"Funeral March of a Marionette," too familiar to require any explanation further than to say it depicts the breaking of a Marionette and the subsequent lamentations of the troupe as they bear it to the grave. It is, after a fashion, a musical Humpty-Dumpty. Another instance is the chorus of students in Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust," who sing an elaborate chorus in the form of fugue, the entire development being wrought out on the word "amen." It was Berlioz's idea in this to ridicule the method and pedantry of the old school, just as Wagner had done in his "Meistersinger." In Schumann's "Children's Album" there are several charming instances of musical humor, the "Don't Frighten Me" and "The Bear Dance" recalling themselves to our memory specially. Indeed, with only a little investigation into musical literature, one might make out quite a long list of examples of this kind.
A modern example of real humor is a composition by Dr. J. K. Paine, America's greatest native composer. In this he exploits the virtues of a certain patent medicine, prominent before the public some years ago, and tells all about the virtues of Radway's Ready Relief to a musical setting that is of the most musicianly character. The text is simply an old newspaper advertisement of the patent medicine. These utterly prosaic words are set for four-part male chorus and bass recitative.
The certificate from the rheumatic sufferer is given to a dramatic agitato movement, and the price of the medicine is heralded in learned counterpoint. The music cleverly takes off both the Händelian contrapuntal and the modern romantic styles, the burlesque solemnity of the writing being infinitely comic, the whole ending with a side-splitting parody on the Finale to "Egmont," and not forgetting the little shrieks of the piccolo (the only instrument employed). The very excellences of the writing and the purity of the musical form add an element of ludicrousness to what altogether affords one of the best instances of the composer at play, but not forgetting his erudition in his humor.
