A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Extravaganza

by John Hullah

EXTRAVAGANZA. Any work of art in which accepted forms are caricatured, and recognised laws violated, with a purpose. A musical extravaganza must be the work of a musician familiar with the forms he caricatures and generally amenable to the laws he violates. Mozart's 'Musikalischer Spass' (Köchel, No. 522) is an instance on a small scale. The pantomime overture would seem to be the most legitimate field for the exercise or gratification of musical extravagance. In this, ludicrous effects might be produced by assigning passages to instruments inapt though not altogether incompetent to their execution; by treating fragments of familiar tunes contrapuntally, and the like. Perhaps no field for musical invention has been less worked than that of extravaganza. Of no class of music does there exist so little as of that which is ludicrous in itself, and not dependent for its power of exciting risibility on the words connected with it, or the circumstances under which it is heard. Haydn's Toy symphonies are in a certain sense extravaganzas. His 'Farewell Symphony,' though open to a ludicrous interpretation, is, as Mendelssohn truly said of it, a 'melancholy little piece.' Indeed, as orchestras now are, it cannot be performed as intended. Mendelssohn's own Funeral March for Pyramus is an exquisite piece of humour.

[ J. H. ]