Ein musikalischer Spass - Definition

Divertimento for two horns and strings, A Musical Joke, (Ein Musikalischer Spaß,) K. 522 was published on June 14, 1787 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. 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:

1. Allegro. (In sonata form)
2. Menuetto and Trio.
3. Adagio cantabile.
4. 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, which is very uncommon in the beginning of the classical period,
• use of secondary dominants where subdominant chords are just fair,
• use of trills for French horns, which were technically difficult to produce at the time period, and consequently sound ridiculous,
• the use of discords in the French horns, satirizing either their inability to transpose, 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,
• and use of polytonality at the end of piece.

Some theorists believe that A Musical Joke is a parody of works by clumsy composers of Mozart's time. With such an assumption, one would find some points of the score hilarious, such as the mere elementary developments of the theme, where the poor composer might felt the agony that he/she had to proceed the development. Other theorists disagree with that view.

The use of asymmetrical phrasing, whole-tone scales, and multitonality is quite foreign to music of the Classical era. However, these techniques were later revisited by early 20th century composers like Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, who were searching for new musical styles, as newly introduced techniques for serious music. Still, a non-classical context in a classical scheme gives it a hilarious manner, and the entire work shows the genius' sense of humor.

Two months after A Musical Joke was published, probably to express his sense of beauty, Mozart published Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is considered one of his most gorgeous works.

Perpetuum Mobile: musikalischer Scherz by Johann Strauss II is also translated to A Musical Joke.