Peter was a rare combination of thoughtful musician and wild and crazy guy. We were lucky to be around when he was doing his thing in concert halls in NY and elsewhere.I will always remember the Avery Fisher Hall concert with "The Seasonings" and the "Concerto for Horn and Hardart." We laughed nonstop, bought the LPs, listened and memorized all the music. My wife and I were partucularly lucky that we got to do a radio broadcast with him, and, starting in the 80's, to be part of the group of composers and singers who gathered in Manhattan every December, and sometimes during the year, at the home of our mutual friends, composer Dick Peaslee and his wife Dixie, for evenings of madrigals, new rounds and carols by anyone who wanted to bring one, good food, and lots of laughter. RIP dear Peter. The angels must be learning how to detune their harps for you.
Thank you for a marvelous conversation! I hope that both of you are also fans of the late great J. Reilly Lewis and the Washington Bach Consort. About 27 years ago, there was a free lunchtime concert series at venues all over DC, and I was not paying any attention to the date when a friend told me to meet him at the Church of the Epiphany on G Street at noon. Lewis started them with no verbal intro, but 3 measures into the piece a violin string broke, loudly. They carried on, and at about measure 10 a cello bridge collapse. The band played on, people were looking around, nervously, and about the time that the bassists bow instantly frazzled to two mops of horsehair connected by maybe three strands, and not missing a beat, the shenanigans continued It was without so much as a wink or a nod, and they KEPT playing. People started sliding off of the pews. It was a spectacular April Fool's Day treat, and I will go to my grave saying they did P D Q Bach, better than P D Q Bach!
For my sins i have a composition degree though I decided decades ago that i do not have the talent to actually compose anything of worth. and i must totally agree with you that his work is sophisticated and is not slapstick. On the basis of my training, albeit unused as a composer and also my experience as a classical musician for 30 years as an orchestral double bass player, I can confidently affirm that Mr Schickele did indeed have the high level of technique required to make his satires work. for him to be able to make extraneous melodies superimpose pre existing classical works shows that his grasp of counterpoint, not to mention the other skills a serious composer needs, is amazing!!
The best musical satirists have nearly always been solid musicians/composers. Jonathan and Darlene Edwards (Jo Stafford and Paul Weston IRL), Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Anna Russell, Victor Borge, etc. And, of course, some great composers composed some gags of their own ("Ein musikalischer Spaß," anyone?)
For those of you (like me) who only heard a few episodes of "The Schickele Mix" before it vanished, it lives on at the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/SchickeleMix
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I so missed his voice and intelligence and am so very glad for the link to it on the Internet Archive. thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
@@ArthurSmoot You can also get a URL that will let you add it to your podcast app here: fourble.co.uk/podcast/schickmix Personally, I have found the web playback interface at Archive.org to be pretty buggy.
Great interview. Always been a fan of Peter Schickele, P.D.Q. Bach and Maestro Slatkin. The maestro may remember me for a couple of times I told him I know Stuart Pearl (Violinist At That Time) who he did a concert with way back in his early school days out in California. Looking good maestro at age eighty. I'm right behind you at age 76. Wish I looked that good.
In the mid 1970's I was studying music theory at Delta College in Bay City Mi. Our professor suggested we go to a performance of "The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach" at the Midland Center For The Arts in Midland Mi. Our professor was a very serious classical pianist so I expected a serious performance. Boy, was I wrong! Peter Schickele was a blast. I've never forgotten "Calliope Four Hands."
I saw Mr. Schickele/PDQ Bach in concert numerous times. One performance that really stood out was with the Chicago Symphony. His introduction to one of the numbers (I can't quite remember which one, but it might have been "Royal Firewater Musick") had the orchestra laughing so hard that they literally couldn't begin the piece for a couple of minutes. One thing I'm sure about, though, is that you can't be great at the "funny" stuff if you don't know how to do the "serious" stuff, and Peter Schickele absolutely knew how to do the "serious" stuff. His (not PDQ's) "Pentangle, Five Songs for French Horn and Orchestra" is one of my favorite pieces of all time.
Happily, "Schickele Mix" episodes live on at this podcast link: fourble.co.uk/podcast/schickmix They're all air checks made by fans, so the list is not complete, alas.
I became familiar with the unbegun symphony before many of the pieces that were plagiarized, but as I became more familiar with the sources I came to name them using the melodies from the unbegun, for example, there is the "Beautiful Dreamer Symphony" by Brahms...
