The Devil To Pay

Schickele Mix Episode #39

Part of The Schickele Mix Online Fan Archive

Premiere
1993-04-10
“Peter, are you ready?”
mmmmuuuuwahhh hahhhh... I'm always ready!

Listen

You can listen to this episode on the Internet Archive, and follow along using the transcript.

Listing

Transcript

[This is a machine-generated transcript, corrected by hand and formatted as HTML. You can download the original as an .srt file.]

Schickele Mix is next. Are you ready, Peter? I'm always ready. 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. Now there's good and bad, and then there's evil. The good part is that our bills are being 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 good radio station.
The evil part is the rest of our show, which is called The Devil to Pay.
Some people believe that the devil quite literally walks among us, in a human body. Others think of the devil more as a metaphor for evil. The first belief is much scarier.
The idea that evil incarnate is a person that we might be dealing with, making friends with, falling in love with, without ever noticing anything amiss until it's too late. It's an idea so deeply terrifying that its appeal transcends traditional religion. When I was 10 and 11, my father used to take my brother and me to the movies every Friday night. The feature was almost always a Western. Once in a while, it might have been Tarzan.
But in addition to the feature, there was always a cartoon and the latest chapter of a serial. The serial I remember best was called The Purple Monster, an interesting title given the fact that the movie was in black and white. The Purple Monster came from Mars, but he could take over an earthling's body and you'd never know the difference unless you could trip him up with some bit of arcane earth knowledge.
Of course, that became a staple of post-World War II sci-fi movies, taking over a body. And it calls to mind a much earlier story, that of Count Dracula. Not only were the English people in the story often unaware that one of their circle had become someone quite different, thanks to the able fangs of Dracula, but the Count himself could change at will into a wolf or a bat, or even, as in Francis Ford Coppola's movie, into mist.
Remember, at one point he turns into mist so that he can seep into a room under the door or through the French windows. My wife and I saw that movie with another couple, and the other husband just hated it. As we were walking to the car afterwards, he said, man, if I could turn into mist, I would have seeped out of that theater a long time ago. Well, a good Dracula movie may have some laughs in it, but it has to have at least one true A true shiver. Not just a jolt that comes from somebody sneaking up on you, but the shiver that comes from the realization, the revelation, that the face you see may look like that of your old friend, but it's actually the devil's.
That's the frightening thing about the devil. He might just be the fellow sitting next to you now, which happens to be the title of our first song cycle. It has four numbers in it. I'll see you in a little under 12 minutes.
[music: Tyler, "Don’t Let the Devil Ride" (Steppin’ Out); Gospel Hummingbirds]
[music: Johnson, "Me and the Devil Blues" (The Complete Recordings); Robert Johnson]
[music: Hardin, "Smugglin’ Man" (Tim Hardin 1); Tim Hardin]
[music: David Schickele, "Jack" (Waldsong, Volume IV: Everything); David Schickele]
The He Might Just Be the Fellow Sitting Next to You Now song cycle. We began with the Gospel Hummingbirds singing Don't Let the Devil Ride and from there moved on to Robert Johnson. The complete recordings have been reissued on CD.
That was a tune called Me and the Devil Blues and it is heavy stuff. Tim Hardin was next from his first album Smugglin' Man and finally a song by my brother David, David Schickele, a song called Jack. David is a filmmaker by trade but as you can hear he's also a very good musician and composer. Aside from the lead vocal who is Skip Holcomb on that, and a little percussion by Angus Martin. Everything else is done by my brother.
He's playing a couple of viola tracks, and guitar, bass. And just in case you like that song as much as I do, I have to tell you it is not commercially available. Too bad about that. I'm the composer's brother, Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix on APR.
So this guy ends up in hell, and the devil's giving him a tour.
In the first cave they visit, they see people being whipped with chains. Who are those people? says the guy, and the devil says, those are Catholics who ate meat on Friday. In the second cave they see people being boiled in oil. Who's that? says the guy, and the devil says, those are Jews who ate pork. Then they come to the third cave, which is full of people being whipped with chains while they're being boiled in oil. Oh, wow, says the guy, who are those? The devil says, those are Episcopalians who ate the main course with their salad fork.
Hell is where you find it. It may be a room as in Sartre's play No Exit. It may be an arena for witty repartee as in the Don Juan in Hell scene in Shaw's Man and Superman. Or it may be the 1980s in the United States when the devil's mask slipped off, although as usual it was too late. What? Okay, okay, okay. Man, you know, that little alarm up there on the wall is a marvel of electronics.
It goes off if I wax irrelevant or if I talk too long, and now I find out that it's also sensitive to talk that is unnecessarily political. What won't they think of next? Anyway, the Hell is Where You Find It song cycle has three songs in it.
