The last post was kind of heavy, so I thought I’d lighten things up. And what better way than with a joke?
In particular, Joseph Haydn’s string quartet Op. 33 No. 2, known as “The Joke.”
In this string quartet, Haydn plays with the listener’s expectations of what a string quartet “should” sound like, what the listener expects to hear. And when we are surprised by what we hear, sometimes we laugh. And sometimes we jump—this is, after all, the same man who wrote the “Surprise” Symphony (No. 94). You can hear the symphony’s famous second movement here (headphone/earbud listeners might want to pull them away from their ears before time stamp 0:40).
I found a great short TEDx talk by the St. Lawrence String Quartet on the last movement of “The Joke” that provides a fun explanation of what Haydn is up to. When the movement ends, you can’t help but chuckle.
They also have an extended discussion that includes other movements of the string quartet, and that video can be found here.
A funny point is brought out that involves the minuet (scherzo) movement. This minuet had already showed signs of Haydn’s tinkering: the “graceful” minuet had some starts and stops that would make it a little difficult to dance to. Then, (in the trio section) Haydn put an interesting fingering notation over some notes. Editors must have scratched their heads and said, “that can’t be right—play two successive notes on the same string with the same finger?!” What you end up with, if you play it with Haydn’s fingering, is an effect that sounds like…well, a slide whistle. It’s a funny sound, perhaps slightly inebriated-sounding, that seems to poke fun at the stately minuet. You can hear a wonderful example of it here.
Ah, but enough explanations! Let’s let Haydn do the talking. Here is this wonderful string quartet in its entirety. Enjoy!
Image attribution: Portrait of Joseph Haydn by Thomas Hardy (1757-circa 1805) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJoseph_Haydn.jpg