# Music that made me laugh out loud



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

For any reason whatsoever, intended or not.

For me, it was John Cage: _Aria_ for solo voice. Sung by Linda Hirst, a British mezzo-soprano, just looking at her photo cracks me up. It's ridiculously funny; she squawks like a chicken, yells, cusses in Italian, grunts, whatever. It's from the collection _Songs Cathy Sang_ (Virgin Classics).


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)

I love vocal / choral compositions that make use of extended techniques. I didn't know John Cage wrote experimental vocal music, I'll have to give that album a listen.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Delius, the Appalachian thing. I pictured a hill family on their stoop, listening to an ensemble in the yard. After several minutes, the squirrel rifles appear.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I think PDQ Bach's Einstein on the Fritz is pretty funny. But it's supposed to be funny, so maybe it doesn't count. Also any track on his CD PDQ Bach on the Air.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 11 in F minor

The second movement's glissandos (that's the right term, right?) caught me by surprise and I just started laughing while listening to it:


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

*Dohnanyi's *_Variations on a Nursery Song for piano & orchestra. _Kind of predictable answer to this thread, maybe. Starts off with this portentious - and pretentious? - introduction reminiscent of a Brahms concerto or a Mahler symphony maybe, and then after all that, what does the pianist start playing. _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,_ of all things.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

*Mozart's "A Musical Joke"* can still make me laugh after however many hundred years. So does *Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony* even when I know it's coming.

And along the line of PDQ Bach, is *Peter Schickele's *own* "Unbegun Symphony."* It's loaded with crazy quotes. And there is another similar piece I want to get in my collection by *Bernd Zimmermann, Musique pour les soupers du roi Ubu*


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

Listening to Shostakovich Piano Concerto no. 1 with my daughter, then 4 years old:

Trumpet, tune, 9:03 in video

Piano, rude interruption, 9:14 in video

4-year-old: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Hilltroll72 said:


> Delius, the Appalachian thing. I pictured a hill family on their stoop, listening to an ensemble in the yard. After several minutes, the squirrel rifles appear.


Ouch! I hope I can manage to listen to it from now on without that image.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Rameau: Platée -- Marc Minkowski: Les Musiciens Du Louvre

Rameau's hilarious, and vicious!, opera. Rameau was a master of orchestral effect, and the setting of oboe-staccato in imitation of frogs is genius. When it was suggested to Haydn, in his "Seasons", that he put such an effect in his music, Haydn scoffed at such "French artifice". If Haydn was at all familiar with Rameau's work, and I suspect that he was, he may have thought of this moment.

I laughed hysterically. Still do. The finale is also riotous.

Edit: It's the Tambourin at the end of Act 1 that I was thinking of.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Sid James said:


> *Dohnanyi's *_Variations on a Nursery Song for piano & orchestra. _Kind of predictable answer to this thread, maybe. Starts off with this portentious - and pretentious? - introduction reminiscent of a Brahms concerto or a Mahler symphony maybe, and then after all that, what does the pianist start playing. _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,_ of all things.


Andre,I already mentioned it..you're too late !


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

moody said:


> Andre,I already mentioned it..you're too late !


Yes,but not on this thread---there is another one going called

"What Makes You Laugh and Why?" This is all very confusing for geezers you know !!


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Another 'classic' one is the fossils movement of* Saint-Saens'*_ Carnival of the Animals. _Its got that crazy xylophone solo representing the clanging of bones, but also quotes that did make me chuckle - the clarinet playing a bit of Rossini's aria "Una voce poco fa" from _The Barber of Seville _and also _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star _played on the two pianos. But this piece is full of composer's "in jokes" - another part (The Turtle) has Offenbach's Can-Can slowed down to the nth degree, and another movement has got a bit of a Berlioz tune. Ironic how Saint-Saens supressed this work from public performance during his lifetime (probably cos he saw it as kind of not serious enough, too light) yet ever since it was given its first public airing in the 1920's its been a kind of hit - with both young and old, it seems...


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Why hasn't anyone mentioned Florence Foster Jenkins yet? 






