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Article Excerpt
After nearly forty years of "discovery" it truly is no secret that Peter Schickele is still composing the works of the fictional composer P.D.Q. Bach. By composing this humorous music, he carves his own niche as a musical comedian while also maintaining the other part of his career as a "serious" composer. An interview of 1974 with Peter Schickele provides a historical snapshot of his techniques of composing the music of P.D.Q. Bach. (1) We learn that he prefers to parody music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries because of the form and pattern of the pieces. He blends well-known motives, like "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits," with baroque and classical sounding phrases, and adds familiar classical and popular themes as quotations. Schickele composes music to make the performer seem lost in a complicated passage, and to be playing wrong notes and strange sounds. Another technique he uses is to create instruments out of unusual items and materials such as bicycles and music stands. The jokes present in the P.D.Q. Bach music may be written for a musically sophisticated audience, but they have a wide appeal. The musical jokes can range from witty--with tricks played on an established form or style--to slapstick, and from popular to obscure. A couple of questions come to mind: "Has Peter Schickele always told similar jokes in his P.D.Q. Bach music?" And, "Does P.D.Q. Bach's musical comedy have early, middle, and late periods?" (2)
The goal of this article is to introduce a different way of thinking about the P.D.Q. Bach music, and to intimate that it could, indeed, have early, middle, and late periods. This will be accomplished using the following methods: reviewing existing literature on humor in music for types and categories of musical humor, applying these categories to the P.D.Q. Bach music in a brief taxonomical discussion using a wide chronological range of representative works, and using this discussion to closely analyze and compare two vocal and two instrumental pieces. This approach will demonstrate how the musical jokes are treated, and will establish a framework for more comprehensive examination of comic stylistic trends of the P.D.Q. Bach music over time.
For the sake of brevity and clarity, this article will not address certain aspects related to this topic. As is well recognized, P.D.Q. Bach is not simply a pen name under which Peter Schickele writes comic music. P.D.Q. Bach can also be defined as an institution in a sense that Schickele has created a theatrical and performing tradition with the P.D.Q. Bach concerts, as well as his alter ego "Professor Peter Schickele," member of the fictional Department of Music Pathology, University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Because this study is devoted particularly to the style of jokes found in music, it will focus on the music of P.D.Q. Bach and not the theatrical elements of a P.D.Q. Bach concert, except as they are prescribed in a score. Nor will this study delve into descriptions of humor in music, or explain why a joke in a P.D.Q. Bach piece is funny. Existing literature on the psychology of musical humor explains this quite well. (3) Furthermore, one does not need to understand the causes of psychological and emotional effects that music may have for a listener in order to understand its purely technical aspects. Doing so quickly becomes an exercise in pedantry, as the reader will become lost in tangential discussions in an attempt to see the comic forms and structures inherent within the music. (4) What will be addressed here is how the P.D.Q. Bach music can be analyzed based on studies of humor in music, and to introduce readers to the notion that musical jokes in P.D.Q. Bach have evolved over time. In the context of this paper, to attempt an explanation of why the jokes in P.D.Q. Bach are funny would be tantamount to explaining why water is wet, and falls outside of its scope.
CATEGORIES OF MUSICAL HUMOR: A REVIEW OF EXISTING LITERATURE
The discussion of categories and even subcategories of musical humor is nothing new. Halfway through the eighteenth century, comical music, mainly in Germany and Austria, had its own classification system complete with a set of characteristics, norms, and rules regarding performance. This kind of categorization lasted into the early nineteenth century. (5) Comedy was divided into two levels--high and low. High comedy yielded "pure laughter," and low comedy, or the ludicrous, yielded laughter with contempt. (6) This can most certainly be applied to the P.D.Q. Bach oeuvre, but it may be applied inconsistently. Some may consider all of the P.D.Q. Bach music to be a farce of classical music, while others may argue that the finer points of certain pieces fall into the "high comic" category. It may also be unfair to subject the P.D.Q. Bach music to this approach, as Peter Schickele states that there is no hidden agenda behind his satirization of classical music. (7)
The recent literature on humor in music includes several works that deal specifically with types and categories of musical humor. In some cases these categories are sparse, vague, and inconsistent. Some of the works are lengthy chapters in books or of book length; they provide explicit and detailed headings for musical humor with plenty of accompanying musical examples. Others have only a few categories, dealing primarily with the intent of composers to create a humorous composition, but are backed up by very sound arguments. Many of the consulted articles describe a category of musical humor based only on isolated instances of jokes, but do not subcategorize them by more specific headings, while other authors present some semblance of a hierarchy. These hierarchical treatments will prove helpful when it comes to in-depth analyses of works, allowing for more nuanced explanations of musical joke technique. The varieties of musical humor discussed in this literature review will form a basis for applicable categories in the P.D.Q. Bach music, and will then be used for further analysis.
