HUMOR AND ICONICITY IN MUSIC

by Don L. F. Nilsenand Alleen Pace Nilsen

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Music and Dance are Everywhere

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AUTO-TUNE THE NEWS:Brian Williams Raps

on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YCeIgt7hMs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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BALLET TROCADERO:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIQyZo1PeFA

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Contemporary Musicals

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Contemporary Joke Bands:Tenacious D and Flight of The

Conchords

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Country Music

Dueling Banjos: Roy Clark and Buck Trent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gw0fxuIvBM

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Some Fun Musical Links

“Fit as a Fiddle and Ready for Love”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Badf0ctYQo

“Make ‘Em Laugh” from Singing in the Rain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SND3v0i9uhE

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Contemporary ParodyWeird Al Yankovic

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“Weird Al” Yankovic:” Eat it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcJjMnHoIBI

“Weird Al” Yankovic:” Fat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2mU6USTBRE

“Weird Al” Yankovic:” White and Nerdy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw

Musical Point of View!

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Flash Mob at the University of Minnesota:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uH8FvERQHtM

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Music and Magic

• Cognate with chant are such words as Encanto, enchanted, and a Jewish Cantor.

• This is why there is an Encanto Park in Phoenix.

• It is enchanted.

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A FEW HISTORICAL NOTES

• In the 1600s, the Italians developed their “Opera Buffa,” leading the way to comic opera, which in France became the “Comedie Française” and in Germany the “Komische Oper.”

• Karl Haas says that in England it led to John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera,” (1728), and in the 1850s and 1860s to Offenbach’s satirical masterpieces.

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HUMOR IN CLASSICAL MUSIC• Humor in classical music has a long tradition as shown

by such playful vocabulary items as the French gavotte, which like the Irish and English gigue or jig is music for a fast-moving dance.

• A scherzo is a musical joke while a cappricio is a composition that is irregular in form and usually lively and whimsical.

• A divertimento is a light and entertaining instrumental composition.

• And a rondo is a composition whose principal theme is repeated three or more times in the same key, interspersed with subordinate themes.

Musical Satires and Parodies:

CHEAP FLIGHTS:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/HPyl2tOaKxM

PIANO JUGGLER # 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07brW206D84

MECHANICAL GUITARS:http://www.youtube.com/embed/XlyCLbt3Thk?rel=0

IGOODESMAN AND JOO:http://cartoonando.blogspot.com/2008/04/1000-posts.html

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IRONY IN MUSIC

• In Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio,” Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” and Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,” dramatic irony comes into play as characters become victims of Tricksters and suffer from misidentifications and misunderstood events.

• An extra irony in relation to Offenbach’s “Orpheus” is that one of its musical sequences was so lively that it became famous throughout Paris and the world as “The Can Can.”

Leroy Anderson:

“TYPEWRITER” BY LEROY ANDERSON:http://www.metacafe.com/watch/803796/the_typewriter_song/

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JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

• In his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter compares Johann Sebastian Bach’s fascination with acoustic loops to artist M. C. Escher’s fascination with visual loops in which a waterfall appears to become its own source.

• In his “Endlessly Rising Canon,” Bach seems to be drawing to a conclusion but instead slips out of the key of C-minor and into D-minor. This false “ending” ties smoothly into a new beginning where Bach repeats the process and returns in the key of E, only to start over again.

Hofstadter on Bach (continued)

• Hofstadter says that “these successive modulations lead the ear to increasingly remote provinces on tonality, so that after several of them, one would expect to be hopelessly far away from the starting key.

• And yet, magically, after exactly six such modulations, the original key of C-minor has been restored?”

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Johann Sebastian Bach

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P. D. Q. Bach, A Musical Satirist• P. D. Q. is purported to be the last of Johann

Sebastian Bach’s 20-odd children.

• He was “discovered” by Peter Schickele, the first person to occupy the “General Electric Chair” at the University of Southern North Dakota at Huppel.

• Peter Schickele keeps unearthing various P. D. Q. Bach “schleptetas” and pervertimentos.

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P. D. Q.—An Antidote to Our National Inferiority Complex

P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickeley) has a wider appeal than standard classical musicians because of his musical parodies.

