Peter Schickele and P.D.Q. Bach, remembered

“And so they’re off! It’s very thrilling—the start of a symphony is all the time very thrilling. I can’t inform if it’s sluggish or quick but as a result of they hold . . . stopping.”

It’s 1997, I’m six years outdated, and my household has simply pulled into the driveway of our residence. The native public radio station is enjoying Peter Schickele’s “New Horizons in Music Appreciation.” We hold the automotive idling for the following eight minutes to listen to it out—thus far, the one “driveway moment” I can keep in mind experiencing.

“New Horizons in Music Appreciation” takes the primary motion of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and treats it as a sporting occasion, with a working commentary from two hammy announcers who comment on the whole lot from the opening tempo to the oboe cadenza within the recapitulation. Among the jokes are pitched at a common viewers—at one level, a horn participant flubs a be aware, and the hosts focus on the chance that he’ll be traded to a different orchestra within the subsequent season—however others require at the very least some information of music principle. There’s an prolonged bit about how surprising it’s that the piece is ready to finish in C major as a substitute of C minor. 

Basically all of those jokes fly over my head, and I sit within the again seat bewildered by my mother and father’ laughter. It appears unlikely that I had by no means heard the opening barrage of Beethoven’s Fifth earlier than, however I’d actually by no means listened to it attentively. I resolve I’ve a solemn obligation to review the piece in order that the following time “New Horizons” comes on the air, I’ll get the jokes. I proceed to trace down Beethoven’s Fifth in my household’s CD assortment and hearken to it over and time and again. I used to be not a classical musician earlier than this; after this, I will probably be.

Schickele was born in Ames, Iowa, in 1935. Each of his mother and father had scientific bents—his father grew to become the chair of North Dakota State College’s Agricultural Sciences Division in 1945, and his mom helped set up the significance of humidity in assessing harmful warmth situations—however Peter took an early curiosity in music. As a highschool pupil, he performed bassoon within the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony, and had his first composition classes from their conductor on the time, Sigvald Thompson. He would go on to be the primary music main at Swarthmore School earlier than incomes his grasp’s diploma from Juilliard, the place Philip Glass numbered amongst his contemporaries.

If Schickele had had the kind of profession that almost all classical composers on this nation pursue, his highschool bassoonery might need been a light-hearted level of his biography, an attention-grabbing element dropped right into a bio to interrupt up lists of ensembles and awards. He didn’t have that type of profession. 

In 1954, Schickele wrote a parody of J.S. Bach’s “Espresso Cantata”: the “Sanka Cantata.” Somewhat than take the credit score himself, he attributed it to P.D.Q. Bach, a determine of his personal invention whom he would later describe because the “final and oddest” of J.S.’s 20-odd youngsters. What might have been a one-off joke became an annual collection of concert events at Juilliard and finally public outings at The City Corridor and past. Schickele introduced himself as a professor on the College of Southern North Dakota at Hoople whose analysis space was the “most justifiably uncared for” of the Bach household composers and who saved unearthing new scores from rubbish cans, gutters, and different unsavory locales. Recordings of those works would win 4 Grammys in a row, from 1989 to 1992.

It’s 2007 or so, and I’m taking bassoon classes in highschool. My instructor, Becky Eldridge, generally regales me with tales of her time in numerous regional orchestras. Someday, she describes a bit the place she has to stay a part of her bassoon right into a trombone to create an unholy honking contraption. The piece is “The Seasonings” (Schickele quantity: ½ tsp), a grand oratorio by one P.D.Q. Bach. She digs out an LP recording of the piece, and we lose the higher a part of the lesson cackling. Along with the flatulent tromboon, there’s a fugue minimize quick by orchestra administration attributable to additional time constraints, a story recitative interrupted mid-syllable by a untimely tutti, cadences so surprising they really feel like being hit within the face with a sonic frying pan.

