In the Pines (TRAD. arr. TAYLOR (BMI)) Performer: Earl Taylor & His Stoney Mountain Boys Folk Songs from the Blue Grass (United Artists UAL 3049)
“Cosi fan tutte,” “Soave sia il vento” (MOZART) Performer: Kiri Te Kanawa/Anne Murray/Ferruccio Furlanetto/Berlin Philharmonic/Levine Deutsche Grammophon 423 897 2
And now, Schickele Mix. Ready, Mr. Schickele? I am more than ready. I'm willing. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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. Three. Now there's an interesting number. Because of the Trinity, for instance, medieval music theorists, who tended to be clerics, regarded three beats as the ideal musical measure.
Which is particularly interesting, by the way, when you think of all the dances in triple time, from the Sarabande to the Waltz, upon which the church has frowned throughout the ages. But be that as it may, one of the basic forms in Western music, sometimes called the song form, is tripartite, ABA. That is, you do something, you do something different, and then you do the first something again. And of course, three is the number of musicians playing in a trio. Or is it?
We're going to be talking about that today, but before we do, let me point out that the fact that we're talking about anything is due to the generosity of this radio station. Now, I'm going to play Ann Landers here and answer a question that I'm sure has many a listener hot and bothered. Those of you who go to classical music concerts but aren't exactly certified musicologists may have wondered, now and again, why the trio of a minuet and trio is called trio.
I mean, there you are, listening to a Mozart string quartet, and they play the minuet, and then there's a trio, which is always the middle section, and then the minuet again. But all four members of the quartet are playing in the trio, just as they were in the minuet. Or it's a solo piano sonata with a scherzo and trio, and you look up at the stage during the trio, and sure enough, there's still only one pianist there.
Why is it called a trio? Well, I'm glad you asked. Like many details of nomenclature and notation in music, the term was originally an accurate description, but was kept around long after its accuracy became defunct. Let's listen to the fourth movement, or at least part of it, of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 1. We'll hear the minuet, a trio, and then the minuet again.
And you'll notice that the full ensemble plays in the minuet, but just two oboes and a bassoon in the trio.
[music excerpt: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, 4th Mvt.; English Chamber Orchestra/Somary]
That thinning of the texture to two melody instruments over an independently moving bass, that's what gave rise to the term trio. And even though the three-voice texture was abandoned really before the end of the 18th century, it's interesting that the trio section is still usually softer and more sparsely orchestrated than the minuet, at least in orchestral pieces. Now, you may have noticed that there was a harpsichord playing in the minuet, but he dropped out for the trio, leaving only literally three instruments playing.
Well, that was the recording of Johannes Somary. Somary? You know, I have often made the guarantee on this show that the choice of music played will not be determined by brow height. I think I can also make a guarantee that I will mispronounce somebody's name during the program. Anyway, that was Johannes Somary conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. Let's check out another recording of the trio, just the trio of that movement.
This is Ton Koopman, I hope again I'm pronouncing that correctly, Ton Koopman leading the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
[music excerpt: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, 4th Mvt.; The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra/Koopman]
Now, you hear that? In this performance the harpsichordist plays during the trio.
Does this mean, here, let me fade this out here. Does this mean that there's a line or two of music in the score that the previous recording ignored? No. In the Baroque era, the keyboard player read off the same line of music as the bass instrument player. But what the keyboard guy did was he played the written bass line with his left hand and improvised with his right, filling out the texture.
And things were not as standardized then as they are now in classical music, so this becomes something for the individual musician or group to call. Now, I've listened in the last couple days, I've listened to over a dozen recordings of this movement, and Koopman's is the only one to use the harpsichord in the trio.
Maybe that's because he's the harpsichordist. Hey, just kidding, Ton. The point is that the real meaning of the trio texture in the Baroque and Rococo periods lies in the fact that the composer wrote three lines of music. Take a listen to this.
[music excerpt: Johann Stamitz, Orchestra Trio, Opus 1, No. 5; Camerata Bern/Füri]
Sounds like a symphony, right?
Well, it is. Here, let's fade that out. It is a symphony, but Johann Stamitz, who wrote it, calls it orchestra trio in B-flat, opus 1, number 5. And that's because, you guessed it, even though a lot of musicians were playing there, Stamitz only wrote three lines of music, first violin, second violin, and bass, the latter line being played by cellos, basses, and harpsichord.
