Johann Peter Schickele is an American
composerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, musical educator, and
parodistA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
. He is best known for his comedy music albums featuring his music that he presents as music written by the fictional composer
P. D. Q. BachP. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. In a gag that Schickele has developed over a five-decade-long career, he performs "discovered" works of this forgotten member of the Bach family...
.
Biography
Schickele was born in
Ames, IowaAmes is a city located in the central part of the U.S. state of Iowa in Story County, and approximately north of Des Moines. The U.S. Census Bureau designates that Ames, Iowa metropolitan statistical area as encompassing all of Story County, and which, when combined with the Boone, Iowa...
, to
AlsatianAlsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
immigrant parents, and brought up in Washington, D.C., and
Fargo, North DakotaFargo is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Cass County. In 2010, its population was 105,549, and it had an estimated metropolitan population of 208,777...
, where he studied composition with Sigvald Thompson. Graduating from Fargo Central High in 1952 and then graduating with a degree in music from
Swarthmore CollegeSwarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....
in 1957, he was the first student at Swarthmore and the only student in his class with such a degree. He graduated from the
Juilliard SchoolThe Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
with an M.S. in
musical compositionMusical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
; in the ensuing years he has frequently cited
Roy HarrisRoy Ellsworth Harris , was an American composer. He wrote much music on American subjects, becoming best known for his Symphony No...
as the most influential of his teachers.
Career
Schickele has composed more than 100 original works for
symphony orchestraAn orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
, choral groups,
chamber ensembleChamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
, voice, film (e.g.
Silent RunningSilent Running is a 1972 environmentally themed science fiction film starring Bruce Dern and directed by Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked as a special effects supervisor on such science fiction films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.-Plot summary:Silent Running depicts a...
, and animated adaptations of
Where the Wild Things AreWhere the Wild Things Are is a 1963 children's picture book by American writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak, originally published by Harper & Row. The book has been adapted into other media several times, including an animated short in 1973 , a 1980 opera, and, in 2009, a live-action feature film...
and
In the Night KitchenIn the Night Kitchen is a popular and controversial children's picture book, written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and first published in 1970. The book depicts a young boy's dream journey through a surreal baker's kitchen where he assists in the creation of a cake to be ready by the morning...
), and television. He has also written music for school bands, as well as a number of
folkFolk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
musicians, most notably
Joan BaezJoan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....
(for whom he also orchestrated and arranged three albums during the mid-1960s,
NoëlNoël was a Christmas album by Joan Baez, released in 1966. Working with composer Peter Schickele , Baez, for the first time, recorded an album outside the standard guitar-based folk format...
,
JoanJoan was a 1967 album by Joan Baez. Having exhausted the standard voice/guitar folksong format by 1967, Baez collaborated with composer Peter Schickele , on an album of orchestrated covers of mostly then-current pop and rock and roll songs...
, and
BaptismBaptism: A Journey Through Our Time was a 1968 album of poetry spoken and sung by Joan Baez. Peter Schickele did the orchestration, as he did on 1967's Joan....
). He has also written a number of musicals, and has organized numerous concert performances as both musical director and performer. Schickele is active on the international and North American concert circuit.
Schickele's musical creations have 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. As a musical educator he also hosted the classical music educational radio program
Schickele Mix which was broadcast on many
public radioPublic broadcasting includes radio, television and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service. Public broadcasters receive funding from diverse sources including license fees, individual contributions, public financing and commercial financing.Public broadcasting may be...
stations in the United States. Lack of funding ended the production of new programs in the late 1990s, and rebroadcasts of the existing programs finally ceased in June 2007. Only 119 of the 169 programs were in the rebroadcast rotation, because earlier shows contained American Public Radio production IDs rather than ones crediting
Public Radio InternationalPublic Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...
. In March 2006, some of the other "lost episodes" were added back to the rotation, with one notable program remnant of the
Periodic Table of Musics, listing the names of
musicianA musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
s and
composerA composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s as mythical element names in a format reminiscent of the
Periodic tableThe periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular display of the 118 known chemical elements organized by selected properties of their atomic structures. Elements are presented by increasing atomic number, the number of protons in an atom's atomic nucleus...
.
In recent years, Schickele has created the non-P.D.Q. Bach albums
Hornsmoke,
Sneaky Pete and the Wolf, and
The Emperor's New Clothes"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent...
.
Schickele, an accomplished
bassoonThe bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
ist, was also a member of the chamber rock trio
Open Window, which wrote and performed music for the revue
Oh! Calcutta!Oh! Calcutta! is an avant-garde theatrical revue, created by British drama critic Kenneth Tynan. The show, consisting of sketches on sex-related topics, debuted Off-Broadway in 1969 and then in London in 1970. It ran in London for over 3,900 performances, and in New York initially for 1,314...
. Schickele's two children, Matt and Karla, have been members of various
indie rockIndie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
bands, including Beekeeper,
IdaIda is an indie rock band from New York City. They are known for their three part harmonies, sparse, minimal, often quiet arrangements, and for their three singer-songwriters...
, K, and M Shanghai String Band. His brother was the film director and musician David Schickele (d. 1999).
