Peter Schickele.

GOTTLIEB, JANE

Peter Schickele. Brass Calendar for Brass Quintet [1993]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Program note, 1 p.; score, p. 3-24 and 5 parts. 164-00237. $37.50; duration: ca. 18'.]

Peter Schickele. Ceremonial March for Piano or Organ [1955/56]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Score, 2 p.; program note, back cover verso. 160-00217. $3.95; duration: ca. 2'.]

Peter Schickele. Variations on a Medieval Theme for Organ [1958]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Score, 5 p.; program note, back cover verso. 163-00044. $18.50; duration: ca. 4'.]

Peter Schickele. Canzona for Organ (1960). Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1998. [Score, 3 p. 163-00043. $3.95; duration: ca. 4'.]

Peter Schickele. Fantasy for Organ [1990]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1996. [Program note, 1 p.; score, p. 3-19. 163-00042. $18.50; duration: ca. 9'.]

Peter Schickele. Viola Dreams: Quodlibet for String Quartet, [1997]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Program note, front cover verso; score, p. 1-4 and 4 parts. 164-00245. $12; duration: ca. 4'15".]

Peter Schickele. Eagle Rock: Sonatina for Cello and Piano [1996]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Program note, 1 p.; score, p. 2-8 and part. 164-00243. $12; duration: ca. 4'30".]

Peter Schickele. Duo Caprice for Two Violins [1993]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Program note, 1 p. (inside folio); 2 scores (loose-leaf in folio), 10 p. 164-00238. $15; duration: ca. 8'30".]

Peter Schickele. River Run: For Contrabass and Harpsichord [1976]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Program note, 1 p.; score, p. 3-11. 164-00236. $14; duration: ca. 6'.]

Peter Schickele. Divertimento for 2 B[flat] Clarinets and Bassoon [1984; 1996]. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: Elkan-Vogel (Theodore Presser), c1999. [Program note, 1 p.; score, p. 3-12 and 3 parts. 164-00235. $20; duration: ca. 9'.]

A June 1959 press release in the Juilliard School Archives entitled "Special to the Fargo Forum" lauds composer Peter Schickele for the "double honors" he received at the school's commencement exercises that year. Juilliard School president William Schuman awarded Schickele the Richard Rodgers Scholarship in Composition and announced that he had been reappointed as a teaching assistant for the school's "Literature and Materials of Music" department. Accompanying the press release is a photo of Schickele's presentation for Juilliard's May 1959 Alumni Association concert that included the premiere of his Concerto for Horn and Hardart. The photo depicts the young Schickele with several other students, including his classmate Philip Glass, who helped design the special musical instruments used for this performance. The press release commends Schickele's humorous presentations, noting that "his ventures into musical humor, however, have not interfered with his serious composition."

Indeed, Schickele's long tenure as P. D. Q. Bach's manager and "alter ego" has not hampered his career as a serious composer. His work list on the Theodore Presser Company Web site at http://www.presser.com (accessed 15 March 2001; Elkan-Vogel, a Presser subsidiary, publishes all of Schickele's compositions; Theodore Presser, Inc. publishes P. D. Q. Bach's works directly) includes more than one hundred compositions for all types of instruments and ensembles--orchestral, choral, vocal, chamber, jazz, and theater works, pastiches, and film scores. Soloists and ensembles worldwide have commissioned and performed Schickele's works, and overall, his output demonstrates a total command of musical styles past and present as well as his propensity for quotation and parody. Schiekele's serious works display the superb musical craftsmanship that enabled him to create P. D. Q. Bach (1807-1742?) and make this questionable eighteenth-century composer's works so funny and enjoyable, especially to educated musicians.

Prior to entering Juilliard in 1957, Schickele was a student at Swarthmore College as the school's only music major. In his hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, he played bassoon in the Fargo-Moorhead Orchestra and studied theory with its conductor, Sigvald Thompson. He later studied composition privately with Roy Harris in Pittsburgh during the summer of 1954 and with Darius Milhaud at Aspen in 1958. Schickele's primary teachers at Juilliard were Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma, and his works show the influences of both composers. Other sources of inspiration include Spike Jones, whom Schickele discovered as a teenager in Fargo, as well as (per Schickele) the Everly Brothers, Bela Bartok, Paul Hindemith, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley. and Igor Stravinsky.

Schickele taught at Juilliard for several years following his graduation in 1960 and presented some of the earliest performances of music by P. D. Q. Bach in the school's recital halls. The Juilliard Archives includes a program for a May 1962 "Wednesday One O'Clock" concert that included Schickele's own Quodlibet for Chamber Orchestra (ca. 1300-1945) as well as P. D. Q. Bach's Sinfonia Concertante (1757). Schickele composed the quodlibet "with the help of Wolfgang, Giuseppe, Vincent, Ludwig, Dmitri, Darius, Ralph, Igor, Johann Sebastian, Anon[.], Paul, Alban, Johannes, Giacomo, Arnold, Pyotr, Herb, George, Ray, [and] Irving." George Mester conducted this work and the Sinfonia Concertante, which featured Schickele performing the solo ocarina.

