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, and I quote, which, as it happens, is the name of today's show, and I quote, a brief but scholarly survey of non-Larsenist lifting by one composer from another.
The bills for this inquiry are paid by the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also by this radio station, which has set me up here in the lap, well, maybe in the elbow of luxury. When composers write down music that they didn't make up, there are several possible explanations.
The most obvious, but probably the rarest, is plagiarism. Consciously or unconsciously swiping something from another composer and presenting it as one's own. They may be making an arrangement. Many composers including Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schoenberg and Weber made arrangements of other composers' works to bring in a little extra money, and others, including Bach, Liszt, Respighi, and Stravinsky, made arrangements to use in their own concertizing, They may be studying someone else's work.
Until printed music became ubiquitous and cheap, copying a piece was a standard way of studying it. And it's a shame that we're too lazy to do that now, because it's still one of the most thorough ways of learning a work. There are several pieces that used to be attributed to the young Mozart, because the scores that turned up were in his handwriting. Later, it was discovered that the pieces were actually by someone else. Now this doesn't mean that the little Wunder-tyke was trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.
He often copied or arranged other people's pieces as a way of studying them. A composer once told me that he had seen in some European museum all nine Beethoven symphonies in Wagner's hand. Anyway, it's also possible that a composer may be quoting the work of another composer, making a brief reference, sometimes but not always, with humorous intent.
Camille Saint-Saëns' intent was certainly humorous in most of these sections of his most popular piece and perhaps the most famous party piece of all time, the Carnival of the Animals. The joke in the fourth movement, called Turtles, is that Saint-Saëns takes a fast peppy tune by another composer, a tune that was even more famous a century ago than it is now, and slows it down to a point where I'll bet a lot of people, if they're not told, don't even recognize the melody, even though they know it.
First, we'll hear the theme in its original setting, and then we'll hear how Saint-Saëns turtle-ized it.
[music excerpt: Offenbach, the Overture to “Orphee aux Enfers” (Weekend in Paris); London Philharmonic Orchestra/Black]
[music: Saint-Saëns, “Carnaval des Animaux,” “Tortues”; Argerich/Freire/Kremer/Van Keulen/Maisky]
...places there where it sounded like the turtle's shell was maybe pinching him a bit. Anyway, that was from an album with Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns and some other works involving speakers and other sort of humorous works. Martha Argerich, Nelson Freire, Gidon Kremer, and a bunch of other people playing. And before that, we heard a part of the overture to Orpheus in the Underworld by Offenbach with the famous can-can theme.
Now, here's another example from the Carnival of the Animals. This time, Saint-Saëns doesn't quote a whole melody, just little snippets. The animal here is the elephant, so what is the least elephantine thing he could quote? He makes a reference to the Ballet of the Sylph from the Damnation of Faust by Berlioz.
[music excerpt: Berlioz, “La Damnation de Faust,” “Ballet des Sylphes”; Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt/Inbal]
I hate to fade that out, but fade I must. And he also refers to Mendelssohn's famous incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.
[music excerpt: Mendelssohn, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Scherzo; Berlin Philharmonic/Previn]
Just that little part.
I'm gonna take that out too. Okay, now naturally, since this is a humorous piece, Saint-Saëns takes these delicate, wispy, melodic ideas and incorporates them into a theme for the double bass, one of the largest and most awkward instruments in the orchestra. Now, where did I put this? Here's the Saint-Saëns, and here is the elephant.
[music: Saint-Saëns, “Carnaval des Animaux,” “L’Elephant”; Argerich/Freire/Kremer/Van Keulen/Maisky]
Okay, now, here comes the Berlioz part.
And here comes the Mendelssohn.
[No speech for 43 s.]
The elephant from the Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns. Earlier, by the way, the little bit of the Berlioz damnation of Faust we heard was Eliyahu Inbal conducting the radio symphony orchestra Frankfurt and then the little bit of the Mendelssohn we heard was Andre Previn conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker, which sounds like a mouth organ in the shape of a hot dog. You know, except for the famous and lovely cello solo called the Swan, Saint-Saëns wouldn't allow the Carnival of the Animals to be published or publicly performed during his lifetime, because he was afraid it might sully his reputation as a serious composer. Poor guy, now it's his most often played work. History doesn't care, you know. Posterity says to a composer, your opinion of your work interests me least of all. One composer whose statements about his own music had to be taken with a grain of salt was Stravinsky. He protested that music was completely abstract and that the funny places in his music weren't funny and the touching places weren't touching but they were and they are I'd be willing to bet that this next case is an example of spontaneous combustion, that Stravinsky wasn't thinking about Schubert when he started working on this commission.
