PDQ

For more than half a century, in works like the “Unbegun” Symphony and “Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons,” Peter Schickele’s creation, the fictional composer P.D.Q.

Peter Schickele, an American composer whose career as a writer of serious concert music was often eclipsed by that of his antic alter ego, the thoroughly debauched, terrifyingly prolific and mercifully fictional P.D.Q.

For more than a half century, through live performances seemingly born of the marriage of Mozart, the Marx Brothers and Rube Goldberg; prizewinning recordings; and even a book-length biography, P.D.Q.

When it comes to provocatively suggestive titles, composers’ intentions are seldom as successfully realized as with, say, Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy” or P.D.Q.

The satire — some Monty Python, a little “Saturday Night Live,” a whiff of Borat, a welcome boatload of P.D.Q.