Talk:Johann Sebastian Bach

/batS/?? We have a perfectly good /x/, you know! Elemtilas

I thought you anglophones rather turned it into something like [bA:k_h]? --IJzeren Jan 00:02, 8 Jul 2005 (PDT)

I tend to agree with Jan, but let the native Anglophones decide! Feel free to correct the intended pronunciation of Bach in the FK. Kyrmse 07:34, 8 Jul 2005 (PDT)

Whatever the IPA is, it's the sound of Scots "loch". I think that's pretty close to the German sound in Bach. English *there* retains the sound, too, and even if they didn't probably would still not rhyme the great one's name with "church"! Elemtilas

So, /bak/ isn't used *there*? -- Nik 21:53, 10 Jul 2005 (PDT)

It may be -- all I'm saying is that quite a number of IB Englishes retain the /x/ sound (the one that we lost in night and might). It may well be that /bak/ is the norm for English-language classical music radio announcers; but I simply thought that "J.S. Batch" would be right out! Elemtilas

PDQ Bach

Question: Are we making PDQ Bach a real IB person? The article is somewhat confusing on this point... Elemtilas

Sure, why not! Chalk it up to IB Whimsy! BoArthur 08:26, 9 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I agree. PDQ just fits a little too nicely with the rest of our stuff! Of course, we need to be careful: he is already a fictional person created by someone else, outside the reach of IB. I guess there is no harm in calling him a real composer in our project; but we probably cannot easily use titles of compositions and the like. Perhaps we should just ask Mr. Schickele... --IJzeren Jan 15:07, 9 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Legalities aside, if we take PDQ Bach as a real composer in IB, we lose out on all the really cool stuff Mr Schickele has written. There is almost no way that a composer as incompetent as PDQ is supposed to have been could have either made a living in real life or see such a large corpus survive. Keep in mind that Schickele is a gifted composer in his own right, and his PDQ works flaunt that genius. A *real* incompetent PDQ Bach probably could not have produced anywhere near the quality as his faux-literary counterpart. Elemtilas

Maybe we can link to PDQ Bach and then have Mr. Schickele be his IB counterpart, as he exists here, or we can strike it. I was unaware that it was something that was already outside of IB. BoArthur 18:46, 9 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Yes, Peter Schickele is, and has for many years, been quite quite well known in musical circles. I think there must be about a dozen CDs -- and that's just his PDQ Bach corpus! Even if you're not into classical music, PDQ is quite funny. It might be easiest if we simply strike PDQ from the article altogether. Or if we leave him in, acknowledge that he is the creation of a modern NALien composer and etc. with a link to the PDQ Bach website.

Elemtilas

I have heard several works by the "real" Schickele, too. It we keep PDQ as a real composer *there*, it's simple: they are two different persons. Or the real Schickele doesn't exist there... Is that really much of a problem? I mean, we never mentioned Charles Wuorinen or Alfred Schnittke or Tan Dun either, and I haven't heard anybody complaining about that!

A dozen CDs? Frankly, I think five dozen is much closer to the truth! :)

Well, here's an idea. What if PDQ is a hoax? What if *there*'s Pete Schickele is the same as *here*'s Pete Schickele, but *there* he actually presents his invention as if it were real? And the people actually believe him?

--IJzeren Jan 00:37, 10 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I have no problem with the YES PDQ NO Schickele solution at all, but I guess the main problem would be in taking copyrighted material and using it for our own purposes. Of course, if the article is left as-is, with just the bare mention, then perhaps all would be well.

Not sure what those other guys have to do with anything -- a lot of people, I'd say three to four billion of them, don't get any mention at all in the IB Wiki. We often take real people from *here* and give them slightly different roles *there* -- so it might be that Schnittke took up writing about the SNOR regime's treatment of Jews and eventually emigrated to Judea. Perhaps in his later years, he could take up the fusion of Middle Eastern and European musics into some kind of Ruso-Punk-Pan-Judean Klezm-o-Fùnque?

A hoax wouldn't be far from the truth! ;) Most people even *here* would probably accept PDQ Bach at face value if told that he was one of JS Bach's musically, mm, inclined (or perhaps reclined?) children. They hear the name "Bach" and automatically assume that any combination of initials prepended equals a composer! Elemtilas

Probably the best, and easiest, solution is to leave that article as it is. I'm not an expert in copyright issues, but I can't imagine the name P.D.Q. Bach itself is copyrighted heavily. We are not copying and distributing any of his music, are we? We just borrow the concept, without copying his oeuvre list or any text written by Prof. Schickele. Especially if we give proper credit to him and link to his pages, I don't think we're doing anything reproachable! Of course, we could elaborate the hoax idea by saying that "there is a theory that says that PDQ actually didn't exist, but blabla...". --IJzeren Jan 02:20, 11 Aug 2005 (PDT)