PD on Music Theory Print

P. D. Q. Bach

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

P.D.Q. Bach is a fictional composer created by the American composer and musical satirist Peter Schickele for a five-decade career performing the “discovered” works of the “only forgotten son” of the Bach family. Schickele’s music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and Classical music, and slapstick comedy. The name P.D.Q. is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C.P.E. for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach; PDQ is an initialism for “pretty damned quick”. Schickele began working on the character while studying at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Juilliard, and performed a variety of P.D.Q. Bach shows over many years. The Village Voice mentions the juxtaposition of collage, bitonality, musical satire, and orchestral surrealism in a “bizarre melodic stream of consciousness … In P.D.Q. Bach he has single-handedly mapped a musical universe that everyone knew was there and no one else had the guts (not simply the bad taste) to explore.” In 2012, Schickele reduced his touring due to age. On December 28 and 29, 2015, at The Town Hall in New York, he performed two con

P. des Molins

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

P. des Molins (), probably Pierre des Molins, was a French composer-poet in the ars nova style of late medieval music. His two surviving compositions – the ballade De ce que fol pensé and rondeau Amis, tout dous vis – were tremendously popular as they are among the most transmitted pieces of fourteenth-century music. The ballade is found in 12 medieval manuscript sources and featured in a c. 1420 tapestry; the rondeau is found in 8 sources and referenced by the Italian poet Simone de’ Prodenzani. Along with Grimace, Jehan Vaillant and F. Andrieu, Molins was one of the post-Guillaume de Machaut generation whose music shows few distinctly ars subtilior features, leading scholars to recognize Molins’s work as closer to the ars nova style of Machaut. Identity and career P. des Molins is only known for two works, the three-part ballade De ce que fol pensé and three-part rondeau Amis, tout dous vis. No secure biographical information about Molins exists. His name is given as “P. des Molins” in the Chantilly Codex and as “Mulino” in the codex, Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS ital. 568. In several sources, the title of Amis, tout dous le vis is given as “The mills of Paris,” (Molendium de Paris, Die