Beatus Homo (LASSUS) Performer: Girl's Chorus of Gyor/Miklos Szabo, director Qualiton LPX 11441
St. Nicholas (ST. GODRIC) Performer: Sequentia English Songs of the Middle Ages (EMI CDC 7 49192 2)
The Parallel Interval Song Cycle
O Roma Nobilis (ANON.) Performer: Capella Antiqua of Munich Pro Arte PAL 1008
“Cosi Fan Tutte,” “Secondate, aurette amiche” (MOZART) Performer: Nicolai Gedda, tenor/Wladimiro Ganzarolli, baritone/Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/Davis Philips 6707 025 4
Long Time Gone (HARTFORD/RITTER/GOLDSEN (ASCAP)) Performer: The Everly Brothers Songs Our Daddy Taught Us (Cadence CLP 3016)
WQED FM Pittsburgh, WQEJ Johnstown, WQED Multimedia If I were any readier, it would be unseemly. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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. And some people's noses get a little bit out of joint on account of how we mix it up on this show. But I want to say straight out here that when I do something like follow a Mozart aria with a country song by the Judds, I'm not going for shock value.
Well, alright, maybe just a teeny weeny bit. But the real point is that I really do think it's all good music, and I really do think that you can notice things as a result of these juxtapositions that are worth noticing, and I don't think it shows any disrespect to either Mozart or the Judds to put them in bed together, and I'm not really interested in theoretical reasons for the superiority of some music over other music. If I like listening to it, then as far as I'm concerned it's worth listening to, and you should feel the same about what you like listening to. And I do agree that some music bears repeated hearings better than other music, but I don't think that means we shouldn't hear the nifty or the how about that stuff as well as the truly great stuff, like Beethoven and the Beatles. And another thing, like, okay, all right, all right, I must say that this time Even I can understand why the old hot air sensor up there on the wall went off.
It's time to get back on track here. Our bills are paid by this radio station. Okay, now let's get this show on the road. On two roads, actually, because today we're dealing with parallelism in vocal music. Two lines are said to be parallel if they move in the same direction and keep the same basic interval between them. But first, let me play a brief example of music that avoids parallelism almost completely, so we know what we're not talking about.
Here's a two-part motet by Lassus, and notice that the two lines, although they share melodic material, move at different times and often in different directions.
[music: Lassus, "Beatus Homo"; Girl's Chorus of Gyor/Miklos Szabo, director]
Beautiful stuff, huh? A Lassus two-part motet, Beatus Homo, sung by the Girl's Chorus of Gyor, Hungary, under the direction of Miklos Szabo. Please don't bug me about pronunciation of names. I'm hopeless. S-Z-A-B-O. All I know is that if I go into a Hungarian restaurant and they've got S-Z-E-K-E-L-E-Y cabbage on the menu, and I say, I'll have the Schickele cabbage, please, the waiter doesn't bat an eyelash.
Okay, now let's demonstrate parallel motion. This is an English song from the 12th century, and we'll hear the melody three times. First in unison, which means everybody's singing the same note. Then in parallel fifths, here let me illustrate fifths on the authentic instrument, not a reproduction mind you, an authentic 1991 Casio tone bank with which this splendiferous studio is equipped.
Here's a note, and you go up the scale five steps, one, two, three, four, five, in scales you always count the first note, one, two, three, four, five, that's a fifth. In parallel fifths, moving, the two voices moving and keeping a fifth between them. And then the third time we'll hear it with parallel triads. A triad is two sets of thirds on top of one another. Here's the note: one, two, three, one, two, three. Parallel triads. Here we go with St. Nicholas.
[music: St. Godric, "St. Nicholas" (English Songs of the Middle Ages); Sequentia]
The wonderful early music group Sequentia, singing a 12th century song by St. Godric. The words are beautiful to this song. St. Nicholas, God's Darling, graciously prepare for us beautiful dwellings. By the merits of thy birth, by the merits of thy bier, that's B-I-E-R, wise guys, St. Nicholas, bring us safely there. Beautiful little vocal number there.
