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, and I quote, which, as it happens, is the name of today's show, and I quote, a brief
but scholarly survey of non-larcenous 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 Webern, 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, or simply
because they liked fooling around with other people's music.
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 wunderteich 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.
The 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-Saens' 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-Saens 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-Saens
turtleized it.
Let's hear it for Saint-Saens.
Turtles are not in a hurry.
There are a couple 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-Saens, some other
works involving speakers and other sort of humorous works.
Marta Augerich, Nelson Frere, Gideon Kramer, and a bunch of other people playing.
And before that we heard a part of the overture to Orpheus and the Underworld by Offenbach
with the famous can-can theme.
Now, here's another example from the Carnival of the Animals.
This time Saint-Saens 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.
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.
Just that little part.
I'm going to take that out too.
Okay, now naturally, since this is a humorous piece, Saint-Saens 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-Saens, and here is the elephant.
Okay, now here comes the Berlioz part.
And here comes the Mendelssohn.
The elephant from the Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saens.
Earlier, by the way, the little bit of the Berlioz Damnation of Faust we heard was Eliahu Inbal
conducting the Radio Sinfonie Orchestre 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-Saens 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 March Militaire followed by Stravinsky's Circus Polka.
.
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 March Militaire with Richard and John Contigulia 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 Piu 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 Piu 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.
Now, 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 music.
So Don Giovanni tells this on-stage band to play,
and first they strike up a tune from Cosa Rara,
an opera by Solaire 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 Piu 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,
De 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 Piu Andrai from the marriage of Figaro.
Figaro is teasing the young carabino about going off to be in the army.
Okay, here's a bit of Non Piu Andrai.
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 Piu Andrai starts, his line, questa poi la conosco portropo.
Now that tune I know all too well.
Jana menza premarata.
Oi, sua la dia litigani.
Leonard Bernstein conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a brief excerpt from the first movement of Shostakovich's Seventh 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,
bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,
and quotes them in an embellished manner in the clarinet, after which he presents the most obvious depiction of laughter,
snickers, really, at a rude raspberry ever perpetrated by a symphony orchestra.
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 Shay Maxime by Lehrer.
I'm off to Shay Maxime, the joy I've been extreme,
the warm breeze of the dancing, the romance by the dancing.
One more talk, don't you shoo, the common love to do.
But when it comes to dancing, you'll try my fatherland.
Let's match this once again, we are the motion thing.
I'll be seeing my places with the feeling strange.
It's me or me, my home, and I'll not shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo, shoo.
This luxury replaces my dear fine fatherland.
Werner Krenn singing Lehrer with Richard Bonning 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 paradistic 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.
Werner Krenn singing the National Philharmonic Orchestra.
The interrupted intermezzo from Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.
That was the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of Christoph von Dochnany.
My name is Peter Shickely.
The program is Shickely 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 number 5 sounded like a lark.
Well I don't know if it sounds like a lark or not but it sure is beautiful.
That's the Gabriele 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 in viola are answered by the cello.
And they play together until the first violin comes in.
So I reversed the order. The second violin in 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 crackerjack box.
Here's the scherzo movement from my second string quartet.
It's actually a tape of the premier performance by the Lark Quartet.
The second violin in viola now answer the cello.
Whew! Do they play that or do they play that?
That was a live, non-commercial recording made at the premier of the second movement
of the regarded American composer Peter Sickles' String Quartet No. 2, 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 Earhart,
who's a sound designer and voiceover actor, and it's... well, I'm not going to tell you.
This was made by a good friend of mine out on the West Coast.
Right on.
2001, an aversion performed by the Trumpeting Fool and the 2001 Fools.
My friend Jeff Earhart has made me swear not to reveal the identity of the Trumpeting Fool.
And that's Sickly 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 Shickley 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
Schickly Mix, that's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickly Mix, care of American Public Radio,
100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
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