To think that PDQ Bach's first big public concert was held at NYC's Town Hall, same locale as for the première of Edgard Varèse's Écuatorial! Just the other night I watched the TH-cam video of Schickele's performance of PDQ Bach's Concerto for Piano versus Orchestra with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. I was struck by the hugely wide range of humor, from low-brow (wearing hiking boots with his tuxedo, sitting down for a rest like a prize fighter after the first movement, ending in spitting water onto his assistant...) to quite high-brow (in the first movement, the piano instead of the orchestra plays the lead-up to the cadenza, cadencing on the traditional I6/4 chord, only to be surprised when, one by one, the orchestra players each begin their own cadenza; in the last movement, the piano part calls for cross-hands technique, though done in such a way that the hands actually are only switching between material in the same ranges, thereby completely defeating the sound of cross-hands -- one has to be closely watching Schickele's hands at the keyboard to notice this) -- and everything in-between!
The last 50 years would have been far more entertaining if PDQ had kept up his original radio program on WOOF, broadcast from Hoople, North Dakota. Especially new and innovative takes on "What's My Melodic Line" and more original field recordings like the "Traumerei for Unaccompanied Piano". Schickele's unassuming but solid radio broadcasting persona was a calming influence. Long live Heinrich Ziefenblaza!
Schickele also composed the arrangements for a couple of Joan Baez albums back in the day for Vanguard. "Noel" and "Baptism." All of those arrangements are quite original and some of them are very good, indeed.
Am Anna Russell was a grand old camp at a time when women comedians were far fewer today - especially doing stand up classical music bits. She is still unique.
@@LouieLouie505 Yes, I got to see her many years ago during one her many "farewell tours." 🙂 And, of course, I have all the albums, either on LP or CD.
Hats off gentlemen, a genius
Peter was a rare combination of thoughtful musician and wild and crazy guy. We were lucky to be around when he was doing his thing in concert halls in NY and elsewhere.I will always remember the Avery Fisher Hall concert with "The Seasonings" and the "Concerto for Horn and Hardart." We laughed nonstop, bought the LPs, listened and memorized all the music. My wife and I were partucularly lucky that we got to do a radio broadcast with him, and, starting in the 80's, to be part of the group of composers and singers who gathered in Manhattan every December, and sometimes during the year, at the home of our mutual friends, composer Dick Peaslee and his wife Dixie, for evenings of madrigals, new rounds and carols by anyone who wanted to bring one, good food, and lots of laughter. RIP dear Peter. The angels must be learning how to detune their harps for you.
I saw Schickle/PDQ In St. Louis, when Slatkin was there, in the early 1990s. Fabulous.
Me, too.
Thank you for a marvelous conversation! I hope that both of you are also fans of the late great J. Reilly Lewis and the Washington Bach Consort. About 27 years ago, there was a free lunchtime concert series at venues all over DC, and I was not paying any attention to the date when a friend told me to meet him at the Church of the Epiphany on G Street at noon. Lewis started them with no verbal intro, but 3 measures into the piece a violin string broke, loudly. They carried on, and at about measure 10 a cello bridge collapse. The band played on, people were looking around, nervously, and about the time that the bassists bow instantly frazzled to two mops of horsehair connected by maybe three strands, and not missing a beat, the shenanigans continued It was without so much as a wink or a nod, and they KEPT playing. People started sliding off of the pews. It was a spectacular April Fool's Day treat, and I will go to my grave saying they did P D Q Bach, better than P D Q Bach!
For my sins i have a composition degree though I decided decades ago that i do not have the talent to actually compose anything of worth.
and i must totally agree with you that his work is sophisticated and is not slapstick. On the basis of my training, albeit unused as a composer and also my experience as a classical musician for 30 years as an orchestral double bass player, I can confidently affirm that Mr Schickele did indeed have the high level of technique required to make his satires work.
for him to be able to make extraneous melodies superimpose pre existing classical works shows that his grasp of counterpoint, not to mention the other skills a serious composer needs, is amazing!!
The best musical satirists have nearly always been solid musicians/composers. Jonathan and Darlene Edwards (Jo Stafford and Paul Weston IRL), Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Anna Russell, Victor Borge, etc. And, of course, some great composers composed some gags of their own ("Ein musikalischer Spaß," anyone?)
For those of you (like me) who only heard a few episodes of "The Schickele Mix" before it vanished, it lives on at the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/SchickeleMix
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I so missed his voice and intelligence and am so very glad for the link to it on the Internet Archive. thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
@@ArthurSmoot You can also get a URL that will let you add it to your podcast app here: fourble.co.uk/podcast/schickmix Personally, I have found the web playback interface at Archive.org to be pretty buggy.
