# Getting Mozart's Musical Joke



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Getting Mozart's Musical Joke

Explaining a joke defeats the purpose, or so it is said. Humor really only works if you're on the inside of a culture and understand the references to begin with. So people who aren't immersed in the musical culture of 18th century Classicism may have a harder time understanding the jokes in Mozart's Ein musikalischer Spass, a divertimento for two horns and strings in F major, than the musically educated people of the late 18th century. Sure, the piece ends with a polytonal clash and has a few bits that sound a little off, but beyond that, what was Mozart trying to do? In the spirit invited by this first day of the fourth month of the year, I would like to take a quite serious look into Mozart's game of musical parody.

_*I. Allegro*_

The movement opens with a simple and rather clumsy 4-bar theme headed by three repetitions of an F major triad, which is immediately repeated verbatim. As the first and last bars of the theme are identical, though, one of the middle two is lopped out by accident, leaving the phrase unbalanced. The next phrase, featuring mechanical triplet figures, once again ends with the same repeated F major chords as before, as does a seeming attempt to modulate with a lyrical motif. A jerky fanfare leads to a bizarre viola trill (placed above the second violin), which note is then taken up by the horns for an extra three bars as the first violin adds predictably climbing grace note figures. Another fanfare figure heralded by falling triplet arpeggios leads to a threefold C major triad to complete the exposition.

After the exposition repeat, we are treated to another pair of threefold chords, the dominant of C followed by C (uselessly establishing the key we were already in), with the first in first inversion, putting a B in the bass (which becomes important later). A two bar phrase moves to B-flat major, and the threefold repetitions follow once more in that key. A brief move into A minor leads to an awkward oscillation between B-flat and the dominant of F, and after a brief intensification of this, the recapitulation begins, this time with some half-hearted running eighth note figures in the inner strings. The partial repetition of the opening phrase has been removed, but we have a new jolting contrast between the triplet figures and the lyrical motif, ending in a dotted rhythm unrelated to anything else in the movement. The second theme follows, complete with long-held viola trill as before, and viola grace notes are added to those in the first violin. As the theme draws to its close, the horns add a dotted fanfare that seems to signal the end of the recapitulation, but a sudden coda bursts in fortissimo, complete with a motif seemingly pulled out of thin air backed by scalar bass line. After a few arpeggios in both strings and horns, the coda stutters to a close on an F major chord.

Part of the joke here is lost if the second repeat is not taken, because after a short pause, the F in the bass is supposed to lurch a tritone lower to B, Mozart's imagined composer having structured the movement so carelessly that he didn't think at all about the implications of including the customary repeat.

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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

And the fourth movement of this became so popular it was the theme tune for BBC's Horse of the Year Show....


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