NEW from P.D.Q. Bach Thursday, April 01, 2010
It's been approximately ten years since the release of the last choral masterwork by eminent composer P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742?). Born in Leipzig on April 1, 1742, P.D.Q was the twenty-first of Johann Sebastian Bach's twenty children. Now available is Long Live the King (S. 1789), a hilarious and satirical ode to the King of France, who was beheaded during the French Revolution, complete with sound effects.
According to the program notes, this piece was discovered by Professor Peter Schickele after “he had just finished performing the demanding lasso d'amore/tromboon part in P.D.Q. Bach's Shepherd on the Rocks, with a Twist at a concert in Paris (Texas, not the other one in Arkansas), and, as he turned to exit into the wings, several sheets of what turned out to be music paper wafted down from the fly space above the stage, wafted, in fact, right on top of the author's by-now gray head (it had been a long concert). A quick perusal of the musical missiles revealed them to be a work for which the author…had been searching for aeons, even months, since reading a reference to it in one of the composer's letters to his uncle Schweinhardt ‘Piggy' Bach: ‘I have just composed a major choral work in honor of the recent revolution in France, called Long Live the King; the title, I hasten to assure you, is meant to be ironic - my sympathies are always with the people, especially the people who run taverns. The invention of the guillotine gives, I think you will agree, new meaning to the term ‘head of state.' The piece is a cappella, and lasts in excess of two minutes, unless it is done up to tempo, in which case all bets are off.â€
Click here for more (tongue-in-cheek) music by P.D.Q. Bach, and contact us for more “out of the ordinary†concert suggestions.