Composer, musician, author, satirist—Peter Schickele is internationally recognized as one of the most versatile artists in the field of music. His works, now well in excess of 100 for, variously, symphony orchestras, choral groups, chamber ensembles, voice, movies, and television have given him a "leading role in the ever-more-prominent school of American composers who unself-consciously blend all levels of American music." (John Rockwell, The New York Times)

Among his most recent projects is a weekly, syndicated radio program Schickele Mix, which features recorded music with commentary by Peter Schickele and is heard over Public Radio America. Other highlights of his 1991-92 season have included a tour with a program of original songs, sung and played by the composer with the harmonizing assistance of David Dusing; a tour with the Renaissance band Calliope as the narrator of his own Bestiary, and as singer/recorder player in miscellaneous original compositions; a performance at the New York Philharmonic New Year's Eve gala narrating Carnival of the Animals, and the annual all-Schickele chamber music concerts at New York's Merkin Hall and at Brooklyn's Barge Music in May 1992. He has also continued to perform a recently created program, The Condition of My Heart, which combines Schickele's songs with the poetry of his wife, Susan Sindall.

Peter Schickele's commissions have been numerous and varied, ranging in the 25 years since his first public appearance from the works of the St. Louis Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Audubon String Quartet, the Minnesota Orchestra Association and many other organizations to compositions for distinguished instrumentalists and singers. His most recent premieres include Elegy for String Orchestra (given by Hudson Valley Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra), Blake's Proverbs for Mixed Chorus and Seven Players (Baltimore Choral Arts Society), Timepiece for brass quintet (commissioned by The Canadian Brass and premiered in July 1991 at Interlochen), String Sextet (pre-sented by Composer's Showcase at Lincoln Center); Go for Broke, a comedy for chorus (Dale Warland Singers and Chanticleer); Momochrome VI for ten grand pianos (Sommerfest/Minnesota Orchestra) and String Quartet No. 3 (Audubon String Quartet).

He also created the musical score for the film version of Maurice Sendak's children's classic Where the Wild Things Are, issued in 1990 on videocassette along with another Sendak classic In the Night Kitchen (Weston Woods), which Schickele narrates.

Schickele's works are recorded by RCA Red Seal, which has released his String Quartet No. 1 with the Audubon String Quartet, and by CRI, whose latest release is Serenade for flute and piano with Sue Ann Kahn and Andrew Willis.

In his well-known other role as perpetrator of the oeuvre of the now classic P.D.Q. Bach, Peter Schickele is acknowledged as one of the great satirists of the 20th century. In testimony, Vanguard has released 11 albums of the fabled genius's works; Random House has published eight editions of the Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach (now in German); Theodore Presser has printed innumerable scores, and VideoArts International has pro-duced a cassette of P.D.Q. Bach's only full-length opera The Abduction of Figaro which, in the 1989 summer season, was given 28 successive sold-out performances in Stockholm, Sweden by the Dramatiske Ensemblen.

"The greatest comedy-in-music act before the public today" (Robert Marsh, Chicago Sun Times) is italicized by the four consecutive Grammy awards earned by his Telarc albums P.D.Q. Bach: 1712 Overture and Other Musical Assaults, Oedipus Tex and Other Choral Calamities, WTWP—Classical Talkity-Talk Radio and Music for an Awful Lot of Winds & Percussion were winners in the Best Comedy Album category for 1989, 1990, 1991 and 1992, respectively. Although currently on an "indefinite sabbatical" from touring the works of P.D.Q. Bach, he will continue to present both old and new discoveries of his music at Carnegie Hall each December.

Peter Schickele was born in Ames, Iowa and brought up in Washington, D.C. and Fargo, North Dakota. He graduated from Swarthmore in 1957, having had the distinction of being the only music major (as he had been earlier, the only bassoonist in the Fargo-Moorehead Orchestra), and by that time he had already composed and conducted four orchestral works, a great deal of chamber music and some songs. He then undertook a three-year stint at the Juilliard School of Music where he studied composition with the late Vincent Persichetti. Then, under a Ford Foundation grant he taught in Los Angeles and at the Aspen School of Music before returning to the Juilliard Extension School. It was during this latter period in 1965 that, at the instigation of some of his colleagues, he began a long friendship with the American public as "Professor" Peter Schickele, apostle of the legendary composer.

In the course of his career Schickele has created music for four feature films, among them the prize-winning Silent Running; for countless documentaries; for television commercials; for several Sesame Street segments and for an under-ground movie. He has also created music for Oh, Calcutta. His arrangements of songs by Bob Dylan and the Beatles, along with his own compositions, are on the Vanguard label, and he has also arranged for Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joan Baez and other folk singers.

The Schickele family, which includes a son and daughter, resides in New York City and at an upstate hideaway where much of the time is spent composing.