4. Music and Merriment.
When I proposed this class, I was thinking of all those videos that use music to generate laughter. But then I realized that
merriment was a lifting of the spirits that did not necessarily involve explicit comedy, and music whose good humor is
inherent in the music itself is a lot more interesting than comedians using music as a prop in their acts. So we have popular
songs set in four different world cities, three examples of uplifting dance, a bunch of fast finales to symphonies or concertos,
a group of variations for solo horn, and—finally for laughs—some examples of singers using their voices to imitate non-vocal
sounds.
The original course syllabus included a demonstration of what is involved in musical humor. Although I have now greatly
reduced the emphasis on musical jokes in the present class, and focused only on a type of humor that requires no musical
knowledge, I still include the as a fun and
hopefully instructive experiment. rb.
The link below will open a 3½-minute video which I think is very funny; I hope you do too. Click on it to play, and
think about the following questions. Was it funny for you? What made it so? How much of the humor relies upon the
acting abilities and technical skills of the four women? How much comes from subverting normal performance
expectations? How much depends upon knowledge of specific musical quotations?
Think about your answers to the above questions,
then which will appear below
MY RESPONSE. It can be tedious to explain a joke, but I did ask, so here goes. The question is how much you need
to know before you can laugh, or whether this humor is open to everyone.
Everyone, surely, will appreciate the sheer skill of these four women, whether as actresses or musicians. This is
a well-rehearsed routine executed to perfection. Most people, surely, will realize that the instruments get played
in increasingly bizarre ways. A more subtle point is that chamber music, normally a collaborative endeavor, is
here presented as a competition between rivals.
So do you have to know the music? As it happens, I did—the first three references at least: the string players begin
with a lick from Vivaldi's Seasons; the pianist responds with the opening of Mozart's "easy" C major Sonata;
she then goes into "Mack the Knife" from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. I did not know if that piece of jazz
they all played at the end was also a quotation, but that hardly mattered; it was enough to recognize the style. In
fact I suspect that the extreme contrast between styles would be enough, even for those who could not identify any
of the pieces.
The script, videos, and images will be posted immediately after class.
Most of the clips shown in class are available on YouTube, many at greater length than I could show. The main exception is
the ballet L'allegro, il penseroso, e il moderato by Mark Morris, for which I have only a substantial trailer.
I have made several additions. I padded out the city section with an upbeat song by Pharrell Williams set in Los Angeles, and
another Pomplamoose cover that mentions numerous cities in France and elsewhere. I put in the fast finale to an early
Beethoven sonata that is especially easy to understand and comes with the printed music above the pianist's lightning
fingers. Most horn-players nowadays play the Mozart Concerto on a valved horn, which makes it easier to play any note in any
key. However, Mozart wrote for the natural horn, without valves, which made the piece immensely more diificult. I have thus
added a video in which Roger Montgomery of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment plays the rondo on such a horn, plus
a short documentary in which he explains it.
The Vocalise section includes a montage of the Janequin piece with text and images that I made for another class, plus another
vocal piece, this time imitating bird song. I added two versions of the William Tell overture (as heard in the first
class) for vocal ensembles, both professional and amateur. And don't forget to listen to the end of the Bach clip by the
Swingles Singers, to hear another Bach piece, a Dvorak Slavonic Dance, and the ubiquitous Mozart Turkish Rondo.
My decision to downplay the comedic element in the class has left a number of possibilities on the cutting-room floor; I include
a small selection of them here; my favorites have double asterisks (**) at the end. There are so
many to choose from that I give only one clip per artist or group; there are plenty more out there if you get interested. I end
the list with a section on actual jokes: a web page in which the jokes are at least illustrated with good images, a video with
good images ruined by a deadpan voice, and a third in which the auto-generated reading is so bad that it is a joke in itself!
All additions are *asterisked.
The thumbnails below cover the slides shown in class, though
there may be a few small discrepancies. Click the thumbnail to see a larger image. Click on the right
or left of the larger picture to go forward or back, or outside it to close.
ARTISTS
Here are brief bios of the creative artists considered in the class, listed in order of birth.
Clément Jannequin, 1475–1560. French composer.
Most of Janequin's large output consisted of secular chansons, often with striking onomatopoeic imitation of their subjects, which made him exceptionally popular in his day.
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685–1750. German composer.
The towering genius of German music in the earlier 18th century, Bach was most famous in his time as an organist and choirmaster, most notably at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. His work includes two Passions, numerous cantatas, and keyboard and orchestral works that codify and extend the possibilities of counterpoint in his time.
George Frideric Handel, 1685–1759. German-born English composer.
Gradually over the last half-century, Handel's 42 operas and numerous dramatic oratorios have been recognized as placing him on the level of Mozart and Verdi as an opera composer. The delay in appreciation is partly due to the fact that his preferred form, opera seria, is based almost entirely on recitative and solo arias. Born in Germany and trained in Italy, he dominated the English musical scene in the first half of the 18th century.