The first is in German, and the text goes like this: My ship resounds, cypresses whisper, hark, the spirits' ghostly cries join in. Soon I will reach the shore, so somber, far, far away from lovely earth. No sun shines here, nor any stars, no song is heard, here is no friend. Receive this, my last tear, O heaven, that this my weary eye will shed. Already the pale Danaids I see, and the accursed Tantalus. The ancient river murmurs of peace, heavy with death and oblivion. To forget, oh, this I call a double death. What I with all my strength attained, to lose it and again to win. When, when will these tortures end? Oh, when? And the third of these three songs is in Italian. The text: first one character sings, Now your time has done. Then the main character sings, From what strange convulsions do I feel spirits assail me? Whence come these terrible whirlpools of fire? Chorus sings: That is as nothing compared to your misdeeds. Come, worse is in store for you. Main character: Who is tearing my soul apart? Who is raging in my vitals? What agony, alas! What frenzy! What hell! What terror!
His assistant cries: What a desperate face! What gestures of doom! What screams, what wailing! How it terrifies me! The flames rise higher. Ah, as he sinks down to hell. I'll be back in about nine minutes.
[music: Schubert, “Fahrt zum Hades” (D 526); Stephen Varcoe, baritone/Graham Johnson, piano]
[music: Axton, "Heartbreak Hotel" (Elvis’ Golden Records); Elvis Presley]
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Don Giovanni,” Finale Act II; Thomas Hampson/Robert Holl/Laszlo Polgar/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Harnoncourt]
Hell is where you find it. Song cycle. It began with the Schubert song Journey to Hades, by Stephen Varcoe with Graham Johnson accompanying on the piano. Next came, as far as I'm concerned, one of the classic lieder of our time, Heartbreak Hotel, Elvis Presley. "The bellhop's tears keep flowing, the desk clerk's dressed in black. They've been so long on Lonely Street, they'll never, never look back." I think that matches a lot of the poems that Schubert set, if you want my opinion, but you probably don't. Then came Don Giovanni, From the finale, when Don Giovanni is going down to hell, which was not the original plan of Mozart and his librettist, Da Ponte, but people felt that he had to be very obviously punished, so he did go down to hell.
Don Giovanni there was sung by Thomas Hampson Il Commendatore was Robert Holl, and Leporello was Laszlo Polgar and this is Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. By the way, both the classical selections in that last song cycle were in a minor key. Just to be very brief about it, that's a major chord.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Those chords sort of define a major key, and here's minor.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
I'm very glad this studio comes equipped with an authentic instrument. Anyway, in the Western European music tradition, minor keys are very much associated with sadness, or at least with death. Requiems, for instance, are usually in minor keys. I would say almost always in minor keys the famous funeral March by Chopin and the one from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, are both in minor keys, but you know, none of the songs in that first song cycle we did were in the minor, I guess, except that in bluesy music you're usually singing minor melody notes even if the chords are major. There's a major chord, but
[sung: a line from "Heartbreak Hotel"]
Those are minor scale notes. But the Robert Johnson, the second one of that first suite, is really the only one of those songs that sounds down. The Gospel Hummingbirds and the Tim Hardin numbers were both lively, not to say peppy. And my brother's song is smooth and cool, suave perhaps.
What I'm saying is that by not writing dirgy music, the composers of those songs emphasize the fact that the devil might be an ordinary-looking person among ordinary people, rather than a mythical, larger-than-life character. Okay, now I love throwing out theories on which I've done no corroborative research whatsoever. And here's a good one. Europeans are more pessimistic than Americans.
Here's a pair of stories about the devil setting his sights on a violinist. Fair enough. Let's give this brace of yarns the title, Taking on the Devil. The first is European. We only have time to hear the very end of the tale, but it's obvious that the devil wins. The second is American, and hey, what can I tell you? We can do anything.
Christopher Lee (recorded): The devil greets him at the frontier post. The soldier has had his day, for the devil holds the violin, and he begins to play.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky/Ramuz, "The Soldier’s Tale"; Christopher Lee, narrator/ Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Friend]
[music: Daniels/Edwards/Marshall/Crain/ Digregorio, "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" (Classic Country Music, Volume IV); Charlie Daniels Band]
Taking on the Devil. We started with the end of Stravinsky's classic, The Soldier's Tale, Histoire du Soldat, and that was the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Lionel Friend, conductor. Chamber Orchestra is a little bit of a strange way of listing it, since there are only seven or eight players in that piece, and it doesn't say as far as I can see who the violinist is. But the narrator is Christopher Lee. He does all the parts in that.
