Musical Pranks

It's April Fools' Day.: a day of (hopefully harmless) pranks. Musicians and composers have been known to play pranks on the piano. Probably the most famous playful piano perforrmer was the Danish-American pianist and comic Victor Borge.

One piece that Borge liked to perform was a version of Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody (especially the friska section), which is considered a musical comedic classic and has been featured in animated cartoons.

Mozart once wrote an aria for a soprano who tended raise her head for high notes and tuck in her chin for low notes. Mozart hated her, so the nicknamed piece, “The Chicken Dance” in Cosi fan Tutte, featured dramatic fluctuating low and high notes; Mozart took delight in watching the soprano bob her head repeatedly.

More recently, Leroy Anderson is known for his lighthearted compositions, such as The Syncopated Clock. His pieces sometimes featured unlikely instruments such as a typewriter.

Debussy's Carnival of Animals is charming, but how many people realize that his “Tortoises” is actually a very slow version of Offenbach's “Can-Can”?

P. D. Q. Bach is a comedic alias for contemporary composer Peter Schickele. He creates parodies of baroque and classical music, which often employ unusual instruments such as kazoo and slide whistles and even fictional instruments such as the left-handed sewer flute and pastaphone. His humor often draws from odd key changes and inserts of popular music into classical sections.

Violinist Fritz Kreisler played “lost” classical pieces, which she later admitted writing himself. Another violinist, Henri Gustave Casadesus, also wrote faked compositions, supposedly created by Handel and Boccherini.

Some musicians also played practical jokes. For instance, Brahms sketched a fake Beethoven manuscript, and had a street vendor wrap it around a sausage to sell to one of Brahms' friend, who thought he had discovered a lost composition.

Who says composers don't have a sense of humor?

"Chill' July Piano Composers

 

Summertime can heat up; one way to “chill” is with a good piano selection. And there are several piano composers with July birthdays, so you can celebrate the month AND their music at the same time.

Tomoko studies composers as part of her preparation for performing, and she considers the style of each composer when she chooses pieces for her students. Here are some of Tomoko’s favorite July composers.

Number one on the list for Tomoko has to be Mozart, born on July 26, 1791. “I have a natural feeling about Mozart,” Tomoko says;“I could play a piece of his twenty  times, and not tire of it.” And Mozart has helped Tomoko’s career. For instance, while at the conservatory student on a US visa, Tomoko had to audition to prove that she was a serious music student. She played a Mozart concerto as her audition piece, which showcased her expertise and self-confidence; her performance enabled her to stay in the conservatory’s program.

Two July-born composers, Field and Granado, are featured on Tomoko’s CD Baroque-20^th Century. John Field was born on July 26, 1782, in Dublin. His music was considered one of the most influential of the early Romantic period, inspiring several of Tomoko’s composers, whose music she plays regularly: Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann.  In contrast, Spaniard Enrique Granados was born on July 27, 1867. He is known for both a romantic style and for nationalistic pieces such as Spanish Dances. Some of the compositions have been transcribed for classical guitar.

Also linked with folk music is Percy Grainger, who was born on July 8, 1882 in Brighton, Australia. He led the movement of reviving British folk music as reflected in his arrangement of the folk dance tune Country Gardens. Many of his other compositions are experimental, including the use of music machines. Tomoko values traditional musical forms, which express a sense of communal culture.

Tomoko is also a devotee of Bach. One July piano composer with a good sense of humor is Peter Schickele, who has composed parodies of Bach’s music using the alias of P. D. Q. Bach; sample titles include “Canine Cantata” and “A Little Nightmare Music.” Schickele has also composed music for Joan Baez, and done more serious compositions as well. Schickele was born on July 17, 1935. He was also a music educator, and hosted a long-running weekly radio program called Schickele Mix.

One 20^th century Japanese compatriot piano composers born in July was Yasushi Akutagawa, born on July 12, 1925. Akutagawa attended the same university as Tomoko: Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. His compositions were influenced by several composers whom Tomoko likes: Stravinsky, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. Akutagawa was also a music educator like Tomoko.