# Which classical works are full of wit?



## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

Sorry....I meant "full of wit."

[Admin edited the title to "wit"]



Waiting for a concert to start the other day, I was reading the playbill describing the upcoming performance. Ran across this passage:
* "…. the last movement is pervaded by sparkling humor from beginning to end. Both of its main themes the first muscular and acrobatic, the second playful but elegant-enact a kind of rhythmic tug-of-war between quick triple time and a pattern moving precisely half as fast: a feature that the early reviewer who advised against trying to perform the Concerto without a conductor must surely have had in mind. Another humorous touch comes about midway through the movement, where Schumann interrupts a school-bookish fugue with a new dance tune shared by winds and piano."*

So which classical works do you think are full of wit?

And which ones are completely devoid of it?

You can also mention any that are half-full, if you want.

Or maybe you are confused by the concept of wit in classical music; maybe you think that this concept is "full of it!" ( i.e., doesn't make any sense). Robert Greenberg, a composer and music historian, who is the speaker in the popular audio course "How to Listen to Great Music," mentions, in the course, how confused he was when a college professor stated how a certain musical passage was an example of Haydn's wit. Feel free to comment on wit confusion/denial if you want.

Here's my attempt:

Full of wit: Mozart's Figaro overture

I read somewhere that almost everything Mozart composed was "tongue in cheek," I agree with that(except for his masses, Liturgical works, requiem, etc.) but can't explain why.

Devoid of wit: Beethoven's 9th symphony

In fact, Ludwig is the last person in the world I'd expect to crack a joke.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

_A Musical Joke_ is always very funny to me, if an obvious answer...


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Another obvious answer is Haydn's "Joke" Quartet. When I saw it live, the audience audibly laughed at the false endings of the last movement. the perfromers punched it up by with the physical movements.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Many of Joseph Haydn's symphonies and his idiom has a wit about it in general.


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## drnlaw (Jan 27, 2016)

Shostakovich Ninth Symphony. Probably my least favorite Shostakovich.

Also, the Shostakovich 15th, with its references to the William Tell overture.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Pyotr said:


> Sorry....I meant "full of wit."
> 
> [Admin edited the title to "wit"]
> 
> ...


Wit and humour??? All over the place in Haydn! Just listen to all later Haydn pieces which are generally 'happy' in tone, there will be plenty of wit in them. The late Haydn quartets, Piano Trios or Piano Sonatas, as well as The Creation and The Seasons are great examples.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

ArtMusic said:


> Many of Joseph Haydn's symphonies and his idiom has a wit about it in general.


True that. I don't think anyone was as witty and humourous (overall) as F. J. Haydn.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Prokofiev Symphony No. 1. Prokofiev Music from Romeo and Juliet. Stravinsky Petrushka.

Haydn Symphony No. 93, second movement, oboe "fart". Haydn Symphony No. 94, second movement "surprise".

Beethoven most of the 32 keyboard sonatas-full of musical jokes-too many to point out.


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne 
und die trägt er im Gesicht 
und Macheath, der hat ein Messer 
doch das Messer sieht man nicht. 

Ach, es sind des Haifischs Flossen 
rot, wenn dieser Blut vergießt. 
Mackie Messer trägt 'nen Handschuh 
drauf man keine Untat liest. 

An 'nem schönen blauen Sonntag 
liegt ein toter Mann am Strand 
und ein Mensch geht um die Ecke 
den man Mackie Messer nennt. 

Und Schmul Meier bleibt verschwunden 
und so mancher reiche Mann 
und sein Geld hat Mackie Messer 
dem man nichts beweisen kann. 

Jenny Towler ward gefunden 
mit 'nem Messer in der Brust 
und am Kai geht Mackie Messer 
der von allem nichts gewußt. 

Und das große Feuer in Soho 
sieben Kinder und ein Greis - 
in der Menge Mackie Messer, den 
man nicht fragt und der nichts weiss. 

Und die minderjährige Witwe 
deren Namen jeder weiss 
wachte auf und war geschändet - 
Mackie, welches war dein Preis? 
Wachte auf und war geschändet - 
Mackie, welches war dein Preis?


