Laughter and Reception

I recently watched a performance of Erik Satie's ballet "Relâche", which accented small chamber and ensemble pieces of Satie's with theatre, dance and film he had a hand in crafting as well (you haven't lived until you've seen Satie lamping around an artillery gun in slo-mo, replete with his trademark bowler). The show was both lively and contemplative in trademark Satie fashion (although I still prefer his piano work), but the audience's reaction to some of the material presented struck me as odd...

A series of short ensemble pieces were preceded by a suite of three short chamber songs with vocal accompaniment. These first songs were as "serious" and emotive as Satie gets, and were treated as such by the audience. Later, there was a series of brief comedic pieces ("Sports & Divertissements") which were narrated by an actress performing an exaggerated pantomime: the audience laughed throughout. But it was the audience's reaction to "Mercure", the short pieces between these "serious" and "comedic" pieces, which puzzled me. The pieces are brief, seemingly off the cuff. One might describe most of them as comic in tone, but not comedic. The audience listened "properly" to each song, but when each of them came to a quick and sudden end, laughter broke out.

I'm not sure if what prompted the laughter at the end of the pieces was simple propriety - one doesn't laugh during classical music unless there's a clown onstage, as there was with "Sports & Divertissements" - or the sudden conclusions which punctuated the pieces at there end. Were people laughing at how quickly the pieces resolved? At how short they were? If that's the case, it seems like a stunted manner in which to approach comic music. All of the pieces in "Mercure" were brief and resolved themselves quickly. Those which were explicitly comic were so throughout their duration, not just during their abrupt conclusion. If we laugh at the manner in which an episode of "Seinfeld" ends with multiple storylines crashing together in manic chaos, we've also been laughing during the episode. So why not laugh during a piece of comic music as well as at its end?

I suppose I'm drawing a somewhat arbitrary line in the sand between music with explicitly comedic content (Weird Al, Spike Jones, or, say, Biz Markie) and music with a comic approach to form and structure (Sparks, Wire). I laugh at Weird Al's jokes or Biz's zaniness during their music, but if a Sparks or Wire song is both amusing and taking liberties with pop/rock expectations and structural devices, I tend to have a smile on my face throughout a listen, but that doesn't necessary culminate in a catharsis of laughter once the song's ended. I don't keep a straight face until "Field Day For The Sundays" reaches its quick end then break out laughing - "They ended the song after 29 seconds! How magnificently frivolous!" Music rarely makes "jokes" in the most restrictive sense of the term: setup and punchline (although I'd be keen to hear suggestions or examples). It may have a humourous conclusion, but it plays and japes along the way (especially Satie's): everything does not depend on the punchline.

Bah, I have hundreds of problems and concerns about the way music is received in public, especially art music. I don't expect people to be slapping their knees and hooting throughout performances (that actually sounds quite hellish), I just wish that music which overturns so many formal conventions like Satie's would be able to provoke at least some upset in the conventions of listening.