The author looks at the question of humour in learned instrumental music and argues that humour can be defined as a possible form of sublimation. In this body of music, the link with humour mainly calls upon the consoling side of the superego. The process of sublimation is examined in relation to different types of negation in the face of the ordeal of castration, and also in its proximity to the reality of death. By touching on the limits of sublimation, we also touch on its truth, which opens up the dimension of the real as the impossibility of death and the bedrock of castration, with veiling and unveiling becoming analysers of a particular way of processing death. Indeed, depending on whether sublimation seeks to cover up or rather prioritize the dimension of the real, humour, in its sublimatory quality, moves towards the side of veiling or unveiling the dimension of the real as the impossibility of death.