A castle in the Bavarian countryside of Germany housed the first manuscript Professor Peter Schickele found by P.D.Q. Bach, the last son of Johann Sebastian Bach. The piece found was called the ‘Sanka’ Cantata.

More manuscripts were found, including the ‘1712 Overture,’ ‘Oedipus Tex’ and ‘The Abduction of Figaro.’

BGSU students and faculty can discover P.D.Q. Bach too.

Tonight, at 8 p.m. in Kobacker Hall at the Moore Musical Arts Center, works by both P.D.Q. Bach and Peter Schickele will be performed.

This is the Jekyll and Hyde Tour, and Schickele said the audience can decide who is who – if he is Jekyll or Hyde.

Perhaps those composition titles and puns sound slightly familiar to University students, but the connection can’t be placed.

‘[Schickele] is a master of musicological puns,’ said Mary Natvig, professor of musicology.

The first connection comes from J.S. Bach’s Coffee Cantata, which Peter Schickele, his brother and a friend were listening to 40-some years ago. Schickele decided to write a parody, which turned into the ‘Sanka’ Cantata.

This composition was for his own amusement, but when he was a student at Juilliard, someone heard Schickele and some friends talking about funny things to do during a concert, Schickele said.

This person came up to him and asked him to perform at another student’s piano recital, and he performed some of his amusing compositions.

Schickele’s performance then became an annual event at Juilliard.

In 1965 Schickele’s first performance of the P.D.Q. Bach works that he composed was well received in New York City.

Don Wilson, BGSU professor emeritus and friend and student of Schickele, was at this first performance.

He explained this concert began with the conductor saying that the professor must be running late. Then, from the back of the balcony, Schickele ran down the steps, grabbed a rope and swung onto the stage, Tarzan style.

‘There’s a beginning for a concert,’ Wilson said.

Eventually, the P.D.Q. Bach concerts took off.

‘By the 70s, P.D.Q. Bach was beginning to make a living for me,’ Schickele said.

As Schickele composed P.D.Q. Bach pieces, he created the story about P.D.Q. Bach and the discovery by Professor Schickele.

This creation was a spin-off of all the people discovering manuscripts, and the music world questioning whether they were real or not, Schickele said.

As each piece was composed, the story about P.D.Q. Bach grew.

‘The key is the title….Usually the title comes first, and the piece springs from that.’

Schickele composes not only comical pieces, but also modern works.

‘To me, they just seem like different parts of my personality,’ Schickele said.

The P.D.Q. Bach compositions’ verse sometimes is written in German, but Schickele said lack of knowledge of German does not prohibit the audience from understanding the song. For instance, one song is titled ‘Es war ein dark und shtormy Night’ – ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

Schickele chose to write some songs in German because Germans are often the most important musical scholars, Schickele said.

‘A lot of the most widely read musicology texts are by German scholars,’ he said.

The music is written in the style of 18th century baroque music, which is what J.S. Bach composed.

‘If you put German sacred words to that [type of music], it would sound like Bach,’ Natvig said.

This change to Bach’s style was on purpose, Natvig said.

‘He thinks we’ve all overanalyzed J.S. Bach,’ she said. ‘Schickele has made him mediocre.’