When Mozart invented the WHOLE TONE SCALE 100 years early!

This cadenza comes from a piece Mozart composed in 1787, the same year as his opera Don Giovanni. He was 31 years old, and at the height of his compositional powers. But The Musical Joke is a really odd piece, made entirely out of musical material that sounds deliberately banal. It was as if Mozart, who normally composed music of extraordinary grace, sophistication and emotional power, felt compelled to attempt to write a bad piece! Some people think that he was satirising his less talented colleagues by using the raw clichés of the Style Gallant. The score also contains a number of strikingly modern-sounding effects that weren’t used again in the Western Classical tradition until the Twentieth Century, such as polytonality and the whole tone scale. MUSICAL EXCERPTS USED IN THIS VIDEO Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Ein Musikalischer Spaß (A Musical Joke) K522 (1787) Movement III. Adagio Cantabile Movement IV. Finale. Presto Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra Sandor Frigyes, conductor links - Original full recording - #music #mozart #debussy #comedy #violin ⦿ SUPPORT US ON PATREON ⦿ ⦿ SUBSCRIBE TO THIS CHANNEL ⦿ Edited by Ian Coulter ( ) Produced and directed by Ian Coulter