# Satire/Parody in Classical Music



## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

What's your favorite satirical/parody piece of music? This is not an arrangement or "mockery" of an actual piece of music, like PDQ Bach, but an actual piece written by a composer to mock or poke fun, i.e. Mozart's A Musical Joke.


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

Mozart's Lick Me in the A**. haha


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## SuperTonic (Jun 3, 2010)

Didn't Bartok parody Shostakovich somewhere in the Concerto for Orchestra?


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

*Hoffnung Music Festivals 1956, 1958 & 1961 *- YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/.../UCAyfjmNgFDOXLSOdZcVIr_g

Best of YouTube. Music ... Hoffnung Music Festivals 1956, 1958 & 1961 ... Hoffnung (alias Morley College) Symphony Orchestra/Sir Malcolm Arnold - Topic.

Concertos for vacuum clears and more of that kind.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

SuperTonic said:


> Didn't Bartok parody Shostakovich somewhere in the Concerto for Orchestra?


Yes, in the fourth movement he quoted the marching tune from the first movement of Shosty's 7th, scoring it wickedly for high clarinet. Of course, Shosty borrowed the tune from Lehar's tune "I go to Maxim's" from The Merry Widow. And Bartok includes some nice raspberries in the trombones for fun.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

There’s a lot of talk that Bartok wasn’t parodying DSCH at all. But hey, listen to it! Poor Bartok was close to penury, living on the charity of Koussevitzky and others, while Shostakovich was getting worldwide acclaim for a total piece of c**p (in Bartok’s opinion). So a horselaugh it was.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Langgaard's satire of Carl Nielsen!


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## drmdjones (Dec 25, 2018)

The allegretto scherzando of Beethoven's eighth symphony originated in a drinking song, sung by B and friends as a canon, commemorating Maelzel's metronome. Hence the "tick-tock" rhythm. The words were "ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta lieber lieber Maelzel, ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta la (sic) leben Sie wohl, sehr wohl."


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## Bluecrab (Jun 24, 2014)

SuperTonic said:


> Didn't Bartok parody Shostakovich somewhere in the Concerto for Orchestra?


Yes, he did. I had an old lp many years ago that explained that. It even gave the measure; I think it might had been in the final movement. According to Bartok's son, Bartok had heard a part of a Shostakovich symphony while he was composing the concerto, and it annoyed him immensely.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

My personal favorite is Satie's Sonatine Bureaucratique, where he takes Clementi's Sonatina, Op. 36, No. 1, and turns it into a narrative about a bored bureaucrat. I used to play the Clementi Sonatina when I was taking lessons, so I get the joke. 

The next favorite is the second movement of Satie's Embryons desseches, where he redoes Chopin's funeral march.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

Wow, I've listened to all of these and they're fantastic... I also just remembered one of my favorites- Bernstein's Slava! Overture, a parody of American politics.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Gordon Jacob - The Barber of Seville Goes to the Devil






Gunther Schuller - The Twittering Machine from "Seven Studies of Paul Klee"






Michael Daugherty - Hell's Angels






Paul Schoenfield - Burlesque


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Manxfeeder said:


> The next favorite is the second movement of Satie's Embryons desseches, where he redoes Chopin's funeral march.


No. 3 in the set ends with a hilarious parody of a Beethovenian coda.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Also there's Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals with subtle parody and jabs at several composers including Offenbach, Mendelssohn and himself!


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> There's a lot of talk that Bartok wasn't parodying DSCH at all. But hey, listen to it! Poor Bartok was close to penury, living on the charity of Koussevitzky and others, while Shostakovich was getting worldwide acclaim for a total piece of c**p (in Bartok's opinion). So a horselaugh it was.


I too favor this interpretation. However, there is the possibility that Bartok was laughing with Shostakovich rather than at him, since Shostakovich's choice of a leitmotif for the German invaders, a silly tune by Lehar rather than, for example, something grandiose and stirring by Wagner, was itself a joke.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Guest (Jan 24, 2019)

The opera Pagliacci contains an opera within an opera which strikes me as a parody of earlier forms of Italian comic opera. I recall that Karajan's famous recording is very good at making the music for the scene sound different.

Stravinsky's Jeux de cartes also contains what seems to me a parody of Italian Opera.


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## brahms4 (May 8, 2017)

EdwardBast said:


> I too favor with this interpretation. However, there is the possibility that Bartok was laughing with Shostakovich rather than at him, since Shostakovich's choice of a leitmotif for the German invaders, a silly tune by Lehar rather than, for example, something grandiose and stirring by Wagner, was itself a joke.


Conductor Antal Dorati,in his book Notes of Seven Decades,claims that while visiting Bartok he was asked by the composer "Do you know what the interruption in the fourth movement is?"Dorati answered that it was from Lehar`s Merry Widow and was given a completely blank look from Bartok with him asking "What is that?!"With a twinkle in his eye he told Dorati that "It is a parody of Shostakovich!"Dorati further stated that Bartok made him promise not to tell anyone and told him of his dislike for Shostakovich.Dorati stated that this was the only time he ever heard Bartok talk bad about a fellow composer.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Walton's Facade - is it a parody of Pierrot Lunaire?


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Bernstein's (and Richard Wilbur's) send-up of the coloratura aria:


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Schnittke's Symphony No. 1


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Schedrin - "Naughty Limericks"


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Shostakovich 9th symphony … Stalin puffing himself up like a frog instead of the solemn music about the revolution he was supposed to write.

Shostakovich's "Lady MacBeth of Minsk District" is married to an alcoholic abuser she murders. Guess who that was supposed to be?

Shostakovich 7th symphony -- he said the long march at the beginning, thought to be about the Nazis marching on Leningrad, represented "other enemies of mankind" namely Stalin.

Haydn Symphony No. 60, "The Distracted One", has a section where the string section retunes.

Haydn Symphony No. 45, "Farewell", has the orchestra members leaving in the finale so that only 8 or 10 are left playing in the end. This was Josef's way of telling his boss it was time to give the orchestra members a vacation.

Eric Satie "Parade", a "ballet" with a typewriter, six guns blazing, acrobats and a Chinese magician. Satie also wrote Trios Petite Pieces Montees, or Three Little Stuffed Pieces for orchestra where a tuba parodies itself.

Beethoven's "Rage Over A Lost Penny" is also a lot of fun.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

larold said:


> Shostakovich's "Lady MacBeth of Minsk District" is married to an alcoholic abuser she murders. Guess who that was supposed to be?


the book, which the libretto of the opera is based upon, had been written in 19th century.



larold said:


> Shostakovich 7th symphony -- he said the long march at the beginning, thought to be about the Nazis marching on Leningrad, represented "other enemies of mankind" namely Stalin.


the symphony 1st part buildup was composed under influence of the movie Chapaev (1934) and the famous episode of 'psychotic attack' launched by the Whites against the Reds' positions -


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

I love a good parody, so I may be over-inclined to hear them where not intended.
A good example is Gottschalk's magnificent The Union, a paraphrase de concert aux themes nationaux (Op. 48). 
The whole piece is a ginormous gallimaufry of over-decorated pianistic bloviation, so much so as to sound like a parody. Not least, the contrasting way that "Oh say can you see/By the dawn's early light..." comes in like an extract from the most genteel of salon music. 
Maybe he meant it seriously, but it makes me laugh.


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