Funny / P.D.Q. Bach

• An early part of "The Art of the Ground Round" has two singers singing their parts separately, then overlapping after both have been sung. Seemingly innocuous words with inconspicuous pauses between them end up overlapping into, "Look!", "Up!", "Her!", "Dress!".
  Singer 1: Why, she's ... up ... dressing. She'll be down in a jiffy.
  Singer 2: ............. Look ... her ... face could launch a thousand ships.
• "The Erotica Variations for Banned Instruments" — said banned instruments tend to cross the conventional line as to what constitutes a musical instrument. Like deflating a balloon at certain moments in the song, or blowing through a large set of pitched tubes.
• The final variation of the "Erotica Variations" is a straight-forward variation on the theme, until it jumps out with the introduction to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. We then realize that the variation had been featuring the Fifth Symphony's four-note motif from the start.
• From "The Seasonings, S. 1½ tsp.":
  Tenor: Then asked he of her...
  Bass: Have you any onions, and have you savory?
  Tenor: But she answered him not... saying...
  Alto and Soprano: Onions have I, but savory have I none.
  Tenor: Whereupon he scolded her...
  Bass: Then thou art an unsavory rapscallion!
• Cantata: Iphigenia in Brooklyn: "As you can see from the catalog number, S. 56152, this is a fairly late work."
  • The first aria in the cantata works "Jesus Loves Me" in as a countermelody (played shrilly on oboe and bassoon reeds with no instruments attached), while the second manages to squeeze Dvorak's Humoresque into the middle of a baleful dirge!
• From "The Abduction of Figaro", the first part of the libretto is an operatic rendition of "Found a Peanut". "Oh, Suzanna!" follows a little later.
• The title of the 2006 live album: P.D.Q. Bach in Houston: We Have A Problem!
• The 2006 live album includes a performance of "New Horizons in Music Appreciation" that features a referee, the conductor in kneepads and batting gloves, a penalty box for flubbed notes, "instant replay", and the oboist getting into an argument with the conductor, among other things.