suppose these are taken for granted.
Pictures At an Exhibition has moments of great amusement also.
The opening of Beethoven's Choral Fantasy is also a huge put on,well I hope so anyway !


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## GodNickSatan (Feb 28, 2013)

That was terribly played. Needs more grass.

In reply to Huilunsoittaja.


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## DrKilroy (Sep 29, 2012)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> I cracked up when I heard this the first time:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The melody is kind of similar to Jingle Bells. 

Best regards, Dr


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

DrKilroy said:


> The melody is kind of similar to Jingle Bells.
> 
> Best regards, Dr


It is, Shostakovich is using it for a foolish end (the words are not Jingle Bells however, it's from Shakespeare's King Lear).  Jingle Bells is sorta the underlying theme for rest of the songs in this collection, with the shrieking "Hey!" in the woodwinds coming over and over.


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## Peterinch (Apr 24, 2013)

Britten: The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard
Adams: The Chairman Dances


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

The march section in Beethoven's Wellington's Victory, where a section of the music (16 bars, maybe?) goes in sequence up a semitone 3 times in a row.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> The march section in Beethoven's Wellington's Victory, where a section of the music (16 bars, maybe?) goes in sequence up a semitone 3 times in a row.


You really like that work, eh? I remember back on April 1st - to be precise - you wrote so eloquently about it...


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

What makes me laugh is how personally insulted some folks get when other folks claim to dislike their favorite composers.

We are not all robots marching to the same composers' beat. :lol:


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

End of Ives Sym #2!!


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Andre Rieu playing Shostakovich


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> It is, Shostakovich is using it for a foolish end (the words are not Jingle Bells however, it's from Shakespeare's King Lear).  Jingle Bells is sorta the underlying theme for rest of the songs in this collection, with the shrieking "Hey!" in the woodwinds coming over and over.


The reference to Shostakovich brought this to mind. It was, however, a rather blatant example of copyright infringement (by the composer).


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## mtmailey (Oct 21, 2011)

Elgar cello concerto is great to me not funny though.


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## chromatic owl (Jan 4, 2017)

The first piece I cried laughing at was Debussy's "Morceau de concours" for piano. It was just so brilliantly stupid, in a good sense.
Also the music of Haydn and Prokofiev sometimes makes me laugh, not because it is stupid but, on the contrary, its humour is rather exquisite and subtle.
There is yet another type of laughter that can be roughly described as a "ho-ho-ho" which is actually an expression of astonishment and is mostly produced when I am listening to some complex fugue and suddenly the upper voices start doing stretti of the theme and its inversion while the bass states the augmented retrograde or something like that.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

I laughed at Die Meistersinger because it's so un-Wagner-like (in both plot and some of the music). It's probably my favorite opera by him though, so I guess I wish Wagner wrote more comedies.


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