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. Good enough for jazz, anyway. Hey, just kidding, man. This compote of compatible music is made possible with funds provided by the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation and also by this radio station.
Herbert von Karajan was one of the last, if not the last, of the old-style conductors. Lofty, autocratic, brilliant, difficult of approach, irascible, single-minded, the stereotype of what great conductors were like in the days when classical musicians were called longhairs. Karajan, unlike some of his predecessors, was also an astute businessman, a very wealthy person, and perhaps the most recorded conductor in history.
A friend of a friend of mine, when told that Karajan had died, said, I suppose that means he'll only be doing recordings from now on. And there's been a musician's joke going around for years that our greatest violinist dies, and when he reaches the pearly gates, St. Peter says, ah, I've been waiting for you. Please come with me. We want you to play the Beethoven Concerto with the Celestial Symphony. So they walk over the clouds for a while till finally they see a huge orchestra in the distance, and as they get closer, they can make out the conductor, a towering figure on the podium, making sweeping gestures and giving imperious cues, his handsome, sculptured face displaying intense concentration.
And the violinist asks St. Peter, Who's that? And St. Peter says, Oh, don't pay any attention to him. That's God. He thinks he's von Karajan. Herbie the K in heaven. Then there's Bloch's dream. I've heard this from two different people, which of course doesn't necessarily make it true, but the story goes that Ernest Bloch, the Swiss American composer who died in 1959, told his students about a dream he had in which he died and went to heaven.
As he was walking around, he saw a large figure in the distance flanked by two shorter figures. He drew nearer, and he saw that the large figure was Beethoven, and the smaller figures were Schoenberg and Stravinsky, who were grasping at Beethoven's robe in a desperate and futile attempt to keep from sinking into the cloud. As Bloch got closer, Beethoven looked up and said, ah, Bloch, I've been waiting for you.
Wouldn't it be great to have an ego like that? Man. In my dreams, I'm about to go out on the stage of Carnegie Hall, and I don't have any clothes on. And then, of course, there's the one... Okay, okay. That's the old irrelevancy alarm going off there. I guess we've had enough anecdotes. So what is heaven like? Sunlit? Timeless? Harp music in the elevators? The traditional western view of heaven is quite a classical one.
If there's any architecture besides clouds, it's Greek architecture, and the cherubs are singing Palestrina. Well, here are three non-classical views of heaven. An early admirer of Schubert's monumental C-major symphony referred to its heavenly length. But our opening suite, the Visions of Heaven song cycle, lasts a modest 12 minutes or so.
[music excerpt: Duke Ellington, "Heaven" (Second Sacred Concert); Alice Babs, vocal; Duke Ellington Orchestra; Johnny Hodges, sax]
[music: Tex Ritter, "I Dreamed of a Hill-Billy Heaven"]
Tex Ritter (recorded): Last night I dreamed I went to hillbilly heaven. And you know who greeted me at the gate? The old cowboy philosopher himself, Will Rogers. He said to me, he said, Tex, that the big boss of the riders up here has asked me to kind of show you around. And right over yonder's a couple of your old compadres. My, was I glad to see them: Carson Robison, and the Mississippi Blue Yodeler, Jimmie Rodgers.
Tex Ritter (recorded): He introduced me to Wiley Post, and he showed me the Hall of Fame with all the gold guitars and fiddles hangin' on the wall. Then he said, Tex, step over this way. There are two more of your friends I know you'll want to see. They're waitin' for you. And there they were, standin' side by side and smilin' at me, Hank Williams and Johnny Horton.
Tex Ritter (recorded): Then I asked him who else he expected within the next, say, a hundred years. He handed me a large book covered with stardust. Will called it the Big Tally Book. In it were many names, and each name was branded in pure gold. I began to read some of them as I turned the pages: Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Tennessee Ernie, Eddie Dean, Andy Griffith, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter.
Tex Ritter (recorded): Tex Ritter? Oh, well, that's when I woke up. And I'm sorry I did,
[music: Talking Heads, "Heaven" (Fear of Music)]
The Visions of Heaven Song Cycle. We began with Duke Ellington from the second Sacred Concert. The tune is called Heaven, with the fabulous Alice Babs singing, and Johnny Hodges played the sax solo. Then, after that, Tex Ritter and his truly immortal I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven.
