Peter Schickele (2024-1935)?

[cahn]

Peter Schickele died yesterday, at the age of 88. He was a composer in his own right, but I at least knew him primarily as the man behind P.D.Q. Bach, (1807–1742)? "the twenty-first of Johann [Sebastian Bach]'s twenty children," the composer of many hilarious musical parodies.

I was introduced to Peter Schickele / P.D.Q. Bach by the orchestra kids I hung out with freshman year of college (L, T, and F) -- it was L who made me sit down and listen to the 1712 Overture, clearly taking great delight in introducing a newbie to it. I went to listen to it tonight in honor of Peter Schickele and was so charmed to find that there is a live performance of the 1712 Overture on Youtube. (Non-Americans might benefit from listening to the tunes of Yankee Doodle and Pop Goes the Weasel first.) I also love Schickele's Eine Kleine Nichtmusik, which he did have under his own name.

I introduced D to P.D.Q. Bach when we were dating, and when I told him the news of his death, D said, "They should perform the Missa Hilarious at his funeral." RIP, you gave laughter to a lot of people. <3

Comments

[landofnowhere]

:-D I listened to a bunch of them some years ago, and while I don't enjoy the dad jokes as much as I did when I was 12, they still hold up pretty well! (There were a couple episodes on women and music that didn't hold up so much -- "Masculine/Feminine" ends with a rant about feminist musicology, while "Cherchez la Femme", though it features women composers, I mainly remember for the cameo with Bill Clinton playing the saxophone and the final gag about how Garrison Keillor is more popular than Schickele (this was made in 1996, I kinda want to know what Schickele was thinking?). I should listen to more sometime, I see there are more available online now than there used to be!

[cahn]

Haha, he sure does love his dad jokes. I bet I would have eaten that up when I was twelve, too. (Huh -- that makes me think I should listen to these with the resident 13- and 8-year-olds, who would probably be all over the jokes.) I will keep that in mind about the women-and-music episodes, thanks for the warning!