Program for November 2, 2025
“Safe” Sextet (S. R33–L45–R[pass it once]78) P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742) ?
Lindsay Bartlett, piccolo; Ed Love, bass clarinet; Joyce Besch, contrabassoon; Alyssa Case, English horn; Katie Wychulis, harp; Jack Rinke, celeste
Sonata for Viola 4 Hands and Harpsichord (S. 440) P.D.Q. Bach
I. Andanteeny
II. Molto Fast
III. Ground Round
IV. Allah Breve
Donna Carnes, viola; Cindy Ricker, viola; Jack Rinke, harpsichord
Sonata “Abassoonata” (S. 888) P.D.Q. Bach
I. Allegro so-so
II. Andante con moped
III. Allegro assaionara
Joyce Besch, bassoon; Jack Rinke, piano
Intermission
Blaues Gras Cantata (S. 6 String) P.D.Q. Bach
I. Recitative and aria: "Blaues Gras"
II. Recitative: "O"
III. Recitative and aria: "Du bist im Land"
IV. Recitative: "O"
V. Duet: "Ich sehe" VI. Chorale: "Ich gehe Krüppel VII.
VI. Duet: "Sag' mir"
Blue Grass Band: Steve Hanson, banjo; Ted Eschliman, mandolin, Matt Richardson, guitar; Ian Wright, string bass; Chad Brassil, harmonicas
"Bach" Ensemble: Lindsay Bartlett, flute; Alyssa Wilhelm, flute; Donna Carnes, violin; Kristie Pfabe, violin; Cindy Ricker, viola; Tracy Sands, cello; Hans Sturm, contrabass
Trey Meyer, Bass; Christian Cardona, Tenor
Ed Love, Conductor
Program Notes
Peter Schickele’s (1935–2024) P.D.Q. Bach is one of the most longstanding and beloved satirical figures in classical music. The Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach had a family of 20 children, 10 of whom survived into adulthood and four of whom became successful composers themselves: Wilhelm Friedemann (W.F.) Bach, Johann Cristoph Friedrich (J.C.F.) Bach, Johann Christian (J.C.) Bach, and Carl Philipp Emanuel (C.P.E.) Bach. In 1965 musicologist and composer Peter Schickele unveiled his satirical discovery of “Bach’s 21st son,” P.D.Q. Bach, a character and pen name Schickele inhabited throughout his career. The initials “P.D.Q.” are a play on musicologists’ habit of referring to the various Bach family members by their initials—in this instance “P.D.Q.” stands for “Pretty Darn Quick.”
Schickele’s music as P.D.Q. Bach is eclectic, satirical, and uniquely enjoyable. Through P.D.Q., Schickele combines the conventions of Baroque and Classical music with comedy by constantly subverting the audience’s expectations. His works often include parodies of scholarly conventions and the satirical use of unconventional instruments—or even household items used unconventionally as instruments. As Schickele’s biography states, he “gained renown for his dramatic entrances to concerts, his wry spoken introductions, and his virtuosity while playing instruments such as the wine bottle, bicycle, and left-handed sewer flute.” Schickele passed away in 2024 as the most decorated music satirist of our lifetime, whom the New Yorker called “a latter-day Haydn, the one composer whose name makes everyone smile.” He won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album four years in a row from 1989 to 1992. Over the course of his career, Peter Schickele fleshed out the character of P.D.Q. Bach to include a fictional biography (now in its 11th edition) with humorous and outlandish remarks, such as “P.D.Q. distinguished himself in his lifetime by triumphing over the most staggering obstacle ever placed before a composer: an absolute and utter lack of talent.”
Peter Schickele’s catalogue under the name “P.D.Q. Bach” is staggering and defies conventional organization. Among P.D.Q.’s output is an opera named “The Abduction of Figaro” (as opposed to Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro”), a Birthday Ode to “Big Daddy” Bach, a “Classical rap,” “Fanfare for the Common Cold,” and “The Only Piece Ever Written for Violin and Tuba.” Schickele’s sharp wit is present in everything he authored, and his compositional style has a unique ability to relay joy and humor through sound. Schickele often wrote the program notes for his own pieces, and they are reprinted here as part of the P.D.Q. Bach experience. — Paul Zeller
"Safe" Sextet P.D.Q. Bach
“A few months ago, I checked into a hotel whose safe had just been robbed. The culprits had cleaned out the whole thing, except for some scrumpled-up paper that a bunch of jewelry had been wrapped in. I asked the manager if I could look at that scrumpled-up paper. And I'll be darned if it didn't turn out to be the manuscript of a work which, because of where I found it, has come to be known as the "Safe” Sextet.
The instruments used in the "Safe" Sextet are the instruments of the orchestra that composers often forget about. The present editor has had to adapt the top woodwind part to the modern piccolo, since the instrument for which P.D.Q. Bach wrote the part, the dill piccolo, is obsolete. The English horn is, of course, a larger version of the oboe; in addition to its largeness, it is distinguished from the oboe in that the end of the instrument is, rather than flared, shaped like a bulb. This is an extremely important part; when the instrument begins to wear out, this is the part you plant to get another one.
