# Most humorus compositions?



## JamieHoldham (May 13, 2016)

Not sure a thread like this has started before so why not? I need something to cheer me up at this point in my life so here is my choice, the Paganini variations by Lutoslawski;


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Mozart: A Musical Joke.

Anything by PDQ Bach.

Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks

Lieutenant Kije- Prokofiev


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Episode 6 of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts is called "Humor in Music." He divides his presentation as follows:
_- Funny for Musical Reasons_
++ Piston - The Incredible Flutist
++ White - Mosquito Dance
++ Gershwin - An American in Paris (for the Taxis)
_- Imitating_
++ Kodaly - Hary Janos
++ Rameau - Le Poulet
_- Fast & Funny_
++ Gilbert & Sullivan - Pirates of Penzance
++ Haydn - Symphony No. 88
_- Satire_
++ Prokofiev - Classical Symphony
_- Puns_
++ Prokofiev - Classical Symphony
++ Mahler - Symphony No. 1 (and Frere Jacques)
_- Parody_
++ Gilbert & Sullivan - Mikado
++ Wagner - Tristan and Isolde
++ R. Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier
_- Burlesque & Nonsense_
++ Mozart - Musical Joke
++ Shostakovich - Suite from the Golden Age
++ Copland - Music for the Theatre: Burlesque
_- Mickey-Mousing_
++ Dukas - The Sorcerer's Apprentice (an obvious Fantasia reference)
_- and Brahm's Fourth Symphony_ (for which I don't recall the rationale)


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Several works by Haydn could be considered. His symphonies Nos. 93 & 94 come to mind immediately. A lot of Satie's works were written with a humorous intent I would say. Rameau's Pièces de Clavecin had some humorously themed harpsichord pieces like "Salted Pork" and "The Lame Girl." Don't forget about works from Jacques Offenbach either.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Schedrin - "Naughty Limericks" - wonderful - all sorts of burps, belches, raspberries, flatulence [great contrabassoon stuff]

Kodaly - Hary Janos is a good example - the Napoleon mvt...

PDQ Bach is in a class by itself!!


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## Jacred (Jan 14, 2017)

What type of humour are we talking about? Intentional attempts to be funny (e.g. parodies), or a serious piece imbued with the composer's sense of humour?


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Jacred said:


> What type of humour are we talking about? Intentional attempts to be funny (e.g. parodies), or a serious piece imbued with the composer's sense of humour?


I think Saint Saens often shows a sense of wit in his music, but I don't know that I would call much of it "funny," except perhaps part of Carnival of Animals.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

JAS said:


> Episode 6 of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts is called "Humor in Music." He divides his presentation as follows:
> _- Funny for Musical Reasons_
> ++ Piston - The Incredible Flutist
> ++ White - Mosquito Dance
> ...


Well, that puts my list to shame...


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Ibert - Divertissement. Willfully, deliberately silly.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I remember someone thinking that Brahms' Academic Festival Overture was funny, I guess because of the songs it quotes, but the humor is lost on me.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Manxfeeder said:


> I remember someone thinking that Brahms' Academic Festival Overture was funny, I guess because of the songs it quotes, but the humor is lost on me.


That is a case where the joke requires explanation, since we are so far removed from the context. The idea of writing an overture for an academic festival, based on student drinking songs, must still be credited as being quite funny. (Presumably the joke was more or less at the expense of the faculty.)


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

The Presto movement in Beethoven's String Quartet #14.






Boccherini's "La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid".


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## David OByrne (Dec 1, 2016)

JamieHoldham said:


> I need something to cheer me up at this point in my life


Watching lots of comedy and getting a girlfriend/boyfriend (if you don't already) should help a lot


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Here are two cheerful suggestions, Hamilton Harty's Irish Symphony (which is certainly lively) and his Comedy Overture. Perhaps those will help to put a jig back into your step. (It has long been a matter of interest to me how many great comedians have come out of a tragic past, and how much comedy they have made out of, or to triumph over, their pain.)


