Okay, just keep your pantaloons on. 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.
A program sworn to a policy of playing music of the people, by the people, and for the people, even if some of those people happen to be kings and queens.
Let's face it, the arts and financial backing go together like a horse and carriage. And if you don't know any kings and queens, you can do what I did, genuflect before the American Public Radio Program Fund,
whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, and also before the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and this radio station. It worked for me, and my gratitude knows no bounds.
Let's begin today's program with a popular song.
That song, called,
Lomar May, was a big hit in the 15th century. We heard it sung by the Italis scholars on a Gimel CD. Its words mean, fear the armed man.
Word has gone out that everyone should arm himself with a coat of iron mail. And in those days, it was common for composers to base masses, not only on liturgical melodies, but also on secular songs.
There were at least 25 mass cycles based on Lomar May, written during the second half of the 15th century, and here's the beginning of the Agnus Dei from Dufay's Mise Lomar May,
performed by the Hilliard Ensemble on an EMI CD. Now, don't expect to hear the tune in the top part. It's pretty much buried in the whole texture.
If you can hear Lomar May in there, you've got a very good ear. At the risk of courting a charge of musicological impudence, let me play that again and sing along when the song comes in.
Of course, Dufay changed the words to those of the Kyrie, but I'll sing the original words. Now, I think it's safe to say that if I auditioned for the Hilliard Ensemble, I wouldn't make it in.
So, I'm going to see if I can help myself out here a little singing-wise. I just had a reverb thing put into this studio here, and this is a good time to try it out. I'm going to turn it up here.
Okay, now maybe I can blend in with the rest of the group.
It doesn't sound half bad.
I'll have to remember that. But it would be tacky to use it for the whole show. Okay, now, hearing a Lomar May Mass is all well and good, but it doesn't give us, you and me, here and now,
an idea of what it would be like to hear a Mass based on a song that has been a part of our lives for years. So, let's move ahead a couple of centuries to a Baroque piece.
In this case, the chorale melody, also based on a secular song, is in the soprano. It's a song that's still around. Why don't you see? If you can recognize it. The melody is foreshadowed in the trumpet
at the beginning of this excerpt.
No?
Well, maybe you don't know the song. But it's more likely that the problem is that the words, which in this case are the original song words, are quite difficult to understand.
Let me play that excerpt again with me singing along when the tune comes in. Okay, let me just turn up the old reverb here. Here we go.
I said these words to my
In 1965, after I had recorded the first PDQ Bach album with Vanguard,
but before it was released, I got a call from Elektra Records. Basically, what the guy said was, we've got this great idea for an album, we can't tell you what it is, but would you like to do it?
He did mention something about it involving both classical and popular music, so I said that I'd probably be interested, but that I was already working on this, and he said that he wanted to do a PDQ Bach album with Vanguard,
and it sounded like there might be a sort of a conflict of interest there, and maybe he should talk to the two brothers who ran Vanguard and see what they thought. Naturally, they thought it was a lousy idea. They're no dummies.
And thus it was that I didn't get to do the Baroque Beatles book, an excerpt from which we just heard. The person they got to do it was Joshua Rifkin, who later made some very influential recordings
of the music of Scott Joplin and Johann Sebastian Bach. We knew each other from Juilliard, and in fact, Josh was the first person to sing the PDQ Bach cantata, Iphigenia, in Brooklyn,
decked out in a red wig to make him look like Russell Oberlin, the reigning countertenor of the day. That was at Juilliard in 1962, and for a while our careers seemed to be paralleling each other.
He did Baroque treatments of Beatles songs, and I did PDQ Bach. He arranged for Judy Collins, and I arranged for Joan Baez. Anyway, he did a fine job. He did a fine job with the Baroque Beatles book,
which certainly turned out to be more scholarly and probably a lot subtler than it would have been if I had done it. And what makes it good is not only the fun of spotting the tunes, but it really does give you a feeling of what it must have been like
to be a 15th century northern Italian listening to a mass based on Lomar May. The excerpt we heard before was from Last Night I Said,
cantata for the third Sunday after Shea Stadium, MBE 58,000. Here's the overture to the royal Beatleworks music, MBE 1963. I'll see you in about six minutes.