Articles that contain inconsistent categories of humor are typically found in nonmusicological periodicals. Here are two examples. "The Musical Mask of Comedy" by Richard A. Coolidge, which appeared in a music education journal, presents three types of musical humor: absolute, autonomous, and programmatic. (8) According to Coolidge, "absolute" musical humor consists of funny effects made for their own sakes, with no attributed motives or subjects--musical instruments making rude or childish noises, for example. "Autonomous" humor consists of "in" jokes for musicians, such as musical quotations, or a dominant seventh chord resolving to something other than the tonic. "Programmatic" humor is defined by the composer--as in instrumental program music--or by collaborators, such as librettists in opera, or lyricists and poets of individual songs. "The Composer Jests," by Ludwig Misch, appeared in Musical America. (9) Misch groups musical humor into eleven categories with illustrative and sometimes whimsical headings. Some of these have similar meanings: "Logical Contradiction" and "The 'Surprise' of Course" address humor resulting from a contradiction between what is expected and what actually happens; similarly, "'Naughty' Joke?" refers to unexpected dissonances and forte chords. Other categories are more specific, such as "The Canary," dealing with funny titles; or "Pigs and Bassoons," which addresses instruments making funny noises, or a work transposed for an instrument in a much lower register than originally intended. Unfortunately, many instances of musical comedy fall under more than one of these headings, making Coolidge's and Misch's categories of musical humor inconsistent and confusing.
Book-length studies of musical humor typically organize chapters into hierarchical categories of humor that include very specific subcategories with accompanying musical examples. Two such volumes will be discussed here.
In his categorization of "Inherent Types of Musical Comedy" [Typen immanent musikalischer Komik], Michael Stille allows only three general categories of musical comedy: "Playing on the expectations of listeners: the trumped anticipation" [Das Spiel mit der Erwartung des Horers: die getauschte Antizipation], "Connection of contrasting sound layers" [Die Verknupfung kontrastierender Klangschichten], and "Comedy of musical transposition" [Die Komik musikalischer Transpositionen]. (10) He breaks each of these into at least a few subcategories, and illustrates them with a discussion involving examples from the classical musical literature. Under his first category Stille gives musical examples that support the following subheadings: "Thwarting of listeners through unexpected techniques" [Irrefuhrung des Horers durch unerwarteten satztechnischen Fortgang], "Comic formation of conclusions" [Komische Schlussbildungen], "Dynamic surprise effects" [Dynamische Uberraschungseffekte], and "Comic irregularity in rhythm" [Komische Unregelmassigkeiten im Rhythmus]. (11) His second category features discussions of "Groups of greatly contrasting instruments" [Zusammenstellung stark kontrastierender Instrumente], "Combination of heterogeneous voices" [Kombination heterogener Stimmen], and "Quodlibet" [Das Quodlibet]. (12) The third category contains five subcategories: "Unusual use of instruments" [Ungewohnliche Verwendung von Instrumenten], "Imitation of uncommon instruments in the nature of concerts" [Nachahmung von im Konzertwesen ungebrauchlichen Instrumenten], "Musical caricatures of the village musician and amateur composers" [Musikalische Karikaturen dorflicher Musizierart und dilettantischer Kompositionsweise], "Musical comic parody" [Die musikalisch-komische Parodie] where known musical works and styles are degraded and travestied so that listeners will laugh, and "Comedy of musical quotes" [Die Komik musikalischer Zitate]. (13)
Hubert Daschner, like Stille, in his Humor in der Musik, states categories and subcategories of musical humor, and gives supporting musical examples for each. Some of these are similar to Stille's, such as a discussion of how elements inherent in music like dynamics and rhythm can contribute to musical comedy. (14) His approach to other kinds of humor differs from other writers; he addresses "Object-bound humor" [Objektgebundener Humor] in music with a discussion of different animals and humans as the comic object throughout the common-practice era. (15) Humorous treatments of dice music, canons, palindromes, and Augenmusik appear in his book as well. (16) Lastly, Daschner gives us a look at different forms of humor apparent in vocal music in his chapter "Word and text-bound humor" [Wort- und textgebundener Humor]. (17) He covers instances of stuttering, word puzzles, spelling jokes, excessive chatter in texts, imitation of dialects, and gibberish. He also discusses the word- and tone-painting in vocal music throughout music history.
More recent literature explains how a composer's intentions can be an important factor in the discourse on musical humor. Daschner touches upon this in his book, and Gretchen Wheelock examines intentionality in musical humor from an interesting standpoint. (18) As an example, in the opening chapter of her book on Haydn's musical humor, she discusses Mozart's Ein musikalischer Spass (A Musical Joke), which was well recognized even in Mozart's time as being intentionally humorous. (19) Mozart makes fun of inept composers and performers in this piece; he takes on the persona of an incompetent composer and must prove that this individual cannot create a satisfying piece of music. Wheelock's argument is analogous to Peter Schickele's intentional jesting with the P.D.Q. Bach music. Listeners understand that P.D.Q. Bach is a fictional composer, and another persona or career facet of Peter Schickele. In most P.D.Q. Bach works, Schickele proves that his fictional composer...
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