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Several of Haydn's symphonies have charmingly humorous parts in it. The "Surprise" symphony is an example.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Thel Typewriter by Leroy Anderson might cheer you up.


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)




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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Olias said:


>


Which reminds of another great "cat" aria.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Klassik said:


> Several works by Haydn could be considered. His symphonies Nos. 93 & 94 come to mind immediately. A lot of Satie's works were written with a humorous intent I would say. Rameau's Pièces de Clavecin had some humorously themed harpsichord pieces like "Salted Pork" and "The Lame Girl." Don't forget about works from Jacques Offenbach either.


Especially the bassoon joke near the end of the second movement of 93-especially with Szell/Cleveland doing it just right!


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I see reference to PDQ Bach but nobody has mentioned the Hoffnung Festivals? Schickele's Bach is slapstick but the various contributions in Hoffnung, most done by serious composers (yes I know that Schickele is also) are hilarious satire and parody.


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## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

hpowders said:


> Especially the bassoon joke near the end of the second movement of 93-especially with Szell/Cleveland doing it just right!


This is truly one of the greatest moments in classical music history!

Although I don't think Julius Fucik's Entrance of the Gladiators was intended to be a humorous piece, it has basically become that. Of course, I'm not sure if anyone with a mustache like this could be taken seriously anyway!


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

I know it's not really Perlman, but it gets me every time...






Sorry, Perlman, now I'm really picking on you...


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

ALL of the episodes of comic relief in Beethoven's c-sharp minor quartet, Opus 131. (Thank you, Alphacharger.)


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

The naughty songs by Mozart.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

I believe there's a roasting swan in Orff's Carmina Burana.

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=iSOTjbr2qSw

P.S. The previously referenced Haydn Symphony #93 has an unfortunate nickname.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Watching Maxim Vengerov playing Bazzini's 'La Ronde des Lutins' and 'Danse du Sabre' on this video from 1994 always makes me smile 




or how about Maxwell Davies - Mavis in Las Vegas - the music is amusing and the story behind the composition makes it even more enjoyable

"During 1995 Peter Maxwell Davies toured the USA with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. A British journalist, trying to contact him at his hotel in Las Vegas, was told that no one by the name of Davies, Maxwell, Peter or even 'Sir' was staying there. He was, of course, but appeared on the hotel's register as 'Mavis' (what the reception desk made of his co-conductor, Yan Pascal Tortelier, is not recorded). Sir Peter seems to have been more delighted than bothered: he was already imagining a richly gowned Mavis descending a pink circular staircase (to the sound not of a mere big band but a colossal one) en route for Caesar's Palace and the Liberace Museum. Mavis in Las Vegas was the result, a 13-minute "theme and variations", as the composer calls it, though the conductor, John Mauceri, gets a bit closer by describing it as "a totally mad transvestite dream ballet" and "a bubble-bath in a heart-shaped jacuzzi". Parody has always been one of Maxwell Davies's central gifts, and if the producer of the next Hollywood blockbuster is looking for a composer, or if Richard Clayderman needs an arranger or Forest Lawn someone to provide tasteful mortuary music they need look no further. Nor need they fear being raucously sent up: there is as much wry affection as derision here. Sir Peter is also startlingly good at evoking sensational lighting effects: the fountain at Caesar's Palace, bathed in violet radiance, is almost visible; there is poetry to his description of the lights of Las Vegas seen from the desert at night." (https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/maxwell-davies-mavis-in-las-vegas)


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Becca said:


> I see reference to PDQ Bach but nobody has mentioned the Hoffnung Festivals? Schickele's Bach is slapstick but the various contributions in Hoffnung, most done by serious composers (yes I know that Schickele is also) are hilarious satire and parody.


For the Hoffnung Festival, at least on CD, I get a good bit of the humor, but I also always feel that I am missing some key element because I cannot actually _see_ what is going on. I presume these have never been on VHS or DVD. (That sometimes happens in the PDQ Bach CDs, as well, although there, I mostly feel that you get nearly all of the humor from just hearing it, even if actually seeing it would be funnier. And it may help that I have actually seen PDQ Bach concerts.)