Schickele's music is published by the
Theodore Presser CompanyThe Theodore Presser Company is an American music publishing and distribution company located in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and formerly based in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It is the oldest continuing music publisher in the United States.-Theodore Presser:...
.
P. D. Q. Bach
Besides composing music under his own name, Schickele has developed an elaborate parodic persona built around his studies of the fictional "youngest and the oddest of the twenty-odd children" of
Johann Sebastian BachJohann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, P.D.Q. Bach. His clever parodies of
baroqueBaroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
and
classical musicClassical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
, written under this particular Bach’s name, have earned him four
Grammy AwardA Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
s for
Best Comedy Performance/AlbumThe Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album was awarded from yearly 1959 to 1993 and then from 2004 to present day. There have been several minor changes to the name of the award over this time:*From 1959 to 1967 it was Best Comedy Performance...
. Among the huge repertory still being uncovered by the diligent Schickele are such challenging works as
The Abduction of FigaroThe Abduction of Figaro is a comic opera, described as "A Simply Grand Opera by P. D. Q. Bach," which is actually the work of composer Peter Schickele. It is a parody of opera in general, and the title is a play on two operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio and The...
,
Canine Cantata: "Wachet Arf!" (S. K9),
Good King Kong Looked Out, the
Trite Quintet (S. 6 of 1), "O Little Town of Hackensack",
A Little Nightmare Music, the cantata
Iphigenia in Brooklyn, the
Concerto for Horn and Hardart, and perhaps best known of all, the dramatic oratorio,
Oedipus Tex, featuring the O.K. Chorale. Though P.D.Q. Bach is ostensibly a Baroque composer, Schickele extends his parodic repertoire to modern works such as "Einstein on the Fritz", a parody of his Juilliard classmate
Philip GlassPhilip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
.
His fictitious "home establishment," where he reports having tenure as "Very Full Professor Peter Schickele" of "
musicolologyMusicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
" and "musical
pathologyPathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
", is the
University of Southern North Dakota at HoopleThe University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople is the fictional university that is the home institution of "Professor" Peter Schickele, who is renowned as the greatest expert on the life and works of the fictional composer P.D.Q. Bach and who serves as a professor in the Extension Division of...
, a little-known institution which does not normally welcome out-of-state visitors. To illustrate the work of his uncovered composer, Schickele invented a range of rather unusual instruments. The most complicated of these is the Hardart, a variety of tone-generating devices mounted on the frame of an "automat", a coin-operated food dispenser. The automat is used in the
Concerto for Horn and HardartThe Concerto for Horn and Hardart is a work of Peter Schickele but is touted as a work by P. D. Q. Bach. The work is a parody of the classical double concerto but where one instrument, the hardart, uses different devices, such as plucked strings, blown whistles and popped balloons, to produce each...
, a play on the name of proprietors
Horn & HardartHorn & Hardart was a food services company of the USA noted for operating the first food service automats in Philadelphia and New York City.Philadelphia's Joseph Horn and German-born, New Orleans-raised, Frank Hardart opened their first restaurant together in Philadelphia on December 22, 1888...
, who pioneered the
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n use of the
AutomatAn automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drink are served by coin-operated and bill-operated vending machines.-Concept:Originally, the machines took only nickels...
. Schickele also invented the "dill piccolo" for playing sour notes, the "left-handed sewer flute", the "tromboon", the "
lasso d'amoreThe lasso d'amore is an experimental musical instrument made of corrugated plastic tubing, employed in some of Peter Schickele's comic P. D. Q. Bach compositions such as the Erotica Variations and Shepherd on the Rocks with a Twist...
", the double-reed slide music stand, which he described as having "a range of major third and even less expressiveness," the "tuba mirum", a flexible tube filled with wine, and the "pastaphone", an uncooked tube of manicotti
pastaPasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
played as a horn. And then there was the extensively described but (so far as is known) never demonstrated über klavier or super piano, with a keyboard ranging from sounds which only dogs can hear down to sounds which only whales can make. Sample sheet music was provided in P.D.Q.'s unauthorized autobiography. P.D.Q's 1965
Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and BalloonsPervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons is a satirical work authored by Peter Schickele under the pseudonym P.D.Q. Bach, whose works and life Schickele purports to study...
demonstrated the inherent musical qualities of everyday objects in ways not equally agreeable to all who listen to them.
To some degree, his music written as P.D.Q. Bach has overshadowed Schickele's work as a "serious" composer.
This aspect of Schickele's musical career came from his early interest in the music of
Spike JonesMel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...
, whose musical ensemble lampooned popular music in the 1940s and 1950s. While at Juilliard (1959) Schickele teamed with conductor
Jorge MesterJorge Mester is a Mexican conductor of Hungarian ancestry.-Biography:He studied conducting with Jean Morel at the Juilliard School in New York, and worked with Leonard Bernstein at the Berkshire Music Center and with Albert Wolff...
to present a humorous concert, which became an annual event at the college. In 1965 Schickele moved the concept to
Town HallThe Town Hall is a performance space, located at 123 West 43rd Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, in New York City. It seats approximately 1,500 people.-History:...
and invited the public to attend.
Vanguard RecordsVanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...
released an album of that concert, and P. D. Q. Bach's career was launched.
External links
Audio links