On the first hour of our two part series "Trick r' Treat," we presented The Trick Show this week. Browse below for nine of classical music's most infamous pranksters. 

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Symphony No. 60 in C 'Il distratto': Finale Haydn is practically synonymous with the classical symphony, having written around a hundred of them during his prodigious career. While his work epitomized the grace and elegance of the Classical era, he was also known for being quite a musical trickster, inserting musical jokes and satire into many of his compositions. His 60th symphony, known as Il Distratto, is based on incidental music written for a French comedy by Jean Francois Regnard. Just as the play revolves around the absent-mindedness of the central character, Haydn took the opportunity to write in musical distractions into the musical score itself. The first allegro of the symphony seems to have a habit of trailing off into forgetfulness, and in the final movement, the strings need a quick tuning break before carrying on!  

Nicolo Paganini (1782-1840) Theme and Var. on 'I palpiti' from Rossini's Tancredi, Op. 13 It was during a concert tour of central Italy that Paganini met Rossini in Bologna and began a long-lasting musical and personal friendship. Paganini wrote several famous sets of variations for violin and orchestra, each based on an aria from a Rossini opera. The virtuoso was a great help to the composer, on one occasion he subbed in at the last minute to conduct the Roman premiere of Rossini’s opera Mametto the Second, because the original conductor had suddenly died. Rossini and Paganini were known to be quite jovial together, and even enjoyed a good prank. It’s reported that once during the carnival season, Paganini mysteriously postponed one of his concerts. It was later discovered that he and Rossini and two other vocalists had disguised themselves as blind street musicians, parading through the streets of Rome with violin and guitar. The upper crust who invited them into their drawing rooms had no idea they were being serenaded by two of Europe’s greatest musical contemporaries. 

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 Johannes Brahms was a notorious wisecracker and prankster, and his antics are well-documented. He was known to have a trick rocking chair in his Vienna apartment that would dump guests who tried to sit in it out onto the floor. One of his most devious pranks involved Gustav Nottebohm, a close friend and prominent Beethoven scholar. Brahms fabricated a fake manuscript that looked as though it was in Beethoven’s hand, then paid a sausage vender to serve Nottebohm a wurst casually wrapped in the prank document. The gullible Gustav supposedly rushed home, beaming at his discovery. This was not the only time Brahms would have a laugh at the expense of academics. He was invited to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau, however the award came with the condition that Brahms would write a symphony to mark the occasion. Instead he produced the Academic Festival Overture, a boisterous potpourri of student and fraternity songs. Some of the stodgier academic’s feathers were ruffled, but they did still award Brahms the degree.   

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Lieutenant Kije, Op. 60: 'Troika' Sergei Prokofiev provided the music to the 1937 film Lt. Kije, which satirized the bureaucracy of Emperor Paul I of Russia, the emperor who ruled in the late 18th century. The film is an adaptation of a novella by Yuri (Tin-yawn-ov)Tynyanov, and based on an anecdote about Paul’s foolishness, and the bureaucratic ineptitude of his empire. In this story, the emperor is fooled into believing that a man named Lt. Kijé exists due to a miscopied phrase in a military order. Of course, the emperor can never be wrong, so the fictional lieutenant continues to rise through the ranks and ultimately becomes General Kijé. The ruse goes too far when Kijé is  supposed to return home after his valorous actions in battle, so the emperor’s advisers devise a way to “kill” the imaginary general, lest the true nature of his existence be discovered. Prokofiev’s film music was later made into a suite, which continues to be played today.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, Op. 28 Till Eulenspiegel was a 14th-century prankster whose last name derived from the German words for owl and mirror—perhaps because he was a very wise prankster who used his merry pranks to reflect the foolishness of those around him. Modern historians believe that the Till we know today was not a real person, but instead represents a number of different real-life pranksters all rolled into one. The town of Möllin in north Germany, however, begs to differ. The town has designated itself as the Eulenspiegel town, believing that he lived there late into his life, and perished from the plague there in 1350. He’s supposedly buried there too, and even has a gravestone replete with a carved image of the prankster. Perhaps this is the best prank of them all—Möllin has been profiting off of the Till tourism industry for years!

Erik Satie (1866-1925) Véritables préludes flasques (pour un chien) We couldn’t do a show on musical tricksters without acknowledging the playfully absurdist music of Erik Satie. Many of his compositions include nonsensical titles, sly parodies of “high art,” and hilarious notes to the performer. Case in point, his Flabby Preludes for a Dog include four short movements consecutively titled “Interior Voice”,”Cynical Idylle”, “Canine Song,” and “With Comradeship.” Never one to listen to authority, Satie forged his own musical path, supplementing his artistic pursuits with work as a cafe pianist. His early studies at the Conservatoire had been unremarkable, however he did spend three additional years studying traditional counterpoint under D’Indy, and earned the admiration of Maurice Ravel. It wasn’t until the film maker and art critic Jean Cocteau introduced Satie’s music to a wider audience that he gained notoriety as an eccentric and became an authority on the avant-garde in Paris.

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), André Messager (1853-1929) Souvenirs de Bayreuth: Quadrille on themes from Wagner's Ring When Gabriel Fauré and his friend and fellow composer, André Messager, produced a piece titled Memories of Bayreuth, it likely came as no surprise to family and friends. The two were known to occasionally improvise and perform piano four-hands arrangements of works by Wagner, and Fauré was a professed “Wagnerite,” traveling all over Europe to catch performances of the Ring Cycle. What was unexpected was that Fauré and Messager made Memories of Bayreuth a good-humored parody of Wagner’s music, taking themes from the Ring Cycle, the first being the epic Ride of the Valkyries, and setting them as quadrilles, popular and high energy dances of the time. Even as the Wagner craze began to wain after the turn of the 20th century, the popularity of this piece endured, with Gustave Samazeuilh (a student of Debussy) publishing a solo piano version in 1930.  

Rick Astley Never Gonna Give You Up What would a show on pranks be without a little prank from the Ether Game Brain Trust? A bait and switch prank called rickrolling gained popularity online in 2007 and is still practiced by certain tricksters almost two decades later. Initially, rickrolling involved getting an unsuspecting user to click on a hyperlink that would send them to the 1987 music video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The prank has since evolved to encompass any real-world situation in which somebody can be tricked into hearing or watching the song. Astley retired from music at age 27 in 1993, however rickrolling gave him a career come-back. Initially reluctant to return the spotlight, the career boost has led Astley to tour again after a 14 year hiatus, and an appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2008, where he rickrolled the audience on live tv.  

Knudage Riisager (1897-1974) Bricconata (Prank) Just like Charles Ives remained committed to working both as an insurance agent and a composer, Knudage Riisager worked his entire career as a department head of the Ministry of Finance while also championing contemporary Danish music and becoming an internationally renowned composer.Though his music for ballet was the most consistently successful, he also wrote many works for violin, an instrument he could already play by age seven. This selection, titled with the Italian term for a mischievous trick, was clearly written to showcase the effervescent playing style of Denmark’s legendary violinist Wandy Tworek, who premiered Riisager’s violin concerto, and to whom several works for violin were dedicated.