Stay tuned for Schickele Mix, it's coming up next. Have a great Tuesday evening. This is IPR Music Radio, WYAA Interlochen, and WYCV, East Jordan Charlevoix. It's 6 o'clock.
Oddly enough, I am. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Well, hello there. I'm Peter Schickele, and this is Schickele Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good. One of my favorite non-musical courses in college was art history, and in a paper I wrote for that course, I said that one doesn't respond to painting as viscerally as one does to music.
When I got the paper back, the professor had written in the margin, speak for yourself. He's right, of course. I shouldn't assume that other people react to things just as I do, but for me, there is an intensity to the musical experience that is unmatched by any other except perhaps dance. Well, music and dance are the same thing anyway. One is the audible manifestation and the other is the visible. Anyway, there's so much great music from all over the world, from all walks of life, and from all periods of time, and that's what this program is about. And a lot of the most intensely beautiful music is religious music, and that's what today's show is about.
The manna from heaven making this program possible is funds provided by this wise and good radio station, which provides me with a home away from home, within whose nurturing walls I hatch my intellectual eggs, and whence the resultant birds of wisdom fly to the four corners, with the navigational help of PRI, Public Radio International.
There are certain forms of religious worship that attract people who are not part of that particular religion. The mantras being used all over North America and Europe these days is an example. And another example is the Mass. There are many composers, and I'm one of them myself, who have written Masses even though they're not involved in a religion that celebrates the Mass. I suppose this may offend some very strict religious people, but to me there's no disturbing contradiction there.
The Mass is an extraordinarily inspiring text in its own right, and the tremendous historical weight it carries adds a resonance that many composers respond to with great fervor. Some years ago, the Dale Warland Singers premiered a piece of mine in Minneapolis, and on the same program, they put together a composite mass with each section written by a different contemporary Scandinavian composer. This idea intrigued me, and still does.
So we're going to start things off today with a composite mass, but this one covers a whole millennium of music history, from the Middle Ages to 1948.
It has the usual five sections, Kyrie, Gloria, Credo. The Sanctus is actually divided into Sanctus and Benedictus, but they're both from the same work. And finally, the Agnus Dei. It's about 16 1⁄2 minutes long. Now, I feel pretty certain that we'll be doing this again in the future, so let's call our opening suite the Composite Mass No. 1.
[music excerpt: Ockeghem, Missa au travail suis, “Kyrie”; Pomerium Musices/Alexander Blachly, director]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Mass, “Gloria”; English Chamber Orchestra/Davis]
[music excerpt: Missa Luba, “Credo”; Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin]
[music excerpt: Schubert, Mass No. 2 (D 167), “Sanctus & Benedictus”; Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Shaw]
[music: Gregorian Chant, “Agnus IV”; Choir of Monks of the Abbey of St. Pierre de Solesmes]
Composite Mass No. 1 began with the Kyrie from the Missa au travail suis by Johannes Ockeghem, 15th century composer, performed by the Pomerium Musices, I guess that is. That's a beautiful record, by the way, of Ockeghem pieces. Then the Gloria was from the Stravinsky Mass, which he completed in 1948, performed by a section of the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis.
The soloists were Doreen Murray, Jean Allister, Edgar Fleet, Christopher Keyte, and, as I say, the conductor is Colin Davis. The Credo comes from the Missa Luba, a mass sung in pure Congolese style. Some of you may remember hearing the Sanctus in the movie If.
According to the notes, a missionary named Father Guido Haazen came to the Congo in the early 50s, and instead of trying to impose European music, he encouraged them to set the Mass in their own style. These are very fancy notes here. Let me just find this.
And according to the notes, the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo are performed within the same framework as a Kasala, which has existed today among the Nganjika, or Kasai. And according to the notes further, none of the Missa Luba is written. Certain rhythms, harmonies, embellishments are spontaneous improvisations. It's a beautiful Credo. The Sanctus comes from the Mass No. 2 by Schubert in G Major.
That was Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Chamber Chorus, Dawn Upshaw, soprano, David Gordon, tenor, and William Stone, baritone. And finally, the Agnus Dei is from an anthology of Gregorian chant sung by the Choir of Monks of the Abbey of St. Pierre de Solesmes. That was the Agnus Dei IV.
The diplomatic relations between religion and humor have always been delicate, but some of us feel sure that God has a sense of humor. Now, I won't go so far as to play the P.D.Q. Bach, Missa Hilarious here, but I would like to pass along a little story. A visitor is being shown around hell by the devil, and they look into one cave, and the sufferers are being burned by the eternal flames of hell. And the visitor said, well, who are these? And the devil says, well, those are Jews who ate pork.
And they look into the next cave, and there the sufferers are being boiled in oil. The devil says, well, these are Catholics who ate meat on Friday. Then they look into the third cave, and there the sufferers are being boiled in oil while they're being burned by fire. And the visitor says, well, who are these unfortunate souls? And the devil says, well, those are Episcopalians who ate their main course with their salad fork.
Be that as it may, my name is Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
In the church services I grew up with, which were congregational, music was an important part of the service, but it came at very specific places and lasted for well-defined times. It's pretty easy to take that kind of music out of the service and present it as separate concert pieces.
In many kinds of worship, all over the world, the music goes on for very long periods of time, sometimes even hours, and is woven into the non-musical parts of the service in such a way that it's impossible to extract separate pieces.
Now, obviously, a program such as this can't represent that kind of music in any breadth, but I'd like to give a little taste of the kind of long service that gets more obviously into a state of trance than does your typical congregational service. I guess you can't call something with only two sections a suite, and these are neither separate compact pieces nor complete ceremonies, so let's just call it a pair of religious worship scenes. I'll be back in about 14 and a half minutes.
