Symphony Jokes / Recent Jokes

A year ago, Hans Vonk conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a production of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. During the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth, there is a large pause in the Orchestration where only the chorus sings.

Four bass players, feeling they could use this break to get out and stretch their legs, slipped off backstage and proceeded to go outside to smoke a cigarette and take a little nip from a bottle one of them was carrying.

Well, they lost track of time and became quite inebriated. Finally one of them says, "Say! We should really be getting back in... It's almost time to play our part."

"Don't worry," confided one of the other bassists with a wink. "I've fixed it so that we have a longer pause... I tied together the last parts of the conductor's score before our part begins!"

All the bass players had a good chuckle and took a few mo

...one Minnesota Symphony violinist is dead, another in critical condition, and a 3rd under arrest after a shooting incident that apparently stemmed from a love triangle gone bad. Police are calling it a case of fiddle attraction.

From: Efficiency & Ticket, Ltd., Management ConsultantsTo: Chairman, The London Symphony OrchestraRe: Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor.After attending a rehearsal of this work we make the following observations and recommendations:1. We note that the twelve first violins were playing identical notes, as were the second violins. Three violins in each section, suitably amplified, would seem to us to be adequate.2. Much unnecessary labour is involved in the number of demisemiquavers in this work; we suggest that many of these could be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver thus saving practice time for the individual player and rehearsal time for the entire ensemble. The simplification would also permit more use of trainee and less-skilled players with only marginal loss of precision.3. We could find no productivity value in string passages being repeated by the horns; all tutti repeats could also be eliminated without any reduction of efficiency.4. In so labour-intensive an more...

The president of a large managed care company was also chairman of the board of his community's symphony orchestra. Finding he could not go to one of his concerts, he gave the tickets to the company's director of health care containment.

The next morning, the president asked the director how he enjoyed the performances. Instead of the expected usual polite remarks, the director handed him a memorandum which read as follows:

1. The attendance of the orchestra conductor is unnecessary for public performances. The orchestra has obviously practiced and has received prior authorization from the conductor to play the symphony at a predetermined level of quality. Considerable money could have been saved merely by having the conductor critique the orchestra's performance during a retrospective peer review meeting.

2. For considerable periods, the four oboe players had nothing to do. Their numbers should be reduced and their work spread over the whole more...

A tourist in Vienna is going through a graveyard and all of a sudden he hears some music. No one is around, so he starts searching for the source. He finally locates the origin and finds it is coming from a grave with a headstone that reads: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827. Then he realises that the music is the Ninth Symphony and it is being played backward! Puzzled, he leaves the graveyard and persuades a friend to return with him. By the time they arrive back at the grave, the music has changed. This time it is the Seventh Symphony, but like the previous piece, it is being played backward. Curious, the men agree to consult a music scholar. When they return with the expert, the Fifth Symphony is playing, again backward. The expert notices that the symphonies are being played in the reverse order in which they were composed, the 9th, then the 7th, then the 5th. By the next day the word has spread and a throng has gathered around the grave. They are all listening to the Second more...

When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Mozart was buried.
Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it.The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.
When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Mozart's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."
He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."
So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."
Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow more...

The Boston Symphony Orchestra was performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In the piece, there's a long passage, about 20 minutes, during which the bass violinists have nothing to do.Rather than sit around that whole time looking stupid, some bassists decided to sneak offstage and go to the tavern next door for a drink. After slamming several beers in quick succession, one of them looked at his watch. "Hey! We need to get back!" he cried."No need to panic," said a fellow bassist. "I thought we might need some extra time, so I tied the last few pages of the conductor's score together with string. It'll take him a few minutes to get it untangled."A few moments later, the drunk musicians staggered back into the concert hall and took their places in the orchestra.About this time, a member of the audience noticed the conductor seemed a bit edgy. She pointed this out to her date."Well, of course," said her companion. "Don't you see? It's the bottom more...