P.D.Q. Bach to Bring Musical Bag of Tricks to Costa Mesa

Peter Schickele is the 20th Century’s preeminent case of musical schizophrenia: two distinct composers forced to inhabit the same person.

The serious Schickele turns out commissions with respectable titles such as String Quartet No. 3, “Monochrome VI” and “Dream Dances” for flute, oboe and cello. The other Schickele--who uses the name P.D.Q. Bach--pens works named Schleptet in E-flat, the “Unbegun” Symphony, “Fuga Meshuga” and a full-length opera titled “The Abduction of Figaro.”

“The only problem with having two personalities is that some people don’t know that I do serious stuff,” Schickele complained. “Not too long ago, I learned that a performing group applied to a foundation for a grant to commission a work from me. They were turned down because the foundation said that P.D.Q. Bach was too commercial. Even when the group informed the foundation that Peter Schickele also wrote serious music, they were still unwilling to award the grant.”

That P.D.Q. Bach is a commercial success, however, is beyond argument. Over the past 15 years, this completely mythical son of J.S. Bach (whose more famous composer offspring are also universally known by their initials, such as C.P.E., J.C.F. and W.F.) has virtually cornered the American market on musical parody.

Tonight at 8 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, the P.D.Q. Bach Pick-Up Orchestra (a.k.a. Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra) will play several of the more immortal works of P.D.Q. Bach, including the “Howdy” Symphony in D, the “Royal Firewater Musick,” “Fuga Meshuga” (from “The Musical Sacrifice”) and Fantasieshtick for Piano and Orchestra. The concert, sponsored by the Orange County Philharmonic Society, will be a benefit for the society’s youth programs.

On the podium will be yet another Schickele persona, Professor Peter Schickele, the conductor and musicologist who has “discovered” the lost oeuvre of P.D.Q. Bach. Of course, the real Schickele is not really a professor.

“Well, it is hard to prove my credentials at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople,” Schickele admitted when pressed by a skeptical reporter. “But I taught at Juilliard in the early 1960s,” he protested. Although the non-professor’s university is as bogus as P.D.Q. Bach--whose dates are always given as (1807-1742)?--Hoople is quite real.

“Yes, there really is a Hoople, a town of 400 located northwest of Grand Forks, N.D., near the Canadian border. Once, when I played a concert in Grand Forks, I was presented with the key to the city by the mayor of Hoople.” No doubt the key opened both doors there.

Schickele attributes his primary inspiration to the American musical humorist Spike Jones.

“I was introduced to the recordings of Spike Jones at the age of 9 or 10. In fact, my brother and I would lip-sync his records and even did this as entertainment for Kiwanis Club lunches.” He also credits as influential the early recordings of England’s zany Hoffnung Festival.

Schickele’s earliest forays into the strange world of P.D.Q. Bach occurred during his college years, while he was at home in North Dakota.

“In the summer of 1953, I was home from Swarthmore College, where I was a student. Some friends and I were fooling around with tape recorders, and three of us made a recording of one of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos. They played all the strings parts, and I played all the wind parts on bassoon two octaves too low, something that sounded rather like mud wrestling. The next week I came up with a piece called the ‘Sanka’ Cantata. Although I don’t clearly remember whose idea the name P.D.Q. Bach was, my buddie Ernie Lloyd’s mother claims her son came up with it.”

When Schickele taught at Juilliard, he and his colleagues would give an annual concert of his musical parodies under the baton of Jorge Mester. In 1965, Schickele made his professional debut as P.D.Q. Bach at New York’s Town Hall, and the rest is demented history.

If Schickele is known for his pun-filled titles, crude sight gags and on stage pratfalls, he is quick to point out the serious craft behind his P.D.Q. Bach compositions.

“For all its ineptness,” he said, “the secret weapon in my P.D.Q. Bach writing is solid construction and musical ideas interesting enough for someone to listen a second and third time. After all, once you know the punch line, you know the joke. A P.D.Q. Bach piece needs more than a good joke to make it.”

The Orange County Philharmonic Society will present a program of music by P.D.Q. Bach at 8 tonight) at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, in Costa Mesa. The concert will benefit the Society’s youth programs. Tickets: $10-$30, with premier benefit tickets at $125 (includes a post-concert reception at the Center Club with the artists). Information: (714) 646-6277.