Chopin's Funeral March Burlesqued - Production & Contact Info (original) (raw)

It opens with a motley quartet of musicians inflicting the torture of their music on a law abiding citizen, marching into the yard of his home and stationing themselves beneath his window to do so. He eloquently voices his dissatisfaction ...See moreIt opens with a motley quartet of musicians inflicting the torture of their music on a law abiding citizen, marching into the yard of his home and stationing themselves beneath his window to do so. He eloquently voices his dissatisfaction by pouring a pitcher full of water into the horn of the big bass. The musicians retreat from the yard, but soon return for vengeance. They place their instruments on the ground, and soon succeed in dragging the water-spiller from his house, where he conducts an upholstery business. They throw him to the ground and three of them pile his own pillows and sheets on him, while the fourth turns the water pump on the entire effect: then they run. The chase leads through a number of comical situations, a frenzied, howling populace, headed by a few courageous gendarmes being the pursuers. The climax of the pursuit is reached when the musical fugitives seek refuge in what is still standing of a building in the course of demolition, The pursuers follow, when suddenly a wall topples and the next second there is an avalanche of debris, rocks timber, etc. The next picture now shows the funeral of one of the gendarmes who was killed in the wreck. Apparently the musicians' human feelings of brotherhood have overcome them, for they are now seen, with their instruments, at the head of the procession, which consists of a motley assemblage, in single file, of humans shaped in all the various forms that Nature ever attempted. including such artificial addition as red noses. Everybody is weeping, and there seems to be some competition for the largest handkerchief. The musicians strike their notes, and the funeral march follows, the grotesque mourners stepping as if their legs were made of dough, and were moved by machinery which at that time happens to be out of order, Written by Star Catalog See less