PETER SCHICKELE

(1935 - 2024)
MUSIC ::: CLASSICAL :

Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1935, he became one of America's most accomplished composers, arrangers, performers, educators, and broadcasters. Through the fictional genius of P.D.Q. Bach, Schickele created one of the twentieth century's most inventive musical satires, delighting audiences while demonstrating an astonishing command of music history, composition, and performance. The joke endured for decades because the musician behind it was the real thing.

Beyond P.D.Q. Bach, Schickele built a remarkable career that reached from concert halls to recording studios, from film scores to public radio. He composed more than one hundred original works, wrote the acclaimed score for Silent Running, arranged landmark recordings for Joan Baez, and hosted the beloved radio series Schickele Mix. Among his classmates at the Juilliard School was fellow composer Philip Glass, proving that even the most radically different musical voices can emerge from the same classroom. Whether conducting an orchestra, performing on the bassoon, or composing a symphony, Schickele approached every project with the same generosity, curiosity, and unmistakable wit.

Motherlode remembers Peter Schickele because he understood that loving an art form also means giving it permission to laugh at itself. He celebrated tradition without becoming trapped by it, proving that scholarship and humor could enrich one another rather than compete. Through a lifetime of joyful invention, Schickele reminded us that culture survives not simply because we preserve it, but because we continue to delight in it, question it, and keep it gloriously alive.