The Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion is a piece of music written by Peter Schickele, touted as a composition of the fictional P.D.Q. Bach.http://www.presser.com/Composers/info.cfm?Name=PETERSCHICKELE It consists of 4 movements, and is meant to be humorous to listen to. The players are told to play the piece sloppily, especially the fourth movement. The whole piece is about 10-11 minutes long.

Movements

• Grand Entrance: A short movement with repeated lines by the whole band. The music is very simple to play.
• Simply Grand Minuet: Features some parts of the band playing with their mouthpiece
  Mouthpiece (brass)
  On brass instruments the mouthpiece is the part of the instrument which is placed upon the player's lips. The purpose of the mouthpiece is a resonator, which passes vibration from the lips to the column of air contained within the instrument, giving rise to the standing wave pattern of vibration in...
  
  s only, to create a duck call
  Duck call
  A Duck call may refer to either the process by which a hunter lures waterfowl, or the actual tool that he uses to do so.-Process:Duck calling is the process in which a hunter uses a tool also known as a "duck call" to emulate the sound of a duck as a means to draw them closer.-Tool:As a tool, a...
  
   effect. The lead trombonist plays a high part while the rest of the section plays a very low note, and a piccolo duet is featured as melody. At the end of the piece, the clarinet section takes water and gurgles a B-flat note.
• Romance in the Grand Manner: The melody of this piece is actually Old Folks at Home
  Old Folks at Home
  "Old Folks at Home" is a minstrel song written by Stephen Foster in 1851. It was intended to be performed by the New York blackface troupe Christy's Minstrels. E. P. Christy, the troupe's leader, appears on early printings of the sheet music as the song's creator...
  
   at a slower tempo.
• Rondo Mucho Grando: The final and longest movement of the four; it features a Crasho Grosso. This is where the percussionists are instructed to drop and tip over their instruments while making it appear to be an accident. The melody is very simple, accompanied by an upward scale. There are many references to other musical snippets, including a trombone playing a blues scale
  Blues scale
  The term blues scale is used to describe a few scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. See: blues.The hexatonic, or six note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 4th or 5th degree...
  
   and the trumpet section playing the fanfare before a race begins. One quoted tune is "You Gotta Be a Football Hero
  You Gotta Be A Football Hero
  "You Gotta Be a Football Hero" is a song written by Al Sherman, Buddy Fields and Al Lewis. It is one of the most widely recorded and performed American football anthems of all time...
  
  ," which is immediately turned into the opening theme of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 7
  String Quartet No. 7 (Beethoven)
  Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 7 in F major was published in 1808 as opus 59, No. 1. It consists of four movements:# Allegro in F major# Allegretto vivace e sempre scherzando in B major# Adagio molto e mesto - attacca in F minor...
  
  . A siren then announces the end of the piece.

Discography

• Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion (Telarc CD-80307 CS-30307)
• The Ill-Conceived P.D.Q. Bach Anthology (Telarc CD-80520) (excerpts)