LONG LIVE THE KING
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SKU: PR.312418560
Composed by PDQ Bach. Edited by Professor Peter Schickele. Choral. Performance Score. With Standard notation. Composed November 13 2001. 8 pages. Duration 2 minutes. Theodore Presser Company #312-41856. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.312418560).ISBN 9781598062502. UPC: 680160584543. Octavo inches. Key: Eb major.
Theodore Presser Company announces the release of its first P.D.Q. Bach octavo in about ten years, a hilarious and satirical ode to the King of France, who was beheaded during the French Revolution, complete with sound effects. The historical tie-in makes Long Live the King appropriate for high school choir in particular. The program notes have a fictitious story about how the composer found an old manuscript written by his departed uncle, with a note - I have just composed a major choral work in honor of the recent revolution in France, called Long Live the King; the title, I hasten to assure you, is meant to be ironic – my sympathies are always with the people, especially the people who run taverns. The invention of the guillotine gives, I think you will agree, new meaning to the term head of state. For intermediate choirs. Duration: 2'.
The serendipitous discovery of the only known copy of Long Live the King was an especially big dealie for the author of this little essay on the serendipitous discovery of the only known copy of Long Live the King. He had just finished performing the demanding lasso d’amore/tromboon part in P.D.Q. Bach’s Shepherd on the Rocks, with a Twist at a concert in Paris (Texas, not the other one in Arkansas), and, as he turned to exit into the wings, several sheets of what turned out to be music paper wafted down from the fly space above the stage, wafted, in fact, right on top of the author’s by-now gray head (it had been a long concert). A quick perusal of the musical missiles revealed them to be a work for which the author, a professor at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, had been searching for for aeons, even months, since reading a reference to it in one of the composer’s letters to his uncle, Schweinhardt “Piggy” Bach: “I have just composed a major choral work in honor of the recent revolution in France, called Long Live the King; the title, I hasten to assure you, is meant to be ironic – my sympathies are always with the people, especially the people who run taverns. The invention of the guillotine gives, I think you will agree, new meaning to the term “head of state.” The piece is a cappella, and lasts in excess of two minutes, unless it is done up to tempo, in which case all bets are off.”This unusually minor “major choral work” was discovered on November 13, 2001; it was redacted to a fare-thee-well on April 11, 2002. The first modern performers were Michèle Eaton, David Düsing and, well, modesty forbids.