And it's very effective. And then we heard Charlie Daniels' classic tune The Devil Went Down to Georgia, and that is Charlie Daniels singing and playing the fiddle. You know, when you're a classical composer and you're used to these abbreviations and in catalogs, OB for oboe, CL for clarinet, TPT trumpet, and I enjoyed in this album seeing FID for fiddle. When they have a violin section, you know, for whole section sound, then they put VLN for violin, but FID for fiddle.
That's from the Smithsonian Country Music Collection. Well, in the long run, it's hard to say that Americans have dealt any better with evil than Europeans have. One thing's for sure. If you've ever lived, you've had to deal with the devil. In fact, lived spelled backwards.
While you're thinking about that, I'll mention the fact that my name is Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix on APR. And now it's Tidbit Time. The items featured on Tidbit Time, I hasten to point out, are chosen irregardless of sonic fidelity. I think I'll get no argument on that.
Every week, along about this point in the show, I just like to pull a short selection off the shelf that engages the mind, piques the curiosity, or drops the jaw. I think this one does all three.
[music: Axton, “Heartbreak Hotel” (in Japanese); Unknown]
Stick with me now. I warned you about the sound quality here. Somebody faxed me this cassette.
[No speech for 61 s.]
Heartbreak Hotel, sung in Japanese and very well too. I love it. I'm afraid I can't tell you who's doing it. Somebody, and I can't even remember who, gave it to me on a cassette. I was kidding about the faxing. If anybody knows who it is, I'll be glad to give them proper credit. Just, uh... I thought I turned that off. Hello?
Yes.
Now, I find that hard to believe. Yeah, I know he has admired certain kinds of American movies, but I've never heard that Kurosawa was a singer. Yeah, well, I don't believe it. You send me the jacket and... Hung up. Figures.
I think the field is still wide open on this one, folks, and I'm serious. If you know who that was, I'd love to find out. I suppose it sounds pretty funny to a Russian to hear us singing Hey, Ho, Nobody Home, meat nor drink nor money have I none, but what do I know? I'm an American, and proud of it. So here's some good old American optimism. Here's another couple of devil stories. We'll call this pair, The Devil Meets His Match.
[music: Trad., "The Devil’s Nine Questions" (In the Quiet of the Night); Burl Ives]
[music: Trad., "The Little Devils"; Jean Ritchie]
The Devil Meets His Match, a pair of tales there, with The Devil's Nine Questions, sung by Burl Ives. And I guess it's only fair to say that this kind of riddling ballad is common in European folklore, and I think that the devil often loses in those, too. It's not only an American thing.
And then we heard Jean Ritchie singing The Little Devils on an early Elektra 10-inch LP. Now, when I say early, it says here EKLP-2. I wonder if anybody knows what EKLP-1 was. Still one of my favorite albums, Jean Ritchie, from many years ago.
Well, you know, it's true, I am an American, but those Europeans have had a lot of experience, you know? They've been, well, they've just been doing it, whatever we've all been doing for years. Maybe they're right. Maybe the devil does win more often than he loses. Maybe they're right.
So let's go out with Berlioz, Damnation of Faust. The devil definitely wins in this one. We're going to hear the end, not the very end, but the part where the chorus of demons and damned sings as the Prince of Darkness, Mephistopheles, takes Faust down to hell. The chorus sings: Has! Irimiru Karabrao! Has! Has! Has! Something like that. It doesn't make any sense, and I'll tell you why.
The Princes of Darkness sing: Mephisto, are you master and lord over this proud soul forever and ever? Mephistopheles: I am master forever and ever. Princes of Darkness: Then Faust freely signed the fatal deed which consigns him to the flames? Mephistopheles: He freely signed.
Chorus: Has! Has! There's a poet named... no, it couldn't be that. The demons bear Mephistopheles in triumph, and then the chorus sings: Tradioun Marexil fir trudinxé burrudixé. And what is this? What it is, according to these notes, it says, while the demons bear Mephistopheles away in triumph, singing a chorus in the language of hell invented by Swedenborg in the eighteenth century. So there you have it.
Swedenborg apparently invented this language, and it's a perfectly appropriate language to go to hell with.
[music excerpt: Berlioz, "La Damnation de Faust"; Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon/ Gardiner]
The next-to-last section of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, Jean-Philippe Laffont singing Mephistopheles and the Princes of Darkness, and the chorus were the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon.
Proof of the devil's power is the fact that actors often find it more fun to be the villain than the hero. So don't underestimate him. Beauty is the best revenge.
[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 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 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 39.
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.
[No speech for 151 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 Care of American Public Radio 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, MN 55403.