So, have you been listening to the news lately? You will definitely have heard about Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine in Paris, France which has come into the news after militants killed its cartoonists because they felt they’d drawn offensive art. Now, there is a raging debate around the world as to whether they were funny or offensive.
Really, there’s a thin line between the two, but usually this sort of conundrum involves an act that deviates from the norm or the rule. And to find something funny or offensive, you have to have an understanding of the norm. You have to understand the rules to know when they’ve been broken. Then you can either protest in indignation or guffaw in mirth.
The latter is what Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart decided to do one day. He was one of the most famous classical music composers to live in 18th-Century Austria and must have been really upset or outraged by what some of the younger upstart composers were doing. So, he decided to write a piece of musical satire to parody “poor quality composition” and make people laugh at his own attempt at musical buffoonery.
Good. Or is it?
The son is made of four parts. The first is an Allegro, which means it is supposed to excite you and be generally fast-paced. The next is a Menuetto and Trio, a ballad-like excerpt that can be slow-danced to. The next is an Adagio Cantabile, which is smooth, soft and slow. The fourth and final, a Presto, which is supposed to sound like a hungry mouse making a last-ditch dash for the cheese before the cat chases it down!
If you listen to it ( >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzaQixVGoQg ), it might actually sound good and harmonious for the most part. And that sense of normality actually makes the sporadic jerks of “bad music” very distinct and all the more shocking. There are subtler jokes in it, though, and you’d need to know some more rules to get them. But wait for the obvious punch line at the end of the piece, where Mozart has all the instruments squelch out chords that sound like an obscure sound made by a pig after a heavy meal. Euch!
Much of the ‘rule-breaking’ in this piece is classical and meant to irk only finicky people. Today, we hear so much music that breaks all these rules and more, but we’ve got so used to it that it can’t tickle us anymore. But imagine in pre-Victorian times, when people walked around in breeches, wore fancy top hats and heard only perfect copybook music. What a shock it must have been for them!
Bookmark this piece, because we’ll be exposing several musical faux pas using it as an example!
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