Franz Joseph Haydn, 1732–1809. Austrian composer.
With Mozart, Haydn was the leading musical genius of the late 18th century. Equally prolific, but far longer lived, he wrote 104 symphonies, 68 string quartets, 16 operas, and 14 masses, together with the two great oratorios, The Creation and The Seasons.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756–91. Austrian composer.
A child prodigy as both performer and composer, Mozart produced an extraordinary body of work in all genres over a relatively short life. He wrote the greatest of his many operas after moving to Vienna: three collaborations with Lorenzo da Ponte—The Marriage of Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così fan tutte (1790)—framed by two German Singspiels: The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) and The Magic Flute (1791).
Ferdinand Hérold, 1791–1833. French composer.
Born of a musical family in Alsace, Hérold spent most of his career on the music staff of one or other of the Paris opera houses. At the same time, he was a prolific composer, although few of his works have remained in the repertoire except for his opera Le pré aux clercs, the overture to his opera Zampa, and his 1828 score for the already-existing ballet La fille mal gardée.
Gioacchino Rossini, 1792–1868. Italian composer.
Rossini's fame rests on his 39 operas, especially the comedies, all written while he was still in his thirties. In 1829, fter writing Guillaume Tell, one of the foundation stones of French grand opéra, he essentially retired, settling in Paris, and writing only occasional pieces plus his masterpieces of sacred music, the Stabat Mater of 1842 and Petite Messe solennelle of 1864.
Sergei Rachmaninoff, 1873–1943. Russian composer.
Considered one of the finest pianists of his day [Wikipedia], Rachmaninoff most frequently appears on concert programs for his four monumental piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. His music is noted for its rich late-Romantic coloring, lush harmony, and gift for melody. He moved to America after the Russian Revolution and died in Beverly Hills.
Sergei Prokofiev, 1891–1953. Russian composer.
With Igor Stravinsky, he is surely the greatest Russian composer of the earlier 20th century, but with two major differences: he returned to Russia, and produced most of his work in traditional forms such as sonatas, symphonies, and concertos.
Frederick Ashton, 1904–88. English choreographer.
Like most choreographers, Sir Frederick Ashton began as a dancer, and continued performing even as his fame blossomed as a choreographer. He became artistic director of the Royal Ballet in 1963, but had worked with the company and its various predecessors since 1935, responsible for creating many of the works that are the foundations of English ballet today.
Leonard Bernstein, 1918–90. American conductor and composer.
Winning fame relatively young as conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein also reached wide audiences with his music lectures on television. His work as a composer ranges from Broadway musicals such as West Side Story (1957) through symphonies, operas, and his multi-media Mass (1971).
Michael Flanders, 1922–75. British actor and songwriter.
His appearances in various productions at Oxford seemed to destine Flanders for a great career as an actor, but War intervened. While serving with the Royal Navy, he contracted polio, and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. But this did not stop a second career as a writer for the BBC and theater—nor a third one, teamed up with composer Donald Swann to perform some of the many songs they had written together, beginning when both were pupils at Westminster School.
Ward Swingle, 1927–2015. American vocal arranger.
Swingle was a singer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist. Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, he developed a special interest in jazz. He went to Paris in 1951 on a Fulbright Scholarship. While there studying piano, he joined a group specializing in scat singing, later applying this concept to the work of Bach and others with his own group, the Swingle Singers, whose recordings became popular worldwide. When he moved to London in 1973, he formed a new group, which still continues to this day.
Joe Dassin, 1938–80. American-French singer-songwriter.
Dassin was born in Brooklyn, son of an American violinist and the French film director Jules Dassin. When the latter fell victim to the Hollywood blacklist in 1950, the family moved to France, where Joe laid the groundwork for what was to be a 16-year career, not only in France but internationally.
Mark Morris, 1956– . American dancer, choreographer, and conductor.
Both as leader of his own company since 1980 and in collaborations all over the world, Morris has created works noted for their expressivity, humor, and power to surprise. Morris is exceptional in his reponse to music of all periods, which had led him into opera directing and even to conducting.
Mikael Karlsson, 1975– . Swedish composer.
After training in his native Sweden, Karlsson moved to New York City, where he continues to work, writing music for video games, films, and several ballets by his friend Alexander Ekman.
Psy, 1977– . South Korean singer-songwriter.
Psy is the performing name of rapper Park Jae-Sang,. His satirical 2012 video Gangnam Style was a worldwide sensation and was, for five years, the most-viewed video on YouTube.
Alexander Ekman, 1984– . Swedish choreographer.
After five years as a professional dancer in Sweden and Holland, Ekman began a free-lance career as a choreographer when he was 21. His works, which move beyond traditional ballet technique in startling and inventive ways, have been created for or taken up by companies all over Europe.