The bass clarinet is the same as a regular clarinet, but baser. It looks rather like a saxophone, but sounds more like a cow. The contrabassoon is the largest member of the double reed family; it is becoming increasingly rare since Congress cut off aid to the Contras. The technique of audibly clicking the keys on the instrument, heard in the slow middle section of the Sextet, was not used by other eighteenth-century composers. One wonders why. The harp is basically a nude piano (don't tell Jesse Helms that). This brings us to the celesta, a high-pitched instrument that might be called the castrato of the keyboard family, especially since it was first used in Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker.”
Sonata for Viola Four Hands and Harpsichord
“Although there exists an extensive literature for piano, four hands (two people playing at one piano), diligent research has led to the conclusion that the sonata under consideration is in all likelihood the only work ever to have been written for two people playing one viola. The fact it was written by the last and least of the great Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty-odd children is no surprise; P.D.Q. Bach was certainly the oddest of the lot, and one of his most devious streaks was that which had been called “a criminally irresponsible approach to instruments.” Not only did he write for things which wiser composers had the good sense to avoid, but even when he employed well-established instruments he had a way of making them sound recently invented. When performing P.D.Q. Bach, the best of players sounds as if his father just bought him the instrument a few days ago.
The first movement is a typical Andanteeny, which is more than can be said for the second movement, marked Molto Fast. The heading of the third movement, Ground Round, is a slight misnomer, since it does employ a ground (a constantly recurring melody in the bass); furthermore, it does employ a device which is not even mentioned in the heading: pedal point (a long held note). Perhaps this omission is due to a failure to notice that he had used the device, since P.D.Q.’s interest in pedal point and counterpoint was even less than his interest in needlepoint. Nevertheless, the last movement, like many modern soft drinks, uses imitation with similar results. The marking Allah Breve is a quaint reminder of the composer’s association with the Middle East; years earlier, P.D.Q. had worked his way up from assistant warper to head woofer in a Turkish rug factory, and the influence of that time is evident in several other pieces as well, such as the Minaret and Trio in the Pevertimento, and most notably, the Mass in Allah Mode.”
Sonata “Abassoonata” for Bassoon and Piano
“The Bassoon is an interesting instrument; it wasn’t invented by P.D.Q. Bach, but it sounds as if it had been. The Italian word for it, fagotto, and the German word, Faggot, mean, respectively, “A bundle of sticks” and “a bundle of sticks.” In the original manuscript of this sonata, the piece is dedicated to a Hans Holzmann; at first I assumed he was the bassoonist for whom P.D.Q. wrote the work, but it turns out that Hans Holzmann was a woodcutter who actually played the first performance of this piece on a bundle of sticks. The sonata is not difficult to play on the bassoon, but it makes extraordinary demands on a bundle of sticks.
The first time I programmed this piece, I couldn’t find a bassoonist to play it—able was one thing, willing was quite another—so I really had no choice: I simply had to learn how to play the instrument myself. It wasn’t easy, becoming proficient on the bassoon in three days, but fortunately I had the help of a couple of pretty good books. One of them was Jane Fonda’s Bassoon Book,” but by far the most useful was Billy Graham’s “So You Want to Play the Bassoon.”
In a recent survey, three thousand people from all walks of life were asked, “If you were to be stranded on a dessert island with only one object, which object would you choose?” An impressive 63% responded, “Anything but a bassoon.” Musicologists, sociologists, and psychologists searching for an explanation for that surprising answer need only listen to P.D.Q. Bach’s Sonata “Abassoonata.”
Cantata: “Blaues Gras” (Bluegrass Cantata)
“Much has been written about the English, Scottish, and Irish influences on the white folk music of the southeastern United States, but the discovery of the manuscript of P.D.Q. Bach’s cantata Blaues Gras should cause students of the subject to sit up and take notice (and about time, too) of the substantial debt owed by so-called “bluegrass” music to a certain late eighteenth century southern German composer. Most of the credit for establishing the characteristic sound of bluegrass music is usually given to William Monroe, known to his friends as “Bill,” but it will be immediately apparent to anyone hearing this cantata that omitting the name of P.D.Q. Bach in any future discussion of this “typically American” music will constitute a sin of omission on the part of the omitter, serious enough to warrant, at the very least, an academic slap on the wrist.
By all accounts, the most popular Black Forest string band during the 1790’s was the group Tommy Mann and his Magic Mountain Boys. Both Tommy Mann and the outfit’s banjo player, Erl “Konig” Skruggsendorfer, came from Wein-am-Rhein and knew P.D.Q. Bach, so it is perhaps not surprising that before making their first American tour in 1806 they asked their hometown composer to write them a piece that would ingratiate them with audiences in the (still quite young and intensely patriotic) United States of America. That the resulting cantata was extremely successful is attested to by the fact that ever since the Magic Mountain Boys’ triumphant tour, Kentucky has been affectionately known as the Bluegrass State.
How often is an artist appreciated more abroad than at home? The manuscript of the cantata (now safely ensconced in the P.D.Q. Bach museum at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople) was not found in Europe, but deep in a Kentucky coal mine, where it was being used to stuff up a hole leading (as this writer discovered in the nick of time) to a vein of methane gas.
Certain enigmas surround this piece—the significance of the soldier who has but four words to speak, and the meaning of the last line of the entire text (“That’s a big ten-four, good buddy”)—but even with these small air pockets of unintelligibility, Blaues Gras stands as one of them most important additions to the increasingly impressive pantheon of P.D.Q. Bach pieces for the human voice.” — Peter Schickele
