EMS "The Viola Joke" 23/2/2025

[AuntDaisy]

EMS "The Viola Joke" with Mark Seow, 5pm 2/2/2025.

The Viola Joke
The Early Music Show

What do you call someone who hangs around musicians? A viola player (lol)!

Mark Seow explores the historical roots for the “viola joke”, which goes back to at least 1752 when Johann Joachim Quantz wrote that “so few violists devote as much industry to their work as they should...remaining chained to the viola to the end of their lives”. But the viola wasn’t considered a lowly instrument by everyone. It possessed a range and timbral quality that many Baroque composers associated with tenderness and love – made explicit by its stranger cousin, the viola d’amore.

In this programme, we'll hear the viola come into its own as a sonorous solo instrument in music by Telemann, Bach, Biber, Rosenmüller and others.

Possibly an error, but the weekly/daily listings page says this is a repeat and the actual listing mentions 18/8/2024 ("Dutch Organ Improvisation" repeat that Sunday). The Ensemble Augelletti also has an unexpected 4th August 2024 date, possibly the recording date?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021xyw

[Roger Webb]

Q. How do you know when the viola is being played out of tune?

A. The bow's moving.

[AuntDaisy]

Q. How do you know when the viola is being played out of tune?

A. The bow's moving.

Lovely.

[Roger Webb]

Lovely.

Many of the viola jokes I know were told to me by a viola player in one of the regional orchestras who used to come into my CD shop when in town - I never managed to out-do him with one I'd heard elsewhere...he'd heard them all. Until one day we were discussing the Walton Viola Concerto and I told him that in the first record shop I worked in the best selling version of the Walton was on the Music Minus One label. He didn't get it at first, and merely pointed out that a lot of people must be studying it!

[oddoneout]

I was a viola player when young and got used to the jibes - mostly reasonably good-natured, some not so much.
There are similar types of jokes told about oboes. On both cases that perhaps stems partly from not being so flamboyant or prominent as other members of their sections. Many years ago I went to a concert given by the Orchestra of the 18th Century and noticed that a front desk viola player seemed somewhat out of character - more like the violins. Turned out that he was originally 2nd violin principal but, faced with deteriorating eyesight, decided to move to the viola section and memorise the parts, rather than stop playing altogether.

[Vox Humana]

There are similar types of jokes told about oboes.

And organs. As you might imagine, they are uusually crude and tiresome rather than funny.

[vinteuil]

There are similar types of jokes told about oboes.

... and ukuleles and accordeons and bagpipes -

"A man was out shopping on a busy Saturday and he had a set of bagpipes in the back of his car. It was so crowded he had to park three streets from the shop where he was going. As he got to the shop, he suddenly realised he had not locked the back door of his car. He raced back to where he had parked. But it was too late. There were now two sets of bagpipes on the rear seat."

Somehow the viola jokes tend to be gentler, subtler, and wittier. Which is only right...

.

[Roger Webb]

And organs. As you might imagine, they are uusually crude and tiresome rather than funny.

And, of course conductors!

My visiting violist (above) once asked the question, 'If you saw a conductor and violist standing in the middle of the road, which one would you run over first?' the answer 'the conductor - business before pleasure'!