Did Beethoven actually have a sense of humour?

Behind the bold chords and brooding reputation, Beethoven laced his work with wit and musical pranks Michael Taube Troy Media “Ludwig van Beethoven. What a brilliant composer. What an incredible pianist. And what a funny guy!” Hold on. I hear the beeping noise of a truck backing up right now. Beethoven had a sense of […] The post Did Beethoven actually have a sense of humour? first appeared on Prince Albert Daily Herald.

Behind the bold chords and brooding reputation, Beethoven laced his work with wit and musical pranks

Michael Taube

“Ludwig van Beethoven. What a brilliant composer. What an incredible pianist. And what a funny guy!”

Hold on. I hear the beeping noise of a truck backing up right now.

Beethoven had a sense of humour?! It appears so.

I was reminded of the rarely discussed topic this past weekend. I watched Odyssey: The Chamber Music Society in Greece, a production of the award-winning TV series Live from Lincoln Center that was first broadcast on Sept. 6, 2019. It took a while to locate this special, since it’s no longer available on the PBS website, but I’m glad I found it.

What’s still accessible is a small, additional clip, “Beethoven’s Humor.” The Chamber Music Society members took a different spin on the piece they performed, Serenade in D Major for Flute, Violin and Viola, Op. 25. “The Beethoven’s serenade that we’re playing has very quirky aspects to it,” viola player Paul Neubauer said. “There are many unusual elements to the serenade, which is pretty much fun music…it’s not your usual Beethoven motive that you think of. It’s him having a good time, saying, I’m putting a combination of three instruments that you don’t usually hear and I’m going to do something unique.”

Violinist Aaron Boyd felt the serenade is “not profound, and that’s on purpose. It’s full of fun, it’s full of playfulness and imitation of horns and trumpets and marches.” Flautist Tara Helen O’Connor called it the “perfect little nugget of music.”

This serenade, which was partially sketched out in 1797 and finished in 1801, is more light-hearted than Beethoven’s usual fare. This is also the case as compared to a similar piece he composed between 1796–1797, Serenade in D Major for Violin, Viola and Cello, Op. 8. The latter is also light-hearted, but the inclusion of a flute in the former gives it a faster-paced rhythm and airier tone.

Humour isn’t something that’s typically associated with the prolific German composer. References to his mood swings and arrogance are commonplace.

“Beethoven was not an English gentleman, but neither was he a Jacobian teaching dissipated nobles a lesson,” musicologist Maynard Solomon wrote in Beethoven. “His boorishness, hauteur, and many eccentricities cannot be explained solely in terms of his need to demonstrate his independence and assert his equality with his patrons as a human being. The very nature of personal patronage seems inevitably to arouse in artists contradictory emotions of gratitude and resentment, submission and rebelliousness, love and hostility.”

It once seemed like a stretch to suggest Beethoven was a purveyor of great hilarity—or a joker extraordinaire in the fine art of yuks. There may be something to it, however.

Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann suggested in a March 23, 2021, interview with WRTI 90.1 that this was the case with Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony. She believed he was trying to surprise audiences, since “he starts with a magic chord and a completely, mysterious start. You are in the dark and you don’t know where to go. You are lost, completely lost in translation.”

She pointed out the great composer’s funny side, mentioning he was “a lot, like Haydn! They were funny guys, very basic ones. And a favorite joke of Beethoven’s was to put himself just behind the door, and just [say] ‘BOO!’ to surprise people coming! Oh my God! And it’s full of this in his music.”

Peter Kay of the University of South Carolina wrote a thesis examining musical humour and Beethoven’s Symphonic Scherzi in 2012. He suggested Beethoven’s wit, humour and “clever manipulation of conventional patterns” changed the nature of musical composition. Peng Du Krol of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wrote a thesis in 2021 related to the “humorous dimensions in Beethoven’s seven piano variations from his first decade in Vienna.”

The French choir Accentus released a 2019 album, Beethoven: Canons & Musical Jokes, through Warner Classics/Erato; while the Austrian cappella quartet Ensemble Tamanial released an album of the same name in 2020 through Naxos.

The Foundation for the Revival of Classical Culture pointed to a humorous exchange in Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 in a May 7, 2020, piece. When the line Der schwer gefasste Entschluss, which can either mean “difficult decision” or “difficult resolution,” is brought up in the fourth movement, the initial thought is Muss es sein? (“Must it be?”), with the response being, Es muss sein! (“It must be!”)

The Foundation suggested that “musically, Es muss sein is an inversion of Muss es sein. It turns the phrase upside down, creating a resolution.” Moreover, since this is Beethoven’s final work, “many believe that Muss es sein? refers to the impending end of his life: Must it be? Yet, the inversion expresses joy—the joy of knowing that although he is not physically immortal, his music is! It will live on for centuries. It must be!”

How could there have been so much confusion about Beethoven’s intent? Did we always miss the humour in his music? An additional clip that I unearthed may have inadvertently revealed the reason.

An Oct. 30, 2016, mini-lecture by pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim highlighted a humorous and tragic phrase in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 7 in D Major. Barenboim said he went to a “master class” of the great Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer when he was young. Fischer apparently “spent the whole lesson talking about the humour” in the last movement. He found humour in the first three notes, followed by a short moment of silence and being repeated. This was “a perfect example of humour in music.”

Some years later, Barenboim went to Claudio Arrau’s recital. He was a great pianist and one of the most “serious musicians that ever came on this earth.” He saw the “dark side and the tragic side in the most innocent music.” When Barenboim went to dinner with him, a long explanation about the “tragic nature of the last movement” was provided. Arrau, unlike Fischer, viewed those three notes as “interrupted, as if they were dying…it is the inability of these three notes to become something continuous and create a melody.”

“For me,” Barenboim concluded, “this has remained a perfect example of the dangers of choosing adjectives to…explain the music. Music can only really be explained through sound.”

That’s why Beethoven’s humour was missed by so many. His musical compositions can be interpreted in both a comedic and tragic fashion. The great composer’s funny bone was constantly battling the dark, stormy weather that occasionally clouded his mind.

Michael Taube is a political commentator, Troy Media syndicated columnist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He holds a master’s degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics, lending academic rigour to his political insights.