Yes, but that doesn't make you laugh not because it's gay. What was so funny about that? Hm? It's gay. Now what was so funny about that? What was funny? Tell me. For instance, if you take that great parade part of the ballet, "The Incredible Flutist", by the American composer, Walter Piston. Now of course some music does make certain jokes that aren't about music but then they're not musical jokes. Nonsense is the loveliest thing there is because it makes us laugh - and boy, nothing feels so good as laughing. Incongruous things are things that don't make sense and that's how we get nonsense. Tea-trays have nothing to do with the sky they have nothing to do with bats either. Incongruous means, for example, Alice in Wonderland, when she gets all mixed up in that strange new world of hers, and can't remember anything right so she suddenly begins to recite:
Now that's a word you ought to try to learn and remember. And when music is funny, it's funny in the same way that a joke is funny: it does something shocking, surprising, unexpected, absurd it puts two things together that don't belong together, which are, to use a very hard word, incongruous. You see, music can't make jokes about anything except itself it can make fun of itself, or of other pieces of music but it sure can't make jokes about that elephant and that mouse. And all those different kinds of humor can be found in music.īut there's one very important thing we have to know about humor in music: it's got to be funny for musical reasons. The other trouble with trying to explain humor is that it's such a big subject - there are so many different kinds of humor: there's wit, satire, parody, caricature, burlesque, and just plain clowning around. We all know people, unfortunately, who insist on telling you a joke and then explaining to you why it's funny. For instance, who would have expected that the mouse would try to excuse his smallness by saying he'd been sick? But once we've explained that fact you don't laugh anymore the joke may have been funny, but the explanation isn't. You see, there has to be that element of surprise and shock in every joke - the thing that's called the twist, or the gimmick, or the punch, or the topper, or the tag-line, or the gag line but whatever you call it, it's got to be a surprise, a shock, and that's what makes you laugh. Well, what's so funny about that? I mean, it always gets a laugh maybe we can explain why: because the answer is so unexpected and shocking.
And the elephant said: "Huh, look at you, you little shrimp, you peanut, you're not even as big as my left toenail!" and the mouse said, "Well listen, I've been sick." For instance, take a joke - any old joke: like this shaggy story about the elephant who was making fun of a mouse because the mouse was so tiny. The main trouble seems to be that the minute you explain why something is funny, it isn't so funny anymore. That's an easier question to ask than to answer. It's a fun subject, but it's a hard subject. Now since that program we've had so many letters and requests for more about the subject of humor in music that I've decided to spend a whole program on it. How do you all do? On our last program if you remember, which was about Classical Music, you remember we were playing part of a symphony by Haydn, and we were learning something about the way he gets humor into his music - Humor was part of that 18th century elegance and fun we were talking about. Original CBS Television Network Broadcast Date: 28 February 1959
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