March 10
By Linda de
Vries
On this date in 1972 the film Silent Running was released. Starring Bruce Dern and directed by
Douglas Trumbull, this science fiction adventure imagines an earth on which all
plant life has become extinct. A fleet of space fighters are sent into space to
cultivate plants in weightless domes for the eventual reforestation of the
planet.
The UK film critic Mark Kermode lists it as one of personal
favorites on his BBC blog, preferring it to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 2008 Silent Running was nominated for AFI’s
Top Ten Science Fiction Films.
This film is clearly relevant and worth watching on this day
in 2014, but what on earth (!) does it have to do with Sebastian Bach?
Well, the answer is our Bach Bagatelle for today: PDQ Bach.
Johann Peter Schickele was born July 17,
1935 in Ames, Iowa of Alsatian immigrant parents. He attended high school in
Fargo, North Dakota, Swarthmore College, and the Juilliard School of Music,
where he received an M.S. in musical composition. His instrument was the
bassoon.
In his early career he wrote music for a number of folk
singers, most notably Joan Baez, for whom he also arranged and orchestrated albums
during the 60s. He was also a member of the rock group Open Window, which wrote
and performed music for the 1969 “naughty” review, Oh! Calcutta!
He was a serious and well-trained musician, a classmate of
Philip Glass at Juilliard. In fact, the two collaborated on Concerto for Horn and Hardart. Horn and
Hardart was the company that created the first American automat, so in this composition
the player had to put in coins to pull out implements with which to strike the
instrument. Glass helped build the instrument.
This piece used Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, for which Schickele
wrote a cadenza, the cadenza later recorded by the Los Angeles alternative
hip hop group Jurassic 5.
His interest in musical humor triggered by the work of Spike
Jones, Schickele’s annual reviews at Juilliard became popular enough to move to
Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. This aspect of his work evolved into the
creation of PDQ Bach, for which he is best known.
PDQ performs the newly “discovered” works of the “only
forgotten son” of Sebastian Bach. His name, parodying the three names of the
Bach family that were often reduced to initials, such as C.P.E., stands for
“Pretty Damn Quick.”
PDQ, it goes, was born in Leipzig on March 31, 1742, the 21st
of Sebastian and Anna Magdalena’s children, whom they didn’t even bother to
name. The only thing his father willed him was a kazoo. PDQ describes himself
in relation to his musician brothers as having: “the originality of Johann
Christian, the arrogance of C.P.E., and the obscurity of Johann Christoph
Friedrich.”
He defines his music as “manic plagiarism,” composed using
such invented instruments as pastaphone, tromboon, and left-handed sewer flute.
He also incorporates objects of daily life and rude vocal sounds into his
music, as well as unusual methods of playing them. The “S” numbers used to
catalogue his works are a parody of the way musicologists catalogue the works
of composers—“BWV” for J.S. Bach, for instance.
PDQ uses actual compositions of serious composers—Bach,
Beethoven, Mozart, Glass--but with his own twists and insertions, perhaps
prefiguring the contemporary movement in art known as “appropriative art.”
He might play the original piece at half speed, double
speed, with interminably repeated phrases, with added noises, or side-by-side
with popular songs. As with all humor, he evokes laughter with his sudden and
unexpected juxtapositions. He is also known for entering the stage in unusual
ways—through an air duct or down a rope, for example.
Although he largely stopped performing in 2012, he has
performed in venues from Las Vegas to Carnegie Hall, and has won four Grammy
awards for Best Comedy Recording. Check online for a list of his compositions
and his many album recordings—the titles alone are a music-lover’s delight: Oedipus Tex, A Little Nightmare Music,
Little Notebook for Piggy Bach, Einstein on the Fritz, and my favorite, OK Chorale.
Peter Schickele, to return to our
Bagatelle, continued serious composition as well. He composed the soundtrack
for Silent Running, which includes
two songs released as singles by the hugely popular folk singer Joan Baez:
“Silent Running,” and “Rejoice in the Sun.”
He has composed over 100 original works for symphony
orchestra, choral groups, chamber ensembles, films, and television. As an
educator he hosted Schickele Mix on
public radio. You’ll have fun reading more about him and listening to the music
of this very interesting American composer.
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