Groan's Dictionary of Music and Musicians - Revised Edition

[Serial_Apologist]

Crotchet - form of knitting
Quaver - form of potato crisp
Breve - form of existing
Triplets - excessive form of existence
Quadruplets - massively excessive form of existence

etc etc...

Displaced accent - talking posh in Liverpool

[LeMartinPecheur]

This humour from musical indices reminds me of an example from, surprisingly, Sir Donald Tovey in his six volume 'Essays in Musical Analysis', from 1939. (Who said he was as dry as dust?)


In the index volume, there are these entries:

Sand, see Sugar.
...
Sugar, see Grocer.
...
Grocer, see Hindemith.
...
Hindemith, Paul, ... and sugar, iv. 174


Sure enough, in Volume IV, page 174, one reads (in the entry for Kammermusik Number 1, Op.24/1):

"The work requires eleven players, one of whom, the person in charge of the percussion is to 'serve' (as Hindemith puts it) nine instruments. ... The 'servant' of nine has to deal with a xylophone, a side-drum, a Holztrommel (a Chinese block-drum; or the head of a professor), a small pair of cymbals, a tambourine, a triangle, a tin canister full of sand, a siren, and one note of a glockenspiel. ... The canister full of sand has, I am informed, sometimes presented difficulty, owing to the fact that the sand obtainable from the grocer is so frequently adulterated with sugar; but in Edinburgh it is convenient to import the finest West Indian sand from Portobello."

What was he on???

[salymap]

Toccata - Push chair for daughter who should be walking by now.

Sonata - Second child, a boy.

Andante - Uncle won't come without her.

[Flay]

Staccato – multi-storey car park

Counterpoint – choosing sweets

Grandioso – small change to Burlesconi

[Serial_Apologist]

Pianissimo - toy piano

Diatonic - fizzy non-alcoholic gin accompaniment for dieters

Phrygian scale - found on fishmonger's slab

Orchestral score - tourists descend on Brixton en masse

[Stunsworth]

Piano - medical complaint where patient is only able to urinate once a year.

[Flay]

Gosh, that sounds painful....

Heckelphone - berating a nuisance caller
Didgeridoo - enquiring if little Jerome has been
Unison - we only have one boy

[Serial_Apologist]

Piano - medical complaint where patient is only able to urinate once a year.

For which an organ transplant could be the only cure...

[Alain Maréchal]

Visions Fugitives: Third Harpist.

[EdgeleyRob]

Slow movement - constipation.

[Flay]

Slow movement - constipation.

Better than Moto Perpetuo!

[Flosshilde]

diminuendo - does my bum look small in this?

Crescendo - fatal road accident (in Morningside)

[Flosshilde]

Antonio Pappano dirige la Nona di Bruckner (from a listing web site for music in Rome) - Tony's dad in a funeral lament for Bruckner's granny.

[Flay]

Puccini - lap dog

[Serial_Apologist]

Donna e Mobile - Lady with cell phone