Peter Schickele (;[ July 17, 1935 – January 16, 2024) was an American composer, musical educator and parody, best known for comedy albums featuring his music, which he presented as being composed by the fictional P. D. Q. Bach. He also hosted a long-running weekly radio program called Schickele Mix.]
From 1990 to 1993, Schickele's P. D. Q. Bach recordings earned him four consecutive wins for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.
Early life
Peter Schickele was born on July 17, 1935, in Ames, Iowa,
Early career
Schickele wrote music for a number of , most notably Joan Baez, for whom he also orchestrated and arranged three albums during the mid-1960s, Noël (1966), Joan (1967), and (1968). He also composed the original score for the 1972 science fiction film Silent Running.
Schickele, an accomplished , was also a member of the chamber rock trio the Open Window, which wrote and performed music for the 1969 revue Oh! Calcutta!
The humorous aspect of Schickele's musical career came from his early interest in the music of Spike Jones, whose musical ensemble lampooned popular music in the 1940s and 1950s.
P. D. Q. Bach
Schickele developed an elaborate parody around his studies of P. D. Q. Bach, the fictional "youngest and the oddest of the twenty-odd children" of Johann Sebastian Bach.[ the "Unbegun" symphony,][ "Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons",][ Canine Cantata: "Wachet Arf!",][ Peter Schickele: Compositions, Peter Schickele] Good King Kong Looked Out,[ Peter Schickele: Portrait of P.D.Q. Bach, Peter Schickele] the "Trite" Quintet,[ "O Little Town of Hackensack",][ A Little Nightmare Music,][ 'A Little Nightmare Music' From P.D.Q., The Washington Post. Accessed 16 May 2024.] the cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn,[ the Concerto for Horn and Hardart,][ The Stoned Guest,][ "Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice",][ the Concerto for Two Pianos vs. Orchestra,][ the dramatic oratorio Oedipus Tex][ Oedipus Tex and Other Choral Calamities, Peter Schickele] and Einstein on the Fritz, a parody of Schickele's Juilliard classmate Philip Glass.
His fictitious "home establishment" is the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, where he reports having tenure as "Very Full Professor" of "musicolology" and "musical pathology". He invented a range of rather unusual instruments. The most complicated of these is the Hardart, a tone-generating device mounted on the frame of an "automat", a coin-operated food dispenser. This modified automat is used in the Concerto for Horn and Hardart, a play on the name of Horn & Hardart who pioneered the American use of the automat in their restaurants.[
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Schickele also invented the "dill piccolo" for playing sour notes, the "left-handed sewer flute", the "tromboon" ("a cross between a trombone and a bassoon, having all the disadvantages of both"), the "whirly tube", the double-reed slide music stand, the "tuba mirum" (a flexible tube filled with wine), and the "pastaphone" (an uncooked tube of pasta played as a horn).
To a large degree, Schickele's music as P. D. Q. Bach has overshadowed his work as a "serious" composer.[ "Swarthmore's First Music Major" by Paul Wachter, Swarthmore College Bulletin (September 2007)]
Schickele 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.
Other musical career
Schickele composed more than 100 original works for orchestra, choral groups, chamber music, voice, television and an animated adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are (which he also narrated).[ The Tennessean March 12, 2009, "The Nashville Scene", p. 46] He made a brief foray into Film industry with the Bruce Dern film Silent Running (1972), for which he composed the Film score and co-wrote the original songs "Silent Running" and "Rejoice in the Sun" with Diane Lampert. He also wrote music for school bands, as well as for a number of musicals, including Oh! Calcutta!, and organized numerous concert performances as both musical director and performer. Schickele was active on the international and North American concert circuit.[
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Schickele's musical creations won him multiple awards. His extensive body of work is marked by a distinctive style which integrates the European classical tradition with an unmistakable American idiom.
Schickele also created such not-quite–P. D. Q. Bach albums as Hornsmoke,
Schickele's music is published by the Theodore Presser Company.
Radio
As a musical educator he also hosted the classical music educational radio program Schickele Mix, which aired on many public radio stations in the United States (and internationally on Public Radio International). The program began in 1992; lack of funding ended the production of new programs by 1999, and rebroadcasts of the existing programs finally ceased in June 2007.
Personal life
Schickele married poet Susan Sindall on October 27, 1962.
Schickele's brother David Schickele (1937–1999) was a film director and musician.
Peter Schickele died at his home in Bearsville, New York, on January 16, 2024, at the age of 88, due to a series of infections that damaged his health.[
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Awards
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| 1970 | Grammy Awards | Best Score From an Original Cast Show Album | Oh! Calcutta! | | |
| 1990 | Best Comedy Recording | P. D. Q. Bach: 1712 Overture and Other Musical Assaults | rowspan="3" |
| 1991 | P. D. Q. Bach: Oedipus Tex and Other Choral Calamities |
| 1992 | Best Comedy Album | P. D. Q. Bach: WTWP Classical Talkity-Talk Radio |
| Best Album for Children | Sergei Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf / A Zoo Called Earth / Gerald McBoing Boing | |
| 1993 | Best Comedy Album | P. D. Q. Bach: Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion | |
| 1996 | Best Spoken Comedy Album | The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach | |
| 1999 | Best Classical Crossover Album | Schickele: Hornsmoke (Piano Concerto No. 2 In F Major "Ole"; Brass Calendar; Hornsmoke – A Horse Opera) | |
| 2004 | Best Spoken Word Album for Children | The Emperor's New Clothes | |
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External links
