Schickele, are you ready? As ready as rain is right, here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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 it's always good to express gratitude clearly and willingly, which I hereby do to this radio station, whose state-of-the-art facilities I sit amid. When was the first time you heard a kettledrum or timpani and really paid attention to it?
I can't say for sure myself, but it's a pretty good bet that this was the piece.
[music excerpt: Prokofiev, "Peter & the Wolf"; English String Orchestra/Menuhin]
That was, of course, an excerpt from Towards the End of Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev, Yehudi Menuhin conducting the English String Orchestra. And the timpani, as is carefully explained at the beginning, is used for gunfire. Those were big guns. Now, Copland in Billy the Kid, we're talking about little stuff you wear on your hip there, he uses a snare drum. That was a favorite piece of mine in childhood, its natural appeal heightened, no doubt, by the coincidence of names.
When I was four, our family lived briefly in Waltham, Massachusetts, and there was an idyllic meadow not far from the house, bounded on one side by an idyllic country stream. One day, so the family story goes, my mother took me there so she could do some watercolor painting and I could play by the stream. The whole time we were walking there, I was talking about Peter and the Wolf and what a coward Peter was, really.
I mean, he talked big, but when it came right down to it, now, if I had been there, I wouldn't have been scared at all. No siree, I would have walked right up to that wolf and bopped him on the head, etc., etc., etc.
etc. I can't say I remember this event, but I imagine myself sounding a bit like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway, we got there and settled in, my mother sitting in the meadow and me down by the brook. Pretty soon, unnoticed by me, a big old horse wandered down to the stream to take a drink. And it got right up behind me before I heard anything. When I did, I stood up and turned around, and there was that horse's face only inches away from mine.
Well, I sized up the situation immediately, screamed and jumped into the creek. The family's gotten a lot of mileage out of that story. Hey, you know, horses are very big animals, a lot bigger than wolves. And the thing is about- Okay, all right, okay. There goes the irrelevancy alarm. And I do have to admit, as a matter of fact, I can't remember what we were talking about. Oh yeah, timpani. Okay.
Okay, now, for the first 150 years after they were introduced into orchestras, timpani tended to be used in a subservient role. Important to the texture, in fact, if you hear at a rehearsal the big loud ending section of a classical symphony, and for some rehearsal reason the timpani are laying out, you really notice how important a part of the texture it is. It's the timpani that really gets the old adrenaline going.
But they rarely have solos. In fact, solos are so rare that when they happen they become famous. The Haydn drum roll symphony owes its nickname to a timpani solo, and everybody remembers the [sung: the timpani figure] in Beethoven's Ninth. In fact, Beethoven was being quite daring in starting his violin concerto.
It's not only a solo, it's the first thing in the piece. And it's not a roll, it's soft, it's not martial. Later in the 19th century, solos became more common, but they're still comparatively rare, and therefore prominent. Listen, nobody refers to Brahms' Fourth Symphony as the flute solo symphony. Flute solos are a dime a dozen. Sorry, Jean-Pierre, but it's true. Be that as it may or may not be, we're going to start things off with some lesser-known drum licks.
The brief but important timpani solo suite has three movements and lasts a little under nine minutes. See you later.
[music: Mozart, Serenata Notturna in D (K 239), 1st Mvt.; The Hanover Band/Goodman]
[music: Don Everly, "’Til I Kissed You" (The Fabulous Style of the Everly Brothers); The Everly Brothers]
[music: Lunceford, "Stratosphere" (Big Band Jazz, Volume II); Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra]
The brief but important timpani solo suite began with the Mozart Serenata Notturna, one of his most charming serenades, performed by the Hanover Band, directed by Roy Goodman there, and it's unusual, that piece, in that it uses timpani but no trumpets. Usually they go together in music of that period. Then we had one of my favorite Everly Brothers songs, Till I Kissed You, written by one of them.
Now wait a minute, I see you going for that phone, don't do it. I know, those were really tom-toms, they weren't really timpani. Now, timpani have that soup kettle look. Tom-toms, you know, look like regular drums. But tom-toms, like when you hear Gene Krupa in the famous solo work in Sing, Sing, Sing, they're not tuned to any particular note.
They're treated like a drum, a regular drum in that fashion, whereas these are tuned the way timpani are tuned, we'll talk more about exactly how that's done later, but they're sort of in the timpani family here, and actually they sound quite a bit like high timpani. This is a nice CD, Ace CD, of both of the original Cadence recordings of the Everly Brothers. Good stuff.