Probably the first non-unison singing in Western culture was singing in parallel fifths.
And it's hard to resist the suspicion that the practice arose accidentally, as it were. I took a taxi cab just a few days ago that was driven by a man from India, and he was playing some beautiful Indian popular music on his tape deck, and two or three times he started singing along with the tape, and one time, instead of singing the same notes as the singer, he was singing along a fifth off. And that happens at birthday parties all over the world, I expect.
In terms of the physics of music, if you take a given note, the note a fifth above it is the most closely related differently named note there is. And it's not uncommon for people who don't have a very good ear to sing a fifth off all the while thinking that they're singing with, that is, the same notes as, everyone else. But the most common interval for parallel singing in Western music over the last few centuries is definitely the third.
Let me reach over to the authentic instrument here to illustrate the 3rd. 1, 1, 2, 3. This is the parallel thirds. And its close cousin, the 6th. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
There's a sweetness to thirds and sixths. And speaking of sweet, our first suite features singers singing in parallel intervals, basically two parallel lines. In the first number, the top and bottom parts are an octave apart. In other words, functionally singing the same notes. And the middle part is a fifth above the bottom. Got that? The other numbers abound in parallel thirds and sometimes sixths. Remember though, these are living, breathing, beautiful pieces of music, not textbook examples, so the parallelism is not always strictly adhered to, and of course, the accompanying instruments and or voices are not necessarily involved in the parallel motion.
There are five numbers in the parallel interval song cycle, and together they last close to 14 minutes. See you then.
[music: Anon., "O Roma Nobilis"; Capella Antiqua of Munich]
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Cosi Fan Tutte,” “Secondate, aurette amiche”; Nicolai Gedda, tenor/Wladimiro Ganzarolli, baritone/Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/Davis]
[music: Hartford/Ritter/Goldsen, "Long Time Gone" (Songs Our Daddy Taught Us); The Everly Brothers]
[music excerpt: Orff/Keetman, “Music for Children,” “Five fools in a barrow”; Directed by Orff, Keetman & Jelinek]
[music: Brahms, “Weg der Liebe” (II), Opus 20, No. 2; Judith Blegen, soprano/Frederica von Stade, mezzo/Charles Wadsworth, piano]
The parallel interval song cycle. It began with O Roma Nobilis, Song of the Pilgrims, an anonymous composition from 12th century Verona, performed by the Capella Antiqua of Munich under the direction of Conrad Ruland. And then we had a duet with chorus from Così fan tutte of Mozart. It's between Guglielmo and Ferrando, sung by Wladimiro Ganzarolli and Nicolai Gedda, and the words they were singing were, Ye friendly breezes, help, oh help my desires, and carry my sighs to the goddess of my heart.
Repeat, repeat, you who a thousand times have heard the tenor of my griefs, all that you have heard to my beloved. I love it. Either a bad translation or a typo. That was Colin Davis conducting the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
And then the next number was Everly Brothers from one of my favorite albums, a little-known album, called Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. Everly Brothers come from a family of singers. Their father was a singer and father before them.
And this is an album of songs that range from very obviously English songs that came across the ocean, like Roving Gambler and Barbara Allen and Down in the Willow Garden, to good old sentimental southern favorites like Rockin' Alone in My Own Rockin' Chair and That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine. That song was called Long Time Gone. You know that little sort of thrill you get when you find out that you're a member of an exclusive club, you find out that somebody else likes some obscure thing that you like. I got that feeling when I read in an interview with Paul Simon once that this was one of his favorite albums.
The Everly Brothers' songs our daddy taught us. And then we had an item from a nice album of music for children by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman. This is work that Orff did with school children originally in Germany, although this album has the songs translated into English. And that was Five Fools in a Barrow. Five fools in a barrow drove into Harrow, Tralala, etc. They bumped and they bumped and they limped and they lumped, and the faster they rumbled, the faster they tumbled.
