I need to check out PDQ — I remember enjoying one of his albums many years ago at a friend’s house but never managed to buy or listen to any more of his work. He seemed both very funny and actually a good musician......
One tidbit stuck in my mind from one of his “compositions”....
VIRGINIA.......
THEY CALLED HER “VIRGIN” FOR SHORT
BUT NOT FOR LONG......
From his bio... Peter Schickele was born on July 17, 1935, in Ames, Iowa, and brought up in Washington, D.C. and Fargo, North Dakota, where he studied composition with Sigvald Thompson. He graduated from Swarthmore in 1957, having had the distinction of being the only music major (as he had been, earlier, the only bassoonist in Fargo). By that time he had already composed and conducted four orchestral works, a great deal of chamber music and a number of songs. He subsequently studied composition with Roy Harris and Darius Milhaud, and with Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma at The Juilliard School of Music. He composed music for high schools in Los Angeles under a Ford Foundation grant before returning to teach at Juilliard in 1961. In 1965 he gave up teaching to become the freelance composer/performer he has been ever since.
Of the several dozen symphony concerts I've been to, his was definitely one of the most memorable.