Peter Schickele

I was just trying to explain to my cat—well, it's Katie's cat really—that Peter Schickele had died.  But she did not seem that concerned.  'But you're here,' she seemed to say, 'Pet me!'

Of course, Schickele has little to do with cats, but I report the facts as they take place.  My father knew Schickele's parents (who were also called Schickele) and the gentleman—Dr. Schickele—was a Ford Foundation exchange professor.  They valiantly tried to explain to us what it was that their son did, but they didn't have the background. 

Well, what he did was invent a fictitious son of the (real) composer,  Johann Sebastian Bach, called P. D. Q. Bach, and proceeded to 'discover' numerous works by this gentleman.  All the works were parodies of existing tunes by well-known composers, that were written by Schickele himself (the parodies, not the originals) and released a number of albums throughout the eighties and the nineties, that were extremely well received. 

In the nineties, and later, Schickele had a regular hour on NPR called Schickele Mix, in which he introduced his audience to a number of pieces, both classical and other, that fitted some theme that he was following. 

Schickele composed at least one wonderful opera (ascribed, as always, to PDQ Bach) called The Abduction of Figaro. 

Peter Schickele had provided those in the know with simply hours of hilarity.  His sense of humor was deliberately clumsy, as befitted an amanuensis of a non existent last child of a German composer of the 1700s.  What an amazing gift to us he was!

Do-Re-Mi

Back in 1965, we kids didn't know much about The Sound of Music, until a big fuss was made about the movie in the Sri Lsnkan newspapers. We didn’t even know about Julie Andrews at that time.  A wide screen was needed for Sound of Music, and we had to wait until theaters—cinemas, as we called them—were convinced of the necessity of the expanded screen, and refitted them. 

Then, of course, everyone saw the movie, which was a big hit, and the songs were being sung by kids everywhere.  Edelweiss was the big hit, and the Lonely Goatherd.  The Do-re-mi song trailed in popularity, and it did not strike me at that time why that was so.  In retrospect, at least one reason is clear: it is difficult to play by ear!

To my mind, that song is almost brilliantly well constructed; there are several sequences, as they're called; the fragments that start with 'Doh, a deer ...', then 'Re, a drop of golden sun ...' and 'Mi, a name ...' and 'Fa, ...' all have the same pattern; that's a sequence.  At 'Soh ...' a new pattern begins, that continues with 'La, a note to follow Soh,' and 'Ti, a drink with jam and bread...'

The song was so embedded in my consciousness that I didn't quite notice that some of those runs introduced accidentals (sharps and flats) that popped the song—which had started out in C major—first into the neighboring key of G major, and then into A minor!  The last line rather nonchalantly introduced a B Flat, not for harmonic reasons but just as a chromatic passing note.  You haven't lived until you've tried to play it on a baritone horn.

The little example I have shown is in the key of B Flat, which means that the accidentals that were introduced in the song are now an E Natural (which moves the tune into the key of F, temporarily,) followed by an F Sharp, which moves the tune into G Minor; and then an A Flat to get us out of G minor, and back home to B Flat.  A flat is not a note in the harmony, really; it is a chromatic note, just for fun.

Archie