music

Announcing the P. D. Q. Bach project!

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Many years ago, I put up a page called “The Key of P. D. Q.” It’s still there, though I haven’t updated it in decades. It lists musical parodies by Peter Schickele under the name P. D. Q. Bach and names pieces of classical and popular music they quote. This gave way to the P. D. Q. Bach Wiki on fandom.com, or “WikiPDQ,” as I like to call it. I contributed to it for a while. It’s probably the best online source for details about the music, but wikis are fragile things, and not all the information on them is verified.

So I’m starting a new project, where so far I’m reusing the name “The Key of P. D. Q.” It will be an e-book, most likely for free, since I doubt that there’s a market for it. It will be a PDF document, which is good for preservation. I’ll probably make it available for free in several places, such as one of my websites and Scribd.

I’ve been a P. D. Q. Bach fan for over half a century. I love spotting the hidden jokes in the music. The book will have an entry on each piece I can get information about, taking a light tone while digging into the technical tricks Schickele used. That’s a tricky balance, and I’m working on how to do it best. These pieces can give people a fun introduction to classical music, and I’ll work on explaining the connections between the satires and their models.

An early target will be a public or semi-public alpha version. It will have articles on just some of the music, so readers can comment on the approach I’m taking and suggest tweaks.

My setting of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”

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I’ve written and recorded a musical setting of Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” It’s one of the most ambitious compositions I’ve done, and it pushes my vocal abilities, but I think you’ll find it listenable. If you caught it when I first uploaded it, you might want to go back. Last week I remixed it to strengthen the vocal line a little and fix a bad note.

Yeats uses the word “gyre” in a personally specific way. It’s only loosely like Lewis Carroll’s “gyre and gimble.”

About a year ago, I posted some thoughts on the poem. I still stand by them.

A note on Fanny Mendelssohn

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Fanny Mendelssohn, also known by her married name Fanny Hensel, was a sister of the 19th-century composer Felix Mendelssohn. While she wasn’t nearly as famous as her brother, she was an excellent composer herself, and she doubtless would have been better known if 19th-century European society didn’t discourage women from professionally writing music. The website HenselPushers is devoted to publicizing her music and making it available in printed form. The site maintainer’s name isn’t given, but it’s been going for quite a while and appears reliable.

A recent article pointed out a common mistranslation of a statement by her father, Abraham Mendelssohn. Her biographer, R. Larry Todd, translated a sentence in a letter from Abraham to the 14-year-old Fanny as: “Music will perhaps become his [Felix’s] profession, whilst for you it can and must only be an ornament, never the root of your being and doing.” That sounds as if he was discouraging her from making music important in her life.

The actual quote, according to HenselPushers, is “Die Musik wird für ihn vielleicht Beruf, während sie für dich stets nur Zierde, immer Bildungsmittel, Grundbaß deines Seins und Thuns werden kann und soll.” The usual quotation has “niemals” (never) rather than “immer” (always), reversing the meaning, and omits “Bildungsmittel” (means of personal development). He recognized that the chances of her becoming a professional musician were slim at best, but he still regarded music as very important to her future.

This is just a short signal boost, so I won’t get into the reasons for the misquote, which HenselPushers thinks was an intentional alteration by her son Sebastian Hensel. I haven’t independently verified the analysis, but the translation of the German lines looks right to the best of my understanding. “Grundbaß” (spelled “Grundbass” today) means the “ground bass” or bass line of a piece of music; if it had a secondary meaning in the Mendelssohns’ time, it’s dropped out today. Abraham was using the word metaphorically.

Fanny is believed to have contributed to some of the compositions Felix published in his own name, though we’ll never know the exact extent.

Here’s a sampling of three of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words.

Ona Judge

This entry was posted in News and tagged history liberty music New Hampshire on by

On Saturday, May 23, at 2 PM, a mural of Ona Judge will be unveiled at 222 Court Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I would have missed it except for someone passing on the news yesterday evening. It’s supposedly historically accurate, and it will be a good addition to Portsmouth’s many historical sights. I like to think of her as one of the first Free Staters.

In looking for information about her and the event, I learned that today, May 21, is Ona Judge Day in Philadelphia. So that’s two reasons for quickly throwing together a post this morning.

I should also mention my song about her, “Washington’s Slave”, which is on Bandcamp as part of my album, The Road to Freedom.

Upcoming silent film: D. W. Griffith’s America

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged history music New Hampshire silent movies on by

On June 23, I’ll be back at the Plaistow Library to accompany the silent film America, made by D. W. Griffith. It will start at 6 PM and run about 2 hours and 20 minutes. Reservations are encouraged so the library knows how many people to expect.

The show is part of the events observing the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will also be a presentation on the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 9, held by the Plaistow Historical Society. As I’m writing, not much information is available on it, but it should be interesting.

Griffith is famous (or infamous) for his 1915 film Birth of a Nation, which presents the Civil War and glorifies the KKK. America, released in 1924, is about the American Revolution. Both films have spectacular battle scenes and stories focusing on individuals. Both have a mix of accurate history and made-up stuff. America culminates in a made-up battle at a made-up place, but the early parts of the Revolution (Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill) are presented fairly accurately. The film doesn’t have the same level of racial problems as the earlier film. There is a black servant, but he isn’t mocked or caricatured (though I’m pretty sure a while actor played him). Natives who fight for the British are called “savages.” Things like that happen in century-old movies.

Poster for the film "America" (1924)The chief villain is a Tory rather than anyone from Britain. Lionel Barrymore portrays Walter Butler, a real-life Loyalist officer, as a sadistic schemer with an evil grin, which he wasn’t in reality. The British regulars are generally shown as brave soldiers. I wonder if Griffith remembered that the maker of the 1917 Spirit of ’76 got a long prison sentence for making an “anti-British” movie when Britain was our ally in World War I. It may have seemed safer to show Tories doing nasty things. Even as it was, the British Board of Film Censors banned the film.

The story of the war is intertwined with a love story; a Patriot is in love with the daughter of a man who remains loyal to Britain. Both of them prove honorable in the end.

As usual, I’ll provide original, live music for the film.