According to the “Old Style” calendar, Sergei Rachmaninoff was born in Russia on March 20, 1873 – which translates to April 1 on the Gregorian calendar. However, it would appear that Rachmaninoff himself preferred to celebrate on April 2, as supported by this application for U.S. citizenship archived at the Library of Congress.
Today is an excellent excuse, therefore, to share this clip of some dude playing the Prelude in C-sharp minor with the assistance of his dog – which I can’t stop watching!
Rachmaninoff, a lifelong dog-lover, no doubt would have approved.
Unfortunately, the composer came to loathe this particular piece, the second of five “Morceaux de fantaisie,” Op. 3. Russian publishers at the time did not pay royalties, so he basically sold it outright, at the age of 19, for 40 rubles.
Much to his chagrin, “The Prelude” was an instant hit. Opportunistic publishers in the West issued it under many titles, and of course he never saw a penny.
Yet he was expected to include it in every recital.
Whenever it came time for him to play his encores, invariably audiences would cry “C-sharp!” If he refused, they hissed. The composer confided, “Many, many times I wish I had never written it.”
The piece is so sober and portentous, how could it not have been parodied often?
You asked for it, you got it: happy belated birthday, Sergei Rachmaninoff!
Schickele was best known for his “discovery” of P.D.Q. Bach, whom he slyly promoted as the last and least of Johann Sebastian Bach’s progeny – “the 21st of Bach’s 20 children.” P.D.Q.’s manuscripts invariably turned up in the most undignified of places (leaky-ceilinged castles, the bottoms of bird cages, and as coffee maker filters). The music was introduced in performance and on record by “Professor” Peter Schickele, an equally amusing, unreliable source. The combination entertained for more than 50 years, a veritable automat of freewheeling parody, excruciating puns, and good old-fashioned, pie-in-the-face slapstick.
Some of the gags flirted with tedium, but there was always a diamond or two in the rough. If nothing else, you could always count on Schickele’s Jekyll-and-Hyde act to skewer the solemn conventions of classical music.
Frustratingly, his comic success undermined Schickele the “serious” composer. He studied with two of America’s most respected symphonists, Roy Harris and Vincent Persichetti. Under his own name, he produced over 100 works. These could be wildly pluralistic in nature, drawing on folk, jazz, blues, or rock influences. A number of his contemporaries pursued similar impulses (William Bolcom, for one, and it didn’t keep him from winning a Pulitzer), but Schickele never escaped the long shadow of low humor. Which is a shame, as his music is ceaselessly vital, conveying exuberance, invention, and a kind of genial wit.
Schickele also wrote scores for film (“Silent Running”) and songs for Broadway (“O Calcutta!”). For 15 years, he hosted his own syndicated radio show, “Schickele Mix.”
I interviewed him once and met him at a concert at the College of New Jersey in 2014. By that time, he was no longer swinging onto stage by a rope, as he did at Carnegie Hall. Instead, his comic creations were executed by others as he oversaw the shenanigans like something of a dignified lion – albeit a wry lion – providing commentary by way of brief and informal exchanges with Wayne Heisler, TCNJ Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Studies in Music.
P.D.Q. was classical music’s most prolific dad joke, perpetrating groaners like “No-No Nonette,” “Unbegun Symphony,” and “Pervertimento for Bagpipe, Bicycle and Balloons.”
An obituary in the New York Times encapsulates it very well: “In creating P.D.Q.’s oeuvre and putting it onstage, Mr. Schickele cannily deconstructed the classical music of Mozart’s time and just as cannily reassembled it in precisely the wrong configuration.”
It was humor that could engage on two levels, appealing to anyone who ever laughed at someone slipping on banana peel, but also to those who understood the enormity of his musical crimes.
He was rewarded with five Grammy Awards (one for him, and four for P.D.Q.) and by audiences full of chortling fans for over five decades.
Schickele died on Tuesday at the age of 88 – coincidentally the number of keys on a short-tempered clavier.
R.I.P.
On “The Tonight Show”
With Itzhak Perlman and John Williams
Part 1
Part 2
In better definition, and still entering on a rope in Houston in his 70s
Playing it straight: Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello and Piano
A Labor Day treat. One of the things I always loved about SCTV: this is a show that never talked down to its audience, and it trusted viewers to find it funny, even if they weren’t entirely sure what was going on. Nearly 40 years after its release into theaters, and still well before the advent of specialty cable channels devoted to classic movies, here’s a spot-on parody of John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” I must say, Joe Flaherty does a pretty mean (mean, mad) Henry Fonda.
