In this hour long talk we’ll look at snippets of the classical cannon ranging from Mozart’s A Musical Joke and Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, to Malcolm Arnold’s Grand Overture for Three Vacuum Cleaners, a Floor Polisher and Four Rifles, taking in along the way footage of Charlie Chaplin, Dudley Moore and Victor Borge, to uncover the techniques composers use to make us chortle.

I started thinking about comedic moments in music after my chamber ensemble made a live recording of Perpetuum Mobile by Johann Strauss. At the end of it, the audience reacts with a good chuckle and it’s great to have this spontaneous audience feed-back on the recording -sometimes people think Classical Music is all about seriousness and Teutonics, but there are of course times when you can’t suppress a laugh at the composer’s wit.

We’ll savour the humour of Rossini, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Leroy Anderson and many more. In the mix too are a couple of short pieces for solo clarinet played by me but this is primarily a talk looking at how music can make us laugh.