The same is true with the term trio sonata in chamber music, three lines of music usually played by at least four instrumentalists. Now, in some of my P.D.Q. Bach concerts, I've read the entrance exam for the music department of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, and one of the questions is, how many Californians does it take to play a trio sonata?
Now, I'll admit that joke is a bit arcane, especially since it doesn't really have a punchline, but if you heard that show and didn't laugh and you thought it was because you didn't get it, now you'll be able to say, I get it, it just isn't funny. Hey, this show is supposed to be about suites and mixing it up. Let's get some sustained music going here. I've put together a trio sonata in my own fashion, but I want to warn you, anybody out there who is maybe taking notes for an upcoming music exam, two of the movements of this trio sonata are not what people in the know would call trio sonata movements.
And one of them is even an excerpt from a longer movement. What I want to do is show how diverse the basic texture can be. Two higher melody lines, an independent bass line, and something else filling in. The inter-era trio sonata is in the standard four movements, slow, fast, slow, fast. I'll be back in about eleven and a half minutes.
[music: J. S. Bach, The Musical Offering (BWV 1079), Sonata for Flute, Violin and Continuo, 4th Mvt.; The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
The inter-era trio sonata began with the first movement of a sonata by Jan Zelenka, who died in 1745, a composer who was completely ignored for a couple centuries, been sort of rediscovered in the last few decades, part of the reason he was ignored was that apparently the princes that he worked for forbade the printing of his music.
This is a Sonata No. 3 in B-flat for Violin, Oboe, and Continuo, the people reading off the bass line. The violin was, let me see, the violin was, here it is, Saschko Gawriloff, and the oboe was Heinz Holliger, the bassoon was Klaus Thunemann, and the harpsichord was Christiane Jaccottet, and there was also a bass playing, and that was Lucio Buccarella.
So in that case, the Trio Sonata had not four, but five people playing in it, one each on the two top melody lines, and three reading off the bottom line. And the second cut in our inter-era trio sonata was from one of my favorite jazz groups of all time, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet from the 50s. It was a tune called Frenesi, and here, and I'm being a little tricky here, I admit, we've got a continuo consisting of bass and drums.
In other words, we've got trumpet and baritone sax, and the continuo is the bass and drums.
The bass part is playing an independent part from the other two, moving differently. In other words, now instead of a keyboard filling out the harmonies, what you've got is the rhythm being filled out by the drums. I should say that the keyboard filling out the harmonies in the Baroque tradition is completely standard in jazz too, but I thought it'd be fun to just show that the filler doesn't have to be harmonic. It could be drums filling in the beats. And just between you and me, I gotta say I love that sound. I have to admit, and this is real heresy, I have to admit that I don't really care for the harmonic filling in that you get with a typical continuo, whether it's the harpsichord banging away there in the Baroque music or piano comping as they call it in jazz.
I love that clean air sound of the three-part counterpoint in Gerry Mulligan's pianoless quartet. Pianos, as a matter of fact, were so standard in jazz those days that that was known as the pianoless quartet. Chet Baker on trumpet, Mulligan on baritone sax, Bobby Whitlock on bass, and Chico Hamilton on drums. That's Pacific Jazz. I mean, it is Pacific Jazz, but that's also the label. Reissued on Mosaic.
Then the third movement was an excerpt from a longer movement. I hate to do that, but that's the way it had to be in this case. One of the most beautiful themes ever written from one of the most beautiful pieces ever written, the Schubert Cello Quintet. That means string quartet with an extra cello, a very late piece written by Schubert. And that second theme from the first movement, here again, has nothing to do with what technically is called a trio sonata, but it does have to do with it in the sense that you've got a two-part melody in that case, first played by the two cellos, and the continuo, as I'm calling it, is the bass line played at the beginning by the viola, and then the filler, in this case, is the two violins playing chords.
It's all written out. There's no improvisation, but the effect is the same. The violins are doing what the right hand of the harpsichord might do in a Baroque piece. Then the last movement was back to a real Trio Sonata, the Trio Sonata from Bach's Musical Offering. And you could hear in there that's for flute and violin and continuo. And you can hear how the bass sometimes shares melodic material, the flute and violins melodic material occasionally, but it is different. It moves differently from the melody parts.
By the way, I have to backtrack here. Organization was never my strong point. The Schubert was played by the Cleveland Quartet with Yo-Yo Ma on the extra cello. And this musical offering is by The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, conducted by Neville Marriner, although I don't know if he actually conducted this particular piece, since it only had four people playing, Iona Brown on violin, William Bennett on flute, Denis Vigay on cello, and Nicholas Kraemer on the harpsichord.