And the barrow went bust, as you hear when kids say, and they fell in the dust. Everybody has a very good time laughing about that one. This is the chorus of the children's opera group, the chorus of the Bancroft School for Boys, and an instrumental ensemble.
Okay, and then finally, we had a beautiful duet by Brahms, sung by Judith Blegen and Frederica von Stade, with Charles Wadsworth at the piano, called Weg der Liebe, number two, there are two poems with that title, these words, the Gordian knot, which was tied by love, can mortal hand undo, Why struggle, why think up cunning device, since no matter what you do, love finds a way, and if he were locked up and forgotten, his name sealed and and never mentioned. With moanful winds he would glide to me and bring word with him to me. If you were far across mountains, far across seas, I would climb over the mountains, swim through the seas. If, my love, you were a swallow gliding near the brook, I, my love, would be a swallow gliding after you. Now, I usually would try to give the words of non-English things before you hear the suite. In this case, I figured I'd just as soon have you thinking about parallel intervals as much as the words anyway.
I'm Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Now let's move on to parallel chords, three or more different lines moving together. The first two numbers in this next suite feature parallel triads, which I will illustrate on the AI, a parallel triad, we already had this earlier, or
[music: keyboard demonstration]
sometimes in inversion,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
although in this case I think both examples are pretty much in the root inversion, actually.
The root inversion is not really an inversion. Ah, well, never mind. Anyway, the third uses dominant seventh chords, the third number in this suite, dominant seventh chords, which are like this chord, and one of the most spectacular instances of parallelism I know of. So here's the parallel chord song cycle. I'll be back in about eight minutes.
[music excerpt: Orff/Keetman, “Music for Children,” “King Herod”; Directed by Orff, Keetman & Jelinek]
[music: Dennis/Wilson/Jardine, "Friends" (Friends); The Beach Boys]
The parallel chord song cycle began with another number from the Carl Orff children's project there, and thinking about, I was wrong, by the way, when I said before that this was translated into English. Obviously these are not translations. These are English poems. They're much too idiomatic to be translations. The work that Orff did, he originally started working with children in the 20s and 30s.
In the late 40s he started a radio program and started working with kids, and then I think around 1950 or 51 he was joined by his assistant Gunild Keetman, and this bunch of music comes from then, and the pieces were adapted to English poems and sayings such as we've heard here. This one was King Herod. It says it's an old traditional carol sung to a melody from Eastern Europe.
And we heard the last part of the Crosby, Stills & Nash Suite, Judy Blue Eyes, which has some classic parallel triad singing, and then the last one was The Beach Boys, Friends, from the album called Friends, and those dominant seventh chords, I mean, they just sort of grow like one of those movies of a plant in speeded-up motion, you know, the plant just sort of blossoms in front of your eyes. And here it is, Tidbit Time.
Now, very often our tidbits are of a somewhat humorous nature, whether they were meant that way or not, but today's is not only serious, it is also one of my absolute favorite pieces of music in the whole world. And people who are familiar with my serious compositions won't be surprised to hear that. This one album cut has been a major influence on my harmonic language. I played it for my son once and he said, hey dad, this sounds like you.
This song features similar, but not parallel motion. In other words, the two vocal lines move in the same direction, but don't keep the same basic interval between them. The top part may move up a second, while the bottom part moves up a third, changing the distance between them from a fifth to a fourth. Okay, never mind. It's a gorgeous piece of music, a Nindo praise song for men and women of a Bantu tribe in Tanganyika.
The liner notes accurately point out the similarity between this piece and a certain kind of Gregorian chant singing. Also, if any of you have a page of illuminated Gregorian chant music hanging on your wall as a decoration, there was a time when that was all the rage, look at the end of each line of music, and like as not, there'll be a little check-like mark, which is there to warn the singers what the first note of the next line of music will be for when you switch down.
Now, in this song, notice how the composer, an 18-year-old standing in front of the rest of the singers, says the first word or two of the upcoming line to remind everybody what comes next. Here is his song, Awu Mungoya.