[music: "He Stays in My Room"; The Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir]
[music excerpt: “Music in the World of Islam,” “Tahlil”; Sufi Group in Khalif's Mosque in Baghdad]
Two remarkable glimpses into religious ceremonies in some ways very different and yet sharing a kind of a feeling of absolute loss of self, perhaps. The first took place in Newark's Abyssinian Baptist Church, and this is a reissue on CD of an old record by the Abyssinian Baptist Gospel Choir under the direction of Professor Alex Bradford, and that number was He Stays in My Room, and the cut features what is described as a prayer-like dialogue presented by Calvin White and a sermon by Reverend Means.
This original recording was produced by the ubiquitous John Hammond and has now been, I'm very glad, reissued on CD. The other one comes from also a wonderful recording called Music in the World of Islam, which apparently has five volumes. I only have the first volume, The Human Voice. This is a Tangent recording.
And what we heard was Tahlil sung by a Sufi group of about 25 men in the Khalif's Mosque in Baghdad. Eight of these serve regularly as singer-soloists, it says, and the others act as chorus, their bodies moving together. One Mevlevi in yellow robe and high green cap whirled steadily throughout the whole ceremony. My name is Peter Schickele, host of Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
You know, there used to be a public service ad on the New York subway saying something to the effect of, racial discrimination is wrong, don't do it. And I always wondered whether that ad prevented a single instance of racial discrimination, because it was so unconvincing, so simple-minded, and lacking in artistic persuasion. But what do I know? I mean, for instance, I really love funny or arresting ads, but I was talking with a friend just last night about how how some studies showed that the most successful radio ads were the ones that said the name of the product the most times during the ad. Still, it seems to me that if religion is a combination of reason and revelation, the reason having to do with ethics and the revelation with ecstasy, then it's art that is most commonly used to induce ecstasy and revelation, without which joy and hope are hard to come by. Now, if you were to get up on a soapbox and say, Everybody get together and love one another, which is what that subway ad basically said, my reaction is going to be, oh yeah, that's great. Saying that is really going to end war immediately. But if you get up and say, "Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together and love one another right now," I'm already going to sit up and take notice. The sentiment is just as simple-minded, but the way it is put is beautiful. I mean, it would be nice if sisters were mentioned as well as brothers, but if you can forgive that, the words are so mellifluous, the rhythm is so enchanting, the rhyme, it's simple but effective, and the right now coming after the rhyme.
These are the mechanics of art, the artifice, the unnaturalness necessary to make something be different from the humdrum everyday details of life. And this is what gives you hope that, contrary to what your reason says, you know, based on what it sees around you, Art is what gives you hope that maybe the ideal can someday be achieved, or at least that it's worth striving for.
In other words, art, whether it's music or painting or architecture or ritual or whatever, art is not an adornment of religion. It is religion to a significant degree, and it's the only part of religion that can sway a cynical mind. Now we're going to end with a 12-minute quasi-religious song cycle.
Few people would categorize these three songs as religious in any traditional sense, but they share a focus, an intensity, a feeling of being beyond the immediate that characterizes most religious art. The words of the last song are enigmatic and even bitter. Some of them are, "Well, if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand. I've seen your face before, my friend, but I don't know if you know who I am."
But the musical setting is mesmerizing and transcendent. The middle song is in French, sung by a young boy to a princess who has disappeared. You, the heart of a rose, you, the perfume of the lily, you, your hands and your crown, your blue eyes and your bright jewels, you have only left me like a ray of light, a golden hair upon my shoulder, and fragments of a dream.
And the first song of the set is the one I quoted earlier, and I'd like to take what I said about the mechanics of art a step further. The magic, the religious persuasion in this song, is produced not only by how the sentiment is transformed into poetry, and how the poetry is set to the melody, but also by the setting of the melody itself, in other words, the instrumental accompaniment. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in this first number, the religion is in the guitar part.
[music: Powers, "Get Together"; The Youngbloods]
[music excerpt: Ravel, "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges"; Flore Wend, mezzo/L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ansermet]
[music: Collins, "In the Air Tonight" (Face Value); Phil Collins]
Our quasi-religious song cycle began with Get Together. A classic late 60s anthem from the Youngbloods. This is off an RCA album, the Youngbloods' first album. Then the middle one was a little aria or arietta, you might call it, from Ravel's beautiful, beautiful opera that's so hard to put on because it's got characters who are armchairs and things like that.
L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, The Child and the Sorcerers. And the child, after a princess disappears, just gets folded up by the earth, the child sings that plaintive song. That was a recording with Ansermet conducting L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the child was sung by Flore Wend. And finally, Phil Collins from his album Face Value.
The song was In the Air Tonight, and that's Phil Collins doing most of the things, the drum machine and everything, and a few other people there on bass guitar and violins. And that wraps up the quasi-religious suite. You know, listening to some of that music earlier, the middle section there, the Abyssinian Baptist Choir, I couldn't help thinking about what a secular society my background is.
And of course, this country makes a big point of separating religion and civil affairs. And I was thinking about how a lot of singers I know, there are a lot of singers in big cities who make their living singing in all sorts of different kinds of churches, synagogues, churches of different denominations, and it has been said of these singers that they're pantheists, pantheists being people who believe in all gods whose churches hire singers.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Well, that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by this radio station. We'll tell you in a moment how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program, with record numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program 6. And this is Peter Schickele saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. You're looking good. See you next week.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Schickele Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickele Mix. Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.