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Candide
An American In Paris
Love For Three Oranges
Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny
Bogus Pomp


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Music fro Mozart called the Naughty Mozart is so funny :lol:


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Beethoven interrupted the heavy philosophy of the 9th symphony finale with the comedic Turkish March section. I prefer this and the aforementioned Haydn to Shostakovich's attempt at wit any day. The Shostakovich musical humor just doesn't work for me, though of course he was a master of hopeless despair.

A couple of more modern wits for me are Stravinsky (e.g. Jeu de cartes) and Ligeti (Le Grand Macabre, also subtly in other works).


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Weston said:


> Beethoven interrupted the heavy philosophy of the 9th symphony finale with the comedic Turkish March section.


Yeah, the guy singing in the Turkish march section sounds like he's about to pop the buttons right off his tunic. Not sure how much of Beethoven's humor here is intentional -- if it matters.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Pyotr said:


> Sorry....I meant "full of wit."
> 
> Devoid of wit: Beethoven's 9th symphony
> 
> In fact, Ludwig is the last person in the world I'd expect to crack a joke.


Oh dear, you haven't either heard much Beethoven or you don't share his sense of humour. The works are full of wit. He started using the scherzo which itself means 'joke'. And a work like the Diabelli Variations is full of musical wit.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

The Rake's Progress. 

As soon as I saw the thread title.


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## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

Beethoven Symphony no. 4
Alkan's etudes. 
Some of Vivaldi. 

They shake you out of complacency and arrest your concentration.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Does Peter Schickele count? It doesn't get much wittier than that. Or would that be corn? 

And then there's Zappa.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Haydn is the first composer who comes to mind. I often envision Haydn treating the elements of the classical style as a set of building blocks - or better yet Legos - that he can mess around with. Yes, he can build a perfectly respectable castle, but he can also build one that is unbalanced, top-heavy, whatever. And they still look great.

If this sounds a bit patronizing, put that down to a failure of expression. I love Haydn.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

*Atterberg's* Sixth Symphony "Dollar."
*Alfven's* Third Symphony.
*Nielsen's* opera "Maskarade."
*Tchaikovsky's *opera "The Little Slippers."
*Rimsky-Korsakov's* opera "Christmas Eve."
*Sir Arnold Bax's* Overture to the Picaresque Comedy.
*Jacques Offenbach's* operettas like Geneviève de Brabant & La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (and to some extent "The Tales of Hoffmann").


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I find Hindemith to be very witty ... though it's often a dry wit.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

If we are to speak of Peter Schickele and the Semi-Pro Musica, we must also then speak of Victor Borge, and surely of Gerard Hoffnung of the infamous Hoffnung Music Festivals, which set back the cause of classical music by at least 500 years: Here is Wikipedia....

In 1956 Hoffnung took part in one of the popular "April Fool's" concerts in Liverpool, organised by Fritz Spiegl. He took up the idea, and presented a similar, but larger-scale, concert at the Festival Hall in November the same year, in which Spiegl joined him.[14] The "Hoffnung Music Festival" played to a sell-out audience in the hall and to BBC viewers throughout Britain.[15] The success of this concert led to two more Hoffnung Festivals, the third of them presented as a tribute after his death. They featured contributions from distinguished musicians. Donald Swann revised Haydn's Surprise Symphony to make it considerably more surprising.[16] Malcolm Arnold wrote A Grand, Grand Overture, scored for orchestra and vacuum cleaners, and dedicated to US President Hoover.[17][n 4] Franz Reizenstein's Concerto Popolare featured a battle between the soloist, playing the Grieg Piano Concerto, and the orchestra, determinedly playing Tchaikovsky.[18] Sir William Walton conducted a one-note excerpt from his cantata Belshazzar's Feast: the word "Slain!" shouted by the chorus.[19] After Hoffnung's death, similar concerts were promoted by his widow, Annetta, and collaborators.[20


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

I am surprised no one has mentioned Saint-Saëns _Carnival of Animals_.

Then the band junkie mentions a band work. Vincent Persichetti: _Divertimento for Band_.


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## Biwa (Aug 3, 2015)

Händel's organ concertos are sunny works with plenty of wit and humor.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Pyotr said:


> In fact, Ludwig is the last person in the world I'd expect to crack a joke.


