For some reason, the viola has become a butt of many jokes.
According to Wikipedia:
Viola jokes are jokes directed towards violas and viola players. Viola jokes are thought to have originated in the 18th century, when viola parts were often simple and thus amenable to untalented musicians.
Some examples:
Pity the poor violist.
Except that last night was the first rehearsal for our concert, “Think Outside the Bach,” which is scheduled for this coming Saturday night, May 25th at 7:30 pm at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. Anna Womack, viola, beautifully played Johann Christian Friedrich Bach’s “Concerto for Viola and Pianoforte,” (2nd movement) —It is rare that we get to hear her play a big solo and what a treat it was!
In this photo, you can see that Anna is standing in the back, even though she is the soloist. However, please note that this will not be the configuration for the concert—on Saturday the pew chairs will be turned to face the organ, and the setup will be a bit different. It was also unusual to see Iggy Jang, normally the concertmaster in the Hawaii Symphony, playing second violin with Judy Barrett.
As for me, I will be playing harpsichord on three pieces: “Quintet In A, op. 11 no. 5” by Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782), “Das du den Hirten Freude sangst” by Johann Ernst Bach (1722–1777) and “Violin Sonata in D minor,” by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach(1714–1788).
In fact, I’m off to practice this last piece with Darel Stark, violinist, right now.
It’s going to be a great concert—hope you can come!
Here’s another viola joke, this one by Victor Borge:
The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
🙂
It sounds like a wonderful concert. best of luck! jb
“A violist without a deep and self-deprecating sense of humor is like thorns without a rose.”
– Paul Hindemith
Thank you for the top-drawer informative journalism and viola jokes.
And as if that were not interesting enough, as a cognitive scientist and good-humored violist I was recently goaded into writing a mildly PG-13 rated cautionary tale based on a particularly sophisticated viola joke…all in order to help parents and educators appreciate the true value of encouraging kids to learn to play musical instruments in our increasingly auto-tuned modern world: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18HsxPVrPO83ocY_XPmNi5i8AS-pxxQG2/view?usp=sharing
As particularly sophisticated viola jokes go, the one I composed and converted into the aforelinked viola-joke-driven story went something like:
Did you hear about the violist who mistook his bow for a Mahler hammer and subsequently smashed his viola into smithereens? Nobody noticed.
(SOUNDS OF CRICKETS CHIRPING) And how many fans of Mahler hammers do we have out there? One?…zero? Granted, my arcane viola joke may need work. But its main problem seems to relate to the fact that hardly anyone knows what a Mahler hammer is. A tragic loss from the perspective of the global viola-joke community? Yes, great point. Thank you for making it.
“Those who were overheard chuckling at viola jokes were thought to be insane by those who secretly wished that a bright, super-talented violist would come along and create an unusually ground-breaking viola joke – and then magnanimously take the time to imaginatively dramatize it.”
– Frederich Nietzsche
And how many violists can spell Nietzsche without the help of a spell-bot? No point in asking a violist. Violists can’t count. But they surely can blather on and on.
Hence the need for a tediously educational dramatization and backstory: Historically speaking, this viola joke-public-service-announcement was inspired by a handful of perfectly ordinary-looking musicians discussing some very important questions regarding what musical instruments the characters from the world’s most reprehensibly lowbrow television show, Family Guy would play if they were to form an ensemble. Lois plays keyboard, as is well established. Then someone suggested that Meg should play saxophone, given a memorable experience she once had with Lisa Simpson.
But after much heated debate it was agreed that, as a complete and total loser, Meg should play the viola, violas being well known (since the18th century, according to historical fact) for attracting complete and total losers. Speaking as both a violist and a complete and total loser, I know this well. Scholarly emphasis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_jokes
And what might be an apt instrument for Peter? The Mahler hammer, of course. Tough luck nobody knew what a Mahler hammer was. So I filled them in with the help of an illustrative Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs9dAKyIq1o Okay, so that’s a Mahler hammer. Feeling educated yet? Give it time.
And in order to further illustrate my point I composed a fresh, never-before-experienced viola joke involving a Mahler hammer that my ordinarily perceptive friends did not appear to fully appreciate…yet.
Only logical course of action: As an upper one-percent violist (hapless loser) with sympathetic ties to the developmental psychology community, I took a boringly dry anthropological thesis I had been working on and (having inferred a few formatting rules from a circa 1998 script) combined the thesis with my viola joke by turning it into a pretend multimedia experience for folks who appreciate music. Doesn’t that sound like fun? No!
Reasons for employing an imaginary Family Guy story? A) Poetically apt lowbrow sensibilities. B) Convenient pre-familiarity with characters. C) The inherently spartan nature of the screenplay idiom added discipline to the creative process. And D) Ars gratia artis! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhNMHcRSNdo
Thank you for your patience and have a viola-empowered day.
Sincerely,
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjB-TDoEXHI59cWk-VHcENQ