I think that wah that the chorus does after he mentions his own name has got to be one of the great moments in music. And finally, Talking Heads, from the Fear of Music album, Heaven. It's also called Heaven. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. I'm Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix on APR.
Heaven and paradise are not exactly synonymous, but they're certainly closely related. And I think for most of us, they both conjure up a vision of a place characterized by slow time and simplicity. A lack of detail, both temporally and physically speaking. I read an interesting article a few years ago in which a music critic asked a bunch of his friends to name the most beautiful piece of music they could think of. And virtually everybody named a slow piece.
As much as you may love dancing to wild rock music or snapping your fingers to an up-tempo bop tune or triumphing over hardship in a Beethoven Allegro, the word beautiful, like the word paradise, seems for most people to have a little speed governor on it. It seems to have a molecular structure that makes it combine with serenity more readily than with activity. Now, I know, and I'm sure you do too, people who are, by choice, always busy.
They're never happier than when they've got plenty of projects to work on. But if you asked even these people to choose a piece of music that embodies the idea of paradise, do you think that they'd pick?
[music excerpt: Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Kunzel]
Okay, and I know a guy who loves arguments. He's ornery and confrontational and quick-witted. He likes challenging assumptions and hates ideas that feel comfortable. But would his choice for the music of paradise be...
[music excerpt: Boulez, Piano Sonata No. 2, opening; Maurizio Pollini]
Well, maybe with him it would. But I sort of doubt it. Maybe Boulez would pick it. He wrote it. Complications. Paradise doesn't have any complications. The Garden of Eden was paradise until complications set in. Here's a beautiful song about the Garden of Eden by Gabriel Fauré on a poem by the Belgian poet Charles Van Lerberghe. It feels timeless in its seven minutes, and I'll read a translation of the text. If you're not driving, I suggest you close your eyes.
Paradise. It is the first morning of the earth. Like a bewildered flower exhaled into the night, with the new breath rising from the billows, a garden of blue unfolds. All is still mingled, everything flows together, quivering of leaves, singing of birds, beating of wings, gushing of springs, voices of airs, of waters, a murmuring immense and yet soundless.
Opening her gentle, unknowing eyes to clarity, this young and heaven-born Eve is awakened by God, and the world stretches out at her feet like a lovely vision. God now says to her, Go, daughter of earth, and give to all beings which I have created a word from your lips, a sound by which they may be known.
And Eve went away, obedient to her lord, to her bower of roses, giving to each thing a word, a sound from her flowering lips, that which flees, that which breathes, that which flies.
And thus the day passes, as at dawn, indistinctly, languorously. With the dusk, Eden begins to disrobe and fall asleep in the stillness of a blue reverie. The voice dies away, yet everything listens. All is suspended in expectation. As with the rising of the evening star, Eve sings.
Lucy Shelton, soprano, and Lambert Orkis at the piano. A beautiful song, beautifully performed. Fauré's Paradise, the first of ten songs from a cycle called The Song of Eve. I think it's a very peculiar mood that song sets because in some ways it's very sensuous, and yet in other ways it's quite austere because of its almost complete lack of repetition and the spareness of the piano part. A peculiar but, to me, haunting piece of work.
My name is Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix on APR.
Now we move on to a different kind of paradise, a place with sugarplum fairies and waltzing flowers. That's right, folks. We're going to hear the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky in its entirety.
Something's fishy, you say, you regular listeners. And you say the truth. The old sleeve does have something up it. We've talked on other programs about the different shades of arranging. At one extreme, there is transcription, transferring pieces as faithfully as possible from one instrument or instrumental group to another. And at the other extreme, real recomposition, as practiced, for instance, by Igor Stravinsky and Gil Evans.
You're about to hear both extremes and everything in between. There are certain well-known pieces that seem to attract arrangers, like horse apples attract flies. And the Nutcracker is one of them. This suite has eight movements. Overture, March, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, Russian Dance, Arabian Dance, Chinese Dance, Dance of the Mirlitons, or reed pipes, or flutes, check one, and the Waltz of the Flowers.