Beethoven did his share of jokes and witty tricks, misplacing barlines and accents in the first movement of the Quartet Op. 135/i, for example. But Beethoven's humor was, by and large, far beyond mere wit. He created whole movements that were sustained comic dramas in abstract terms. Prime examples include the aforementioned movement of Op. 135, the first movement of the Quartet Op. 59 no. 3, and the first movement of the Piano Sonata Op. 31 no. 3. In each of these works, comic relationships between and among various motives are systematically developed over ten minute spans - he was a master at using humor as a structural force.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Sorabji's music can alternately fit every different connotation you could think of for the word "wit".


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Quite a few folks have already mentioned Haydn, the obvious choice for me.
Since the start of the year I've undertaken a Haydn symphony marathon, listening in numerical order to the Haydn symphonies by way of the BRILLIANT CLASSICS Adam Fischer/Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra box set. (I have a couple other complete box sets of these symphonies.) I listened to the First on January first, the Second on January second, etc. I'm now into the thirties with the start of February.
I've enjoyed every symphony. One can hear much when one programs any one of the Haydn symphonies for a concentrated listen. Often such "classical era" music can come off as a blur, with a "sounding all alike" quality. But when one isolates the piece and pays attention to its individual movements and themes and instrumentation, much happens of a unique sort. And so much of that which happens is humorous. I can't count the times I smiled or even laughed out loud at a Haydn surprise. It makes me think that _any_ of Haydn's symphonies could be subtitled "The Surprise".

At the end of January, in order to sort of buttress my appreciation of Haydn's humor, I randomly selected five of the discs featuring symphonies 1-31 from the BC box set (I think there were eight discs total, but my Marantz play allows for five discs) and I inserted them into the five trays of my CC4003 disc changer and pushed the "Random" play button. That allowed for individual movements of some 20 or so early Haydn symphonies, each with three or four movements apiece (some seventy or so movements), to play in no particular order. I listened for about two hours, and the effect was glorious. A true kaleidoscope of music.

I realize that such a move is sacrilege to many. But I love Haydn, and I believe Haydn himself would have enjoyed that listening session. Intriguingly enough, at no time during the session did I get that sense of the music "sounding all alike." Haydn does so much with soloists, orchestral colors, rhythms and other musical elements that the music is always interesting and fresh. (I'm not so sure a similar experiment with five discs of early Mozart symphonies would produce as varied a pleasure of listening.)

So, for humor, count me as a Haydn advocate. And for the next couple of months I will continue to enjoy my survey of the complete symphonies, at a symphony a day. That itself is kind of funny. Isn't it?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Beethoven, who knew the value of comic relief (numerous places in the c-sharp minor quartet), could be one of the funniest composers who ever lived -- all the more so for his little jokes being unexpected. Dancing double basses in Trio of Fifth Symphony, bubbly bassoon passages in outer movements of the Fourth, off-beat rhythmic tricks in many places, players "losing their place" in penultimate movement of Opus 131 quartet -- seek and ye shall find.


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

For Haydn's wit, specifically, I'd recommend Symphony #80 as one of the clearest illustrations of wit. The first movement has an almost Looney-Tunes-style battle of the first and second themes - one importantly bombastic, the other traipsingly silly and carefree - and the last movement plays a hilarious downbeat/offbeat sleight-of-hand game that I still have not seen matched anywhere. SONNET CLV, let me know what you think of it as of March 20th!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Many of Beethoven's Keyboard Sonatas and Diabelli Variations are as keen in wit as one can get.

Haydn's Symphonies are saturated with musical jokes, my favorite being the wonderful, obscene bassoon joke in the slow movement of Symphony No. 93.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

everything by Jacque Offenbach.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I think a lot of Erik Satie's music after his Gymnopedie period is pretty witty, but it tends to lean toward the sarcastic. His sendup of Clementi in the Sonatine Bureaucratique, complete with a running commentary, anticipates PDQ Bach.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

arpeggio said:


> I am surprised no one has mentioned Saint-Saëns _Carnival of Animals_.
> 
> Then the band junkie mentions a band work. Vincent Persichetti: _Divertimento for Band_.


And Malcolm Arnold's lovely Carnival of Animals, Op 72. The last movement is entitled 'Chiroptera' (i.e. Bats) and consists of 26 seconds of silence (because bats are too high-pitched to hear) terminated by a single toll of a bell.

Hindemith often makes me smile, too, though I cannot explain why.


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## Wandering (Feb 27, 2012)

How the rhythm and dance dizzyingly propel the momentum in Petrushka is unmistakably clever, Stravinsky must have sold his soul.


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