What Are You Laughing At? Humor in Classical Music

Surprise and the subversion of expectations form the foundation of good jokes, musical or otherwise. Centuries of composers have exploited these elements to create musical comedy without saying a single word (though quips and witty rhymes never hurt!). From tempo to timbre, here are some of the tools composers use to keep us laughing.

But what is humor, anyway? And why do we find certain things funny but not others? Culture and age are just two of the many factors that determine what people find funny. One uniting theory that explains what sends us into fits of laughter is known as the incongruity theory of humor, which emphasizes the juxtaposition of incompatible or contradictory elements. This theory, first developed over 300 years ago, has come to be the predominant model for explaining what we find funny. Humor surprises us, violates our expectations, sets us up for one thing before delivering something that contradicts our sense of what “should” happen.

Many composers incorporate humor throughout their catalogs. Mozart, for example, composed some of opera’s most sumptuous melodies while also writing hilarious and extremely bawdy songs. Joseph Haydn, whose works teem with mirthful surprises, has been called “the best joke-teller in the whole history of music.”

Camille Saint-Saëns’s lighthearted The Carnival of the Animals remains one of his most popular works, delighting children and adults alike. The suite cemented his reputation as one of the foremost musical humorists. His contemporary Gustav Mahler, whose symphonies contain some of the most exquisitely beautiful orchestral writing in the repertoire, imbued his works with an ironic “laughing through tears” approach to comedy. Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, Soviet-Russian composers reacting to the opulence and excess of the late-Romantic era, turned to a post-modern sarcasm. 

American writer and humorist E. B. White quipped, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” Nevertheless, let us cut into the musical amphibian and see what we can find.

Tempo

The tempo of a piece of music can establish a mood within moments. From a slow, stately Largo to a frantic Prestissimo, our bodies subconsciously internalize the rhythm of what we hear. But when music reaches the extremes of tempo—either breathtakingly fast or ploddingly slow—the effect can be surprisingly delightful.

Prokofiev wrote his Symphony No. 1 in D Major as a pastiche of Haydn (he himself gave it the nickname “Classical”). Throughout its four movements, Prokofiev takes well-established symphonic conventions and exaggerates them: fortissimos are a bit too loud, pauses last a bit too long. The finale is uptempo, as expected, but the blistering Molto vivace seems almost too fast, like a speeding train threatening to jump the tracks.

The third movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major trudges along at the opposite end of the spectrum. The movement begins with the popular children’s song “Frère Jacques” played in a minor key; the minor mode creates an uncanny somber tone. Mahler described this movement as a darkly comic hunter’s funeral, complete with a procession of woodland animals. “The funeral march,” Mahler wrote, “one has to imagine as being played in a dull manner by a band of very bad musicians, as they usually follow such funeral processions. … . It has a shocking effect in its sharp irony and inconsiderate polyphony.”

“Tortoises,” the fourth movement of Carnival of the Animals, moves even more slowly. As the piano plays a pulsing triplet figure, the strings play an unhurried, majestic rendition of the Galop infernal from Offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld. Those used to the frenetic pace of Offenbach’s can-can may find the music of the stately tortoise painfully slow.

Orchestration

Listening to well-crafted compositions carries an expectation of which instruments play which notes. Bold, powerful melodies are typically played by the brass; virtuosic imitations of birdsong are of course left to the woodwinds. Clever composers can also turn pre-conceived notions of tone color into jokes of their own, turning timbral expectations on their heads.

In the fifth movement of Carnival of the Animals, Saint-Saëns represents a giant elephant with a double bass. While the low, resonant timbre is expected, its melodies are decidedly out of place. Rather than a slow, lumbering march fit for a pachyderm parade, Saint-Saëns borrows light, graceful waltz tunes from Romantic composers Felix Mendelssohn and Hector Berlioz. Where Berlioz used a delicate orchestration of woodwinds, harp, and high strings to evoke the air spirits known as sylphs, the double bass’s treatment of the melody seems ungainly by comparison.

The bassoon, one of the few double reed instruments in a standard orchestra, could occupy an entire article about humor in music. Since the days of Haydn the bassoon has taken on the role of “clown of the orchestra.” The bassoon’s unique, warm timbre and baritonal tessitura have long drawn comparisons to the human voice. This uncanny resemblance to a singing voice, along with its crisp staccato and ability to rapidly leap registers, combine to create an ideal instrumental court jester.

In his symphonic poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (made famous by the Disney animated film Fantasia), French composer Paul Dukas depicts the misadventures of a wizard’s careless pupil. A solo bassoon, its tone conveying lighthearted mischief, introduces the principal theme.

During his foray into Neoclassicism, Prokofiev completed a set of Ten Pieces for Piano including one titled “Humorous Scherzo.” He later arranged the work for a quartet of bassoons. In this configuration, the work takes on the tone of four arguing buffoons.

Haydn noticed that the sounds emerging from the bassoon reminded him of an entirely different wind instrument. During the second movement of his Symphony No. 93 in D Major, one of the twelve “London” symphonies, a solo bassoon interrupts a moment of repose with a brash imitation of a fart.

Dynamics

Musical flatulence wasn’t the only trick Haydn had up his sleeve during his London years. “I was interested” he told an early biographer, “in surprising the public with something new, and in making a brilliant debut.” With his Symphony No. 94 in G Major, he did exactly that. Soon after the pianissimo second movement begins, the entire orchestra interrupts with a sudden fortissimo chord before proceeding as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. This unexpected outburst gives the “Surprise” Symphony its nickname.

Haydn introduced another enduring musical prank in one of his earlier symphonies. During one of his many summers spent at the Esterházy palace, Haydn and his fellow musicians longed to leave and return home to their families. Without saying a word, Haydn made a diplomatic yet unmistakable plea that leaves audiences laughing more than 250 years later. In the final section of the finale, the players leave the stage one by one until only two muted violins remain; to paraphrase a famous poem, “This is the way the symphony ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” This long, anticlimactic ending gives the work its sobriquet, the “Farewell” Symphony.

Satire and Parody

There are many different kinds of humor, many of which can be found in music. Composers, like other artists, have a long history of using their work to critique, whether in biting satire or playful parody. Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, with its modern twist on Haydn and Mozart, is a humorous letter of admiration for Viennese classicism.

Viennese “Waltz King” Johann Strauss II completed his short Perpetuum mobile in 1861. Subtitled “A musical joke,” the piece parodies empty virtuosity with a stream of flashy, unsubstantive melodies. Adding to the joke, the work has no written ending and could thus go on ad infinitum (or ad nauseum, if you prefer).

Mozart also used music to poke fun at his contemporaries. A Musical Joke, a four-movement work for two horns and string quartet, abounds with intentionally uncouth musical choices to lampoon bad composers (and worse players). In the finale alone Mozart includes wonky horn trills, poor orchestration, sudden fortissimo chords, and a half-hearted attempt at a fugue. By the end of this raucous divertimento the players seem to have given up entirely, careening to a halt with a polytonal cluster of “wrong” notes.”