P. D. Q. Bach | |
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First appearance | |
Last appearance |
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Created by | Peter Schickele |
Portrayed by | Peter Schickele |
In-universe information | |
Occupation | Composer |
Family |
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Nationality | German |
P. D. Q. Bach is a fictional composer created by the American composer and musical satirist Peter Schickele for a five-decade career performing the "discovered" works of the "only forgotten son" of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and Classical music, and slapstick comedy. The name "P. D. Q." is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E. for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach; PDQ is an initialism for "pretty damned quick".
Schickele began working on the character while studying at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Juilliard, [1] and performed a variety of P. D. Q. Bach shows over many years. The Village Voice mentions the juxtaposition of collage, bitonality, musical satire, and orchestral surrealism in a "bizarre melodic stream of consciousness ... In P.D.Q. Bach he has single-handedly mapped a musical universe that everyone knew was there and no one else had the guts (not simply the bad taste) to explore." [2]
In 2012 Schickele reduced his touring due to age. On December 28 and 29, 2015, at The Town Hall in New York, he performed two concerts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his first concert. [3] Schickele died on January 16, 2024, aged 88. [4]
Schickele wrote a humorous fictional biography of the composer [5] according to which P. D. Q. Bach was born in Leipzig on April 1, 1742, [6] the son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Bach; the twenty-first of Johann's twenty children. [5] He is also referred to as "the youngest and oddest of Johann Sebastian’s 20-odd children". [7] He died May 5, 1807, [8] though his birth and death years are often listed on album literature in reverse, as "(1807–1742)?". [9] According to Schickele, P. D. Q. "possessed the originality of Johann Christian, the arrogance of Carl Philipp Emanuel, and the obscurity of Johann Christoph Friedrich". [5] : 23
Schickele's works attributed to P. D. Q. Bach often incorporate comical rearrangements of well-known works of other composers. The works use instruments not normally used in orchestras, such as the bagpipes, slide whistle, kazoo, and fictional or experimental instruments such as the pastaphone (made of uncooked manicotti), [10] tromboon, [11] hardart, lasso d'amore, [12] and left-handed sewer flute.
There is often a startling juxtaposition of styles within a single P. D. Q. Bach piece. The Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz, which alludes to Philip Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach , provides an example. The underlying music is J. S. Bach's first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier , but at double the normal speed, with each phrase repeated interminably in a minimalist manner that parodies Glass. On top of this mind-numbing structure is added everything from jazz phrases to snoring to heavily harmonized versions of "Three Blind Mice" to the chanting of a meaningless phrase ("Coy Hotsy-Totsy", alluding to the art film Koyaanisqatsi for which Glass wrote the score). Through all these mutilations, the piece never deviates from Bach's original harmonic structure. [2]
The humor in P. D. Q. Bach music often derives from violation of audience expectations, such as repeating a tune more than the usual number of times, resolving a musical chord later than usual or not at all, unusual key changes, excessive dissonance, or sudden switches from high art to low art. [13] Further humor is obtained by replacing parts of certain classical pieces with similar common songs, such as the opening of Brahms's Symphony No. 2 with "Beautiful Dreamer", or rewriting Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture as the 1712 Overture with "Yankee Doodle" replacing Tchaikovsky's melody and "Pop Goes the Weasel" replacing "La Marseillaise".
