October 07, 2004

Damn you, Peter Schickele!

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The radio is currenting airing (ha ha) the famed Air from J.S. Bach's 3rd Orchestral Suite. A good performance and a piece justly deserving its fame.

Alas, I think it's been ruined for me forever. I am a great fan of Peter Schickele's P.D.Q. Bach parody albums. One of them, P.D.Q. Bach: 1712 Overture and Other Musical Assaults, contains a track called "Bach Portrait". It's Schickele's riff on Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" and contains lots of sweeping Copelandesque music, together with excerpts from some of the letters of J.S. Bach, in most of which the great composer bitched rather loudly about how everyone was ripping him off.

But the piece also contains extracts from a number of J.S. Bach's works, including the Air from the 3rd Orchestral Suite. Schickele, being the fiend that he is, overlays the piece with a slow rendering of "Camptown Races". Now I can't listen to the original without hearing the joke as well.

[Insert "going spare-al" look here.]

UPDATE: Our Llama Military Correspondent busts me on spelling. Unfortunately, I used up my post-quota on "Schickele". My bad.

Posted by Robert at October 7, 2004 10:44 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Old Aaron spelled his last name "Copland"

Posted by: LMC at October 7, 2004 03:52 PM
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