dismallyOriented

So one of the many extracurriculars I did as a kid was playing the violin in my state youth orchestra. This has given me a taste for classical music (albeit one heavily, *heavily* biased toward the things I've performed).

It has also, thanks to my conductors, given me a taste for a classical music shitposter.

PDQ Bach was the comedy stage name of the composer Peter Schickele, under which he did a lot of classical music parodies. The backstory for PDQ was that he was the "twenty-first of J.S. Bach's twenty children," who composed such forgotten works as, "Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion", "The Seasonings" (after Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons"), and "The 1712 Overture" (to my knowledge there are no cannons. Sorry Tchaikovsky). The PDQ stands for "Pretty Damn Quick". He invented many instruments, such as the the "dill piccolo" for playing sour notes, the "left-handed sewer flute", and the "tromboon" ("a cross between a trombone and a bassoon, having all the disadvantages of both"). According to Wikipedia, the sound quality is "best described as comical and loud." and like. Having listened to the sample recording on the page. That's profoundly correct. He passed away back in January of this year, at the age of 88. A long life for a funny man.

My favorite of his works - mostly because it's the only one I've listened to - is a live performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (the famous 1st movement) which he commentates over like a baseball game. The orchestra starts and he shouts, “And they’re off, with a 4 note theme!” There’s a lot of silly gags - cheerleaders, a penalty box, the ref calling a foul after the french horn flubs a note (complete with slow motion replay), silly format stuff like that. But the whole thing is also filled with legit music theory, like how the movement is structured and the important features of the piece. Give it a listen if you want a particularly flavorful bit of silly nerd shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzXoVo16pTg