P.D.Q Bach - The Civilian Barber (S. 4F) - all of the music that has been discovered
0:00 - Overture
2:25 - Perückenstück (Hair Piece) (featuring Marilyn Brustadt, off-coloratura soprano)
13:57 - Entrance of the Dragoons
16:09 - Dance of St. Vitus
16:43 - His Majesty's Minuet
18:53 - Fanfare for the Royal Shaft
20:00 - Her Majesty's Minuet
21:50 - Depature of the Dragoons
The New York Pick-Up Ensemble conducted by Professor Peter Schickele
(The overture was made with Sibelius Ultimate & Noteperformer)
Although P. D. Q. Bach is known to have made quite a few sallies into the musical theater, only four complete operas and fragments of a fifth, The Civilian Barber, have so far been recovered from oblivion. These fragments are tantalizing, because aside from what we can surmise from the text of the Perückenstück we know virtually nothing about even the plot of The Civilian Barber; the author has discovered the cast list reproduced below, but it seems to raise more questions than it answers:
The Count
The Countess
Le Figaro
A maid
A company of dragoons
The King
The Queen
A doctor
Three chimney sweeps
The ghost of Cleopatra
Marie Antoinette
Davy Crockett
The Civilian Barber first came to the author’s attention when he ran across a loose sheet of manuscript paper containing sketches for the overture; in the margin is a note in P. D. Q.’s handwriting which, translated, reads: “Finish New Year’s afternoon,” indicating that the opera was premiered on the evening of January 1, probably toward the end of his life, since Davy Crockett was not born until 1786. The completed overture, however, has never been found, and in all honesty it must be admitted that the author wrote an overture based upon the sketches and published it under his own name, without mentioning that of P. D. Q. Bach. In his defense, the author can only state that he was very young at the time, and that, had he known what P. D. Q.’s completed pieces sounded like, he would have stolen from somebody else.
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