An Honorary Moron (via See-Dub)

Back in 2010 I sent in an email naming James Madison an honorary Moron, which you kindly posted here and attributed to a semi-anonymous retired blogger:

Today I would like to nominate another Great Moron of History: J.S. Bach.

Oh, sure, everyone thinks he was a frumpy old Lutheran who wrote motets, but I would direct the Moron Horde's attention to possibly one of the greatest pieces of Moron music until Paul Anka gave the cutoffs on My Way: Bach's Peasant Cantata, BWV 212.

So picture this-- Bach's patron Picander gets a new boss and commissions Bach to set an off-color peasant song about him. First, writing an off-color song about your new boss is grounds for honorary Moronitude right there. Submitting it to J.S. Freakin' Bach to set it to music? That's evil genius. "Is this song making fun of me?" "Sir, J.S. bach would never do that." "Oh, all right then."

So Bach did, and basically it is a wonderful piece of music about sex, rump-shaking, beer-drinking, and (most importantly for Moronity) complaining about high taxes.

Yes, this is Johann Sebastian Bach. I'm serious. Here's how he starts it out:

2. Aria

We've got a brand-new governor
In this our Chamberlain.
He gives us beer to warm the heart,
That is the kernel plain.
The Rev' may ever angry be,
Ye players, ready for the fling!
Already Molly's skirt shakes, see,
The wanton little thing.

(Bach knew a little bit about wanton little things, having fathered TWENTY children by two wives. I don't know how Mack Daddy Bach got any work done. He must have had a harpsichord right there in the boudoir.)

Anyway, after some further Naughty-Peasant back and forth, including a discussion of "buzzing in the britches", they turn to the subject of taxes:

5. Recit. (B)

The Squire is good: but yet that taxman,
He is of sulphur made,
Who like a bolt a dollar's fine hath laid
Before we scarcely even get our fingers wet.

6. Aria (B)

Ah, Sir taxman, be not all too grim,
Nor us wretched peasant people trim!
Easy on our skin;
If our cabbage then
Like the worms you've eaten to the stem,
Have done with them!

It goes on like that; you get the idea...this is Tea Party tax protest music you can sing in church, or at a Civic Event, and unless someone speaks Old Peasant Saxon they won't have any idea you just excoriated high taxes.

Bach's birthday is March 31st. So on the occasion of this, his- oh, three hundred and twenty eighth birthday, I would like to nominate J.S. Bach and his boss Picander to official Moron status and recommend the Peasant Cantata be named the official Cantata of the Ace of Spades Lifestyle.

Don't make a maniac out of me.

posted by Dave In Texas at 02:09 PM

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