And then finally, from the Smithsonian collection of big band jazz, Jimmie Lunceford & His Orchestra doing Stratosphere, and that was Jimmie Crawford on the drums and giving us that short but telling solo on the timpani. My name is Peter Schickele. The show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
And the name of today's program is Ma & Pa Kettle Drum. I thought that would be an appropriate title, not only as a tribute to the old hillbilly movies about Ma and Pa Kettle, any of which I don't think I ever saw, but also because, for a long time, timpani always came in pairs, just like Mom and Pop. Why, I hope you're asking. The historical answer to that question is, because horses have two sides, port and starboard.
The Turks and Mongols, who introduced Kettle drums to Europe, used to sling a pair of drums astride a horse, right in front of the rider, who would presumably wham the daylights out of them as he galloped into battle. By the way, that reminds me of an old take-off on mail-order catalogs I saw, and one of the items for sale was a single spur. If you can get one side of the horse going, the other side will go too. Well, it seemed funny when I was 14.
But there's a musical reason for always using kettledrums in pairs as well. By 1675, when the French composer Lully introduced timpani into the orchestra, European music had become very tonic-dominant oriented. That is, in any given key, there were two chords that more or less defined the key, and that were used much more than other chords. So the two drums could be tuned to the basic note of each of those two chords.
But even though they took the drums off the horses when they brought them into the orchestra, good thing too, the martial and outdoor associations meant that timpani were almost always used with trumpets. As I mentioned, the Mozart Serenata Notturna is an exception. Now all three of the numbers in our first suite used two drums, continuing, albeit horselessly, the Mongol tradition.
In addition, since tuning the drums was a clumsy process involving turnable pegs placed around the circumference of the drum head, it was not practical to change notes once the piece started, which meant two measly notes for the whole piece. No wonder there weren't more solos. Also, man, it wasn't very difficult to play those parts, which probably has led to the stereotype of the drummer or percussion player.
People figure they just have to hit things, you know. I just heard a joke in San Francisco recently. Why do drummers have an IQ that is one point higher than that of horses? Well, it's so they won't disgrace themselves in parades. Anyway, as early as the 18th century, composers started to get around this two-note limitation, first by using more drums, and then in the 19th century by employing timpani equipped with a foot pedal that enabled the player in effect to change all the pegs simultaneously even while playing a note.
Even then, of course, composers weren't satisfied. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is one of several pieces that require more than one player each playing a set of drums. Well, using these techniques, timpani can actually play melodies, just like real musical instruments. As we now hear in the Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Drumming Suite, whose three movements, the first is actually an excerpt of a longer piece, last a bit over 13 minutes.
[music: Bartok, "Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta, 3rd Mvt."; Zoltan Kocsis, piano/Budapest Festival Orchestra/Fischer]
[music: Druschetzky, "Partita in C, 2nd Mvt."; Jonathan Haas, timpani/ Bournemouth Sinfonietta/ Farberman]
The Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Drumming Suite. We began with a sassy piece by Henry Brant called Signs and Alarms, or rather the first 2 minutes and 40 seconds of Signs and Alarms. With that bravura trombone solo backed up by timpani and tuba. Very interesting sounds there. This is from that fascinating series, Modern American Music Series, the old Columbia LPs.
That was Henry Brant conducting a chamber ensemble. That piece is written for an ensemble consisting of piccolo, two clarinets, two horns, solo solo trumpet, solo trombone, tuba, marimba, xylophone, and four timpani, not your standard string quartet. Next, we had a piece by Bartok, one of his greatest pieces, the slow movement from his music for strings, percussion, and celesta.
That was Ivan Fischer conducting the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and that's a beautiful example of Bartok's night music, Very atmospheric with the timpani making use of this technique I mentioned of being able to change the pitch of a note as he's playing by pushing that pedal or releasing the pedal.
And then the last number was a partita in C major by George Druschetzky for six timpani and orchestra. We heard the minuet and trio.
Now, when you get to have that many timpani, six timpani is enough to surround you. I mean, you can't have more than six timpani without widening the circle considerably. But there are pieces for eight and even more. And as a matter of fact, the cover of the booklet for this CD shows a, let's see, what does it say? It says that in 1845, somebody recounts that in the first part of the century, the first timpanist in Berlin executed a concerto for timpani that used 10 different drums and that he ran from one drum to another on a kind of gallery, threw his sticks in the air, and made the most extraordinary movements without his playing suffering.
Eat your heart out, Lionel Hampton. Now, it's a little bit questionable here. This Druschetzky piece, it says in the booklet that the second movement is a minuet and trio. Particularly effective is the soft staccato duet between the timpani and flute, and it is particularly effective. On the next page, however, it says the performances in this recording are a result of collaborative efforts, etc. The flute and timpani duet in the second movement of the partita was written by Keith Underwood.
