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

Re: Eugene Onegin

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I suspect A Hero of Our Time would probably annoy you, yeah. I honestly kind of want to read it again... I think when I read it (as a teenager), I was interested in the self-destructiveness of the protagonist on a personal level, but now I think I'd be more curious about Russian imperialism and how they let a generation of Pechorins and Onegins loose in the Caucasus and Siberia--- a kind of counterpoint to the American old west, I guess, but a generation earlier. I too am glad that my teens were set in an era of acting out through emo music and bad poetry rather than freely available guns, strong liquor and a code of never saying sorry for anything.

I suspect Hamsterwoman has read all this stuff in Russian... many Russians I have known have very good literary educations, and strong opinions about Pushkin!

Re: Eugene Onegin

[cenozoicsynapsid]

I went back and read it again... Pechorin is absolutely awful and you would hate him. The book begins with his paying an Ossetian boy to abduct his sister (she's pretty, but he does it mostly out of spite for the local man who has been wooing her). He keeps the girl as a concubine for four months (she's not technically his slave, but has been "ruined" and is utterly dependent on him). Then he loses interest in her and she dies. In the final chapter, he throws over both the girl he's been flirting with to make his rival jealous, and the woman whose marriage he has ruined and whom he might actually love. In between, he is just a horrible person to absolutely everyone.

Having watched Dune II over the weekend, I find myself drawing a strange connection to Chani--- the Fremen are partly based on the Caucasian Muslims, and the movie centers her character a lot more than the book does. Movie!Chani is a lot clearer about what sort of relationship she wants, which introduces a conflict the book doesn't really have. The book ends with Jessica telling her that even though they're both concubines, "history will call us wives", and she presumably just accepts that. (As an aside, Jessica's foresight seems like it might have failed her, since Irulan is an actual historian who is implied to have written the in-universe appendices of the book.) There's a kind of theme in both books that runs something like this: "If they treat colonial women this way, might they not do the same to our women?"

I'm off to Ao3 to see if there are any good Hero of Our Time fixit fics, I suppose?

Re: Eugene Onegin

[cahn]

Ha! Lol, I know how it is -- there are plenty of things I read as a much more uncritical teen/young adult that I loved, and in fact still love based on how I remember feeling when I first read them, while realizing that if I read it for the first time as an adult I'd hate it. (Like our discussion about the Uncle Abner stories!) Part of it being age, but also part of it being that just in general we (societally speaking) weren't so aware of a lot of things being awful that now jump out at us a lot more.

(As an aside, Jessica's foresight seems like it might have failed her, since Irulan is an actual historian who is implied to have written the in-universe appendices of the book.)

Oh interesting -- I never thought of it that way, that Irulan being the one who's literally writing the history might mean that history wouldn't, in fact, call them wives. (Which even when I first read it as an uncritical adolescent I thought was a terrible last line!) Now I want a (possibly AU?? found-document??) hatred-to-friendship fic about Irulan and Chani, where Irulan and Chani plot against each other and Irulan writes propaganda against Chani but eventually they come to an understanding... and then what? Irulan pivots to writing Muad'Dib history where only Paul is mentioned, and spends the rest of her time writing hot F/F where Paul never shows up, and it turns out those are the bestsellers? Extra bonus points if that changes history? IDK, I don't know how this would end, but I want it :D

(I should save these notes on what I want for Yuletide -- come Sept/Oct, I'm always caught flat-footed and am all "I can't think of anything I want!")