Many of Schickele's works were inspired by particular occasions or written as gifts to celebrate birthdays of friends and relatives. In the notes to his brass quintet Brass Calendar (1993), Schickele writes that this work refers to "a specific holiday or otherwise significant day or period in each month ... [and] research for this work was conducted in my pocket datebook." Thus, the January movement is entitled "New Year's Day"; February and March are "Valentine's Day" and "St. Patrick's Day," which includes a spiced-tip jig; April, "Income Tax Day," portends the fifteenth of the month with juxtaposed ascending scale passages in increasingly dissonant harmonic and rhythmic patterns; June is "Flag Day"; July's "Independence Day Parade" reveals "Yankee Doodle" in a new guise. Schickele confesses that he could not locate a holiday for August, but since it is the month most associated with vacations, he composed the "Dude Ranch Vacation" with a tempo indication of "Easy-going." September and October are "Labor D ay Weekend Dance" and "Halloween"; November, "Thanksgiving," presents a flowing chorale style melody. For December, Schickele did not choose to depict a holiday spirit; instead the melancholy movement entitled "Alone on New Year's Eve" segues into the January theme. With an estimated duration of eighteen minutes, Brass Calendar, commissioned by the Chestnut Brass Company and premiered by them in January 1994 at the Chamber Music America conference, is a welcome addition to the repertory for brass quintet. A recording of this work (Hornsmoke: Music of Peter Schickele, Newport Classic NCD 85638, 1998) also includes Schickele narrating his 1975 Hornsmoke (A Horse Opera).

Given Schickele's long association with Juilliard, it seemed appropriate to involve a current Juilliard School student in the preparation of this review. I was fortunate to have Juilliard doctoral student Sean Jackson read through Schickele's four recently published organ works on the school's Flentrop organ: Ceremonial March for piano or organ (1955-56), Variations on a Medieval Theme (1958), Canzona (1960), and Fantasy (1990). These are the only organ works listed in the current catalog of Schickele's compositions, and three of them are among his earliest efforts. Schickele notes that his Ceremonial March (printed as a piano score) was used by several of his friends as their wedding march. This two-minute student work was inspired by George Frideric Handel, although it includes some "inauthentic" elements (as Schickele casts them), such as parallel fifths. Variations on a Medieval Theme and Canzona were both written as submissions for an annual Juilliard composition prize for (according to Schickele) "the best two short pieces of quiet music." Variations on a Medieval Theme (which did not win) is based on Matteo da Perugia's virelai Plus onques dame. Each variation extends the theme harmonically and contrapuntally using twentieth-century techniques. The quiet and lyrical Canzona, which did capture the prize, appears to take some inspiration from Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Schickele states that one section of it was taken from an earlier work of his for woodwind quartet. The American Guild of Organists commissioned Fantasy for its 1990 Biennial National Convention, presenting Schickele with the opportunity (as noted in the score) "to write another multi-section work for organ without having to be quiet about it." True to its fantasy title, this is Schickele's most substantial and virtuosic organ work, with challenging polyrhythms and spicy harmonics. Sean enjoyed playing through all of these works and would consider including them in Isis repertory.

Composed as a birthday gift for Schickele's brother David, Viola Dreams: Quodlibet far String Quartet (1997) demonstrates the composer's talent for quotation through juxtaposition of viola melodies by Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms, along with two songs of special meaning to him and his brother--"Alles schweiget" and an Asian song learned from one of their father's recordings. The Armadillo Quartet premiered this four-minute work in 1997 in Los Angeles as an encore to one of their annual concerts of Schickele's chamber music.

Schickele composed Eagle Rack: Sonatina for Cello and Piano (1996) for Armen Ksajikian, the cellist of the Armadillo Quartet, and his wife Vanessa Butler, who resided in the Los Angeles suburb of Eagle Rock. The lyrical opening movement, "Song, for Armen," invokes a Russian-sounding melody in honor of Ksajikian's heritage. The lively scherzo movement, subtitled "For Luke and Cassie," is dedicated to the couple's two dogs, and the last movement is a lyrical "Lullaby, for Vanessa."

Members of the Armadillo Quartet also premiered Shickele's Duo caprice for two violins (1993), a one-movement piece in three sections (fast-slow-fast). Both violinists are kept busy throughout the eight-and-a-half-minute work which forms a valuable addition to the repertory of contemporary violin duets.

River Run (1976) for double bass anti harpsichord was commissioned by Gary Karr and Harmon Lewis. In the notes to the score, Schickele describes the work as "a trance-like, perpetual motion kind of piece, influenced as much by minimalism and Indian music as by traditional European classical music. There is no dramatic form, in the sense of big climaxes anti clearly defined sections; it's more a matter of 'watchin' the river go by'." The composer also notes that "the bass is often a general part of the texture, and is not meant to stand out in front all the time." Indeed, following a slow introduction by the harpsichord, most of the double-bass part consists of quarter- and dotted-quarter-note E's played in 5/8 time against the harpsichord's sixteenth notes. The effect is, well, rather funny.

Schickele notes that he did not write the Divertimento for two B[flat] clarinets and bassoon (1984; rev. 1996) for a specific occasion, but rather that it was inspired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's divertimentos anti serenades for winds (which were usually written for specific events). Schickele composed this five-movement work ("Fanfares and Entrances"; "Waltz"; "Rondo"; "Interlude"; and "Polka") in the best tradition of Mozart's wind music, with distinctly twentieth-century metrical and harmonic elements.

All of the scores discussed in this review are clearly printed, with the parts thoughtfully laid out for performance purposes with logical page turns. Sean noticed that the Canzona, which begins in 4/4 time, includes the metronome marking [whole note symbol]. = ca. 100. At first we wondered if this was the influence of P. D. Q. at work but then noticed that the return of the theme toward the end correctly has [whole note symbol] = ca. 100.

It is certainly clear, however, that Schickele and P. D. Q. Bach are somehow related. Few of Schickele's works present monumental technical difficulties to performers--but they do succeed in providing clever and interesting additions to the performance repertory.