Diverse Ayres on Sundrie Notions
For Bargain Counter Tenor and Keyboard
by PDQ Bach
Chamber Music - Sheet Music

Chamber Music Keyboard, tenor

SKU: PR.411410710

For Bargain Counter Tenor and Keyboard. Composed by PDQ Bach. Edited by Professor Peter Schickele. Sws. Do You Suffer. Classical. Performance Score. With Standard notation. S 99.44. 12 pages. Duration 7 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #411-41071. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.411410710).

ISBN 9781491102763. UPC: 680160087884. 9 x 12 inches. Transcribed by Professor Peter Schickele.

These three songs," Do you suffer, " " Hear me through," and " if you have never" are extraodinary examples of what are perhaps the first singing commericals in history which were concocted by P.D.Q. for a much-needed money-making enterprise in 1795 when commisiions from Prince Fred for such royal occasions as one of his sons losing a tooth proved few and far between, the P.D.Q. Traveling Medicine Show, which left Wein-am-Rhein in the spring and returned eight months later with P.D.Q. a wealthy man. They were originally composed for singer and drum and later unfortunately rescored in Baden -Baden-Baden for Bargain Counter Tenor, Worm & Snake, Violin, Viola, Cello and Harpsichord. In this published arrangement, cunningly transcribed by Prof. Schickele, the Worm & Snake, and the Strings are happily gone, leaving only the keyboard accompaniment. Prof. Schickele remarks in a performance note that, " The first movement of the original Diverse Ayres, A Sinfonia for the instruments alone, has been omitted from this transcription, the feeling being that discretion is the better part of valor, not mention pity." For ad agency executives, TV addicts, and soda jerks.
Although Prince Fred did commission P.D.Q. ever now and then to write a work to celebrate some family occasion such as one of his sons losing a tooth, or even some municipal occasion such as the opening of the Brewery if the Madonna, these commissions were certainly insufficient to support P.D.Q.; gradually he began to realize that he would have to find some extramusical way of supplementing his income. Surprisingly enough, the method he chose turned out to be highly successful; in the spring of 1795 the P.D.Q. Bach Traveling Medicine Show left Wein-am-Rhein, and by the time it returned eight months later, P.D.Q. was a wealthy man.One of the main ingredients of his success was undoutedly the fact hat he employed a singer for who m he composed a series of Diverse Ayres, as he called them, which were actually singing commercials - perhaps the first singing commercials in history.These are the "singing commercials," as we would now call them, that P.D.Q. wrote for use in his traveling medicine show. In a sense they do not belong among the other Contrition Period works, since they were obviously written around the time of the caravan trips (1795-97), but in another sense they do belong here, since they were originally scored only for singer and drum (the latter presumably played by P.D.Q. himself), and it was not until he went to Baden-Baden-Baden that P.D.Q., for some unknown reason probably having something to do with greed, wrote the three arrangements that have survived.