American composer Peter Schickele died on 16 January at the age of 88. He has written an imaginary biography of P. D. Q. Bach, a fictitious last son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and completed it with a large number of self-composed parodistic pieces of music that he published under this pseudonym. Schickele regularly ‘discovered’ new old works by P. D. Q. Bach, published them and performed them for the first time, especially in his Christmas concerts in Carnegie Hall. 17 CDs with these compositions have been released.
However, Schickele has also composed other works as well as film music and musicals.
His teachers at the Juilliard School included Roy Harris, whom he often described in subsequent years as the person who had influenced him the most, as well as Darius Milhaud, Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma. From 1961 to 1965, he himself taught at the Juilliard School, after which he continued to work as a freelancer.
