Divertimento for two horns and strings, A Musical Joke, (Ein Musikalischer Spaß,) K. 522 was published on June 14, 1787 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Events 1276 - While taking exile in Fuzhou in southern China, away from the advancing Mongol invaders, the remnants of the Year 1787 ( MDCCLXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common It was intentionally written to be funny, or, as assumed by some theorists, to mock mediocre musicians among the composer's contemporaries.
The piece consists of four movements, using forms shared with many other classical divertimenti:
- Allegro. Divertimento (from italian divertire - to amuse is a music genre with most of its examples stemming from the 18th century (In sonata form)
- Menuetto and Trio. Sonata form is a Musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical period.
- Adagio cantabile.
- Presto. (Sonata rondo form)
Nevertheless, the music has potential to appeal to the average audience of that time as a comedy, including:
- use of asymmetrical phrasing, or not phrasing by four measure groups, at the beginning of the first movement, which is very uncommon for the classical period,
- use of secondary dominants where subdominant chords are just fair,
- the use of discords in the French horns, satirizing the incompetence of the copyist, or the hornist grabbing the wrong crook,
- use of a whole-tone scale in the violinist's high register, probably in order to imitate the player's floundering at the high positions
The piece is also notable for the earliest known use of polytonality, which may be intented to create out-of-tune sound of the string, at the final chord of the finale:
Some theorists believe that A Musical Joke is a parody of works by clumsy composers of Mozart's time. Sonata rondo form was a form of musical organization often used during the Classical music era. Secondary dominant (also applied dominant) is a type of chord used in musical Harmony. In Music, the subdominant is the technical name for the fourth tonal degree of the Diatonic scale. In Music, a whole tone scale is a scale in which each Note is separated from its neighbours by the interval of a Whole step. The Musical use of more than one key simultaneously is polytonality. With such an assumption, one would find some points of the score hilarious, such as the more elementary developments of the theme, where the poor composer might feel the agony that he/she had to proceed with the development. Other theorists disagree with that view, saying that perhaps Mozart used parody and comedy as an excuse to try things that at the time were not in practice; the piece would then be intended in a more serious tone than so advertised but only for the composer himself.
The use of asymmetrical phrasing, whole-tone scales, and multitonality is quite foreign to music of the Classical era. The dates of the Classical period in Western music are generally accepted as 1750 to 1810 However, these techniques were later revisited by early 20th century composers like Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, who were searching for a new musical language. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on Achille-Claude Debussy (aʃil klod dəbysi (August 22 1862 &ndash March 25 1918 was a French Composer. Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) ( &ndash 6 April 1971 was a Russian born Composer, considered by many to In this later context, these conventions were seen as legitimate new techniques in serious music. In Mozart's time, however, these non-classical elements gives the piece its comedy and perfectly expresses the composer's sense of musical humor.
Two months after A Musical Joke was published, possibly to re-express his abilities as a composer of works of great beauty, Mozart published Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is often considered one of his most gorgeous works. The Serenade No 13 for strings in G major, K 525 more commonly known as Eine kleine Nachtmusik ("a small serenade" -- rendered more literally
Other uses
Perpetuum Mobile: musikalischer Scherz by Johann Strauss II is also translated to A Musical Joke. Perpetuum mobile ( Latin) moto perpetuo ( Italian) mouvement perpétuel ( French) literally meaning Johann Strauss II (also known as Johann Strauss the Younger, Johann Strauss Jr
External links
- Ein musikalischer Spaß: Score and critical report (German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
- The Mutopia project has information about the composition A Musical Joke
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