The Austrian composer Gerhard Schedl was perhaps the most significant music dramatist of the second half of the 20th century. Many know him as the composer of the children's opera The Pig Shepherd. But how can his style be described? What are his roots? Should one analyze the work of a nearly 20-year-old composer that made him famous, namely The Grand Inquisitor? His compositional concept was permanently dramatic. Schedl himself only spoke in hints regarding the semantic interpretation of his work. Following his suicide in 2000, there was a risk of viewing his melancholic-dramatic music solely in light of that act. Schedl also contributed to the creation of legends surrounding him. Thus, the aforementioned works were still regarded as the most important, yet they only represented his early work. His last composition.