But Schubert happened to walk into the room and found himself in the middle of Stravinsky's piece, feeling a little bit off balance, maybe, as Stravinsky often made his guests feel. Okay, so maybe the result isn't exactly funny, like Hardy Har Har funny, but it's at least charming. Here's a bit of Schubert's Marche Militaire, followed by Stravinsky's Circus Polka.
[music excerpt: Schubert, "Marche Militaire"; Richard & John Contiguglia]
Stravinsky's Circus Polka, written for the Ringling Brothers Circus, ballet for an elephant. That was Igor Stravinsky on a collection here. So it was Igor Stravinsky conducting either the Columbia Symphony Orchestra or the CBC Symphony Orchestra, or the Los Angeles Festival Symphony Orchestra, or the Columbia Jazz Ensemble, or the Columbia Chamber Ensemble, or the Columbia Percussion Ensemble.
You can probably cancel out those last three. Before that, we heard a little bit of the Schubert Marche Militaire with Richard and John Contiguglia playing the two pianos.
My name is Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix.
Sometimes composers quote themselves, and probably the cutest example of that occurs in Mozart's Don Giovanni. His Marriage of Figaro had been a huge hit in Prague, and one of the best-loved numbers was Non più andrai. You couldn't go into a beer garden in Prague without hearing the house band do its own arrangement of that aria. I guess it was sort of the melancholy baby of its day. I wonder if the band had drunks coming up and saying, Hey, can you play Non più andrai?
Now, Prague commissioned Don Giovanni, and in that opera, the Don invites the statue of a man whom he had killed earlier in a duel to dinner. As Giovanni and his servant Leporello are awaiting their guest in the banquet room, there's a small wind band in attendance to provide entertainment. Any nobleman worth his salt in those days had musicians on staff, not only for concerts, but to play at parties. It was really like live Muzak.
So Don Giovanni tells this on-stage band to play, and first they strike up a tune from Cosa Rara, an opera by Soler that was popular at the time. You can hear Leporello identifying it and approving. When they change tunes, Leporello sings Long Live the Litigants, which was another successful opera of the day. And finally, when they launch into Non più andrai, Leporello says, Now that tune I know all too well.
It's a nice little joke, self-congratulatory perhaps, but in a charming way. And by the way, notice that Mozart and his librettist, Da Ponte, observe the age-old rule of three in telling a joke. You set it up twice, and the third time is the punchline. Okay, here's a bit of Non Più Andrai from The Marriage of Figaro. Figaro is teasing the young Cherubino about going off to be in the army.
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Non piu andrai”; Jose van Dam/Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Okay, now here's the first part of the finale of Don Giovanni. Most of the banter is Giovanni saying how good the food is, and Leporello trying to sneak some without his master noticing. But listen for Leporello's recognition of Cosa Rara and Il Litiganti, and when Non più andrai starts his line, Questa poi la conosco purtroppo. Now that tune I know all too well.
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Don Giovanni,” Finale; Thomas Allen/Simone Alaimo/ Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
From the finale of Don Giovanni, that was Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and Leporello was played by Simone Alaimo and Don Giovanni by Thomas Allen. By the way, the earlier recording we heard of the little bit of Marriage of Figaro, Figaro was Jose van Dam, and the other forces were the same. Now let's shift gears and hear a very moving use of quotation.
Alban Berg's violin concerto is dedicated to the memory of an angel. The angel was Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler. Berg was especially fond of her, and when she died of polio at the age of 18, Berg made the concerto her requiem. Towards the end of the piece, he quotes a chorale, Es ist genug, it is enough, from Bach's cantata No. 60, O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort.
This quotation is especially effective because Berg's harmonic language was atonal, and when the traditional harmony of the chorale comes in, it's particularly ethereal. In fact, the violin quotes the chorale melody first, but it doesn't stand out as a quotation until you hear the harmonized by Bach version in the clarinets. First, we'll hear the chorale in its original cantata setting, and then a portion of Berg's violin concerto.
[music: J. S. Bach, Cantata No. 60, “Es ist genung:Herr, wenn es dir gefallt”; Concentus Musicus Wien/ Harnoncourt]
That's part of the second section of Alban Berg's violin concerto. That was Gidon Kremer on the violin, Sir Colin Davis conducting the Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. And before that, we heard the Bach Chorale from the Cantata No. 60, and that was Nicholas Harnoncourt with the Concentus Musicus Wien.
That chorale melody, by the way, which was written by one Rudolf Ahle in 1662, but it's Bach's harmonization. The chorale melody has a very unusual opening.
