WQED-FM Pittsburgh, WQEJ Johnstown, WQED Multimedia.
If I were any readier, it would be unseemly. Here's the theme.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickley, and this is Shickley 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, all right, 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...
OK, 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.
OK, 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.
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.
Here's a two-part motet by Lassus.
And notice that the two lines, although they share melodic material,
♪
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 shickley 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 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, it's 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 Saint Nicholas.
Timbre us faire shone us, At the birth, at the birth,
Saint Nicholas, bring us welfare.
Saint Nicholas, God is truth, Timbre us faire shone us,
At the birth, at the birth, Saint Nicholas, bring us welfare.
The wonderful early music group Sequentia, singing a 12th century song by Saint Godric.
Words are beautiful to this song. Saint Nicholas, God's darling, Graciously prepare for us beautiful dwellings. By the merits of thy birth, By the merits of thy beer,
That's B-I-E-R, wise guys. Saint Nicholas, bring us safely there. Beautiful little vocal number there.
Now, 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 third. One, one, two, three, this is third.
Parallel thirds.
And its close cousin, the sixth. One, two, three, four, five, six.
This is a sweetness to thirds and sixths.
And speaking of sweet, our first sweet 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.
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 Cappella Antica of Munich,
under the direction of Conrad Ruhland.
And then we had a duet with chorus from Così fan tutte of Mozart.
It's between Guglielmo Inferando, sung by Bladimiro Gonzaroli and Nicola Gheda.
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...
You know why I stumbled over that word is because it's a bad translation.
It says, repeat, you who a thousand times have heard the tenor of my griefs,
All that you have heard to my beloved.
Either a bad translation or a typo.
That was Colin Davis conducting the Royal Opera House at the 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 and 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 Karl Orff and Gunhild Kittmann.
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 Barrel.
Five Fools in a Barrel drove into Harrow, tra-la-la, et cetera.
They bumped and they bumped and they limped and they lumped,
and the faster they rumbled, the faster they tumbled.
And the barrel 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 Blagen and Friederike 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 never mentioned,
with moanful winds you 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 A.I.
A parallel triad, we already had this earlier.
Or sometimes an inversion.
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 7th chords,
the third number in this suite.
Dominant 7th chords, which are like this,
that 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.
¶¶
The parallel chord song cycle
began with another number
from the Karl Orff Children's Project there.
And thinking about it, 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,
but 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 Gunil Kipman, or Kipman,
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.
Then 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 7th 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 2 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.
Awu Mungoya singing
Ka Xe Nyi Ne Tsa
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 Deka
album, that old Deka 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
A.I. 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...
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 wall door for 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, all right, 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.
I love her in the morning, and I love her at night.
I love her, yes, I love her when the stars are shining bright.
I love her in the springtime, and I love her in the fall.
But last night, on the back porch, I loved her best of all.
I love her, yes, I love her when the stars are shining bright.
I love her in the morning, and I love her at night.
I love her, yes, I love her when the stars are shining bright.
I love her in the springtime, and I love her in the fall.
But last night, on the back porch, I loved her best of all.
I love her, yes, I love her when the stars are shining bright.
I love her in the morning, and I love her at night.
I love her in the springtime, and I love her at night.
But last night, on the back porch, I loved her best of all.
I love her in the morning, and I love her at night.
I love her, yes, I love her when the stars are shining bright.
I love her in the morning, and I love her at night.
Beware, I say, thou little bird, Of my leather-flea flap,
And come not hither, nor hither word, Lest it reach a sound rap,
For it shall be thy little bomb, Hear me, pretty fellow,
And tap it driftly if thou come, Harken what I tell you,
Harken what I tell you, In thy coming, or thy bumming,
If thou comest hither humming, Thou false bumblebee,
In thy swarming and thy harming, If thou chants within thy charming,
Exorcise or take.
In nomine, o domine, Defend us from this groan,
And charm this hurtful honeybee to laugh, Or to do a seagull.
In thy coming, or thy bumming, If thou comest hither humming,
Thou false bumblebee, In thy swarming and thy harming,
If thou chants within thy charming, Exorcise or take.
In nomine, o domine, Defend us from this groan,
Or to do a seagull.
Then we had a composition by the 20th century American composer Peter Shickley,
a piece called Bestiary, and that was The Bee,
which is a poem from 1599 by T. Cutwoad,
from the Bestiary Calta 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 think are delightful,
and there's nothing new under the sun.
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 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 Crum,
Ancient Voices of Children.
This was performed by Jandy Gaitani 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.
And that's Shickly 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 Shickly 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.
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.