And you're listening to classical radio ksui in Iowa City
It's six o'clock and Peter. Are you ready?
Ready is as ready does just a second. Here's the theme
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickely and this is Shickely 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.
Now I don't know much about program funding, but I know a lot about it.
I've been working on it for a long time.
If it sounds good, it is good. Now I don't know much about program funding, but I know what I like.
And I very much like the fact that our bills are paid by this very radio station right here in this very town.
There are two composers that almost all musicians absolutely idolize. Bach and Mozart.
It's interesting, everybody knows what a heavyweight Beethoven was, but he's like an amazing human.
Whereas Bach and Mozart feel like they're just a bit above the human plane.
Anyway, in spite of the tremendous variety of composers who have expressed their great awe of Mozart,
Chopin, Wagner, Elliot Carter, many more, there is something that is unique about Bach.
And that is that almost no matter what you do to him, he shines through.
You can swing him, you can rock him, you can romanticize him,
you can play him on just about any bunch of instruments you can think of, and it always seems to work.
I don't know of any other composer whose work has been used in one way or another by so many other composers and arrangers.
We've got a great variety of pieces based on the old man's music coming up here,
which is why today's program is called the Bach of Gibraltar.
A little play on words there.
But Bach has been the bottom line of Western musical culture in more ways than one.
He is the earliest composer who can be called a staple of our concert halls.
His tonal language has for many, many years been the starting point in the teaching of harmonic analysis.
And he had more children than any other famous composer.
We're going to start out by making a distinction between, or should I say among, three different terms.
Transcription, arrangement, and based upon.
Transcription is the simplest in the sense of involving the least change.
You simply adapt the music as faithfully as possible to different instruments and or voices.
You don't add anything and you don't leave anything out unless you're forced to.
I was once hired to do an arrangement of Yezu Joy of Man's Desiring for an album that the conductor Leopold Stokowski made late in his life.
The original is basically for chorus and strings.
There's a harpsichord in there and some winds doubling the strings, but the constant on the Stokowski album was string orchestra and harpsichord.
I wanted to be as faithful as possible to the original.
I couldn't give the choral lines to string instruments because they wouldn't stand out the way a chorus does.
They would sound too much like the other string parts.
And I couldn't give the choral lines to brass instruments because Bach never used brass instruments that way at all.
It wouldn't sound of the period.
So I gave the parts to four double reeds.
I simply wrote out the soprano part for oboe, the alto part for a second oboe, the tenor part for English horn, and the bass part for bassoon.
That's all I did.
Years later, somebody told me they thought that my arrangement on that album was the best arrangement they'd ever heard.
Now, I love compliments, but I felt a little embarrassed because I didn't think that I'd really done enough to deserve such fulsome praise.
I suppose I can take some credit for leaving well enough alone and choosing four instruments that fit Bach's complexion.
But to let myself get a swelled head over that compliment would be like finding a particularly beautiful stone on the beach and framing it and selling it as a work of art.
Here, why don't I just play a little bit of that cut so you can hear what I'm talking about.
Yeah.
Ooh, hurts to turn it down.
Yesu, Joy of Man's Desiring by Armand Bach, played by Leopold Stokowski and his orchestra, which means New York freelancers.
And although I was paid and credited as an arranger on that cut, I would, strictly speaking, call it a transcription.
It's hard to imagine changing less than I did in that chart.
Our next item, however, I would call a real arrangement.
It's still basically Bach, but a lot more choices have been made and there's been some stuff added.
Before we hear it, we'll hear the original piece of which it's an arrangement.
The second fugue from the well-tempered Clavier.
Yeah.
The second fugue from the well-tempered Clavier, played on the harpsichord by Davit Moroni, followed by the swingle singer's version from, I believe, their first album, Bach's Greatest Hits.
You know, that was a brilliant title in 1963.
Now it's become a complete cliche to use greatest hits with classical composers.
I don't think there's any composer they haven't put out a greatest hits album of, although I don't think I've run across greatest hits of Gregorian chant.
Anyway, those swingle singer's things stay remarkably and charmingly close to the original pieces, but the arranger still had a lot of decisions to make.
