# Your Favourite Satirical Composers.



## Capeditiea (Feb 23, 2018)

What is your favourite Satirical composer's favourite works?


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Erik Satie, movement 3 of Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois where he satirizes Chabrier's Espana, and Sonatine Bureaucratique, where he butchers Clementi.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

I would opt for Satie as well. As for my favorite satirical composer's favorite works, it seems he enjoyed playing Jelly Roll Morton's blues on the piano (played one wonders, 'like a nightingale with a toothache'?). Satie strongly endorsed George Antheil's 'Airplane Sonata' and 'Mechanisms'. At the riotous 1923 concert in Paris Satie, sitting in a box with Milhaud, applauded violently at the conclusion of the former work, and at the end of 'Mechanisms' Antheil "suddenly heard Satie's shrill voice saying 'Quel précision! Quel precision! Bravo! Bravo!' and kept clapping fiercely as the police moved in to arrest the rioters.


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

PDQ Bach's Einstein on the Fritz is such a spot-on take-off on Philip Glass that Glass called Peter Schickele up and asked, "Et tu, Peter?"


----------



## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

https://ontheroad.klara.be/prelude-einstein-fritz

Amazing that PDQ knew about Einstein in the 16th Century.


----------



## ST4 (Oct 27, 2016)

PDQ is a class act, haven't really seen anyone that can top him - though it would be cool to see a composer who would take that kind of thing to the extreme (countering modern social norms and etiquette, all staged but confronting to the audience)


----------



## Capeditiea (Feb 23, 2018)

regenmusic said:


> https://ontheroad.klara.be/prelude-einstein-fritz
> 
> Amazing that PDQ knew about Einstein in the 16th Century.


:3 time travel is real.


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

PDQ's Iphigenia in Brooklyn has always been a favorite spoof on Italianate English Baroque.


----------



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony.


----------



## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Eric Satie
Tom Lehrer


----------



## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Jacques Offenbach
*-->His operetta "La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein", which is a satirical critique of militarism and concerning a spoiled and tyrannical young Grand Duchess who learns that she cannot always get her way. It is a social observation one can see in, say, Carl Nielsen's "Maskarade."


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Pat Fairlea said:


> Tom Lehrer


Tom Lehrer was the king of satire. Like this one:

National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week, 
It's national everyone smile at one another-hood week.
Be nice to people who are inferior to you. 
It's only for a week, so have no fear:
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year.


----------



## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Manxfeeder said:


> Tom Lehrer was the king of satire. Like this one:
> 
> National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
> It's national everyone smile at one another-hood week.
> ...


From The Old Dope-Pedlar:
"He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today's young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow's clientele..."


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Hindemith's _Neues vom Tage_, a hilarious parody of opera, complete with a tender love duet (except that it's a divorce duet).


----------



## Guest (Apr 11, 2018)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> I would opt for Satie as well. As for my favorite satirical composer's favorite works, it seems he enjoyed playing Jelly Roll Morton's blues on the piano (played one wonders, 'like a nightingale with a toothache'?). Satie strongly endorsed George Antheil's 'Airplane Sonata' and 'Mechanisms'. At the riotous 1923 concert in Paris Satie, sitting in a box with Milhaud, applauded violently at the conclusion of the former work, and at the end of 'Mechanisms' Antheil "suddenly heard Satie's shrill voice saying 'Quel précision! Quel precision! Bravo! Bravo!' and kept clapping fiercely as the police moved in to arrest the rioters.


Er, I think you must mean satierical...

And yes, he would be my choice too. I can't point to a specific work that he might be satierising, but no-one can have written this without satierical intent.


----------



## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Rather hard to believe no one has said Shostakovich, whose Symphonies 2 through 14 all contain elements of cynicism and satire. Part of his Symphony 9, which was supposed to represent Soviet greatness after winning the war, is intended to show Stalin puffing himself up like a frog. Symphonies 2 and 3 are satires of great moments in Soviet life, Symphony 7 represents what the composer said was other evils of mankind besides the Nazis, Symphony 10 has a section that is supposed to represent Stalin (who had recently died), and Symphony 11 is metaphor for the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

MacLeod said:


> I can't point to a specific work that he might be satierising, but no-one can have written this without satierical intent.


The music is accompanied by the surreal desolation of this text:

"This vast part of the world is inhabited by one single man: a negro. He is so bored he could die of laughing… To help him think the negro holds his cerebellum in his right hand with the fingers apart. From afar, he looks like a distinguished physiologist. Four anonymous serpents enthrall him, hanging suspended from the coat tails of his uniform which is distorted with a combination of grief and loneliness."


----------

