{"id":86861,"date":"2024-01-19T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86861"},"modified":"2024-01-18T18:30:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T00:30:25","slug":"86861","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=86861","title":{"rendered":"Bach To The Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peter Schickele – better known to decades of music geeks as the author of the “PDQ Bach” music history saga – has passed away<\/a>. He was 88. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It occurs to me that calling. him the “Spike Jones of Music Satire” depends on a generation of people who know who Spike Jones was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThey were playing a record in the store,\u201d Mr. Schickele recalled in a 1997 interview for the NPR program \u201cAll Things Considered.\u201d \u201cIt was a sappy love song. And being a 9-year-old, there\u2019s nothing worse, of course. But all of a sudden, after the last note of the song, there were these two pistol shots.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That song, he learned, was Mr. Jones\u2019s \u201cA Serenade to a Jerk<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always felt that those pistol shots changed my life,\u201d Mr. Schickele continued. \u201cThat was the beginning of it all for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the “Weird Al Yankovic of Classical Music”?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The music majors in college were all into PDQ Bach – and I eventually figured out why. He really, really did classical music satire – perhaps the most esoteric form of satire there is short of lampponing ancient Greeks in <\/em>ancient Greek – really, really well. He not only nailed the punch line – the funny jab – but the setup, the keen understanding of the milieu <\/em>he was sending up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one made me laugh so hard I had a hard time breathing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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