Peter Schickele(1935-2024)
- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Peter Schickele is a renowned American composer. Inspired by the music of
Spike Jones, as a young teenager, he also studied composition and music
history at Juilliard. After graduating from Juilliard he asked himself
what in the world he was going to do with a PhD in music history, and
proceeded to rewrite it (history, that is) by discovering works by
Johann Sebastian Bach's heretofore unknown 21st child, "last and by far
the least", "a pimple on the face of music", P.D.Q. Bach. PDQ's music
had its first public performance in 1965, and lectures by "Professor
Schickele" (of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, or "U
of SND at H" for short) have delighted audiences ever since. Although
the first ten PDQ Bach albums on Vanguard hold his most inspired work,
only his latest five albums (on Telarc) have earned him proper
recognition, with four of the five winning Grammy Awards in comedy. In
1993 he stopped touring with PDQ Bach to devote himself more fully to
'real' composing (which he's done all along, in spite of the spectre of
PDQ Bach which often resulted in even his most serious work eliciting
laughter) and his radio show "Schickele Mix". His weekly show (of which
there have been 168 episodes) features an eclectic mix of music from many
cultures and centuries; he's perfectly happy to illustrate a musical
point using a "suite" that combines music of seeming opposites: Bach
and the Beatles; Heavy Metal bands and Classical string quartets. You
can find him on the radio or in New York City every week after
Christmas performing P.D.Q. Bach at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln
Center.