Notice the bassoon is in two parts.

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PETER SCHICKELE (PDQ BACH):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY0CFaracVE

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Carrot Clarinet:http://www.youtube.com/embed/BISrGwN-yH4

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There are many classical composers famous for their humor

Ludwig Van Beethoven satirized local musicians in his “Pastoral Symphony” where he portrayed a sleepy village in which the musicians doze off, wake up, play a few notes, and then doze off again.

BEETHOVEN’S PASTORAL SYMPHONY:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9HWo4THnHA 27

Ludwig Van Beethoven

3-YEAR-OLD CONDUCTING BEETHOVEN’S 5th SYMPHONY:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0REJ-lCGiKU

7-YEAR-OLD PLAYING BEETHOVEN’S “RAGE OVER A LOST PENNY:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CED7cijODg

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Victor Borge—Our Greatest Musical Clown

• Early in Borge’s career when he was doing a piano concerto, the conductor lost his place in the musical score. Borge, a talented and serious player, stood up from his piano bench, walked over to the conductor’s stand, pointed to the right place in the score, and then returned to his piano bench to finish the concerto. The strength of the applause was a turning point in Borge’s career.

• One of Borge’s most popular gags was to look befuddled as he examined a musical score and tried to play it. After some false starts and pondering, he would realize it was upside down, so he would turn it over and play the piece masterfully.

Victor Borge and Muppets

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More on Victor Borge

• Borge would shift slyly from a piece of classical into a piece of popular music.

• He also played pop culture pieces, e.g. “Happy Birthday to You” as if it had been composed by Bach or Brahms.

• Wordplay was a favorite as when he said that a particular piece he was playing by Rachmaninoff was written in four flats—because the composer had been so poor he had to keep moving while he was working on it.

• He announced another piece as being composed by Bach, but he couldn’t remember whether it was Johann Sebastian, or Jacques Offen.

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VICTOR BORGE:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcV19rylSZc

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Frederic Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OFHXmiZP38

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Dizzy Fingers by Zez Confrey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGKcXv0FeCE

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Phyllis Diller, who died at age 95 in August of 2012, was a pioneer for women stand-up comedians. She used her long cigarette holder much like conductors

use batons, only she was managing the audience rather than the orchestra.

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George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” (Note the Paris Taxi Horns in the Percussion Sections):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ros66y1aZ-E

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In the 1870s through the 1890s, this led to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas

• “The Gondoliers,”• “H.M.S. Pinafore,”• “Iolanthe,” • “The Mikado,” • “Patience,”• “The Pirates of

Penzance,”• “Prince Ida,” • “Ruddigore,” • “The Sorcerer,” • “Trial by Jury,”• and “The Yeoman of the

Guard.”37

W. S. Gilbert

Sir Arthur Sullivan

THREE LITTLE MAIDS FROM SCHOOL (GILBERT & SULLIVAN):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXWkIZUPmDY

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Antonin Dvorak

The expressively cross-sensory sounds of the “Painted Desert” in Antonin Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q8eq66Krv0

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Ferde Grofé

Ferde Grofé’s “bump de bump de dadada” of his “On the Trail” from the “Grand Canyon Suite.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVKVB0MImOg

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Georges Friedrich Handel:

SILENT MONKS SINGING “HALLELUIA CHORUS”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFCeJTEzNU&feature=related

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FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN • Franz Joseph Haydn was distressed by the number of

people who fell asleep while listening to his chamber pieces.

• So he wrote “Symphony Number 94” (The Surprise Symphony) in the key of C using a slow tempo and soft and repetitive sequences.

• At the end of each stanza, he modulated the music to the key of G and ended with a resounding fortissimo chord guaranteed to wake up anyone who might be dozing.

HAYDN’S SURPRISE SYMPHONY:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLjwkamp3lI

Franz Joseph Haydn

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Haydn’s “Farewell Symphony” is another example of Haydn’s humor.

He wanted to communicate that the musicians were lonely for their wives and needed to go home for the summer.

So as the symphony draws to its end, various musicians put out the lights on their music stands and departed.

Audiences were amused at the gradual diminishing of the orchestra, but they understood his message.

This same technique was later used in “The Sound of Music” as the von Trapps left the stage and were smuggled out of the theater past the Nazi guards.

