Soundcheck

Peter Schickele

Critics Gone Wild

Friday, December 17, 2004

Joining us in the studio today will be Peter Schickele, inventor of the fictitious P.D.Q. Bach (the last, and the least, of J.S. Bach’s children). He’ll read some passages from the book Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time, for which he wrote the foreword. A collection of disparaging reviews of debuting artists who were later considered to be some of the greatest composers of their eras, the Lexicon highlights the absurdity of our fears of the unknown. Following Schickele, Rick Moody, author of Demonology, Garden State and The Ice Storm, among other works, joins us with his "Second Spin"—a regular Soundcheck feature in which our guests reveal some of the recordings that inspire them most.

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