Peter Schickele

I was just trying to explain to my cat—well, it's Katie's cat really—that Peter Schickele had died.  But she did not seem that concerned.  'But you're here,' she seemed to say, 'Pet me!'

Of course, Schickele has little to do with cats, but I report the facts as they take place.  My father knew Schickele's parents (who were also called Schickele) and the gentleman—Dr. Schickele—was a Ford Foundation exchange professor.  They valiantly tried to explain to us what it was that their son did, but they didn't have the background. 

Well, what he did was invent a fictitious son of the (real) composer,  Johann Sebastian Bach, called P. D. Q. Bach, and proceeded to 'discover' numerous works by this gentleman.  All the works were parodies of existing tunes by well-known composers, that were written by Schickele himself (the parodies, not the originals) and released a number of albums throughout the eighties and the nineties, that were extremely well received. 

In the nineties, and later, Schickele had a regular hour on NPR called Schickele Mix, in which he introduced his audience to a number of pieces, both classical and other, that fitted some theme that he was following. 

Schickele composed at least one wonderful opera (ascribed, as always, to PDQ Bach) called The Abduction of Figaro. 

Peter Schickele had provided those in the know with simply hours of hilarity.  His sense of humor was deliberately clumsy, as befitted an amanuensis of a non existent last child of a German composer of the 1700s.  What an amazing gift to us he was!