P.D.Q. Bach - Notebook for Betty Sue Bach (S. 13 going on 14)
0:00 - Allemande left
1:45 - Corrate
2:55 - Oh! Courante!
4:28 - Two Part Contraption
5:14 - Three Part Contraption
7:09 - Andre Gigue
8:37 - Traumarei
10:41 - Capriccio Espagnole for Charles III "The Reign in Spain"
Mary Norris
David Nale (2, 6)
P.D.Q. Bach, the last and certainly the least of the great Johann Sebastian Bach's many children, has been called "history's most justly neglected composer", and surely anyone who has heard the Notebook for Betty Sue Bach would be hard put to it to disagree with that assessment. Completed at Baden-Baden-Baden during the last creative period of his life, the Contrition Period, the piece actually represents a summing up of many of the principal stylistic characteristics, or gimmicks, that had marred P.D.Q. Bach's music right from the very beginning of the Initial Plunge Period. The work was written for the daughter of P.D.Q.'s uncle, Leonhardt Sigismund Dietrich Bach, who, since he lived in St. Petersburg, was the composer's most distant relative. In 1807, still unmarried, Betty-Sue visited P.D.Q. on his death-floor, at which time he presented her with the piece. She was extremely moved, and she wanted to have it included in the memorial concert of his music that was given in Wein-am-Rhein a month after his death, but since the faster pieces in the collection were beyond her capabilities as a pianist, the Notebook was premiered by Porcelina Speck, the most accomplished keyboardist in Wein-am-Rhein, after which the two women got together in a corner and traded stories.
The allemande left was a popular 16th-century dance for left-footed people; by the 18th century it had been not only completely stylized, but completely forgotten as well by everyone, that is, except P.D.Q. Bach. Another dance of the period was well known in two quite distinct forms: the French courante and the Italian corrente; but P.D.Q. was, as far as I know, the only European composer to make use of the much rarer Japanese form, the corrate. The Oh! Courante!, on the other hand, seems to be based on a misunderstanding of both the French and Italian types.
J.S. Bach's two and three-part inventions are among his best-known works, and his son's two and three-part contraptions serve to make P.D.Q.'s statement that "my father gave me no music lessons whatsoever" completely credible.
The gigue, like the courante, existed in two forms, and naturally P.D.Q. got them mixed up. The Andre Gigue, in spite of the French connotation of its title, is definitely of the Italian type; in fact, in the original manuscript this movement is almost totally obscured by tomato sauce and petrified spaghetti.
When an eight-year-old boy's father dies, it must be regarded as a traumatic experience no matter what the lad's feelings towards his progenitor are, and P.D.Q.'s Traumarei, although written many years after his father's death, might be expected to reflect his reaction to this ultimate act of ignoring; one must admit, however, that the dominant feeling expressed in the Traumarei is that of indifference. This movement dates from the Initial Plunge Period, and was originally discovered as a separate piece; it may be heard on the Vanguard album Report from Hoople: P.D.Q. Bach On The Air, played on the actual piano that P.D.Q. used in Vienna during that fateful first period. The version appearing in the notebook is slightly different from the earlier version; in all likelihood this discrepancy is due less to an attempt at improving the piece than to the composer's laziness if, while making a copy of a piece, the original fell under the table, P.D.Q. would usually recompose the rest of it rather than get down and search for the original.
One of the many countries that P.D.Q. passed through during the long period which the present editor has called “The Lost Years” is Spain, and the Capriccio Espagnole for Charles III: "The Reign In Spain" is a remarkable evocation of some of the most colorful aspects of that fascinating country. Musically, the influence of Domenico Scarlatti is almost embarrassingly evident, but whereas Scarlatti's conjuring-up of the Spanish flavor is subtle and sophisticated, and therefore somewhat earthbound, P.D.Q. Bach really lets the Spanish fly. He uses several extramusical devices which open up new vistas of programmatic identification while at the same time lowering artistic standards to a point very near Absolute Zero. Achievements such as this have put P.D.Q. Bach where he is today.
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