Peter Schickele (b 1935) is undoubtedly best known for his work with the music of PDQ Bach, the youngest and oddest of JS Bach's twenty odd children, but he's also a talented composer in his own right. His youthful musical environments were perhaps not the richest — he was the only bassoonist in Fargo, and subsequently the only music major in his class at Swarthmore (1957) — but he wound up studying with many of the giants of mid-century musical education, including Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, and Vincent Persichetti. When he was only 26, he landed a teaching job at Juilliard, but, even more remarkably, he was able to quit four years later to embark on a career as a freelance composer. He's managed to keep this up right thru to the present — he currently lives with his wife in upstate New York and isn't affiliated with any institution (occasional research work on PDQ Bach at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople notwithstanding).