April 1st, known to children worldwide as April Fools' Day, is a day known for mischief and tricks. According to Chase's Calendar of Events, the traditions may have begun in France in 1564 when the date for the New Year in the Gregorian calendar moved from April 1 to January 1. Those individuals who insisted on celebrating the new year on the old day were considered April fools; it became standard procedure to play jokes and pranks on them.
Composers have often ridiculed themselves and their austere, esteemed colleagues. One of the best known is Peter Schickele's infamous creation, P.D.Q. Bach, the missing link of the Johann Sebastian Bach lineage. Of course, the scholarship surrounding this infamous concoction must be taken with a grain of salt.
Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard features the humorous but touching jester Jack Point. Ruggiero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci portrays the activities of the male clown Canio and his female counterpart Nedda as they travel around the countryside. Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka, a ballet in four scenes, features a charlatan who magically brings the inert, lifeless puppet figures of Petrushka, a Ballerina and Moor to life. Richard Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel Merry Pranks, a tone poem for orchestra, characterizes the affairs and tricks of the German peasant folk hero.
As the children say in Scandinavia,
"April, April, you silly fish,
I can trick you however I wish."
