From Mozart's "Lick My Ass" Canon to Scarlatti's Composing Cat: Humour in 17th Century Classical Music
William Hogarth, The Enraged Musician, 1741
Modern conceptions of “classical” music often describe composers like Mozart and Haydn as posh, stuck up, or boring. Humour in the classical era (1750-1810) may not have been as witty or as obvious as modern day comedy, but the blatancy of some of the references that historians have uncovered will shock you! The classical era saw the beginnings of comedic genres of music such as the opera comique (the most famous of which being Bizet’s Carmen, written 100 years later). Many composers would write humorous musical parodies of other music, such as folk tunes. An example of this is the “quodlibet” from Bach’s Goldberg variations, which combines parts of multiple popular German folk songs. However if you like toilet humour, musical irony, or even cats – then the following musical “jokes” may be even funnier.
Mozart’s Toilet Humour
Despite being a genius composer and devout catholic, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) regularly wrote letters of toilet humour to his cousins and his friends and was known to be very crudely spoken in often serious situations! This could possibly be evidence of Tourette’s syndrome or another neurological condition. Mozart’s canon for 6 voices K.231 is thought to be a piece for him and his friends to sing as a bit of fun. It was published posthumously (after Mozart’s death) in 1799, under the title “Let us be glad!”, which is a major contradiction to what Mozart originally titled the piece – translating to “Lick me in the arse.” Various versions of a similar score were found in 1991, including a work titled “Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber,” translating to – “lick my arse nice and clean.” Next time you hear someone complaining about the crassness of modern music, refer them to Mozart!
Scarlatti’s Cat
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) was probably most famous for his 555 harpsichord sonatas. This number begs the question – where did he get so many creative ideas from? Well the answer for his K30 sonata, is said to be his cat named Pulchinela. Taking the form of a fugue, Scarlatti was said to have come up with the subject after his cat ran across the piano. The subject itself isn’t too bizarre, however the large jumps and range prove it to be a difficult subject to harmonise. As a result, the countersubject (harmony over the fugue subject) is very jumpy, but it works! Scarlatti was lucky his cat was feeling tonal and walked with delicacy – or he could have encountered a subject of dissonant clusters! The piece was not originally titled cat-fugue, and nobody can prove the story with full accuracy. Scarlatti may have slightly edited the notes given to him by Pulchinela, unless the cat was genuinely familiar with the concept of tonality, but throughout the 19th century, the piece was written in programmes as “cat-fugue.”, It was performed at many recitals, including by Franz Liszt. Unless the cat was running very slowly, a full-speed rendition of this fugue would probably only take a dozen seconds!
Haydn’s Joke Symphony
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), along with Mozart, was a prolific string quartet composer. Writing many highly appraised quartets, his Op33 No.2 HobIII:38 quartet was no different in its seeming simplicity and elegance – that is, until the very last chord of the fourth movement. The return of the A theme at the end of the movement is riddled with unexpected pauses and long rests, causing a very hesitant feel to the performance. The final phrase comes after four bars of rest and is marked pp (pianissimo - very quiet) . This is incredibly unstylistic and comes as a huge surprise to the unaware listener. Each phrase in the final section features a perfect cadence in the tonic (a finishing gesture suggesting the end of a phrase), which causes the audience to be unaware of when the piece ends. The follow-on effect of this is that when the piece actually ends, the audience won’t know that it has actually finished. If this “joke” was written in a 20th century piece of music, it could be thought of as something like “expressionistic,” or “structural silence,” however the humour of this is within the blatancy of how unstylistic this feature is – a classical audience wouldn’t have heard anything like it!
However, this isn’t the most famous of Haydn’s musical jokes. His “surprise” symphony, Op.94 is one of his most performed symphonies today. The surprise this time is at the start of the second movement of the symphony, which begins with 15 bars of a lyrical pp (pianissimo - very softly) melody, which is suddenly interrupted by a fortissimo chord in bar 16. The music then returns to its original pp dynamic. In German, the symphony is known as - Symphonie mit dem Paukenschlag, translating to, “with the kettledrum stroke.” It would be interesting to know why Haydn included these little surprising details in his music. Maybe he just wanted to provide the audience with a different kind of entertainment, by introducing hysterical anti-sophistication into a very exclusive and stylistic genre of music.
The classical era has been branded as a very sophisticated, and “high-art” form of entertainment. Whilst this is true in some respects, many composers had their own ways of extracting humour within the notes of their music, as well as in the wider context of the music. My examples of Mozart’s crassness, Scarlatti’s inhuman co-composer, and Haydn’s audience-toying are only some of the comedic references of the era. There are many other pieces which I’m sure classical audiences would have found completely hilarious, even if audiences today would not. It makes you wonder – how will humour be different within music centuries from now?