Piano Jokes

"In my youth, I wanted to be a great pantomimist -- but I found I had nothing to say."

"Did you know that Mozart had no arms and no legs? I've seen statues of him on people's pianos."

"Ah Mozart! He was happily married -- but his wife wasn't."

"Beethoven wrote in three flats a lot. That's because he moved twice."

When asked the difference between a violin and a viola, Victor replied, "a viola burns longer."

Borge's mischievous sense of humor was manifest from an early age. Asked as a child to play for his parents' friends he would announce "a piece by the 85-year-old Mozart" and improvise something himself.

"When she started to play, Steinway himself came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano." -Bob Hope, American comedian, on comedian Phyllis Diller.

Tonight's page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at the Boris Nitsky School of Page Turning in Philadelphia. She has been turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world's leading pianists. n 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is winner of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecedented 32 seconds. She was also a 1983 silver medalist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score dropped from a Yamaha. Ms. Spelke excelled in "grace, swiftness, and especially poise."

For techniques, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style used to avoid obscuring the pianist's view of the music. She is page turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute.

Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake.

A 64th note is called a hemidemisemi quaver.

There are as many constellations in the sky as there are keys on the piano!

In the 18th century (around Mozart's time), some pianos had a knee pedal that has the same function as today's pedal but were operated with the knees.

Photos of Christopher O'Riley's piano technician voicing the hammers on his Steinway B.

The oldest piano still in existence was built in 1720.

No one knows where Mozart is buried.

Each American president has had a personal piano -- with the exception of Gerald Ford and George Bush. Michelle Obama had piano lessons as a child as do her daughters.
White House Pianos

Mozart once composed a piano piece that required a player to use two hands and a nose in order to hit all the correct notes.

When Beethoven was writing his 9th symphony he requested a piano that had a percussion pedal on it.

"Flint must be an extremely wealthy town: I see that each of you bought two or three seats."
-- Victor Borge on playing to a half-filled house in Flint, Michigan.

Borge came to America to escape the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II. Starting to re-build his career, he was excited to get a booking at a large club in Florida, for which he was to be paid one dollar for each member of the audience. Three hundred guests saw his show, which was a tremendous success. When it came time to be paid, Borge pointed out to the management that the club's 40 waiters had also greatly enjoyed his performance. He got $340."I only know two pieces; one is 'Clair de Lune' and the other one isn't."

"I do not have a single white note on my piano; my elephant smoked too much."

Q: What's the difference between a piano and a Harley-Davidson?
A: One of us might be able to tune a Harley.
Q: What's the difference between a piano and a fish?
A: You can't tuna fish.

Definition of a piano tuner: A person employed to come into the home, rearrange the furniture, and annoy the cat. The tuner's chief purpose is to ascertain the breaking point of the piano's strings.

Piano Tuner: I've come to tune the piano.
Music Teacher: But we didn't send for you.
Piano Tuner: No, but the people who live across the street did.

"Hey, Mike!" shouted Jimmy to his neighbor, "How's your new pet fish doing? You told me he was really something special."

"To tell the truth," said Mike, "I'm really disappointed in him. The guy who sold him to me said I could teach him to sing like a bird."

"What? Let me get this straight," replied Jimmy. "You bought a fish because you thought you could teach him to sing like a bird?"

"Well, yeah," said Mike. "After all, you know, he's a parrot fish."

"Now listen, Mike," explained Mister Jimmy, "while you might be able to teach a parrot to sing, you're never going to get anywhere with a parrot fish."

"That's what you think!" exclaimed Mike. "It just so happens this fish CAN sing. The thing is, he's terribly off-key and it's driving me crazy. Do you know how hard it is to tune a fish?"