I uncover that my native library has a number of P.D.Q. Bach CDs. I verify them out and hearken to them devotedly. I be taught that he has a piece for bassoon and piano; it is among the first items of solo literature I purchase that isn’t required for a lesson or audition. The premise of the work is that the pianist is inexplicably absent, and so the hapless soloist should determine tips on how to play each devices directly. After I play this work at summer season camp, I unintentionally trigger a minor panic among the many counselors: they suppose that my listed accompanist has really gone lacking on their watch.

Schickele additionally wrote items below his personal title, they usually’re largely nice. That’s not an insult—as a composer, “nice” is definitely fairly troublesome to realize, and listening to one among Schickele’s personal works is a wonderfully nice technique to go the time. Nevertheless it’s not stunning that his work with P.D.Q. Bach overshadowed his non-satirical items. There are, frankly, a number of composers who sound kind of like Schickele—tuneful, consonant however not strictly tonal, rhythmically sprightly. There’s nobody on this planet who seems like P.D.Q. Bach. 

When individuals write about P.D.Q. Bach, they usually take pains to debate the standard of the compositional method below all of the jokes. It’s as in the event that they’re saying, “That is really great things, regardless that it’s humorous.” To my thoughts, that is precisely backwards: It might probably solely be so humorous as a result of it’s so rigorously constructed. Humor lives and dies within the tiniest particulars—writing good comedy is exhausting.

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It’s exhausting, and it’s additionally not trivial. Classical music’s boosters usually tout this style’s passages of religious transcendence, its moments of profound grief and comfort. These are vital elements of the human expertise to make certain, and it’s great that this music can communicate to them, however they aren’t the sum complete of our emotional landscapes. Playfulness, irreverence, goofiness are a part of us too, and life could be lesser with out them in it. It’s a mistake to equate inventive greatness with emotional sobriety. P.D.Q. Bach’s finest compositions are, genuinely, masterpieces, magnificent expressions of the deepest currents of joyful absurdity. They’re nice works not despite their humor, however due to it.

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It’s the winter of 2015, and I’m on the fiftieth anniversary P.D.Q. Bach live performance at The City Corridor in New York. The music is properly performed and the viewers reception is heat, however there’s an simple valedictory power within the air. The live performance looks like a farewell not simply to the P.D.Q. Bach phenomenon, however to a complete ethos of classical music, an ethos of assembly this music at eye stage, neither on a distant podium of elite swankiness nor as a waste of money and time. There’s a come-as-you-are enthusiasm to a lot of P.D.Q. Bach’s work, a welcome embrace of anybody, no matter their information of classical music as a style and an ecosystem. Positive, there are jokes that lean on a familiarity with live performance corridor conventions and canonical works, however there are additionally loads of puns, slapstick escapades, and fart noises. Wherever you’re at on the dimensions of classical music information, there’s one thing there for you.

That is an ethos I attempt to take with me in my very own musical profession. After I write program notes, I spotlight options of curiosity for these within the know whereas additionally providing a hand to those that might by no means have been to a classical live performance earlier than. After I invite non-musical buddies together with me to a present, I encourage them to have no matter reactions they’ve with out regard for what they’re “supposed” to suppose and really feel. After I compose, I’m nearly all the time enjoying some recherché sport, however the level stays the emotional journey, not the artifice. I don’t need classical music to be one thing distant and ethereal, to be approached solely with warning, delicacy, and extended training. I would like it to be one thing proper right here proper now, one thing you may attain into and get your arms soiled with.

This can be a type of love. Maurice Sendak as soon as despatched a postcard with an unique drawing to a younger boy who had written him a fan letter; the boy’s mom then wrote again that the boy had cherished the postcard a lot he had eaten it. That is the type of love I get from the work of P.D.Q. Bach, the type of love I really feel for classical music. Expensive Mr. Beethoven, I cherished your symphony a lot I mashed it up with “Camptown Races” and in addition there’s a double reed slide music stand concerned now. Greater than something, that is how I will probably be remembering Peter Schickele, and the way I encourage you to recollect him, too: Love one thing a lot you eat it. After which go stick a part of a bassoon on the top of a trombone. ¶

Peter Schickele died at his residence on January 16, 2024, on the age of 88. His household is directing donations in his reminiscence to the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony.

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