P.D.Q. Bach - Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle, and Balloons

P.D.Q. Bach - Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle, and Balloons (S.66)

0:00 - Allegro moulto
0:44 - Romanza II: Adagio sireno
2:07 - Minaret and Trio
4:46 - Romanza I: Chi largo
6:47 - Presto changio

Maurice Eisenstadt, bagpipes
Peter Schickele, bicycle
Robert Lewis, balloons
The Royal P.D.Q. Bach Festival Orchestra
Jorge Mester, conductor

Since the discovery of the Pervertimento, even his detractors have had to admit that P.D.Q. Bach must be considered history’s greatest late-eighteenth-century Southern German composer of multi-movement works for bagpipes and chamber orchestra. Probably with the encouragement of Thomas Collins, the perverted piper for whom the piece was penned, P.D.Q. used the instrument in a as improper, if not downright immoral, by most pipers today. To these purists the only thing worse than detaching the melody chanter (pipe) and playing it alone as if it were an oboe is detaching the drones and playing them in the same manner, and the use in the penultimate movement of the practice chanter - usually taken out only in private, behind locked doors - is particularly offensive to modern tastes. Thomas Collins’ attitude, however, was “If it feels good, play it,” and even the most sensitive listener will agree that in point of fact the Pervertimento is no more abnormal or unnatural than any other work by the same composer.
It is common knowledge that P.D.Q. invented a technique for playing arpeggios (broken chords) on the foot pedals of an organ; the technique, known as the “tootsie roll,” is now standard practice among organists, and obviously this inventiveness with pedal technique stood P. D. Q. in good stead when it came to writing for the bicycle. Most people do not realize that the bicycle was originally invented as a musical instrument, and that only in the nineteenth century, when composers began to ignore it in favor of the saxophone, did it gradually come to be regarded as a vehicle. P.D.Q. apparently played the bicycle himself, and judging by the solo part in the Pervertimento, he must have been quite adept; the siren song in the second movement requires a high degree of pedal control, since any variation in speed results in a corresponding variation in pitch (see photograph below).
The writing for balloons is, as one might expect, in the typical French style of the day. Balloons had been invented in France for an entirely different purpose, but French musicians (or musiciens français, as they liked to call themselves) were quick to realize that balloons had unique expressive possibilities, and by the middle of the eighteenth century the Paris school of composers was known throughout Europe for colorful balloon writing. The numbering of the second and fourth movements seems puzzling until one remembers that P.D.Q. never numbered his pages, a fact that must be taken into consideration when analyzing the formal construction of many of his pieces.

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