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Malcolm Arnold was often good for a chuckle.
Try his Tam o'Shanter Overture for a lovely musical depiction of a drunken Scotsman, or the last movement of his Concerto for 2 Pianos. Or his Carnival of the Animals.


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## techniquest (Aug 3, 2012)

As Shchedrin's Concerto for Orchestra No.1 "Merrie Ditties" has already been mentioned, I'll plump for these two outrageously OTT pieces: 'Hava Nagila' by Korndorf and 'A Grand Grand Overture' by Arnold


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

Offenbach: La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (in particular).
George Antheil: Piano Concerto no. I & Ballet Mechanique.
Tchaikovsky: Cherevichki (revision of Vakula the Smith).
Rimsky-Korsakov: Christmas Eve.
Bax: Rogue's Comedy Overture & Overture to a Picaresque Comedy.
Carl August Nielsen: Maskarade & Flute Concerto.
Kurt Atterberg: Symphony no. IV "Sinfonia piccola."
Poulenc: Les mamelles de Tirésias & Concert champêtre.
Malcolm Arnold: Carnival of the Animals (absolutely).
Lehar: The Merry Widow, Count of Luxembourg, & Giuditta (for the most part).
Vissarion Shebalin: The Taming of the Shrew.
Shostakovich: Ninth Symphony and the Nose.
Stravinsky: Petrushka.
Prokofiev: Love for Three Oranges.
Kabalevsky: Colas Breugnon & The Comedians.
Boris Tchaikovsky: Capriccio on English Themes.
David Diamond: Symphony no. IV.
Charles Ives: Symphony no. II.
John Antill: An Outback Overture.
George Enescu: Romanian Rhapsody no. I.
Smetana: The Bartered Bride.
Vaughan Williams: The Wasps.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

<<Malcolm Arnold: Carnival of the Animals (absolutely).>>

Malcolm Arnold wrote a wonderful Woodwind 5tet - "3 Shanties" - obviously, based on 3 well-known sea chanteys. 
Fun piece - filled with all sorts of belches, farts, raspberries, whoops, blats, etc....very clever - great fun to play, and to hear....always a crowd favorite.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I found the boogie woogie in Beethoven's last Piano Sonata funny unintentionally. In the midst of a serious piece too.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Haydn's symphony 93 and Mozart's Musical Joke.


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## MissKittysMom (Mar 2, 2017)

Shostakovich:
24 Preludes, Op. 34 - many parodies and grotesqueries
24 Preludes & Fugues - No. 15 in D-flat major
Both piano concertos
Anti-formalist Rayok - parody of Soviet music bureaucrats teaching composers how to write music
Jazz suites
The lighter film scores/suites, such as "The Tale of the Priest and his Laborer Balda", "Hypothetically Murdered", and "The Story about a Silly Little Mouse"
Moscva Cheremushki - operetta about finding an apartment in Moscow
Age of Gold - all of it, but especially the Polka

and as others have mentioned, The Nose, and the ninth symphony


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

MissKittysMom said:


> Shostakovich:
> Age of Gold - all of it, but especially the Polka
> and as others have mentioned, The Nose, and the ninth symphony


The Bolt is pretty funny too,esp the one with the bassoon/trombone - Polka??


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## Forss (May 12, 2017)

Darius Milhaud's _Le Bœuf sur le toit_ is certainly not humorous in the _obvious_ sense, but it still has some of those very qualities. Such a joyous, life-affirming piece of music!

The opening theme is restated in all of the twelve major keys throughout the whole composition in a rather odd, whimsical way.

(It is still _deep_, however, in my opinion, despite its apparent lightheartedness.)


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Another piece that makes me chuckle is, improbably, by Rachmaninov - his Polka de WR. A serious-minded pianist might be inclined to play it 'straight', carefully avoiding any hint of parody. However, R's own recording of the piece is clearly played for laughs, as too, incidentally, is his recording of Golliwog's Cakewalk.


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