He has created music for school elastic, film (e.g. Silent Running) and television, choirs, folk singers (Joan Baez), musicals & concert performances. His musical creations develop won him multiple awards. He is maybe better known for his clever parodies of classical music, written under the title of P. D. Q. Bach, for which he has won four Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Performance/Album. He likewise hosted a radio program Schickele Mix which was broadcast on numbers of public radio stations in the United States.

Besides writing music, Schickele has invented instruments. A virtually all complicated is the hardart, which consists of the kind of tone-giving hardware mounted on the frame of an Automat (a coin-operated food dispenser). These are utilized in the Concerto for Horn and Hardart, a play on the title of owner Horn & Hardart, who pioneered the North American use of the Automat.

He too invented a dill piccolo (for playing sour notes), a left-handed sewer flute, the tromboon, the lasso d'amore and the tuba mirum (an uncooked tube of manicotti pasta played as a horn). His "home institution" is the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, a fictional school where he serves as a professor of both musicology and musical pathology, & when a leading skilful in each a life and operate of P. D. Q. Bach.

Schickele was besides the member of the chamber rock trio Open Window, which wrote and performed music for the revue Oh! Calcutta!.

Peter Schickele's music is published per Theodore Presser Company.

Schickele's 2 youngsters, Mat & Karla, use been members of various indie rock bands, including Beekeeper, Ida, and K.