How to divide up the parts, since most instruments have wider ranges than most singers.
What syllables to sing, since the original was instrumental.
Whether to change the key of the piece to fit the singers, and of course, in this case, to add drums and a newly composed line for the string bass.
Okay, we've had a transcription and an arrangement.
Now let's hear a song that is based on Bach.
The differences here are enormous.
To start with, the meter, the organization of the beats, is changed.
The original Bach is in 3-4 time, whereas the song is in 4-4 time.
Words have been added to an originally instrumental line, and the accompaniment is completely different.
And Bach's whole melody is not followed, just the first, simplest, supposedly most memorable part.
You know, actually, Bach may not have written the original melody.
Then again, maybe he did.
It's from a collection of pieces, some original and some by unidentified contemporaries,
put together for his wife's use in practicing harpsichord, the little notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
Whether or not it's by Bach, we know for sure that it's a minuet.
Okay, let's hear it.
How gentle is the rain that falls off me on the meadow
Birds high up in the trees Serenade the clouds with their melody
Oh, see, they're beyond the hills The bright colors of the rainbow
The sun set in from above Made this day for us just to fall in love
Love me tenderly and I'll give to you Every part of me Oh, God, never make me cry
Long lonely nights without you See, always true to me
Keep this day in your heart eternally
Come, baby, shall we cry This night upon the meadow We'll walk out in the rain
See the birds above Singing once again
I'll hold you Holy in your arms
Say, once again you love me And with your love too
Everything will be just as wonderful
You'll hold me in your arms And say, once again you love me
And if your love is true Everything will be just as wonderful
You'll hold me in your arms And say, once again you love me And if your love is true
Everything will be just as wonderful
Hey, Johann Sebastian, how do you like them apples?
Gustav Landhart played the minuet from The Little Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach
and The Toys sang A Lover's Concerto.
Now, I'm not sure that A Lover's Concerto belongs up there in the great pantheon of song.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think it deserves to be heard,
but I'm not sure it's really up there with the songs of Schubert, Brahms, and Debussy.
Our next song, however, is.
It's based on a chorale melody that Bach used many times.
Here again, Bach didn't actually write the melody.
It's one of the hundreds of hymns written by Luther and others after the Reformation.
But most of us know it only through Bach's numerous settings.
No two alike, but all beautiful.
So we think of it as Bach.
There are five settings of this tune in the St. Matthew Passion alone,
of which we'll hear the second, followed by a beautiful song based on the same melody.
Each will hear my dear shame, Fair after each of me,
From near, near, near, near, near,
Then give thy hands to me,
Then thy hands be blest and honest shows,
As then we'll make it faster,
Be mine and our own shows.
Many's the time I've been mistaken,
And many times confused.
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken,
And certainly misused.
Oh, but I'm all right, I'm all right,
I'm just weary to my bones.
Still, you don't expect to be bright and benevolent,
So far away from home,
So far away from home.
I don't know a soul who's not been battered,
I don't have a friend who feels at ease,
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered,
Or driven to its knees.
Oh, but it's all right, it's all right,
For we lived so well, so long.
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on,
I wonder what's gone wrong.
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong.
And I dreamed I was dying,
I dreamed that my soul grows unexpectedly,
And looking back down at me,
I smiled emotionally,
And I dreamed I was flying.
And high up above, my eyes could clearly see,
The Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea,
And I dreamed I was flying.
Oh, we come on a ship they call the Mayflower,
We come on a ship that sails the moon,
We come in the ages most uncertain hours,
And sing that American tune.
Oh, and it's all right, it's all right, it's all right,
You can be forever blessed.
Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day,
And I'm trying to get some rest,
That's all I'm trying to get some rest.
The Chorale Ich Wil here by Dear Steen from the St. Matthew Passion
with John Elliott Gardiner conducting the English Baroque soloists in the Monteverdi Choir
followed by an American tune by Paul Simon.
And I've always loved that song and I must say I'm a little embarrassed
that I never made the connection to the Bach Chorale
until I saw Jimmy Carter's inaugural concert on TV
and Simon, in introducing the song, mentioned that he wrote it with a little help from Bach.