[music: "Awu Mungoya" (Music of Africa Series, No. 11); Gogo Tribe]
Awu Mungoya, sung by the Gogo Tribe, a Bantu tribe in Tanganyika.
And those of you who have listened to this program quite a bit, this is from that Decca album, that old Decca album that you've heard several cuts from before, of music from Africa. Just about every cut on this album is tremendous, and this is my favorite of them all. Of course, those women in the background, the liner notes say that everybody, man, woman, and child in the tribe knew this song.
And the women in the background singing, that one woman hits that high note, it's just, it would be hard to sit down. It would be impossible to sit down and compose something like that.
And what they're doing is really instead of having an interval, let me hit the old AI here. I guess they're about on that pitch. I don't have perfect pitch. I guess it's about like that. To me, and I expect they wouldn't think of it this way because they probably are not thinking chordally, but to me it's like they're outlining a dominant seventh chord. That's a dominant seventh chord, and they go
[music: keyboard demonstration]
a very evocative sound, which I have borrowed many times and elaborated on. I'm still Peter Schickele, and the program is still Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Many, many years ago, I was taken, for a birthday present, to hear Peggy Lee at one of the supper clubs in New York, the Waldorf or the Rainbow Room, I don't remember where it was. Anyway, my brother, being real cool, he greased the maitre d's palm with a five dollar bill, which got us a table right next to the band, alright, but practically behind it. We were sort of the right rear fender of the band. You could sort of see Peggy Lee's back and right arm through the music stands.
But we had an excellent view of the little violin section, five or six middle-aged guys who obviously didn't usually play this kind of gig. Now one of the numbers required the instrumentalists to sing the tune a couple of times. And the regular band members, the hip guys, obviously regarded this as an extremely corny, not to say demeaning chore, which they did only because they wouldn't be paid if they didn't. But the string players, the squares, they thought that singing the song was more dang fun.
They had big smiles on their faces. The difference between the regular band and the string players was sort of like Garfield and Odie. Now, let's go out with three numbers in which the instrumentalists are asked to sing. This suite, I'll just tell you in advance, this suite goes from the ridiculous to the sublime. In the third song, the sublime one, you have to listen very carefully to hear the three percussionists singing in the background.
The Make the Players Sing song cycle lasts about eight and a half minutes.
[music: Brown/Schraubstader, "Last Night on the Back Porch"; Sextette From Hunger]
[music excerpt: Schickele, “Bestiary: A Music Theater Piece for Renaissance Ensemble,” “The Bee”; Calliope]
[music excerpt: Crumb, "Ancient Voices of Children"; Jan DeGaetani, mezzo/The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble/Weisberg]
Make the Players Sing, started with a Dixieland number, last night on the back porch, which was performed by the Sextet from Hunger Dixieland band some of you may not remember that used to be an expression and that's strictly from hunger meaning that's not really much good that's pretty good jazz band Dixieland jazz band then we had a composition by the 20th century American composer Peter Schickele a piece called Bestiary and that was The Bee which is a poem from 1599 by T. Cutwode from the Bestiary Caltha Poetarum, or the Bumblebee, and the singers in the group, the group being Calliope, an early music ensemble consisting of four people.
They are playing and singing. The words, by the way, in that poem, I just think are delightful, and there's nothing new under the sun. You know, in the first place it talks about, beware my leather flea flap, which I figure has to be a fly swatter, right? It must be a leather fly swatter.
And then my favorite line in, is it, is referring to that leather flea flap. The poet says to the bumblebee, "For it shall beat thy little bum." So words that you thought were new are not new. Ending with the absolutely haunting composition by George Crumb, Ancient Voices of Children this was performed by Jan DeGaetani and the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble conducted by Arthur Weisberg. And the three percussionists can be heard there singing the refrain. The words are, each afternoon in Granada, a child dies each afternoon.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And 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. You have just heard program number 17. 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. Ooh, you're looking good. See you next week.
[No speech for 88 s.]
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, MN 55403.