Sunday, September 12, 2010

Hilarity is one of my favorite topics partly, I think, because it seems to be a forbidden aspect of music. It doesn't occur to most serious musicians that Rachmaninoff deliberately plants a wrong note throughout most of a piece of music so that when he finally gets it right it will sound wrong. Similarly, it doesn't occur to most musicians that Beethoven is actually writing 5's plus 3's in duple meter, boring you to tears trying to get 2's or 4's to work until you discover the hidden clue and then delighting you to pieces every time.

Funny how closely allied they are: boredom and hilarity.