So I'm not sure exactly where we stand there. It may be that the composer wrote a simpler part with the assumption, or at least the present performers are making the assumption, that the performer would fill it out, which was often true with the concertos of that day. Anyway, that was the partita in C major for six timpani and orchestra. My name is Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
And now it's Tidbit Time in timpani town. You know, when you think of a little cabaret on a side street, an intimate boite presided over by a world-weary chanteuse wearing too much eye makeup, you don't usually think timpani as being part of the ambience. But that didn't stop Jonathan and Darlene Edwards from working their not-easily-forgotten magic.
[music: Cahn/Styne, "It’s Magic" (The Piano Artistry of Jonathan Edwards); Jonathan & Darlene Edwards]
Music from Jonathan and Darlene Edwards from the old album The Piano Artistry of Jonathan Edwards and Darlene Edwards. It's fairly obvious, at least to any musician, that Jonathan and Darlene Edwards knew exactly what they were doing. And it has been common knowledge for years that they were, in fact, Paul Weston and Jo Stafford, two of the brightest lights of American pop music in the 40s and 50s. Okay, now we have followed the timpani from the days when it was only an instrument of pomp and warfare to its inclusion in the most artistic and even esoteric musical ensembles. It was bound to come to pass that composers would write not only timpani concertos, we've already gotten a taste of that, but pieces for timpani alone.
Actually, what is perhaps most surprising about the Timpani as Superstar Suite is that its music covers a range of 300 years. The suite has four movements. I'll be back in about 13 minutes.
[music: Philidor, "Marche a 4 Timbales" (La Grande Ecurie de Versailles); Ensemble of drums/Paillard]
[music: Anon., "Allegro"; Werner Tharichen & Nicholas Bardach, timpani/Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Handley]
[music: Carter, "Eight Pieces for Four Timpani, Moto Perpetuo"; Morris Lang]
[music: Hertel, Concerto for 8 Timpani, Winds & Strings, 3rd Mvt.; Werner Tharichen & Nicholas Bardach, timpani/Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Handley]
All right, hit those things. The Timpani as Superstar Suite began with a wonderful record called La Grande Écurie de Versailles, The Great Stable of Versailles, which is the name of the band that was entrusted with the duty of providing music for outside spectacles. That was a piece by Philidor, A March for Four Kettledrums. And we're talking about late 17th century here. I don't usually think of that as a time when people were writing unaccompanied music for timpani. And then next came that wonderful Anonymous Allegro for eight kettledrums, five cellos, and double bass. Now if that doesn't sound like P.D.Q. Bach, I don't know what does... Anyway, whoever wrote it apparently wrote it around the year 1800. It's just an Adagio and Allegro of which we heard the second one for eight kettledrums, five cellos, and double bass.
And the kettledrums were played by either Werner Tharichen, no, I expect here it was Nicholas Bardach, and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin conducted by Vernon Handley. Then we had Elliot Carter from his eight pieces for four timpani, one player, the Moto Perpetuo, quite a haunting little thing. It's interesting, he says when he started these pieces, he wrote the first six in 1949, he says in those days These six were found difficult, if not impossible, to play effectively. But as time passed, interest in them and performing skills grew, so I decided to publish the set complete, as four of them had been widely circulated in manuscript in 1966.
You know, that's something that's happened a lot in the history of music, something that seems absolutely unplayable twenty, thirty years later, school kids are playing it. Anyway, that was Morris Lang playing the Elliot Carter.
And then finally we had, this is a rather interesting situation here, we had a piece that on the record I played it from is called Concerto for Eight Kettledrums, Winds and Strings, by Johann Wilhelm Hertel. If I'm hesitating there, it's because I'm using my fantastic ability to translate from German there, right on the spot. This was the last movement, the Allegretto, from the Hertel concerto. Here again I assume we got two Two timpanists named here, but I think this one is probably Nicholas Bardach, and this was with the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin.
Now, what's interesting is that that same piece is on the album that the Jonathan Haas album, I'm not sure if I mentioned him before, Jonathan Haas was the virtuoso timpanist on the Druschetzky piece that we played earlier, the Partita in C major with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta under the direction of Harold Farberman. And according to the notes of that other album, the Hertel piece is actually by Fischer.
It says that for many years this work has been attributed to Johann Wilhelm Hertel. And this is the kind of thing that musicologists go through. However, in a 1977 dissertation, Studien über das Musikschaffen Johann Christian und Johann Wilhelm Hertels, Reinhard Diekow convincingly ascribes this work to Fischer, even though the work is bound with symphonies by both Hertels, calligraphic and internal evidence indicate that it was composed much later, for the musical style is far from the baroque-textured work of the Hertels.
Well, he certainly convinces me.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
That's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided 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, which in this case is program number 36. 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.
[No speech for 48 s.]
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.