Could it be that the bumbling fellow who brought the world such dubious masterpieces as the ”Hindenburg” Concerto, the Canine Cantata and the
”Safe” Sextet is retiring?
”Well, let`s just call it an indefinite sabbatical-possibly leading to retirement,” says Peter Schickele, who, for the last 25 years, has been reducing audiences to tears playing the unfortunate compositions of P.D.Q. Bach.
As anyone who has witnessed Schickele`s brand of musical anarchy knows, P.D.Q. Bach never truly existed-or at least he never existed outside of Schickele`s decidedly overactive imagination.
Nevertheless, for roughly a quarter-century Schickele has been racing around the world performing pieces attributed to (”blamed on” might be more accurate) P.D.Q. Bach-and selling out concert halls in the process.
As it turns out, there are only so many times you can tumble off a piano bench or walk off the stage (into the orchestra pit) before becoming a bit tired of it all.
”I have extremely ambivalent feelings about giving up P.D.Q.,” says Schickele, who will perform what could be his last Chicago appearance as P.D.Q. Bach`s alter ego at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, when he appears with the Chicago Symphony in Orchestra Hall.
”On one hand, I`m looking forward to it. As much as I enjoyed making people laugh, the success of P.D.Q. Bach prevented me from spending as much time writing all the different kinds of music I want to write.
”But on the other hand, I`m going to miss clowning around with all the orchestra members I`ve come to know over the years,” adds Schickele, who will officially set P.D.Q. Bach aside on-when else?-April Fool`s Day of next year. Certainly Schickele, who also happens to be a fine ”serious” composer, has a long and amusing collection of memories to look back upon.
”One of the great things about doing my kind of musical comedy is that whenever anything goes wrong at a concert, people assume it`s intentional and immediately start laughing, which gets you off the hook for any goofs you might make,” says Schickele.
”So when the orchestra members come out and there aren`t enough seats for all the players, everyone in the house thinks that`s one of my gags and begins chuckling.
”And I begin wondering why I hadn`t thought of that gag myself.
”Or, because I usually enter the concert hall from the same doors as the audience, I`ve gotten into a few jams. Once I had to go outside the concert hall to get to the audience door, but it turns out that it already had been locked.
”So there I am pounding on the door trying to get into my own concert.
”When I finally got into the auditorium-quite late at that-the audience thought my tardiness was part of the gag and didn`t seem to mind.
”But that kind of thing can backfire on you too,” says Schickele, who figures he has been involved in about as many musical disasters as anyone in the business.
”Once a singer and I were making our final bows, and as we were walking off the stage he had a kind of heart seizure. For real.
”So he naturally put his hand to his heart and collapsed onto the floor. ”Of course, the audience thought it was a joke and quite amusing, but I knew it wasn`t part of the act.
”So, in terror, I dragged the poor fellow (who survived) off the stage, while the house was doubling up in laughter. Very strange.”
Most of the laughs Schickele has generated, however, have been planned, for he stands in a class with such virtuoso musical comics as Victor Borge and Weird Al Yankovic.
Yet Schickele`s humor-which gleefully deflates the highbrows`
pretensions-is decidedly his own.
Who else, after all, could have dreamed up a performance of Beethoven`s Fifth Symphony in which an announcer (Schickele) narrates the piece as if he were a sportscaster? Who else could have concocted an opera titled ”The Abduction of Figaro,” which, Shickele is proud to note, recently received fully 28 performances in Sweden, ”although it was performed in a circus tent and one of the characters made his entrance on a trapeze.”
Among the 75-plus comic works in Schickele`s slap-happy repertoire, his favorites include ”The Seasonings” (a rude spoof of Vivaldi`s ”The Seasons”); the ”Howdy” Symphony (a take-off on Haydn`s ”Farewell”
Symphony); and the ”No-No” Nonette (for percussion and ill winds).
Yet Schickele fans never will forget such masterworks as the Schleptet in E-flat Major; the Concerto for Piano vs. Orchestra (in which the composer loses); or the aforementioned Beethoven Fifth Symphony Sportscast, also known as ”New Horizons in Music Appreciation.”
Naturally, no one could have planned such an outlandish career, and Schickele concedes that he came upon it almost by accident.
”When I was a student at Juilliard,” recalls Schickele, winding up for the inevitable one-liner, ”I majored in cafeteria. So I would sit around with my friends talking about funny things we`d seen at concerts, and funny things we`d like to see.
”One day in 1959, the school needed an emergency fill-in for a performance that had been canceled, so Jorge Mester (who has gone on to become a respected conductor) and I put together a program of musical laughs literally overnight. And we had a fellow student named Philip Glass (today an internationally known composer) copying out the parts for us.”
The madness Schickele and friends cooked up became an annual event at Juilliard, and in `65 Schickele began bringing his humor to the unsuspecting masses.
”So here I am all these years later, still preparing to get on with my
`real` career,” adds Schickele, who is developing a music-and-talk radio program for Minnesota Public Radio, while working on various ”serious”
commissions.
”It`s really amazing to me not only that audiences have been interested in P.D.Q. Bach for so long, but that I`ve been interested in him this long.
”I suppose it`s stayed fresh because I`m constantly changing the programs (Schickele`s Chicago program will offer pieces never heard here before, including the Fanfare for Fred, Classical Rap, Overture to ”Einstein on the Fritz” and the 1712 Overture).
”Finally, though, it`s time for a breather.”
