Remembering Peter Schickele

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family joins the music world in remembering the life of Peter Schickele. His career, according to the New York Times, “as a writer of serious concert music was often eclipsed by that of his antic alter ego, the thoroughly debauched, terrifyingly prolific and mercifully fictional P.D.Q. Bach [1807–1742?].” Schickele died on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, at his home in Bearsville, New York. He was 88.

Billed as “Professor Peter Schickele, performer and apologist,” he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on a special concert on September 16, 1977. With the assistance of guest conductor Leonard Slatkin, Schickele introduced the Orchestra Hall audience to several of P.D.Q. Bach’s works, including the Desecration of the House Overture; Hindenburg Concerto; Canine Cantata: “Wachet Arf!” (Sleeping Dogs Awake!), S. K9 (featuring houndentenor Dietrich Fischer-Bauau); Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments; and the Concerto for Bassoon vs. Orchestra (with the professor at the bassoon).

Over the next several years, Schickele returned to Chicago to gently guide the CSO through several of P.D.Q. Bach’s works, including The Art of the Ground Round; Fanfare for Fred; Fantasieshtick for Piano and Orchestra; Fuga Meshuga (from The Musical Sacrifice); Howdy Symphony; selections from Oedipus Tex; the prelude to Einstein on the Fritz; and Swing Sweet, Low Chariot; among many others.

Between 1993 and 1996, James Levine conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in recording sessions at Medinah Temple for Fantasia 2000, the long-awaited sequel to Disney’s classic Fantasia from 1940. For the April 1994 sessions, Schickele arranged portions of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches (nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4) that featured the Chicago Symphony Chorus and soprano Kathleen Battle.

On October 13, 2004, Schickele helped to launch the CSO’s Afterwork Masterworks concert series (which ran through 2016). The “genial host,” according to John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune, kicked off the 90-minute program. "Given Schickele’s zany P.D.Q. Bach alter-ego, one might have expected something frivolous. Not at all. His remarks about Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, with musical illustrations by the orchestra, were at once humorous, informative, and insightful. They made the CSO’s subsequent performance of the work that much more accessible. . . . Perhaps only Schickele could have improvised a scat solo over the final chord of the Stravinsky symphony, or imagined a kinship between the flute melody of the slow movement and Oklahoma! (“A coincidence? I think so.”) He is great at talking to audiences without ever talking down to them."

Most recently Schickele appeared with the Orchestra and guest conductor Edwin Outwater, on a special Symphony Center Presents concert on May 23, 2010. Selections included P.D.Q. Bach’s Variations on an Unusually Simple-Minded Theme, a suite from The Civilian Barber (including the movement Perückenstück or Hairpiece), and Eine kleine Nichtmusik.

Several tributes have been posted online, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Classic FM, among others.

This article also appears here.