The Kamuela Philhamonic Orchestra’s 2011-2012 concert season will conclude Sunday with a program featuring the works of P.D.Q. Bach.
The Kamuela Philhamonic Orchestra’s 2011-2012 concert season will conclude Sunday with a program featuring the works of P.D.Q. Bach.
Audience favorites such as “Unbegun Symphony,” “Eine Kleine Nichtmusic” and “Beethoven Symphony 5: New Horizons in Music Appreciation” (with Lyman Medeiros as narrator) will be performed by the full orchestra, and the concert will also include several works for small ensembles, such as “Sonata for Viola 4 Hands and Schleptet.”
The free concert will begin at 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 1, at the Kahilu Theatre in Waimea. Audience members are advised to arrive no later than 3:30 p.m., since space is limited.
According to the mythology created by his alter ego, Professor Peter Schickele, P.D.Q. Bach (1742-1807, “though these dates are not verified”) was the last of famed composer J.S. Bach’s numerous offspring, possibly illegitimate or an imposter, and the family “black sheep.”
Schickele’s “biography” calls the composer, who was said to have been born on April 1, “the worst musician ever to have trod organ pedals” and claims P.D.Q. Bach had no talent or musical training and only became a composer to capitalize on his famous father’s name.
Due to P.D.Q Bach’s wine/women/song lifestyle, Schickele divides his life into three periods: the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period and Contrition. During the (longest) middle period, P.D.Q. concentrated on borrowing themes from the music of Haydn, Mozart and other prominent musicians of his day.
He was only able to come up with original musical material when he forgot what he was stealing. He did compose music for some rather unusual instruments, such as the left-handed sewer flute, the windbreaker and the bicycle.
But if not for the efforts of Professor Schickele, who in 1957 discovered “Sanka Cantata” being used as a coffee strainer by the caretaker in an old Bavarian castle (has since collected an additional four score of his scores), P.D.Q. Bach would have faded into well-deserved oblivion after his “death.”
Professor Schickele has been entertaining audiences in performances of these works with more than 50 orchestras since 1965, including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra. His self-contained show “The Intimate P.D.Q. Bach,” with Music Antiqua, has played nationwide, and he has had other albums that won Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album. of the Year from 1990 to 1993.