HUMOR AND ICONICITY IN MUSIC by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen

1. HUMOR AND ICONICITY IN MUSICby Don L. F. Nilsenand Alleen Pace Nilsen

2. Music and Dance are Everywhere

3. AUTO-TUNE THE NEWS:Brian Williams Rapson Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YCeIgt7hMs&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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

5. Contemporary Musicals

6. Contemporary Joke Bands:Tenacious D and Flight of The Conchords

7. Country Music Dueling Banjos: Roy Clark and Buck Trent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gw0fxuIvBM

8. 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

9. Contemporary ParodyWeird Al Yankovic

10. “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

11. Musical Point of View!

12. Flash Mob at the University of Minnesota: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uH8FvERQHtM

14. Music and Magic • Cognate with chant are such words as Encanto,enchanted, anda Jewish Cantor. • This is why there is an Encanto Park in Phoenix. • It is enchanted.

15. Piano Duet While Changing Clothes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5jiekqGANA

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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

19. 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.”

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

21. 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.

22. 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?”

23. Johann Sebastian Bach

24. 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.

25. 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.

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

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

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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.

31. Victor Borge and Muppets

32. 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.

33. Victor Borge: “A Night at the Opera”: http://biggeekdad.com/2016/01/a-night-at-the-opera/ Victor Borge: “One Piano, Four Hands” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcV19rylSZc

34. Frederic Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OFHXmiZP38

35. Dizzy Fingers by Zez Confrey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGKcXv0FeCE

36. 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.

37. George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” (Note the Paris Taxi Horns in the Percussion Sections): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ros66y1aZ-E

38. 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.” W. S. Gilbert Sir Arthur Sullivan

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

40. 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

41. 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

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

43. 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

44. Franz Joseph Haydn

45. 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

46. 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

47. Nora’s CATcerto

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

49. 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!”

50. 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.