Classical pranksters Share Tweet

Although many people think classical music is something that should be taken very seriously, there are a number of composers who included musical jokes in their works. Here are some examples of how composers became classical pranksters:

Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is famously known for having an infantile sense of humour, so it comes as no surprise that he created a piece titled Ein Musikalischer Spa ß, which can be translated to ‘A Musical Joke’. At the time, Mozart employed clichéd fragments of melody and harmony that didn’t work well together, possibly poking fun of less talented composers of the time, and writing passages where the horns sound out of tune or as if they were playing at the incorrectly with the strings.

Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn is also known for his great sense of humour, which often made it into many of his compositions. In Haydn’s Symphony No.90, he included a false ending into the piece in order to trick the audience to applaud early, a trick which doesn’t fail often!





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The Farewell Symphony is another example of how Haydn incorporated his sense of humour into his compositions. The final movement of the Symphony sees the musicians stand up and leave the stage one by one, until only a pair of violins remain.

But Haydn’s best known prank is in the second movement of his 94th Symphony, when a lulling pianissimo suddenly explodes into a big bang.

The piece is nicknamed the ‘Surprise’ Symphony, we wonder why?

Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns wrote one of the most popular pieces of classical music for children, The Carnival of the Animals. The fourth movement, which depicts the tortoise, pokes fun at Offenbach’s famous ‘Can Can’, which is played very slowly.

However, Saint-Saëns did not want the general public to hear the piece – he did not want to be known as someone who wrote pieces of this nature.