More Bach

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Until recently historians and music scholars believed that JS Bach had 20 children, but in conditions of such extreme fecundity it is easy for biographers (and even parents) to lose count. There was actually a 21 st child, PDQ Bach, who inherited the family’s talent but whose work was poorly documented.

Musician Peter Schickele, who died last week, devoted much of his life to unearthing and publishing this forgotten Bach’s work. The Economist’s obituary describes Schickele’s first success, his discovery that the score of PDQ Bach’s Sanka Cantata was being used as a filter in a caretaker’s coffee percolator in a Bavarian castle. He went on to unearth many more PDQ Bach compositions.

Since then Schickele brought to the world the delight of 70 PDQ Bach works including Eine Kleine Nichtmusik,The Short-tempered Clavier, and the full-length opera Abduction of Figaro, for which he translated the libretto into English.

Papageno-Papagena

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