Bach To The Future
By Mitch Berg
Peter Schickele – better known to decades of music geeks as the author of the “PDQ Bach” music history saga – has passed away. He was 88.
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.
“They were playing a record in the store,” Mr. Schickele recalled in a 1997 interview for the NPR program “All Things Considered.” “It was a sappy love song. And being a 9-year-old, there’s nothing worse, of course. But all of a sudden, after the last note of the song, there were these two pistol shots.”
That song, he learned, was Mr. Jones’s “A Serenade to a Jerk.”
“I’ve always felt that those pistol shots changed my life,” Mr. Schickele continued. “That was the beginning of it all for me.”
Maybe the “Weird Al Yankovic of Classical Music”?
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 ancient Greek – really, really well. He not only nailed the punch line – the funny jab – but the setup, the keen understanding of the milieu he was sending up.
This one made me laugh so hard I had a hard time breathing.
Maybe you had to be there. But as I was there, there are no regrets.
One of the things that gave me the odd chuckle was Schickele’s constant North Dakota references. Clearly the guy knew something about the state – but he was a New Yorker.
An accomplished bassoonist, the young Mr. Schickele played in his local symphony, the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, when he was in high school.
Years later, he would pay tribute to his North Dakota roots by bestowing upon himself, in his role as P.D.Q.’s earthly representative, an august academic title: professor of musical pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. (There really is a Hoople, N.D. There really isn’t a University of Southern North Dakota there — or anywhere.)
So I learned something new:
RIP, Peter Schickele. .
January 19th, 2024 at 12:31 pm
I have fond memories of my 1994 Minnesota trip, when my cousin (who lives in your area), his son, and I spent a weekend in a small lodge on the edge of a remote lake in Saint Louis County. When we weren’t out in the boat, we were relaxing and drinking Pig’s Eye Pilsner while listening to PDQ Bach. There was something so right about that.
January 19th, 2024 at 12:51 pm
Aww…..I hadn’t heard this. I found P.D.Q. Bach to be funny as a kid in high school. Once I went to college as a music major, and gained an understanding of music history and theory? His sheer genius was undeniable. Most untrained ears could pick out some humor in the music. But knowing the intricacies of music theory that allowed you to truly analyze the work on a compositional level, made it all the more exquisite. Knowing the history of the composers he lampooned also contributed to the inlaid humor.
Like you said, lampooning ancient Greeks IN ancient Greek.
I saw him in concert at Orchestra Hall in the early 90s (back when my head hadn’t yet forgotten all of that music knowledge I had at that time recently acquired). I laughed a lot more frequently and quite a lot harder than most people in the audience
Impressively, I believe he was in his late 80s, and a bit rotund at that.
January 19th, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Spike Jones, Peter Schickele, Ray Stevens, Tom Lehrer, Dr. Demento….we used to have the ability to laugh at ourselves that regrettably we’ve lost for the most part.
Love that PDQ Bach, and I’m still prone to talking about (WTWP Classical talkity-talk radio) joking about Elvis’ younger brother Enos, who didn’t mind until they started calling his brother “the pelvis”.
January 19th, 2024 at 3:05 pm
Speaking of the death of childhood heroes, Sports Illustrated is getting the axe.
January 19th, 2024 at 3:45 pm
So weird that SI isn’t surviving, because it’s not like their former readership would have objected to trans guys in the swimsuit issue, or the pervasive injection of liberal politics into….oh, wait. Never mind.
January 19th, 2024 at 5:06 pm
I used my favorite Peter Schickele quote (and I heavily paraphrase) during the launch of every IT project I participated in.
All projects can be divided into three phases:
Illumination: This is where the vision of the project is born. It is a time of giddy ideas and boundless optimism.
Actualization This is where we try to make the stupid shit work.
Contrition
January 19th, 2024 at 10:40 pm
I’d also add Victor Borge to the list of humorous musical performers. Spike Jones was amazing. He could make music out of anything, and did.
January 20th, 2024 at 1:23 am
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