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P.D.Q. BACH’S MUSICAL MENAGERIECan instruments from three
different continents get along harmoniously with one another?
— by Professor Peter Schickele Eighteenth-century European music was generally composed for
eighteenth-century European instruments. It’s
true that P.D.Q. Bach wrote a work employing the tuba several decades before the
instrument was invented, but that was an anomaly—indeed, the name of the piece
is The Only Piece Ever Written for Violin
and Tuba. An even more striking anomaly is another work by the last, least, and oddest
of Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty-odd children: the recently discovered Two
and a Half Variations on “In Dulci Jubilo,” scored for koto, musical
saw, krummhorn and serpent. In this
case the envelope being pushed is not only temporal but also geographic; the
krummhorn, a Renaissance instrument, had long since become obsolete by the end
of the eighteenth century (and if you’ve ever heard a krummhorn, you know
why), whereas the koto hails from the exotic isle of Japan and the musical saw
from the wilds of backwoods America. The
serpent is also a pre-Classical instrument, which was, however, still in use
during P.D.Q. Bach’s day (and sometimes even, after the bars had closed,
during his night), but it was eschewed by your better composers in favor of the
less serpiginous but slightly more reliable (and less venomous) bassoon. As it happens, the annual P.D.Q. Bach concerts, which fall this year on
December 27th and 29th, at prestigious Avery Fisher Hall, feature (in addition
to the Two and a Half Variations on “In
Dulci Jubilo”) the infamous Concerto
for Bassoon vs. Orchestra, in which the helpless solo instrument is both
philosophically and literally deconstructed before the audience’s very eyes.
Manned by the author of this article, the bassoon is taken to heights of
virtuosity unmatched since those achieved by the balalaika, the oud, and the
highland bagpipes in various other works by the same composer. Was P.D.Q. the first true synthesizer of World Music, or was he merely a
randy tourist? One can decide for
one’s self by attending one of the concerts at the end of this month. It’s a tough call.
—Reproduced with permission of Playbill
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