He goes beyond the chorale melody himself, but the debt to the Bach is obvious and moving.
I'm Peter Shickely. The show is Shickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
And it's tidbit time on the old stream.
You get it? Stream. Bach. Bach means stream in German.
I don't know what it is. I'm just hooked on wordplay today.
Well, there are worse things to be hooked on.
At any rate, our tidbit is entitled Potato Song Slash Bach Prelude
and it's off an album by Dan Arthurs.
I think it's safe to say that this is one of the most unusual cuts I've ever run across
or has ever run across me.
Potato blossoms to bloom
I'm in love with you
You know how I feel
When we're frolicking through the potato field
There'll be enough potatoes for the little ones
To make big, strong potato man
The harvest is here
The potato dance will start
All the boys and girls
Dancing hard to hard
Ah
Okay, Dan Arthurs, Don't Say I Didn't Warn You, Potato Song,
followed by a rendition of the prelude from the first unaccompanied cello suite by Bach.
Before we go on, I'd like to talk a little bit about Bach's place in history.
The standard picture is that Bach was forgotten as a composer soon after he died, if not even before,
and that it wasn't until almost 80 years later when Mendelssohn conducted a performance of the St. Matthew Passion
that his music became known again, and since then, interest in it has continued unabated to the present day.
And that's true, although there were certain cognoscenti during that interim period
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven among them, who knew some of Bach's music and were greatly influenced by it.
But the implication of that picture is that here was this great composer who was unfairly ignored by posterity
until Mendelssohn came along and restored him to his rightful place in music lovers' affections.
Well, the trouble with that is that until the 19th century, that's the way it was for everybody.
It's not much of an exaggeration to say that until Beethoven's time, nobody listened to the music of dead composers.
People wanted the latest stuff. They wanted something new.
Any classical musician today who isn't intimately familiar with the music of Bach will not be considered educated.
But do you think Bach was intimately familiar with the music of Josquin de Pré, who lived 250 years before Bach?
No way, Jose de Pré! It was in the 19th century that people got obsessed with the past.
Okay, okay, it started rolling in the 18th century in some fields, although not in music.
But the 19th century saw the flowering of the worship of the past, digging up Egyptian tombs, studying fossils,
reveling in ruins, passing off new poetry as old, and performing the works of dead composers.
Also, the perfection of mass printing techniques made more material available to more people,
and the concept of complete editions became popular.
Music was published immediately, sometimes even before it was performed,
and then it had to be printed again after the composer made corrections.
Music engraving, you know, was the license plates of the 19th century, right?
If you said right, you're either extremely quick and knowledgeable,
or you're one of those people who says right even though they didn't understand what was said.
The thing is, a lot of the music engraving in the 19th century was done by inmates in prisons.
You know, just like in the century they made the license plate.
Okay, well anyway, Bach wasn't given a raw deal.
He was given the normal deal of his day.
But listen, I'm glad he's still with us now.
And now is when we're going to experience the Haven't I Heard You Somewhere Before Suite,
featuring one of the most famous pieces in the history of Western music.
We'll hear it first as Bach wrote it, then as the accompaniment for a song,
then as a framework for an improvisation,
and finally as the basis for a parody of minimalist music.
The Haven't I Heard You Somewhere Before Suite lasts about 13 and a half minutes,
after which, like Bach and General MacArthur, I shall return.
The Haven't I Heard You Somewhere Before Suite
Koi hatzi tatsi
Kind of gets you in the gut, doesn't it?
The Haven't I Heard You Before Somewhere Suite
started off with the first prelude from the well-tempered Clavier
played on the harpsichord by Davit Moroni.
Then we had Kathleen Battle and Christopher Parkining on the guitar.
She's singing the famous Ave Maria, written by Gounod
over the prelude by Bach, using the prelude as an accompaniment.
Then we have a nice album called Unsquare Dance by Bill Crowfoot
with Chris Brubeck and Joel Brown.
And they do an improvisation based on the prelude.