Schickele divides P. D. Q. Bach's fictional musical output into three periods: the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period, and Contrition. [14] During the Initial Plunge, P. D. Q. Bach wrote the Traumarei for unaccompanied piano, an Echo Sonata for "two unfriendly groups of instruments", and a Gross Concerto for Divers Flutes, two Trumpets, and Strings. During the Soused (or Brown-Bag) Period, P. D. Q. Bach wrote a Concerto for Horn and Hardart (a pun on the name of a chain of automat restaurants), a Sinfonia Concertante , a Pervertimento for Bicycle, Bagpipes, and Balloons, a Serenude, a Perückenstück (literally German for "Wigpiece"), a Suite from The Civilian Barber (spoofing Rossini's The Barber of Seville ), a Schleptet in E-flat major, the half-act opera The Stoned Guest (the character of "The Stone Guest" from Mozart's Don Giovanni , and the play by Pushkin), a Concerto for Piano vs. Orchestra, Erotica Variations (Beethoven's Eroica Variations ), Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice, an opera in one unnatural act (Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel and the 1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice ), The Art of the Ground Round (Bach's The Art of Fugue ), a Concerto for Bassoon vs. Orchestra, and a Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion . [5]
During the Contrition Period, P. D. Q. Bach wrote the cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn (Gluck's Iphigenia in Aulis , etc.), the oratorio The Seasonings (Vivaldi's The Four Seasons ), Diverse Ayres on Sundrie Notions, a Sonata for Viola Four Hands, [15] the chorale prelude Should, a Notebook for Betty Sue Bach (Bach's Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach and Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue"), the Toot Suite, the Grossest Fugue (Beethoven's Grosse Fuge ), a Fanfare for the Common Cold (Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man ) and the canine cantata Wachet Arf! (Bach's Wachet auf ). [5]
A final work is the mock religious work Missa Hilarious (Beethoven's Missa Solemnis ) (Schickele no. N2O – the chemical formula of nitrous oxide or "laughing gas"). [16]
The tromboon is a musical instrument made up of the reed and bocal of a bassoon, attached to the body of a trombone in place of the trombone's mouthpiece. It combines the sound of double reeds and the slide for a distinctive and unusual instrument. The name of the instrument is a portmanteau of "trombone" and "bassoon". The sound quality of the instrument is best described as comical and loud.
The tromboon was developed by Peter Schickele, a skilled bassoonist himself, and featured in some of his live concert and recorded performances. Schickele called it "a hybrid – that's the nicer word – constructed from the parts of a bassoon and a trombone; it has all the disadvantages of both". [17] [18] This instrument is called for in the scores of P. D. Q. Bach's oratorio The Seasonings, [19] as well as the Serenude (for devious instruments) [5] : 187 and Shepherd on the Rocks, With a Twist . [20]
Title | Record company | Year |
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The Wurst of P. D. Q. Bach | Vanguard Records | 1971 |
The Dreaded P. D. Q. Bach Collection | Vanguard Records | 1996 |
The Ill-Conceived P. D. Q. Bach Anthology | Telarc Records | 1998 |
Title | Year |
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The Abduction of Figaro | 1984 |
P. D. Q. Bach in Houston: We Have a Problem! | 2006 |
Title | Year |
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The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach | 1996 |
P. D. Q. Bach recordings received four successive Grammy Awards in the Best Comedy Album category from 1990 to 1993. [21] Schickele also received a Grammy nomination in the Best Comedy Album category in 1996 for his abridged audiobook edition of The Definitive Biography of P. D. Q. Bach. [22]
Peter Schickele was an American composer, musical educator and parodist, best known for comedy albums featuring his music, which he presented as being composed by the fictional P.D.Q. Bach. He also hosted a long-running weekly radio program called Schickele Mix.
The serpent is a low-pitched early wind instrument in the brass family developed in the Renaissance era. It has a trombone-like mouthpiece, with tone holes and fingering like a woodwind instrument. It is named for its long, conical bore bent into a snakelike shape, and unlike most brass instruments is made from wood with an outer covering of leather. A distant ancestor of the tuba, the serpent is related to the cornett and was used for bass parts from the 17th to the early 19th centuries.
Les Luthiers is an Argentine comedy-musical group, very popular also in several other Spanish-speaking countries including Paraguay, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cuba, Costa Rica and Venezuela. They were formed in 1967 by Gerardo Masana, during the height of a period of very intense choral music activity in Argentina's state universities. Their outstanding characteristic is the home-made musical instruments, some of them extremely sophisticated, which they skillfully employ in their recitals to produce music and texts full of high class and refined humor. From 1977 until his death in 2007, they worked with Roberto Fontanarrosa, a renowned Argentine cartoonist and writer.
The Concerto for Horn and Hardart, S. 27, is a work of Peter Schickele composing under the pseudonym P. D. Q. Bach. The work is a parody of the classical double concerto but where one instrument, the hardart, uses different devices, such as plucked strings, blown whistles and popped balloons, to produce each note in its range. The name "hardart" and the name of the concerto is a play on the name of proprietors Horn & Hardart, who pioneered the North American use of the automat. Like the automat, the hardart had small windows in the front where the musician had to insert coins to remove implements needed to strike or otherwise play the devices that produced the notes. The composer Philip Glass, a classmate of Schickele's, helped build the actual instrument; Glass and the others tasked with building the hardart made it a transposing instrument without telling Schickele, who had to transpose at sight during the performance. As with other works that Schickele attributed to P. D. Q. Bach, "beneath the satire one finds very sound technique and invention in the music."
