P. D. Q. Bach

P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. Schickele developed a five-decade-long career, performing the "discovered" works of the "only forgotten son" of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and classical music, and slapstick. The name "P. D. Q." is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. PDQ is an initialism for "".

Schickele began working on the character while studying at the Aspen Music Festival and School and at Juilliard, and has performed a variety of P. D. Q. Bach shows over the years. The Village Voice mentions the juxtaposition of collage, bitonality, musical satire, and orchestral surrealism in a " "bizarre melodic stream of consciousness." "In P.D.Q. Bach he has single-handedly mapped a musical universe that everyone knew was there and no one else had the guts (not simply the bad taste) to explore." As of 2012 he has decreased touring due to age. He performed two concerts to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his first concert at The Town Hall in New York on December 28 and 29, 2015, and continues to have live concert performances.

Schickele gives a humorous fictional biography of the composer according to which P. D. Q. Bach was born in Leipzig on April 1, 1742, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Bach; the twenty-first of Johann's twenty children. He died May 5, 1807, though his birth and death years are often listed on album literature in reverse, as "(1807–1742)?". According to Schickele, P. D. Q. "possessed the originality of Johann Christian, the arrogance of Carl Philipp Emanuel, and the obscurity of Johann Christoph Friedrich."

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