The world is a very serious place these days. Too serious, if you ask me. Where has the humor gone? In music we have a useful term called Leggiero. It tells us to lighten up. Where has humor gone in music? Let’s take a look.
The music world was loaded with humor in the past. Mozart poked perfect fun at amateur musicians. Nothing could be funnier. Beethoven knew how to insert humor into his music. The French compose Satie saw humor in everything, including humor within humor.
Most recently we had Weird The Musical Gourmet The Musical Gourmet The Musical Gourmet More levity, please Al Sankovic. Spike Jones was so famous he had his own television program. The ethnic comedians were also involved big time. Peter Schickele, formerly a serious classical composer, became known as PDQ Bach. Anna Russell and Victor Borge got into the act. Blind pianist Alec Templeton used every aspect of humor in his music. In his composition “Bach Goes to Town” he teaches humor to the serious Johann Sebastian Bach. The change is remarkable and inevitable.
In the movies we had people like Jack Benny and Buster Keaton. They could crack you up with a sideways glance. The great violinist Jascha Heifetz had that same type of humor.
The main ingredient that is lacking in music today is… Leggiero. There is serious music aplenty. There is also a huge library of funny things.
Sometime ago I came into the possession of the Devil’s Dictionary of musical invective. The humor is often quite biting but very accurate.
The definition of a conductor in the Devil’s Dictionary is: “an egotistical monolith who thinks he knows everything. A self-made individual who worships his creator and at the same speed. But the conductor was in his own world and heard himself only. It would have helped if the conductor had opened his ears to what was going on. He could have looked at the musicians to see if they were ready to play.
He didn’t look and they weren’t ready.
Fortunately catastrophe was averted by the inspiration of the musicians. They rose to the task admirably. Sometimes fear increases adrenaline. But what about Leggiero? Levity and commonsense were left waiting in the wings.
History gave us Erasmus. He missed his calling.
And then there was Mark Twain. Can you imagine what kind of music he might have composed? Fortunately, we had another great wordsmith. His nom de plume was worthy of his humorous observations. Everybody knows Corno di Bassetto, the famous music critic. He used his venom-dipped, sharpened pen to great acclaim. His observations were spot on. This great writer found time to compose Pygmalion. As a musical critic, he was Corno di Bassetto Otherwise known as George Bernard Shaw. Music needs to include Leggiero in its lexicon.