Some of you, by the way, who maybe know the prelude very well
might have noticed that some of the chords are a little bit different
and apparently, according to the liner notes here,
they have based it on a version of this prelude that appears
in the little notebook for Wilhelm Friedman Bach,
another little didactic book that Bach put together,
and apparently he had a different version of it going at one time
and then changed it for the well-tempered Clavier.
And then finally, we closed off with PDQ Bach's epic and classic
prelude to the opera Einstein on the Fritz,
Schickly number E equals MT squared.
And this, of course, is remarkably prescient
of the minimalist music of this century.
A little story about that.
Philip Glass, one of the prime minimalists,
is an old friend of mine.
We went to Juilliard together.
And I called him up in September, several years ago,
before premiering this piece, and I talked to his lady friend
and I said, I'm going to do a take-off on Philip
at the Christmas concerts this year in New York,
and I hope you two can come.
And she said, well, he's in San Francisco,
and he can call you tomorrow at 7.
I said, great.
7 o'clock the next night, the phone rings, I pick it up,
and it's Philip saying, et tu, Brute?
But he liked it.
He came back and had it signed.
As a matter of fact, while the piece was being copied,
he and I used the same copyist there for a while.
He came along, and she said, I'm working on the take-off on you.
And he took a look at the parts, and he said, well, looks right.
I'm Peter Schickly.
The program is Schickly Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
We're going to end up with a song that isn't based on Bach.
Why?
Because a lot of folks, and I must say that included myself
until I researched this show, think that it is based on Bach.
It has a bass line that sounds very much like that
of the famous so-called air for the G string,
and the melody line above it sounds very Bach-y,
and lots of people have told me it's based on Bach.
But after looking through lots of the old guy's music
and consulting with the highly knowledgeable Michael Barone,
whose organ program is on a lot of public radio stations,
and reading in a book called Rockin' the Classics
and Classicizin' the Rock by Janelle R. Duxbury
that the band that does the song doesn't say it's based on Bach,
I've come to the conclusion that it's not based on Bach.
We'll hear a little of the air from Bach's third orchestral suite first,
and then some Bach that isn't Bach.
But it's good Bach.
orchestra only,
We skip the light fandango
I was feeling kind of seasick
The crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The wager brought a train
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
Let her face a burst just go steep
Turn the wider shade of air
orchestra only,
She said there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards
Would not let her be
One of sixteen vessel virgins
Believing for the coast
Although my eyes were open
They might just as well be closed
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
Let her face a burst just go steep
Turn the wider shade of air
orchestra only,
And so it was that later
Procol harem,
a wider shade of pale.
The entry in Rockin' the Classics
and classicizing the rock says,
Source, J.S. Bach, Suite No. 3 in D major for Orchestra,
which we heard a little of,
Wachet auf, a cantata,
Sleepers Awake.
Then it says this famous song is often attributed to either of the Bach pieces above.
However, the band itself lays claim to neither.
The tune is closest to the first, but contains some elements of both.
I listened to Wachet auf again.
It doesn't seem to me to contain many elements of that,
but it's a great song,
and the album says on the back,
To be listened to in the spirit in which it was made.
That's good advice for listening to any album.
Eugene Normandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra
were performing that excerpt from the air that we heard first.
And I guess that about wraps it up for this week.
We'll...
This phone is not supposed to be...
Hello?
Yes.
Yeah, it is a beautiful...
Yeah, Yezu, Joy of Man's Desiring by Bach.
Yeah.
And you're right.
Yes, Stokowski does it beautifully.
Oh, thank you.
I guess the arrangement does help.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
Well, yeah, I think we could probably play that,
and we'll do it instead of the theme that we usually do.
We'll put it on at the end and play it all the way through.
Okay?
Thanks for calling.
Well, that's Chick-Alee Mix for this week.
Our program is made possible with funds provided by this radio station.
I just want to get through this fast so we can play the whole thing, you know.
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 34.
I'm going to get this ready here.
This is Peter Chick-Alee saying goodbye
and reminding you that it don't mean a thing
if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi.
You're looking good.
See you next week.
Thank you.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned,
send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Chick-Alee Mix.
That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Chick-Alee Mix.
Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
PRI, Public Radio International.