This reverb thing is really great. I'm going to turn it up here. Yeah, you've got that something. All right. I think you'll understand
When I say that something I want to hold your hand
the overture to the Royal Beatleworks music if you've got what musicians call x-ray ears you might have heard a little reference to another tune you're going to lose that girl in there
but I'm talking very buried of course there's a very prominent quote from the fourth Brandenburg
Concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach my name is Peter sickly and the program is sickly mix on
APR I was just thinking about what the closest thing to a Lomar may mass might be in our culture
now and the Aaron Copland ballets came to mind for instance Billy the Kid in which he uses cowboy songs like goodbye old paint and get along little doggies but that's a score for a ballet about
cowboys the songs that the Renaissance composers used in their masses the words of those songs had nothing to do with the mass or any other part of the liturgy most of them were love songs any
way here are the next two movements of the Royal Beatleworks music rejuice and lape preceded and
followed by their models you say you will love me if I you be thinking wishing you weren't so far
away things we said today you say you be mine girl till the end of time these days such a kind girl
it seems so hard to say then we will reset today say that love is he said today you say that love
is that's enough the only one
it's interesting listening to the Baroque Beatles book Decades Later it reminds me of the story of a kid being asked if she likes classical music sure she says I like the Beatles and it's true
these songs are sort of like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony now sometimes you feel as if you've heard them enough for a while I mean you maybe don't go out of your way to listen to them but man when
you hear them again they really stand up here are the last two movements of the Royal Beatlework music Les Plaisirs, once again preceded and followed by their beatific models.
Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall.
If she's gone, I can't go on, feeling two foot small.
Everywhere people stare, each and every day.
I can see them laugh at me, and I hear them say.
You've got to hide, you've got to hide, even try.
I can see them in the state I'm in.
Could she say to me, look out, let me hear you say.
You've got to hide your love away.
Hey!
She's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care.
Why's she riding so?
She's got a ticket to ride. And she don't care.
For she gets to say.
And she's got a ticket to ride.
She's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care.
We've been listening to the Royal Beetleworks music, MBE 1963, from the Baroque Beatles book, rediscovered and edited by Joshua Rifkin,
who was also conducting the Baroque ensemble of the Merseyside Common Music Gazelle Shaft. Earlier, when we heard that little bit of the cantata, the baroque ensemble, we heard the baroque ensemble of the Merseyside Common Music Gazelle Shaft.
the third Saturday after Shea Stadium, we also heard the Canby Singers. Certainly one of the things that makes this record so delightful is the really spirited performances. It's really a joy. And now it's tidbit time.
And I thought since we're dealing with arrangements, why don't we hear a terse yet quite ambitious arrangement of La Donna Immobile from Verdi's opera Rigoletto.
I was just kidding there, folks. That arrangement isn't very ambitious at all, really. It's from an album of musical clocks.
That was an 1833 Viennese clock. This is on a Candide record called Musical Clocks, Musical Clocks from Private Collections
and Famous Clock Museums in Vienna, Nuremberg, and Bernhausen. I'm Peter Schickely. The program is Schickely Mixed. Schickely Mixed on APR.
On other installments of Schickely Mixed, we deal with classical music as treated by non-classical musicians. Jazz versions of symphonic pieces, for instance. Now that's a pretty large field. There's quite a bit to choose from.
But when it comes to classical treatments of non-classical, but non-folk material, the pickings are considerably slimmer. Today's program has so far been devoted to a playful example of this small genre.
But we're going to go out with a, heavy-duty example. Now, you classical music purists, if there are any of you left listening to this show, you better fasten your seatbelts.
We're going to hear a song called Welcome to the Jungle by Guns N' Roses. My son tells me that Guns N' Roses are not exactly considered heavy metal, but compared to most of the music on even this eclectic show,
Welcome to the Jungle has a fairly weighty mineral content. It will be followed by an absolutely spectacular arrangement of the song for string quartet. That most classical aggregation of instruments.
The arrangement is by Frank Bennett, and also the Green String Quartet, who perform it on a virgin album called The String Machine. Don't say I didn't warn you.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Schickely Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickely Mix.
Care of American Public Radio, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900. 100A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.