HAYDN FAREWELL SYMPHONY:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ligH6PCW0

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JOSEPH HAYDN’S MUSICAL JOKE:

Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet Opus 33, Number 2 is called “The Joke.”

This is because it has so many false endings:

PRESTO MOVEMENT FROM JOSEPH HAYDN’S “THE JOKE”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDkWBzH6dkE

Nora’s CATcerto

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Scot Joplin

SCOT JOPLIN’S PEACHERINE RAG ON RECYCLED BOTTLES:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k26nt3Y4cmg

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Tom Lehrer: Musical Parodies and Satires

• One of the best known satirists is Tom Lehrer, who as a Harvard Professor in the 1960s began getting attention for some forty musical parodies and satires.

• He has written songs about poisoning pigeons in the park, hometown perverts, and charred bodies in a nuclear holocaust.

• His most controversial piece is “The Vatican Rag” with its “bow your head with great respect and—genuflect! genuflect! genuflect!”

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Chico and Harpo Marx: Shooting the Keys

• In the early and mid-1900s, when Chico Marx played an arpeggio on the piano, he would play all of the notes but one, and then would point to that key with his index finger and using his thumb as a “trigger” would “shoot the key.”

• Harpo Marx would also “shoot the keys,” but he was famous for playing glissandos (sliding music), and for getting his finger stuck between the keys.

• We old-timers thought about Chico and his “shooting of the keys” when we saw Mr. Bean playing his one-note solo as part of Britain’s opening ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Mozart was a contemporary of Haydn, and his “The Village Musicians” is also known as “A Musical Joke.” This is because he composed it as a grand burlesque of the nonprofessional playing that was done by amateur community bands of his day.

PAPAGANA/PAPAGENO (MOZART’S MAGIC FLUTE:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87UE2GC5db0

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Jacques Offenbach

HOKUM W. JEEBS PLAYS Offenbach:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q38R0MtNHY&list=PL23E8C9830E320E60

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Johann Pachelbel

PACHELBEL RANT:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

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Sergei Prokofiev

http://www.wnyc.org/story/256987-peter-and-the-wolf/

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Monte Python’s “Song that goes like this”

Eric Idle “Song that goes like this.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ddwK8Py2pY

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Gioachini Rossini

The flourishes and strikes in Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us_6fXZpt-c

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Mark Russell, a Piano-Playing Comedian

• During the 1980s and 90s, Mark Russell used his musical abilities to become a well-known political commentator—talking and playing the piano, first in night club settings and then in performance halls.

• During Reagan’s presidency, he took the tune of “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean” and changed it to:

My ship of state’s practically grounded

for want of a policy plan.

I deny all the charges—unfounded—

since the state of my ship hit the fan.

Bring back. Bring back. Oh bring back my Teflon to

me, to me….”

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CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS

In his “Carnival of the Animals,” Saint-Saëns parodies the “can can” melody from Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.

Ogden Nash added words to Saint Saens’s iconic “Carnival of the Animals.”

The can-can is normally performed at breakneck tempo, but in Saint-Saĕns Tortoises, the parody is played painfully slow by low-register strings.

TORTOISES:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHvqaRaDzQE

Camille Saint-Saens

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Camille Saint-Saëns:

DANSE MACABRE BY CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcOZmtbLRP0&feature=related

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Johann Strauss

LAUGHING SONG (JOHANN STRAUS’S “DIE FLEDERMAUS”):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npLZNoRoH2M&NR=1

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RICHARD WAGNER • Even in the most serious operas, composers include

light moments for comic relief. For example in his “Ring Cycle,” Richard Wagner has the young Siegfried turn the brown bear loose on Mime so that he and the audience can relish in the dwarf’s fright.

• And one of the funniest lines in all of opera is the dramatic irony when Siegfried slices open Brunnhilde’s breastplate with his armor-piercing sword, and exclaims, “Das ist kein Mann!” (“This is not a man?”)

Tempe Community Chorus

http://www.tempecommunitychorus.org/gallery

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Four Really talented Ladies

http://www.reshareworthy.com/amazing-quartet-blew-audience-away/#HlDc3TMGOGULZGi4.01

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