Last Friday, Peter Schickele was in Iowa City as the featured artist on the KSUI program “Know the Score“. The program is broadcast live from the University of Iowa Art Museum, so I went to go see it. If you have met me and talked to me about classical music, chances are I have talked about Peter Schickele (or P.D.Q. Bach). If not, here is a real basic run down:

Peter Schickele is a composer who writes classical music. He “discovered” P.D.Q. Bach (Johann Sebastian’s 21st chid of 20) back in the mid-late 60s while in Bavaria. As the story goes, he was having coffee at a small bed-and-breakfast and he ordered a cup of coffee which was terrible. This is when Schickele discovered that the host had been using an old musical manuscript for a coffee filter. Schickele pulled the music out, cleared off the coffee grounds, and discovered the music of P.D.Q Bach. The rest, as they say, is history.

Peter also known as a professor and conductor for the Turtle Mountain Naval Base Tactical Wind Ensemble, “protecting North Dakota from naval attack”, at University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.

Any how, I have been fascinated with P.D.Q. Bach’s music since High School, when I first checked out a P.D.Q. CD from the Freeport Public Library. After the first listen to the Bassoon/Tuba duets called the Dutch Sweet on “Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Precussion” I was hooked.

During the show last Friday there was a lot of live music performed, including one of Peter’s more serious compositions titled “Elegies for Clarinet and Piano” for which he played piano and Jason Weinberger (conductor of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls symphony orchestra) played clarinet. This piece of music has stuck in my head the most of the entire show, particularly the first movement, titled “Song for Bert”, which is written in memory of Peter’s first music teacher, Bertram McGarrity. I found it interesting that when “Bert” first heard Peter play the clarinet, he suggested that since he had established so many bad habits on the clarinet already, he should just start a new instrument. As a result, Bert convinced Peter to start playing the bassoon. Is everyone who plays the bassoon tricked in to doing so? I know I was. My first music teacher, in response to the statement that I wanted to play bagpipes, told me that the bassoon is also a double-reeded instrument, and that I should start by playing the bassoon and work up to the bagpipes. I shared this information with Mr. Schickele after the broadcast and he offered me his condolences.