The evolution of humor in music is an interesting subject of study.  It is something foreign to it, an exotic, of slow growth, gaining but little in the hands of the earlier composers from Bach on.  Even with Haydn it never advanced much beyond geniality.  They had essayed it chiefly in the minuet, but succeeded only in producing something stately, in which the element of fun or humor, to modern ways of thinking is hardly appreciable.  It found a sudden and wonderful expansion, an efflorescence in Beethoven, with whom every phase of the art was developed to colossal proportions.  He has made of the Scherzo a movement of such importance that it lends a distinctive character to his symphonies.  In this form he is unapproachable.  In the whole range of music there is nothing like it elsewhere.  It is peculiar to Beethoven, and is another example of the many-sidedness of the great composer.  “Happiness is a new idea in Europe,” said St. Just, speaking of the period immediately following the French Revolution.  Whether or not Beethoven ever met with this remark, its significance at least was taken to heart.  The word Scherz—­joke, sport, is sufficiently obvious.  He goes much farther at times than simply to play pranks, however.  A wide range of expression is possible in the Scherzo when manipulated by a master-mind like that of Beethoven.  The satirical, sarcastic humor which escaped him in social intercourse at times, is vented on a colossal scale in the Scherzo, in which he often makes sport of humanity itself, making it the subject of his jest, his ridicule—­its foibles being shown up, its follies exposed.  When projected in this mood, the movement calls for intellectual co-operation, and is of equal importance with the others.

Humor has been defined as the outcome of simplicity and philosophy in the character.  It can exist independently of genius we know, but genius is never without humor.  In other words, wherever there is a work of genius, it transpires that the author has a fund of humor with which he occasionally enriches his work.  The profoundest philosophical treatises have it.  It is a part of the stock in trade of every great novelist; Fielding, Thackeray, George Eliot, Walter Scott.  It frequently comes to the surface in Schopenhauer pessimist though he be; it pervades Shakespeare.  Few men regarded life with greater seriousness than Thoreau, but humor sparkles all over his works.  It is only where this is in excess that it detracts from the value of the work.  Not important in itself when separated from the deeper work which it accompanies, it is yet, all in all, one of the infallible tests, though a minor one, of the work of any man of genius.  A sense of humor exists in the man even though he keep it out of his work, if he is good for anything.

Beethoven’s humor was titanic, heroic, on a grand scale, always with what might be called a certain seriousness about it like that of a lion at play.  Mozart gives many instances of humor in his compositions, but with a great difference in the character.  His disposition was all gentleness and sweetness, and his humor is characterized by these attributes.  It is on a small scale, and though enjoyable, has nothing commanding about it.  The musician, more than any artist, reflects his character and trend of life in his work.