Report from Hoople: P. D. Q. Bach on the Air was released on Vanguard Records in 1967. It is set up as a radio broadcast of the music of P. D. Q. Bach with Professor Peter Schickele as the DJ.
Portrait of P. D. Q. Bach was released in 1977 on Vanguard Records. The album features mostly the work of Peter Schickele writing as P. D. Q. Bach, with one contribution under his own name.
The Ill-Conceived P. D. Q. Bach Anthology is a collection of works by Peter Schickele writing as P. D. Q. Bach originally recorded on the Telarc label by the composer.
Peter Schickele Presents an Evening with P. D. Q. Bach (1807–1742)? was the first concert of and the first release of the music of Peter Schickele under his comical pseudonym of P. D. Q. Bach by Vanguard Records. The chamber orchestra was conducted by Jorge Mester. The album consists of musical parodies with commentaries by the composer.
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific authorship of music across a variety of instruments and forms, including; orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the cello suites and sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion was released in 1992 by Telarc Records. The album contains one piece by Professor Peter Schickele writing under his own name and several pieces by him as P. D. Q. Bach.
An Hysteric Return: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall is live recording of a P. D. Q. Bach concert in Carnegie Hall and was released on Vanguard Records in 1966.
The Intimate P. D. Q. Bach is "a live recording of The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach stage show, featuring Professor Peter Schickele and the Semi-Pro Musica Antiqua" and was released on Vanguard Records in 1973. Many of the performer credits are humorous, and as with all P.D.Q. Bach recordings, the "S" numbers are fictitious and humorous. The cover art is a parody of the 1901 painting Kreutzer Sonata by René-Xavier Prinet.
A Little Nightmare Music is an opera in "one irrevocable act" by Peter Schickele under the pseudonym he uses for parodies and comical works P. D. Q. Bach. The title of the work refers to the English translation of Mozart's famous Eine kleine Nachtmusik. The opera is described as being "based on a dream he had December 4, 1791, the night that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died and Antonio Salieri didn't." The opera was "newly exhumed" at Carnegie Hall on December 27, 1982. It was later recorded with the premiere cast and released on CD by Vanguard Records in 1983. The album also includes two other works by P. D. Q. Bach: an octet and a parody of Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, Royal Firewater Musick.
The Wurst of P. D. Q. Bach is a collection of works by Peter Schickele under his comic pseudonym of P. D. Q. Bach originally recorded on the Vanguard Records label by the composer. It includes "lowlights" from four different Vanguard albums: Peter Schickele Presents an Evening with P. D. Q. Bach (1807–1742)?, An Hysteric Return: P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall, Report from Hoople: P. D. Q. Bach on the Air, and P. D. Q. Bach's half-act opera The Stoned Guest. Wurst is the German word for sausage, with the album cover photograph set in a sausage shop.
The Dreaded P. D. Q. Bach Collection is a collection of works by Peter Schickele under the pseudonym of P. D. Q. Bach originally recorded on the Vanguard Records label by the composer. It includes the complete contents of the first five P. D. Q. Bach albums, plus the never-before-released "Sanka" Cantata.
P.D.Q. Bach in Houston: We Have a Problem! is a live performance celebrating 40 years of P. D. Q. Bach. This performance features Professor Peter Schickele with Orchestra X conducted by Peter Jacoby. It includes never-before-recorded performances of "Trumpet Involuntary" movement of Iphigenia in Brooklyn, and also the rounds Odden und Enden.
The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach (1807–1742)? is a book by Prof. Peter Schickele chronicling the life of fictitious composer P. D. Q. Bach.
The Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments is a satirical instrumental work written by Peter Schickele under the pseudonym of P.D.Q. Bach, whom Schickele studies as a "scholar".
Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons is a satirical work authored by Peter Schickele under the pseudonym P.D.Q. Bach, whose works and life Schickele purported to study. It is a concerto featuring the aforementioned bagpipes, bicycle and balloons as solo musical instruments accompanied by a string orchestra.