And then there is this:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Tristan said:


> Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 11 in F minor
> 
> The second movement's glissandos (that's the right term, right?) caught me by surprise and I just started laughing while listening to it:


Wow, Shostakovich funny? That one came out of left field! :lol:


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

hreichgott said:


> Listening to Shostakovich Piano Concerto no. 1 with my daughter, then 4 years old:
> 
> Trumpet, tune, 9:03 in video
> 
> ...


That's another "Shostakovich is funny!" Have I been missing some essential aspect of his music? :lol:

Later edit: After watching the video, I *did* laugh out loud! :lol:


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> That's another "Shostakovich is funny!" Have I been missing some essential aspect of his music? :lol:
> 
> Later edit: After watching the video, I *did* laugh out loud! :lol:


Did you see my Shostakovich post on the other recent thread on the same topic? The song of the fool? Hear that, there's certainly an element of absurdity to it that can't be ignored.

Another dorky composer, Prokofiev. He made some pretty humorous things, for example, the theme for the Stepsisters in his ballet Cinderella, truly ridiculous (hear through to the romping tempo part):


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Try this out for size too. Quite obnoxious in the best way possible, piccolo and trombone. 

(hear the people snickering in the audience too)


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

In the first of the _Nachtmusik_ movements of Mahler's 7th, the dainty rhythm played _col legno_ on the violins (?) that appears for just a bar always brings a big smile to my face.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

brianvds said:


> Why hasn't anyone mentioned Florence Foster Jenkins yet?
> ....


Oh man, let's just not go there! :lol:

I got a cd with all of the few recordings she made (not even a dozen songs). Whenever I put that on, I laugh so much I am in fear of bursting my insides or something. She makes the "laughing song" from Die Fledermaus truly hilarious - in ways J. Strauss II would not have expected.

But on the serious side, Jenkins filled Carnegie Hall, but that was towards the end of her life. Until then, she only held private soirees, usually in the function rooms of large & classy hotels. I don't know why people liked her. Was it just for laughs and fun or did they take her seriously (like a pre-1945 version of John Cage's anarchism, maybe?). Or maybe like some things, she's so bad that she was actually good. Or good in a bad way. In any case, she was unique, definitely one of the 20th century's unique coloratura sopranos.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Sid James said:


> But on the serious side, Jenkins filled Carnegie Hall, but that was towards the end of her life. Until then, she only held private soirees, usually in the function rooms of large & classy hotels. I don't know why people liked her. Was it just for laughs and fun or did they take her seriously (like a pre-1945 version of John Cage's anarchism, maybe?). Or maybe like some things, she's so bad that she was actually good. Or good in a bad way. In any case, she was unique, definitely one of the 20th century's unique coloratura sopranos.


As far as I know, people liked her in the same way they like the movies of Ed Wood - so bad it is good. What I wonder is whether she herself ever knew this. Was she just playing into the whole thing, or did she genuinely think herself a musical genius? I must go read up on this.


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## hello (Apr 5, 2013)




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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

millionrainbows said:


> That's another "Shostakovich is funny!" Have I been missing some essential aspect of his music? :lol:
> 
> Later edit: After watching the video, I *did* laugh out loud! :lol:


He had a wonderful sense of humor. A partially tragic biography, and a wonderful sense of humor.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Novelette said:


> Rameau: Platée -- Marc Minkowski: Les Musiciens Du Louvre
> 
> Rameau's hilarious, and vicious!, opera. Rameau was a master of orchestral effect, and the setting of oboe-staccato in imitation of frogs is genius. When it was suggested to Haydn, in his "Seasons", that he put such an effect in his music, Haydn scoffed at such "French artifice". If Haydn was at all familiar with Rameau's work, and I suspect that he was, he may have thought of this moment.
> 
> ...


I've got this one! I saw it on YouTube and had to have it. The soprano aria is one of the funniest, most bizarre LSD-drenched things I've ever seen.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The only classical music that has made me laugh out loud is Ligetti's Nouvelle Aventures. I KNOW he just made that piece to see if a stuffy audience would be able to sit through it without laughing.


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