Great interview. Always been a fan of Peter Schickele, P.D.Q. Bach and Maestro Slatkin. The maestro may remember me for a couple of times I told him I know Stuart Pearl (Violinist At That Time) who he did a concert with way back in his early school days out in California. Looking good maestro at age eighty. I'm right behind you at age 76. Wish I looked that good.
Thanks. This is one of several I have done with Leonard over the years; always good conversation at his end, at least. 🙂
In the mid 1970's I was studying music theory at Delta College in Bay City Mi. Our professor suggested we go to a performance of "The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach" at the Midland Center For The Arts in Midland Mi. Our professor was a very serious classical pianist so I expected a serious performance. Boy, was I wrong! Peter Schickele was a blast. I've never forgotten "Calliope Four Hands."
The name P.D.Q. Bach wan't a tipoff? 🙂
@@thedogesl You didn't know this professor. She had a reputation of a no nonsense type. Nobody thought she was capable of a sense of humor.
I saw Mr. Schickele/PDQ Bach in concert numerous times. One performance that really stood out was with the Chicago Symphony. His introduction to one of the numbers (I can't quite remember which one, but it might have been "Royal Firewater Musick") had the orchestra laughing so hard that they literally couldn't begin the piece for a couple of minutes. One thing I'm sure about, though, is that you can't be great at the "funny" stuff if you don't know how to do the "serious" stuff, and Peter Schickele absolutely knew how to do the "serious" stuff. His (not PDQ's) "Pentangle, Five Songs for French Horn and Orchestra" is one of my favorite pieces of all time.
Yup. Schickele's non-comic work is less well known but no less worthwhile.
@@thedogesl Absolutely!
Schickele mix! I knew I heard pdq melodies on public radio! I am sad to hear that he has passed.
Music made into and fun of itself!
Happily, "Schickele Mix" episodes live on at this podcast link: fourble.co.uk/podcast/schickmix They're all air checks made by fans, so the list is not complete, alas.
I became familiar with the unbegun symphony before many of the pieces that were plagiarized, but as I became more familiar with the sources I came to name them using the melodies from the unbegun, for example, there is the "Beautiful Dreamer Symphony" by Brahms...
To think that PDQ Bach's first big public concert was held at NYC's Town Hall, same locale as for the première of Edgard Varèse's Écuatorial!
Just the other night I watched the TH-cam video of Schickele's performance of PDQ Bach's Concerto for Piano versus Orchestra with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. I was struck by the hugely wide range of humor, from low-brow (wearing hiking boots with his tuxedo, sitting down for a rest like a prize fighter after the first movement, ending in spitting water onto his assistant...) to quite high-brow (in the first movement, the piano instead of the orchestra plays the lead-up to the cadenza, cadencing on the traditional I6/4 chord, only to be surprised when, one by one, the orchestra players each begin their own cadenza; in the last movement, the piano part calls for cross-hands technique, though done in such a way that the hands actually are only switching between material in the same ranges, thereby completely defeating the sound of cross-hands -- one has to be closely watching Schickele's hands at the keyboard to notice this) -- and everything in-between!
The last 50 years would have been far more entertaining if PDQ had kept up his original radio program on WOOF, broadcast from Hoople, North Dakota. Especially new and innovative takes on "What's My Melodic Line" and more original field recordings like the "Traumerei for Unaccompanied Piano". Schickele's unassuming but solid radio broadcasting persona was a calming influence. Long live Heinrich Ziefenblaza!
"Seifenblasen". German for "soap bubbles". Honest!
@@notthatyouasked6656 Reminds me of the liner notes for one of the Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band's LPs written by one Wolfgang Luftpost.
Schickele also composed the arrangements for a couple of Joan Baez albums back in the day for Vanguard. "Noel" and "Baptism." All of those arrangements are quite original and some of them are very good, indeed.
Yes, I remember those albums well. At the time I only knew him because of his PDQ Bach parodies and was surprised to hear his more serious work..
a couple others to admit to the pantheon of accomplished composer-satirists: Spike Jones, Frank Zappa
Yes indeed, Spike and Frank, two of my favorites.
Schickele acknowledged Spike Jones as an influence. Not sure how he felt about Zappa.
@@thedogesl Yeah, Frank Zappa is an acquired taste. Thanks again for the interview.
Am
Anna Russell was a grand old camp at a time when women comedians were far fewer today - especially doing stand up classical music bits. She is still unique.
@@LouieLouie505 Yes, I got to see her many years ago during one her many "farewell tours." 🙂 And, of course, I have all the albums, either on LP or CD.
Spike Jones City slickers?
Schickele happily acknowledged his debt to Jones.