And each movement will be performed by a different artist or group. You know, Americans tend to think that the newer something is, the better it is. So here we go with the all-new, 100% improved Nutcracker Suite. Too bad, this is radio. I look pretty fetching in this tutu. See you in about 21 minutes.
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Overture; Modern Mandolin Quartet]
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy ("The Swingin' Plum Fairy"); Shorty Rogers]
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Russian Dance (Trepak); E. Power Biggs, pedal harpsichord]
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Arabian Dance; Spike Jones]
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Chinese Dance ("Chinoiserie," arr. Ellington/Strayhorn); Duke Ellington]
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Dance of the Reed Pipes; the Tubadours]
[music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite: Waltz of the Flowers; Liberace]
Yes, sir-ree, the all-new 100% improved Nutcracker Suite. Going way back to the beginning there, the overture was played by the Modern Mandolin Quartet on an album called Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker Suite, Windham Hill record. Then came one of the more amazing records ever produced, the Portsmouth Sinfonia at the Royal Albert Hall. That was the march, if you can remember back that far.
And I don't know if the principle of that concert was that anybody could play any instrument they wanted, or just anybody off the street could come in and play, but that was basically the idea behind it. There were certainly no auditions for that orchestra. There was also a chorus involved in some of the rest of the concert. And for those of you who are familiar with Talking Heads and some of the other rock albums, you may be interested to know that one of the members of the clarinet section was Brian Eno.
After that, we had Shorty Rogers. He was doing what he calls the Swingin' Plum Fairy from an album, The Swingin' Nutcracker. Shorty Rogers with his sax quintet and the big band.
Jazz people always have a great sense of humor, of course, and this is some album. The cover is one of the great examples of '50s album artwork.
There, it's got Shorty Rogers leaning on a nutcracker that is saying, like, nutty. And the whole album is The Swingin' Nutcracker, and the titles are Like Nutty Overture, A Nutty Marche, Blue Reeds, The Swingin' Plum Fairy, Snowball. The Trepak, Russian Dance, is called Six Pak here. Flowers of the Cats, Dance Expresso is the coffee dance, Pass the Duke, that's pas de deux, get it? Chinawhere? Get it? Chinawhere? That's the tea dance, and then Overture for Shorty. And I think that's actually a nice example. It's not just sort of jazzing up the classics, but he makes a piece out of that. And then we came to E. Power Biggs' Greatest Hits, Columbia album, and he's playing the Trepak, the Russian dance on the pedal harpsichord, on which I think it sounds just absolutely great. That's a harpsichord, but has pedals for extra notes like an organ. So E. Power Biggs, being primarily an organist, felt right at home. After that, the Arabian dance was interpreted by Spike Jones from an album called Spike Jones is Murdering the Classics. No lie there. And then Duke Ellington, an album called Three Suites, and this was, of course, the Nutcracker Suite, and he did the Chinese dance, which he called Chinoiserie. And I think this is a particularly fine example of a rendition that is not simply swinging the classics, but just a beautifully done piece.
I think that Stravinsky would have been proud of that arrangement. By the way, the liner notes to this album say, Duke Ellington and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky met in Las Vegas while Duke's band was setting attendance records at the Riviera Hotel. And I have a friend who is so gullible that he actually believed that. He asked me about that. But I really can't afford to be too superior here because a friend of mine once told me that the little logo at the top of our program, Duke Ellington's statement, if it sounds good, it is good, was made by Duke Ellington when he met Mark Twain.
In response to Mark Twain's statement, Wagner's music sounds better than it is. And I believed him too. Well, there you go. Listen, the best people are gullible. Next, we come to the dance of the reed pipes. This was done by the Tubadours, four tuba players, and then finally that stirring rendition of the Waltz of the Flowers, Liberace from his album Moonlight Sonata.
Now, I know some of you out there are really picky and you want to know every little note that was played on the program. So before we go, I'm going to let you in on those two teeny-weeny excerpts earlier on. One, of course, was the Rhapsody in Blue of Gershwin. The other was the beginning of the second piano sonata of Pierre Boulez. This, on the other hand, is Mozart's 24th Symphony.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, and also 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. This is program number 29. And 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.
Hey, 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.