285.—HUMOR IN COMPOSITION.
We are told that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," or something to that effect. The famous composers evidently believed this, for not only do we find in some of their serious works comical touches, but several of them, and those the greatest, too, have written works that are entirely humorous in their character.
Of the comical touches we might mention the three bassoon notes in Beethoven's Sixth, or Pastoral, symphony. Here we might imagine some old bassoonist seated on a cask, playing the only tones that can be gotten out of his dilapidated instrument, while the village rustics join in a clumsy dance. Then, too, there is that unmistakable bray which Mendelssohn associates (a good word in this case) with "Bottom" in his "Midsummer Night's Dream" music, and there are also the antics of the music to accompany the entrance of the clowns in the same composition.
We would hardly expect to find anything humorous coming from that old periwig, Sebastian Bach. Yet Bach has left us two cantatas, entitled "The Peasant's Cantata" and "The Coffee Party," in which he is supposed to be very funny. But the humor is so artistically concealed—shall we say—in florid counterpoint that to our non-appreciative ears it would sound more like a fugue from the "Well-Tempered Clavichord" than a side-splitting farce. But then perhaps the humor of that day had to have its canti fermi, counter subjects and episodes.
Haydn's humor was more pointed and sudden, especially in the "Surprise" symphony, when an explosive sfz—fortissimo occurs in a pianissimo passage. The "Toy" symphony, too, has a decided humorous side. Then there is a composition for instruments called "A Musical Joke," wherein he parodies the attempt of an uneducated composer to write a symphony.
We may once find even Beethoven writing a comic song. He must then have been in a thoroughly "unbuttoned" mood, as he used to express it, especially as the song had fourteen verses. In his Op., 129, Beethoven vents his "fury over a lost groschen" in a beautiful rondo.
Wagner used many a comic touch in his "Mastersingers of Nuremburg," but it is done with the most artistic musical means and the deftest of touch, forming some of the most delicious musical humor ever written. He also wrote a burlesque work entitled "A Capitulation."
An instance of neat humor is Gounod's popular little "Funeral March of a Marionette," too familiar to require any explanation further than to say it depicts the breaking of a Marionette and the subsequent lamentations of the troupe as they bear it to the grave. It is, after a fashion, a musical Humpty-Dumpty. Another instance is the chorus of students in Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust," who sing an elaborate chorus in the form of fugue, the entire development being wrought out on the word "amen." It was Berlioz's idea in this to ridicule the method and pedantry of the old school, just as Wagner had done in his "Meistersinger." In Schumann's "Children's Album" there are several charming instances of musical humor, the "Don't Frighten Me" and "The Bear Dance" recalling themselves to our memory specially. Indeed, with only a little investigation into musical literature, one might make out quite a long list of examples of this kind.
A modern example of real humor is a composition by Dr. J. K. Paine, America's greatest native composer. In this he exploits the virtues of a certain patent medicine, prominent before the public some years ago, and tells all about the virtues of Radway's Ready Relief to a musical setting that is of the most musicianly character. The text is simply an old newspaper advertisement of the patent medicine. These utterly prosaic words are set for four-part male chorus and bass recitative.
The certificate from the rheumatic sufferer is given to a dramatic agitato movement, and the price of the medicine is heralded in learned counterpoint. The music cleverly takes off both the Händelian contrapuntal and the modern romantic styles, the burlesque solemnity of the writing being infinitely comic, the whole ending with a side-splitting parody on the Finale to "Egmont," and not forgetting the little shrieks of the piccolo (the only instrument employed). The very excellences of the writing and the purity of the musical form add an element of ludicrousness to what altogether affords one of the best instances of the composer at play, but not forgetting his erudition in his humor.