Peter Schickele

Peter Schickele, the usually delirious alter ego of P.D.Q. Bach, didn't swing down to the stage of the Embassy Theatre Tuesday night via a rope ladder from the balcony. Too bad. He just strolled on, looking amiable and a bit sheepish. Without ado about anything, he plunked himself down at the keyboard. He didn't wear his usual uniform--slightly slept-in formal attire with an eternally unruly shirttail hanging out, plus brown workman's shoes.

Peter Schickele is the comic genius behind the works of composer P.D.Q. Bach -- the fictional, long-forgotten, "last and least" of Johann Sebastian Bach's numerous offspring. He's also a versatile, serious composer.

It's not easy being funny all the time. Just ask Peter Schickele, who has been busy "discovering" the musical malapropisms of P.D.Q. Bach for 41 years now and counting. He is just coming out of a 10-year hold on touring the elaborate musical parody shows devoted to the skewed inspirations of "the last and least of the Bachs," saving his P.D.Q. efforts for an annual Christmas bash at Carnegie Hall, and recordings that gave him a lock on the best comedy album Grammy in the early 1990s.

Peter Schickele was to have ended his year as composer-in-residence of the Pasadena Symphony with a new viola concerto Saturday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Instead, he replaced it with the first performance of a newly revised version of his Second Symphony. Asked about the switch at the pre-concert talk, Schickele first tried a bad viola joke. When that didn't work, he told the surprising truth. He had gotten stuck. The first movement wasn't working and he hadn't known what else to do.

It is 30 minutes before curtain with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Peter Schickele is in his dressing room, rehearsing lines sotto voce and writing notes. "As I get older, I have to write these things bigger and bigger," Schickele sighs. "And your handwriting is getting worse and worse," adds Bill Walters, Schickele's longtime stage manager and straight man. "That's not possible," Schickele retorts. The sight is subtly incongruous.

Peter Schickele, the active composer--as opposed to Peter Schickele, the virtually retired discoverer and advocate of one P.D.Q. Bach--has a loyal following in Southern California. Witness the sizable audience that crowded into the Shatto Chapel at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles on Monday night.

An avid donner of many hats, Peter Schickele has many reputations that precede him, but they're not necessarily the right ones, at least relative to his original calling as a composer. We know him as the erudite prankster behind the fictitious P.D.Q. Bach, and now as the voice of the unique radio program "Schickele Mix."

The name Franklin D. Roosevelt still evokes a certain misty-eyed time and place to many who were alive in his era--and even those who weren't can sense that feeling in the American popular and classical music of that time. Peter Schickele was there--at age 9, he witnessed Roosevelt's funeral cortege in Washington, D.C.--and this indelible memory has triggered a piece of art, an attractive new cello concerto called "In Memoriam FDR."

Along with all the usual reasons for going to see P.D.Q. Bach, there is now one bittersweet additional one. Sad to say, this may be the last time around for the hapless composer of "Concerto for Horn and Hardart," the "No-No Nonette," the "Schleptet in E-flat" and many even less distinguished pieces. "Yes, I've decided that this season is my next-to-last touring with P.D.Q.," said Peter Schickele, the man who, as "Prof." Peter Schickele, not only discovered P.D.Q.

Now into its 13th year, the Armadillo String Quartet's annual concert of music by Peter Schickele is more than a just habit or a gig. The atmosphere at the Zipper Hall on Wednesday was collegial, and the composer expressed awe that the group was so dedicated in a situation in which "nobody is getting paid."

With his Concerto for Chamber Orchestra, Peter Schickele carves out a musical geography of America, much like Aaron Copland did. Copland portrayed a mythic wilderness of pioneers, outlaws and limitless space. Schickele picks the Southwest and a later time. But he also captures the energy and optimism that add to Walt Whitman's American yelp. Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony gave the West Coast premiere of the work as part of a three-part program Saturday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Revisiting the domain of the fictional composer P.D.Q. Bach, by way of, as usual, the furtive imagination of Peter Schickele, one finds the same familiar musical landscape from decades back. But even though Professor Schickele's latest research concerning P.D.Q. and his most recently discovered compositions have hardened into ritual, they and Schickele are still funny.

Many people know composer Peter Schickele only in his immensely popular guise as the "discoverer" of works by P.D.Q. Bach, the fictitious black-sheep son of J.S. Bach. Schickele has unearthed such long-lost P.D.Q. hits as "The Short-Tempered Clavier and Other Dysfunctional Works for Keyboard," "Shepherd on the Rocks With a Twist" and "Twelve Quite Heavenly Songs" (which consists of five songs). "There are almost 100 P.D.Q.

The name Franklin D. Roosevelt still evokes a certain misty-eyed time and place to many who were alive in his era--and even those who weren't can sense that feeling in the American popular and classical music of that time. Peter Schickele was there--at age 9, he witnessed Roosevelt's funeral cortege in Washington, D.C.--and this indelible memory has triggered a piece of art, an attractive new cello concerto called "In Memoriam FDR."

It's not easy being funny all the time. Just ask Peter Schickele, who has been busy "discovering" the musical malapropisms of P.D.Q. Bach for 41 years now and counting. He is just coming out of a 10-year hold on touring the elaborate musical parody shows devoted to the skewed inspirations of "the last and least of the Bachs," saving his P.D.Q. efforts for an annual Christmas bash at Carnegie Hall, and recordings that gave him a lock on the best comedy album Grammy in the early 1990s.

It might appear that Peter Schickele is an example of the classic tortured type--in the same mold as the comedic actor who wants to play Hamlet--but that's not really the case. Best known as the perpetrator of the music of P.D.Q. Bach, Schickele is also a prolific composer of "serious" music. But as presented by the Armadillo String Quartet at the Neighborhood Church in Pasadena Wednesday, Schickele's own music shares many of the same sources and aims as P.D.Q.'s.

For eight years, the locally based Armadillo String Quartet has hosted a tribute to the unique American musical figure Peter Schickele. On Monday night at Pasadena's Neighborhood Church, the tradition continued, as the quartet, with guest musicians on hand, presented chamber music from his serious repertory. As a composer, radio-show host and reformed satirist, who for many years adopted the wry persona of P.D.Q. Bach, Schickele has a reputation that keeps preceding him.

Peter Schickele is an extremely funny man. As the perpetrator of P.D.Q. Bach, he has kept music lovers in stitches for some three decades. But he is also a clever and prolific composer under his own name, and that seems to be how Schickele wants to be known these days. He now limits his P.D.Q. Bach activities to the occasional CD along with an annual year-end Carnegie Hall bash.

An avid donner of many hats, Peter Schickele has many reputations that precede him, but they're not necessarily the right ones, at least relative to his original calling as a composer. We know him as the erudite prankster behind the fictitious P.D.Q. Bach, and now as the voice of the unique radio program "Schickele Mix."