A Musical Joke
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A Musical Joke (Template:Langx) K. 522, (divertimento for two horns in F, and string quartet) is a composition by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; he entered it in his {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Catalogue of All My Works) on 14 June 1787. Commentators have opined that the piece's purpose is satirical – that "[its] harmonic and rhythmic gaffes serve to parody the work of incompetent composers"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> – though Mozart himself is not known to have revealed his actual intentions.
English nameEdit
The title A Musical Joke might be a poor rendering of the German original: Spaß does not necessarily connote the jocular, for which the word Scherz would more likely be used. A more accurate translation would be Some Musical Fun.<ref name=Hamilton /> The sometimes-mentioned nicknames {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("village musicians' sextet") and {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("farmers' symphony") were added after Mozart's death; these names ridicule the players more than inept composers.<ref name=Godt>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Extensive analysis with sources.</ref>
Structure and compositional elementsEdit
The piece consists of four movements and takes about 20 minutes to perform.
- Allegro (sonata form), F major
- Menuetto and trio, F major (trio in [[B-flat major|BTemplate:Music major]])
- Adagio cantabile, C major
- Presto (sonata rondo form), F major
Compositorial comedic devices include:<ref name=Godt />
- secondary dominants replacing necessary subdominant chords;
- dissonance in the horns;
- parallel fifths
- whole-tone scales in the violin's high register;
- clumsy orchestration, backing a thin melodic line with a heavy, monotonous accompaniment in the last movement;
- going to the wrong keys for a sonata-form structure (the first movement, for example, never succeeds in modulating to the dominant, and simply jumps there instead after a few failed attempts);
- starting the slow movement in the wrong key (G major instead of C major);
- a pathetic attempt at a fugato, also in the last movement.
The piece is notable for one of the earliest known uses of polytonality (though not the earliest, being predated by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's Battalia), creating the gesture of complete collapse at the finale. This may be intended to produce the impression of grossly out-of-tune string playing, since the horns alone conclude in the tonic key. The lower strings behave as if the tonic has become BTemplate:Music, while the violins and violas switch to G major, A major and [[E-flat major|ETemplate:Music major]], respectively.
In popular cultureEdit
- The beginning of the fourth movement is used as the theme to the BBC's television coverage of the Horse of the Year Show.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=Hamilton>Template:Cite news</ref>
- In series 19, episode 5 of the motoring show Top Gear, presenters Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond design a car for elderly people, the Rover James. A feature of the car, a modified Fiat Multipla, is a radio that only plays the fourth movement.Template:Citation needed
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
- Template:NMA
- Template:Mutopia
- Template:IMSLP
- Template:YouTube, Dennis Brain, Neill Sanders (horn); Manoug Parikian (violin); London Philharmonic Orchestra, Guido Cantelli
- Template:YouTube
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