Charivari

Charivari has a number of meanings, all relevant to the purpose of this page. In legal parlance, it means "discordant voices". It was originally a noisy mock seranade for newlyweds. It was also the name of a French satirical magazine that was adopted by the English magazine, Punch, as its subtitle. We have a a less subversive project — to provide a refuge for amusing irrelevancies that are not sufficiently important, in the view of the more high­minded of us, to make it to the front page.

 

Who dun it?

Our esteemed conductor pointed out that our latest symphony has the character of a whodunit (at least to some ears). For another example of "one art form to the tune of another" (albeit with less synaesthetic overtones), you might like to read a short parody by James Thurber (of Walter Mitty fame) - the The Macbeth Murder Mystery.

A slightly pompous comment described it as .. of course a send-up of classic early 20th century detective fiction and its readership, but also of a habit of mind of reading Shakespeare that looks a bit too closely at the details. Maybe we should play Tchaikovsky the way some people read Shakespeare.