I found the book by serendipity, misshelved among works on Typography in the UT Fine Arts Library. I brought it home and then opened it to read:
“I often find that the humorous, joking aspect of music is missing in many performances, even in those of accomplished artists. It seems that people feel uncomfortable allowing the great work of music to be anything but sublimely serious.”
“… crescendo does not automatically mean either agitato or accelerando. In many cases, quite to the contrary crescendo is an indication of the music becoming broader, more majestic, more dignified. If an alteration of timing is justified, such instances may call for allargando rather than an accelerando. Similarly, diminuendo should not always be taken as an indication of calming down, connected with rallentando. I can think of many examples of diminuendo that indicate, in fact, an increase of activity, albeit of a fantastic, visionary order, sometimes accompanied by an accelerando (see passages in a variety of works by Scriabin, for example).” Boris Berman, Notes from the Pianist’s Bench, Yale University Press, 2000, pages 146-149, passim.
About 1988 or so, as a local newspaper reporter, I attended a concert duet for harp and voice. It was nice and all, a range from “classical” (perhaps Bach and others much later), and at least one modern piece, probably two. The last was “The Owl & the Pussy Cat.” I did not know the piece then and had to search for it now. It was the Edward Lear poem. I am not sure if the music was Stravinsky or another. The audience did not entirely suppress its giggles as the soloist sang about her lovely pussy. Not knowing the Lear poem, I, too, was surprised but having grown up with the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of George Szell and his assistants, Louis Lane and Robert Shaw, I learned well to suppress all emotions while in the audience. After the concert, the harpist replied something like, “Nonsense. After all doesn’t ‘scherzo’ mean ‘joke’?” A light went on – Es gang mir ein Licht an: In German, das Scherz means “joke.” The word must have come from Italian because the Germans would never have invented the word on their own.
Well, that’s not quite fair. Google “Haydn joke” - https://www.therightnotes.org/haydn-s-humour.html Other composers also used the unexpected to surprise the audience. For one thing, from the chamber music of the Enlightenment to the huge civic halls of our time, many of the listeners are players if not performers themselves. When the Beethoven Sonata op. 31. No. 3 opens with a cadential harmonic progression, they get the joke, or so wrote Boris Berman. I don't understand it.
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