Category Archives: Humor

by | March 20, 2010 · 1:30 pm

Conceptual art meets musicology

 

Vitaly Komar and Aleksandr Melamid‘s The people’s choice music: The most wanted song/The most unwanted song (Dia Center for the Arts, 1997)  presents the results of a research project that used a questionnaire to determine the most desired and most undesired characteristics of popular songs. Two new songs—both composed by Dave Soldier, with lyrics by Nina Mankin—exemplify the poles of the questionnaire results.

The most wanted song is five minutes long and comprises a medium-sized group (guitar, piano, saxophone, bass, drums, violin, violoncello, synthesizer, and low male and female voices) perform­ing in a rock/R&B style. It narrates a love story and has a moderate tempo, volume, and pitch range. It will be enjoyed by approximately 72% of listeners.

The most unwanted song is 22 minutes long and features accordion and bagpipe (tied at 13% as the most unwanted instruments) along with banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, and synthesizer (the only instrument to appear in both ensembles). It involves an operatic soprano rapping and singing atonal music; advertising jingles, political slogans, and elevator music; a children’s choir singing jingles and holiday songs; and dramatic juxtapositions of loud and quiet sections, fast and slow tempos, and very high and very low pitches. Fewer than 200 individuals in the entire world will enjoy it.

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by | February 16, 2010 · 2:49 pm

Cartoons

Cartoonists have always recognized music as a rich source for humor. The mere inclusion of an accordion or a banjo can make a situation comical, as Gary Larson’s The far side has repeatedly demonstrated, and caricatures of musicians have long been a staple of popular journalism.

The self-taught French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé (b.1932) has been drawn to musical subjects throughout his career; The musicians, a collection of his characteristically nuanced and captionless music-themed drawings, was published by Workman in 1980, and Phaidon Press issued a similar collection of postcards in 2006. Sempé’s cartoons, many with musical subjects, have graced nearly 100 covers of The New Yorker.

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by | February 9, 2010 · 2:34 pm

Brahms era chileno

In the article “Brahms era chileno” (Pauta: Cuadernos de teoría y crítica musical, no. 63 [July-Sept 1997] pp. 39–44), the Argentine composer Juan María Solare states that Johann Jakob Brahms (1806–72), accompanied by his wife, Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen (1789–1865), took part in a tour of South America as a performer in the orchestra of the Alsterpavillon in Hamburg, and that Johanna gave birth to Johannes Brahms in the village of Copiapó, northern Chile, on 6 February 1833.

He further states that the birth is documented in a letter that Johanna wrote to her sister in Hamburg, but which was lost and eventually ended up in the archive of an obscure village in Patagonia, where it can still be seen; the birth was concealed from German society, and Brahms was baptized under a false place and date of birth upon his parents’ return to Germany.

Later, in an interview, Solare clarified his intention: He wrote the article as a piece of speculative fiction, a type of writing that Pauta sometimes publishes; but since the journal also presents peer-reviewed research, the piece was mistaken for authentic musicology, generating widespread controversy among Brahms scholars.

More posts about Brahms are here.

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by | January 19, 2010 · 1:42 pm

Postcards

Postcards are a form of music iconography that provides clues about reception. Their subjects have included popular musicians, groups, and composers and their works.

The 1909 Austro-Hungarian postcard reproduced above wryly depicts two aspects of Franz Liszt’s persona: the devout abbé of his later years and—if you look closely—the libertine of his scandalous youth. (Click to enlarge.)

Related article: Schubert deltiography

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by | January 6, 2010 · 7:15 pm

Caricature

Caricature is a type of iconography that involves distorting the features of recognizable people to exaggerate some aspect of their demeanor.

Opinions differ regarding the term’s applicability to other than real-life subjects; for example, Walt Disney considered his animated animals to be caricatures because in creating them he blended animal features with human ones, an inversion of the practice of caricaturing people by merging their features with those of animals.

In the caricature reproduced above by Albert Douat (1847–92, signed with the pseudonym J. Blass), Liszt consoles Wagner over the Parisian reception of Tannhäuser in 1861 and Lohengrin in 1891; both productions were disrupted by elements hostile to the composer. Liszt’s imposing stature and paternal attitude—particularly apt since by the time the drawing was produced he was Wagner’s father-in-law—contrasts with the dejected, little-boy look of the creator of Gesamtkunstwerk.

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