Peter Schickele

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Peter Schickele

Peter Schickele (born July 17, 1935 in Ames, Iowa ) is an American composer . He is a grandson of the Alsatian writer René Schickele (1883–1940).

He has "supplemented" his imagined biography of PDQ Bach , a fictional last son of the great baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach , with a large number of self-composed parodic pieces of music, which he published under this pseudonym. Prof. Schickele regularly “discovers” new old works by PDQ Bach, publishes them and performs them for the first time, especially in his legendary Christmas concerts in Carnegie Hall . In the meantime 17 CDs with these compositions have been released.

Schickele has also come to the fore with his own compositions that have not been published under the name PDQ Bach, for example with the soundtrack to the American science fiction film Lautlos im Weltraum from 1972.

Life

Peter Schickele grew up in Washington, DC and in Fargo , North Dakota . His parents immigrated to the United States from Alsace . He graduated from high school in Fargo in 1952, and studied composition with Sigvald Thompson. He completed his music studies at Swarthmore College in 1957 and obtained an MS degree in composition from the Juilliard School of Music . His teachers at the Juilliard School included Roy Harris , whom he often referred to in the following years as the one who had most influenced him, Darius Milhaud , Vincent Persichetti and William Bergsma . From 1961 to 1965 he taught himself at the Juilliard School, after which he worked as a freelancer as before.

Schickele is married to Susan Sindall, and the New York City-based couple have two children, Matt and Karla, who belonged to various indie rock bands including Beekeeper , Ida , K. and M Shanghai String Band . His brother was the film director and musician David Schickele († 1999).

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Schickele created more than 100 songs and musical works for symphony orchestras , choirs, chamber music ensembles , films (including Silent Running ) and animated films based on the books Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen and television. In addition, he wrote works for school orchestras and for some folk musicians , the best known being Joan Baez . He arranged and orchestrated the three albums Noël , Joan , and Baptism for them in the 1960s . He wrote several musicals, for which he also received various prizes, and gave numerous concerts as a musician and conductor in North America and in other countries. In his oeuvre, influences from both European classical music and American music can be seen.

Schickele also designed the 169 episodes of the Schickele Mix radio program from 1992 to 1999 , which were broadcast as part of the educational program by many public broadcasters in the United States. The production of the radio series had for financial reasons in the late 1990s are set to broadcast program repetitions took place until June 2007. Only 119 of the 169 program sequences were repeated, as some past episodes as part of the national public radio program American Public Radio created The later broadcasts were made as part of the national public radio program of Public Radio International . From March 2006 onwards, some of the episodes not yet repeated could be included in the repetition of the series. The well-known episode Periodic Table of Musics was not among them, however, in which Schickele lists musicians and composers comparable to the elements in the periodic table of the elements . As a bassoon player, Schickele was a member of the rock trio Open Window , which played the music for the revue Oh! Calcutta! wrote and performed.

His works are published by the Theodore Presser Company .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ye Olde PDQ Bach Recordings. Website of the composer, accessed on May 15, 2020.
  2. ^ M Shanghai String Band: Biography . M Shanghai String Band. Retrieved November 30, 2009.
  3. ↑ Allan Kozinn : David Schickele, 62, Filmmaker And, With Brother, a Parodist. In: The New York Times . November 11, 1999
  4. ^ The Nashville Scene. In: The Tennessean . March 12, 2009, p. 46 (English).
  5. ↑ Dedicated to the Proposition that All Musics are Created Equal. Peter Schickele website, accessed November 29, 2009.
  6. ^ Schickele Mix Program Database Search. Peter Schickele website, accessed November 30, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Schickele, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bach, PDQ (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Ames, Iowa