Unusual Classical Music: Weird Titles & Tales
Most individuals consider classical music as being very severe. However in actuality, classical music is commonly weird, sarcastic, or simply plain bizarre.
At the moment, we’re eight compositions with significantly bizarre titles, from Mozart’s cheeky “Leck mir den Arsch” to La Monte Younger’s “Composition 1960 #7: to be held for a very long time.”
We’re additionally wanting on the fascinating tales behind them.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber (Lick my Arse for Six Voices) (ca. 1782)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart beloved two issues particularly dearly: composing and scatological humour.
Actually, a lot scatological humour seems in his letters that some scandalised editors of his correspondence really scrubbed it from their editions!
Sometimes, his sense of humour boiled over from his letter-writing into his compositions, like in his three-part canon “Leck mich im Arsch”, which was doubtless meant to be a foolish social gathering track for his pals.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Translated to English, the expression “Leck mich im Arsch” means one thing equal to “kiss my ass.”
It’s a phrase that has no proper to be organized so cleverly or to sound so good…which in fact is a part of the joke!
Charles-Valentin Alkan: Funeral March on the Demise of a Parrot (1859)
Composer Charles-Valentin Alkan is without doubt one of the most intriguing figures in classical music historical past.
He was a piano prodigy born in 1813 who, within the 1830s, was usually talked about in the identical breath as Chopin and Liszt.
Charles-Valentin Alkan
Nevertheless, after Alkan had a son out of wedlock in his mid-twenties, he withdrew from the live performance stage for a time. He resumed his performing profession within the mid-1840s. However after shedding a prestigious job on the Paris Conservatoire and the devastating early loss of life of Chopin, Alkan withdrew from public life once more, specializing in learning and composing.
In 1859, Alkan wrote this parody funeral march, drawing from the pompous custom of grand opera. It was composed for 4 voices, three oboes, and one bassoon.
The lyrics translated are “Have you ever eaten, Jaco? And what? Ah!” That is the French equal of the English expression “Polly needs a cracker?”
Alkan takes himself so critically that should you simply heard the music alone, you’d by no means guess the mild, winking absurdity of the premise.
Erik Satie: Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three Items within the Type of a Pear) (1903)
Composer Erik Satie specialised in absurdity, and his four-hand piano suite “Trois morceaux en forme de poire” presents absurdity in abundance.
The primary joke is that, regardless of the title, the suite consists of seven items, not three.
In accordance with legend, the “pear” a part of the title originated with a criticism Claude Debussy leveled at Satie: specifically, that Satie didn’t pay sufficient consideration to type.
Erik Satie
Satie then selected a intentionally absurd form so he might reply any criticism by Debussy by saying, “however it’s within the type of a pear!”
In France, pears even have a cultural connotation with the archetype of a idiot or simpleton, which means the joke could have been on Debussy, Satie himself, or perhaps each!
Alexander Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy (1905-08)
Composer Alexander Scriabin believed that his life’s mission prolonged far past writing music.
In 1903, he started writing a piece referred to as Mysterium, which he continued engaged on for over a decade, till his loss of life.
Alexander Scriabin
He wished to stage a efficiency of it throughout a weeklong competition within the foothills of the Himalayas, after which he believed the tip of the world would come, and human consciousness itself would shift.
In 1905’s The Poem of Ecstasy, we get a style of his intense conviction and artistic vitality in a piece that was really completed. The narrative of the Poem follows a spirit attaining consciousness.
Scriabin wrote in his personal notes for the piece:
“When the Spirit has attained the supreme end result of its exercise and has been torn away from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has exhausted utterly its substance and its liberated lively vitality, the Time of Ecstasy shall arrive.”
Charles Ives: Like a Sick Eagle (c. 1906)
Charles Ives’s temporary track “Like a Sick Eagle” include simply the primary 5 traces of John Keats’s poem “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”:
My spirit is just too weak—mortality
Weighs closely on me like unwilling sleep,
And every imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I have to die
Like a sick eagle wanting on the sky.
Clara Sipprell: Charles Ives (Washington, DC: Nationwide Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Establishment)
Ives conveys the staggering weak spot of the once-mighty fowl by way of a spare accompaniment and ghostly vocal line.
The tip result’s deeply haunting and unsettling.
Darius Milhaud: Le Boeuf sur le toit (The Ox on the Roof) (1919-20)
Throughout World Struggle I, composer Darius Milhaud served within the French diplomatic service, spending two years in Brazil. Not surprisingly, the wealthy musical tradition of South America rubbed off on Milhaud’s music.
Darius Milhaud
Milhaud himself as soon as claimed that the title “Le Boeuf sur le toit” (which interprets to “The Ox on the Roof”) was a reference to a Brazilian people track.
Nevertheless, there are potential alternate explanations, too:
- It’s the title of an imaginary cafe and dance corridor (an actual model opened a few years after Milhaud’s rating was staged as a ballet).
- There may be an outdated Parisian legend of a person who adopted a calf and introduced it into his house, the place it grew too giant to be moved.
- Amongst musicians, the phrase “faire un boeuf” was slang for “to have a jam session.” When a restaurant internet hosting a jam session was too small to host a gaggle, musicians can be directed to the roof.
No matter precisely what the title refers to, the phrase is playful and evocative.
Paul Hindemith: Overture to the Flying Dutchman as Sight-read by a Unhealthy Spa Orchestra at 7 within the Morning by the Properly (c. 1925)
Composer and violinist/violist Paul Hindemith had a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, as evidenced by this work, which is strictly what it seems like: Hindemith’s thought of what an under-rehearsed ensemble may sound like whereas sight-reading Wagner’s Flying Dutchman Overture.
In it, he pokes enjoyable at out-of-practice musicians attempting to play a piece past their technical skills.
Paul Hindemith, 1923
You possibly can hear their struggles: intonation points, unintentional entrances, wobbly cues.
On the finish, the gamers inexplicably launch right into a rendition of Émile Waldteufel’s The Skater’s Waltz.
La Monte Younger: Composition 1960 #7: to be held for a very long time (1960)
American composer La Monte Younger was born in 1935. He’s extensively recognised as one of many first minimalists, and he has a particular curiosity in sustained tones and musical drones.
The one directions for the piece are {that a} B and an F-sharp are to be held “for a very long time”. How lengthy? It’s as much as the performers – and maybe the viewers – to determine.
La Monte Younger
Conclusion: The Bizarre and Witty World of Classical Music
Whether or not channeling apocalyptic mystical forces or memorialising a useless parrot, the entire composers above embraced a spirit of weirdness when it got here to conceiving and naming their works.
These bizarre names pique our curiosity and invite us to hear with curiosity and contemporary ears. Share along with your music-loving pals, and tell us which certainly one of these quirky works is your favourite.
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