Peter Schickele is the name. Schickele Mix is my game. From PRI, Public Radio International. Now, just to make sure that we've nailed the trio sonata concept, let's talk about what it isn't. It isn't three integrated parts, all sharing the same material, as in a fugue or a round. It isn't a situation with a melody on top, a bass line on the bottom, and the middle part doing an accompaniment kind of thing, as in a waltz.
And of course, a trio sonata isn't a piece for three players. It just about has to have somebody extra to add the cornstarch. Here by way of illustration is the non-trio sonata trio suite. It too covers several centuries, but does so in less than five minutes. The non-trio sonata trio suite is scored for wind instruments and has three movements. See you soon.
[music: Willaert, "Ricercar a 3"; Wiener Blockflötenensemble]
[music: Mozart, Adagio in F (K 410); Holliger Wind Ensemble]
[music: Poulenc, Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, & Trombone, 3rd Mvt.; German Brass]
Okay, that was the non-trio sonata trio suite. And it began with a piece by Adrian Willaert, a composer who died in 1562. And that was a piece for three recorders, at least played by three recorders here, Ricercar is a form similar to a fugue, a precursor of the fugue, and very often in music of that period of the Renaissance the specific instruments were not indicated, so it's played here by three recorders, performed by the Wiener Blockflötenensemble, the old Wiener Blockflute gang, and there are a bunch of them there, I don't know which three are playing this particular piece, and that is like a fugue I mentioned before, or a round, which is a similar kind of thing, in that there is no differentiation among the three parts whatsoever, they're all playing the same melodic material in various ways.
Then we had quite a beautiful piece by Mozart, a little trio, a separate little adagio in F, that's K. 410, or 484d, for two basset horns and bassoon. Basset horn is a clarinet-ish sort of instrument, and in that one you can sort of hear an in-between.
Sometimes the bass is moving separately, as in a trio sonata, and sometimes it's completely participating in the same kind of material, but even when it's moving as a bass instrument separately, there is no continuo filling in, which can also be said of the Poulenc piece with which we ended, the last movement of his Sonata for Horn, Trumpet and Trombone, written in 1922. And here again we sometimes have the trombone doing independent stuff from the two top instruments, but in one place the horn is being independent as it were in the middle and the trombone and trumpet on the outer ends of the spectrum are moving together.
That was performed by an album called German Brass on Audite and the players there were Konradin Groth, I assume was the trumpet player, Wolfgang Gaag on horn, and Enric Crespo on posaune, trombone. Okay, let's bring some voices in here and listen to some vocal trios, accompanied by instruments.
The first three numbers we're going to hear involve all treble voices. Now, in general, you're more likely to hear trios for three sopranos than you are for three basses. And there's a very basic reason for that, because the lower you get, the muddier close harmony sounds. But we're not leaving the men out. There's one piece with three men singing, doing some great singing, although high in their voices, even using falsetto, and one with two women and one man. So the inter-gender vocal trio suite consists of five numbers, and when you and I meet again, we'll both be about 11 minutes older.
[music excerpt: Mozart, “The Magic Flute,” “Seid uns zum zweiten Mal willkommen”; Orchester des Opernhauses Zurich/Harnoncourt]
[music: Parton/Wagoner, "The Pain of Loving You"; Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris]
[music excerpt: Gilbert/Sullivan, “The Mikado,” “Three Little Maids from School”; English National Opera/Robinson]
[music: Trad. arr. Taylor, "In the Pines" (Folk Songs from the Blue Grass); Earl Taylor & His Stoney Mountain Boys]
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Cosi fan tutte,” “Soave sia il vento”; Kiri Te Kanawa/Anne Murray/Ferruccio Furlanetto/Berlin Philharmonic/Levine]
The inter-gender vocal trio suite began and ended with Mozart. It began with the trio from the Magic Flute, the three little boys singing Welcome for the Second Time, You Men, in Sarastro's Kingdom. This was the Teldec recording, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and the three boys were Markus Bauer, Stefan Gienger, and Andreas Fischer. Terzetto, Seid uns zum zweiten Mal willkommen.
Then we went in, of course, to the trio that's called Trio, the album Trio, with Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris, the first cut, The Pain of Loving You. Then we had the Mikado. And I think hearing the Mikado practically after the Mozart, the Magic Flute makes you realize something I've always felt, which is that Sullivan just comes right out of the lighter part of Mozart, maybe via Rossini.
