And now, Shickly Mix. Ready, Mr. Shickly?
I am more than ready. I'm willing. Here's the theme.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickly, and this is Shickly 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, and 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 Andy 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.
ORCHESTRA PLAYS
ORCHESTRA CONTINUES
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
was 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 Sommarie.
Uh, Sommarie?
You know, I've 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 Sommarie
conducting the English Chamber Orchestra.
Let's check out another recording of the trio,
just the trio of that movement.
This is Toon Koopman.
I hope again I'm pronouncing that correctly.
Toon Koopman leading the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
ORCHESTRA PLAYS
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, Toon.
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 3 lines of music.
Take a listen to this.
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, No. 5.
And that's because, you guessed it,
even though a lot of musicians were playing there,
Stamitz only wrote 3 lines of music,
1st violin, 2nd 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,
3 lines of music usually played by at least 4 instrumentalists.
Now, in some of my PDQ 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 sweets 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,
2 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,
2 higher melody lines, an independent bass line,
and something else filling in.
The inter-era trio sonata is in the standard 4 movements,
slow, fast, slow, fast.
I'll be back in about 11 1⁄2 minutes.
¦
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 prints 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,
Sashko Grolilov, and the oboe was Heinz Holliger,
the bassoon was Klaus Thunemann,
and the harpsichord was Christiane Jacotet,
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 Jerry Mulligan Quartet from the 50s.
It was a tune called Frenesy, 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 this 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've got to say I love that sound.
I have to admit, and this is real heresy in the classical world,
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 the piano comping, as they call it in jazz.
I love that clean air sound of the three-part counterpoint
in Jerry 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 could hear how the bass
sometimes shares melodic material,
the flute and violin's 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's in the Field,
conducted by Neville Mariner,
although I don't know if he actually conducted
this particular piece,
since it only had 4 people playing,
Iona Brown on violin,
and William Bennett on flute,
Dennis Viguet on cello,
and Nicholas Kramer 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 3 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.
Bop bop, bop bop, bop bop.
And of course, a trio sonata
isn't a piece for 3 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 5 minutes.
The non-trio sonata trio suite
is scored for wind instruments
and has 3 movements.
See you soon.
♪
Okay, that was the non-trio sonata trio suite.
And it began with a piece by Adrien Villert,
a composer who died in 1562.
And that was a piece for 3 recorders,
at least played by 3 recorders here,
Richard Carr, Atré.
Richard Carr 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 3 recorders,
performed by the Wiener Blockflöten Ensemble,
the old Wiener Blockflöten gang.
And there are a bunch of them there.
I don't know which 3 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 3 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 K410, or 484D,
for 2 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 2 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 a...
It's an album called German Brass on Adite,
and the players there were Conrad and Groth,
I assume was the trumpet player,
Wolfgang Gang 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 3 numbers we're going to hear
involve all treble voices.
Now, in general, you're more likely
to hear trios for 3 sopranos
than you are for 3 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 3 men singing,
doing some great singing,
although high in their voices,
even using falsetto,
and one with 2 women and 1 man.
So the Intergender Vocal Trio Suite
consists of 5 numbers,
and when you and I meet again,
we'll both be about 11 minutes older.
♫
Oh, the pain of loving you
Oh, the misery I go through
Never knowing what to do
Oh, the pain of loving you
You just can't stand to see me happy
Seem to hurt me all you can
Still I go on loving you
But I never understand
Oh, the pain of loving you
Oh, the misery I go through
Never knowing what to do
Oh, the pain of loving you
♫
To love and hate at the same time
The line between the two is fine
The two has bound me heart and soul
So strong that I can't let you go
Oh, the pain of loving you
Oh, the misery I go through
Never knowing what to do
Oh, the pain of loving you
♫
Three little maids from school are we
But a schoolgirl well can be
Filled to the brim with girlish glee
Three little maids from school
Everything is a so-so
Nobody's safe or we care for none
Life is a joke that's just begun
Three little maids from school
Three little maids who all are merry
Come from a lady's seminary
Free from a genius tutelary
Three little maids from school
♫
One little maid is a bride-yum-yum
Two little maids are attendants-car
Three little maids is a tutel-some
Three little maids from school
From three little maids take one away
Two little maids remain and they
Won't have to wait very long they say
Three little maids from school
Three little maids who all are merry
Come from a lady's seminary
Free from a genius tutelary
Three little maids from school
♫
The longest train I ever saw
Went down that Georgia line
The engine passed at six o'clock
And the cab passed by at nine
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun never shines
And we shiver when the cold wind blows
♫
Little girl, little girl
What have I done
That makes you treat me so
You've caused me to weep
And you've caused me to moan
You've caused me to leave my home
In the pines, in the pines
Where the sun never shines
And we shiver when the cold wind blows
♫
The Intergender 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, Nicholas Harnoncourt,
and the three boys were Marcus Bauer, Stefan Ginger,
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.
I 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 and Sullivan's operas
or vice versa.
I'm talking about texture here, not necessarily sophistication.
And then we had Earl Taylor and his Stony 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.
Yes, I did it again!
I forgot to give the singers in the Mikado.
The singers were Leslie Garrett, Gene 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 Coco.
That would be interesting to have seen.
Then we're back now to Earl Taylor and his Stony Mountain Boys
doing In the Pines,
great, great tunes of that repertoire.
One of the high points in my life was
I wrote a piece for Bluegrass Band and Orchestra once
for the McLean Family Band,
and we got together in a hotel suite
near the Museum of Natural History in New York.
We were in the room, and we were talking, getting to know each other.
I said, you know, something that would just give me the greatest pleasure,
because all 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 and Sullivan,
in 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 Kiritikanoa and Murray,
and Ferruccio Ferlanetto, James Levine,
conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Così fan tutte of Mozart.
I'm Peter Shickley. The program is Shickley 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 Toketian 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 coiled around something.
The liner notes say it better than I can.
The serpent passed out of general circulation
between 1850 and 1900
after 2 1⁄2 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 6 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,
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,
that famous Andante Cantabile
from one of his early string quartets.
dee-da-da-da-da-da
dee-da-dee-dee-dee
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 The Hen, the Cuckoo, and the Donkey.
Three little maids from school are we, four little maids from school are we.
Nobody thinks we care for none.
Three little maids from school.
Three little maids who all were wearing couple ladies,
seven ladies, three little things, a suit and many.
Three little maids in suits, three little maids in suits.
And so the voices of Joan Sutherland, Dinah Shore, Ella Fitzgerald and Three Serpents
bring Shickly 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 Shickly saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing
if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi.
Be good. See you next week.
See you next week.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned,
send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Shickly Mix.
That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Shickly Mix.
Care of Public Radio International.
100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403.
P-R-I, Public Radio International.