[sung: the opening of the chorale melody]
Very unusual in the 17th or 18th century, to hear a theme start that way, four pitches that don't strongly imply any tonality, which is probably one of the things that attracted Berg to it. Now we come to one of the meanest examples of quotation in the history of music. While Bela Bartok was working on his Concerto for Orchestra in 1943, he heard a radio broadcast of Shostakovich's newest symphony, the Seventh.
A great deal of the first movement of that piece is taken up with rather simple-minded variations on a banal theme. Quite a combination. Here's one of the most bombastic of those variations.
Leonard Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a brief excerpt from the first movement of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony. Bartok was so annoyed at that theme, and probably also at the immense amount of brouhaha surrounding the premiere of the Shostakovich, that he made a parody of it in the interrupted intermezzo movement of the Concerto for Orchestra. He takes the most inane part of the Shostakovich theme, the descending scale passages,
[sung: the descending scale passages]
and quotes them in an embellished manner in the clarinet, after which he presents the most obvious depiction of laughter, snickers really, and a rude raspberry ever perpetrated by a symphony orchestra.
[music excerpt: Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra, 4th Mvt.; Cleveland Orchestra/Dohnanyi]
I think it's in the Piazza Navona in Rome that there's a very ornate, ugly church, and opposite it in the piazza is a group statue done later by another artist, and one of the figures in the statue is grimacing and holding his arm up so as not to have to look at the church. That's what Bartok's quote from Shostakovich reminds me of. But it's more complicated than that.
Some folks say that Shostakovich was himself parodying a number from an operetta called The Merry Widow, parodying it perhaps because the tune was said to be a favorite of Hitler's. Here's the relevant part of I'm Off to Chez Maxime by Lehar.
[music excerpt: Lehar, “The Merry Widow,” “I’m off to Chez Maxime”; Werner Krenn/National Philharmonic Orchestra/Bonynge]
Werner Krenn singing Lehar, with Richard Bonynge conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra. So, the Bartok may actually be a parody of a parody, but there's a distinction. It is clear that Bartok's quotation is parodistic in intention. That is not the case with the Shostakovich, partly because the quote is not as exact. Here's the entire interrupted intermezzo from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
[music: Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra, 4th Mvt.; Cleveland Orchestra/Dohnanyi]
The Interrupted Intermezzo from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. That was the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Christoph von Dohnányi. My name is Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix on APR.
Next we have a quote, or rather a misquote, that's humorous but affectionate. My second string quartet was commissioned by the Lark Quartet. The name of the ensemble comes from the nickname of one of Haydn's most beloved works, and the quartet suggested that it might be nice to include a reference to the Haydn in my piece. Somebody a couple of centuries ago thought that the entrance of the first violin in Haydn's Opus 64 No. 5 sounded like a lark.
[music excerpt: Haydn, String Quartet in D, Opus 64, No. 5 (“The Lark”); Gabrieli String Quartet]
Well, I don't know if it sounds like a lark or not, but it sure is beautiful. That's the Gabrieli Quartet performing. Weird to name a string quartet ensemble after a composer who didn't write any string quartets. Anyway, I love the Haydn, but the language is so different from that of my quartet that I decided to make the reference a little in-joke for quartet players and connoisseurs. In the Haydn, the opening phrases of the second violin and viola, [sung: the second violin and viola phrase], are answered by the cello, [sung: the cello's answer].
Then they play together until the first violin comes in. So I reversed the order. The second violin and viola now answer the cello, which confuses the first violin about when to come in. After a couple of tentative tries, everyone gives up and drops the Haydn in favor of some new material. It's the kind of thing that if you don't get it, it doesn't matter. But if you do know the Haydn well, well, it's like the prize in the Cracker Jack box. Here's the scherzo movement from my second string quartet.
It's actually a tape of the premiere performance by the Lark Quartet.
Do they play that or do they play that? That was a live, non-commercial recording made at the premiere of the second movement of the regarded American composer Peter Schickele's string quartet number two, subtitled In Memoriam. And in case In Memoriam seems like a strange subtitle for that piece of music, it's by far the liveliest movement in the whole quartet.
And the quartet is written in memory of a man who had a fairly wicked sense of humor.
Well, we are almost out of time here, but I've got a tidbit I just have to lay on you. This was made by a good friend of mine out on the West Coast, Jeff Ehrhart, who's a sound designer and voiceover actor. And it's... well, I'm not going to tell you.
[music: After Strauss, "2001"; Jeff Ehrhart]
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
2001, in a version performed by the trumpeting fool and the 2001 fools. My friend Jeff Ehrhart has made me swear not to reveal the identity of the trumpeting fool. 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 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also by this radio station and its members. Thank you, members.
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 35. 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. 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 American Public Radio, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
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