But aside from Rossini, all that happened between Mozart and Sullivan, I mean Beethoven and Berlioz and Wagner and Liszt, just about might not as well have happened. The Little Terzetto for the Three Boys could just about come out of one of Gilbert & Sullivan's operas, or vice versa. I'm talking about texture here, not necessarily sophistication. And then we had Earl Taylor and his Stoney Mountain Boys.
Those of you who listen to this program regularly have heard cuts from this album before, and you're going to hear them again. Oops! I did it again! I forgot to give the singers in the Mikado. The singers were Lesley Garrett, Jean Rigby, and Susan Bullock. That is the English National Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Peter Robinson. A Jonathan Miller production that had Eric Idle as Ko-Ko. That would be interesting to have seen.
Then we're back now to Earl Taylor and his Stoney Mountain Boys doing In the Pines.
One of the great great tunes of that repertoire and one of the high points in my life was I wrote a piece for bluegrass band and orchestra once for the McLain family band and we got together in a hotel suite near the the Museum of Modern History the Museum of Natural History in New York and we were in the room and we were talking getting to know each other and I said you know something that would just give me the greatest pleasure because I've always wanted to do is to be able to sing in the Pines live so they got their instruments out and I got to sing in the Pines.
By the way, that texture there is interesting, the same in Trio. The melody is in the middle. It's very common in that kind of country harmonization. The melody is in the middle, one of the harmony parts is on the top, the other harmony part is below. That is unlike the Mozart and the Gilbert & Sullivan, which the melody is on top.
Then finally, we had one of the few pieces of music that just about makes me cry every time I hear it, the trio from Così fan tutte, after the men have gone off supposedly to war, and the two women are commiserating with Don Alfonso, that was Kiri Te Kanawa, Anne Murray, and Ferruccio Furlanetto, James Levine conducting the...
The Vienna Philharmonic, Così fan tutte of Mozart. I'm Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Okay, we began this program being very educational, so we're going to have a little bonus at the end. It's not only Tidbit Time, it's double Tidbit Time. You hit the jackpot. We're going to end up with two tidbits, and they're both pretty amazing in their way. I'm going to tell you what they are beforehand. The first one is a reprise of a number we had earlier on the program, The Three Little Maids from School from the Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan.
This time, however, you're going to hear it performed by Joan Sutherland, Dinah Shore, and Ella Fitzgerald. This is from a live performance in 1963. It's from an album called Opera Stars in a Silly Mood, which has got some fairly amazing stuff on it.
It's called Legendary Recordings, and it's got Helen Traubel and Jimmy Durante, for instance, and Armand Tokatyan and Mae West, and what we're going to hear is the Three Little Maids from School from the Mikado, Joan Sutherland, Dinah Shore, and Ella Fitzgerald.
I warn you, the fi is extremely low, and it's really pretty hard to tell who's doing what. And then after that we'll hear another amazing kind of instrumental voice. This is a number played by the London Serpent Trio. The serpent, according to the liner notes, and it is quite an instrument, it's coiled around like a great big python. No, a python lying on the ground, though, going along, not, not coiled around something. The liner notes say it better than I can.
The serpent passed out of general circulation between 1850 and 1900, after two and a half centuries of continuous use. It is carved from wood, sounded by means of the lips in a cup mouthpiece, not unlike that of some brass instruments, and provided with six large finger holes, sometimes supplemented by others controlled with keys. The wooden body is covered with leather, vellum, or heavily painted fabric, virtually always black.
The church serpent was lightly built with sweeping curves. The military serpent was often twice the weight, more compact, and had metal reinforcements and struts to help it survive a less sheltered life. I think after hearing this, it isn't such a great mystery why the serpent fell out of use, but it is a great sound in its own right.
We're going to hear a piece by Franz Anton Hofmeister, who died in 1812, and is the composer that some people suspect wrote a famous Haydn piece, the famous Andante Cantabile from one of his early string quartets.
Some people think that Hofmeister actually wrote that. This is a piece called The Hen, The Cuckoo, and The Donkey. So first we hear Three Little Maids from School, and then
[music excerpt: “Opera Stars in a Silly Mood,” “Three Little Maids from School”; Joan Sutherland, Dinah Shore & Ella Fitzgerald]
[music: Hofmeister, "The Hen, The Cuckoo, The Donkey"; The London Serpent Trio]
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And so the voices of Joan Sutherland, Dinah Shore, Ella Fitzgerald, and three serpents bring Schickele Mix to a close for another 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 when you write. This is program number 10.
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.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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.