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. But what good would good music be if nobody could hear it? Fortunately, we're being radioically disseminated thanks to financial support from the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, and also from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and this very radio station right here where you are right now.
One of the most pernicious, unfortunate, and otherwise draggy aspects of classical music is that, perhaps because it's often called serious music, many people think that classical musicians have no sense of humor, when actually nothing could be further from the truth. In In fact, symphony orchestras constitute one of the greatest manufacturers and repositories of jokes on the planet, surpassed only perhaps by neighborhood bars and office water coolers.
Now everybody hates the boss, so let's start off with conductors. There are probably more incompetent or near incompetence in the conducting business than in any other aspect of music.
Let's face it, you can't build a solo career or get into a decent symphony orchestra without at least being able to play the notes. But there are conductors out there who can hardly get through a piece just beating it correctly. I was playing bassoon in an orchestra once. It was for the Messiah and the conductor was a choral conductor. He was a pretty good choral conductor actually, but he wasn't very good in front of an orchestra. And at one point during rehearsal, his beat was so vague that the first flutist got out of sync. The conductor stopped and said, let's try that again. The flutist played it correctly, and after the solo was over, he turned to the rest of the woodwind section and said, sorry boys, lost my head and looked up.
I have heard a story remarkably similar to that from a member of one of the top orchestras in this country. I was in another orchestra, an amateur orchestra, and we were rehearsing Beethoven's Seventh.
[sung: Schickele vocalizes the opening of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony]
And instead of doing the accepted two-beat pattern with his right hand, down, up, down, up, the conductor was flailing around with both arms, punching down with his right arm on every first beat and with his left on every second beat, as if he were pounding on an invisible drum. Right, left, right, left.
So pretty soon everything falls apart, and he stops the orchestra and says, First horn, you were one beat off. The first horn player says, Sorry sir, I was watching the wrong arm. Anyway, here's a popular conductor joke. You're driving in the country and during the course of the trip you see a dead snake and a dead conductor on the road. What's the difference? There are skid marks in front of the snake.
Now I'm sure that that joke has been told about professions other than conductoring. But sometimes non-musicians ask me, what kind of jokes do musicians make? Tell me a real musician's joke. Well, it's tricky, because a non-musician might not get a real musician's joke. And we all know how much fun explaining jokes is. But against all better judgment, I'll lay one on you, with explanation.
Two guys are auditioning for the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the best orchestras in the country. They're waiting in the waiting room. One of them's a real uptight, nervous guy. The other's real laid back. The uptight guy says, I just know they're going to make me sight read. I'm okay if I can rehearse it and practice it in my room, but I'm terrible at sight reading. I just know they're going to make me sight read. And the laid-back guy says, Hey, don't worry about it, man. They always make you sight read. Finally, put it in front of you, you read it. No problem.
Well, the laid-back guy gets called first. He goes in there. When he comes back into the waiting room, the uptight guy says, Did they make you sight read, huh? Did they make you sight read? Laid-back guy says, Sure, they made me sight read. They always do. Well, what was it? What did they put in front of you? Laid-back guy says, I don't know what it was, I just looked at it and read it. Well, how'd it go? How'd it go?
And the laid-back guy says, that went, la-da-dee-da-dum, dee-da-da-da-dee-da-da-da-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee. Now, most musicians will be laughing by now, because here's what the guy is singing, but at the proper tempo.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro, Overture; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Marriner]
The Overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro at the right tempo. But the most fertile area of musical humor in the last few years has been viola jokes. Why viola? Why Polish? I don't know anybody who doesn't love the sound of the viola, but there is something right about viola jokes. I think it's partly that almost nobody starts out to be a violist. It's the same with bassoon. Like most bassoonists, I started out on clarinet.
And virtually every violist in the world started out on violin and then, for one reason or another, switched to viola. And I guess the perception is that they went to viola because they knew they weren't going to make it on violin. Although, actually, the viola is harder to play than the violin in some ways. The viola is larger than a violin, but not big enough to play between the legs like a cello. So it's awkward and harder to play in tune.
I just heard a nice story about Joseph Silverstein, for many years the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, and now a conductor, as well as a violinist. Apparently, when he was a student at the Curtis Institute, the violist of the Faculty String Quartet got sick at the last moment, and since Joseph was a very fine student, and I'm sure played viola as well as violin, they asked him to sub.
Well, the great cellist Piatigorsky was in the audience, and afterwards he came up and he said to Joe, so young and already the viola. Well, here's a little viola joke sampler. We'll do it hee-haw style.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Divertimento in F (K. 213), 4th mvt.; Holliger Wind Ensemble]
What's the difference between a violin and a viola? A viola burns longer.
What's the difference between a viola and a trampoline? You take your shoes off when you jump on a trampoline.
Why are a violist's fingers like lightning? Because they never strike twice in the same place.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Divertimento in F (K. 213), 4th mvt.; Holliger Wind Ensemble]
What's the difference between a viola and an onion? Nobody cries when you cut up a viola.
Why do violists put their instrument cases on the dashboard when they go to the shopping mall? So they can park in the handicapped spaces.
What's the difference between a viola and a Harley Davidson? You can tune a Harley Davidson.
The conductor gets up on the podium for a rehearsal, and he notices that one of the inside-stand violists is crying. He says, what's wrong? The violist says, the second oboe player unloosened one of my tuning pegs. The conductor says, well, that's pretty juvenile behavior, but I think you're overreacting. Why are you crying? The violist says, he won't tell me which one.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Divertimento in F (K. 213), 4th mvt.; Holliger Wind Ensemble]
What's the difference between violists and terrorists? Terrorists have sympathizers.
Take an instant dislike to violists. Saves time.
How can you tell if the stage is level? The violist drools out of both sides of his mouth.
Why is a viola like... No, I better not tell that one.
Why is a viola like a trial? Because everyone heaves a sigh of relief when the case is closed.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Divertimento in F (K. 213), 4th mvt.; Holliger Wind Ensemble]
All right. The music in the viola joke suite was from Mozart's Divertimento in F, K. 213, played by Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Field types. I'm Peter Schickele and this show is Schickele Mix on APR.
A little coda to the viola joke suite. During the Iraq War, there was one going around, what do a viola and a scud missile have in common? They're both offensive and highly inaccurate. I was talking to an orchestral musician once and he was saying that during a rehearsal when they were taking the break, somebody Somebody told that joke, and everybody laughed at it, and then they went back to rehearsing, and they were doing the end of a symphony, great big loud ending, and one of the violists actually did miscount, so everybody ended, and the violist played two extra chords, and there was this sort of stunned silence, till a percussion player shouted out, One got through!
I met the conductor Christopher Hogwood a few days ago, and he was saying the orchestra is getting tired of viola jokes. They were saying, aren't there any violin jokes? He said, I didn't know any. And I said, well, I do know two. One of them is, how many second violinists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer is none. They can't get up that high. And the other, the other I'll tell you when you get a little bit older.
Today's program is called Humor Me. Musical humor is a tricky business. Think of all the stand-up comics there are around and how few musical comedians. So what does it take musically to amuse? Well, in the first place, the music, whatever it is, has to be played well. When I was touring with P. D. Q. Bach, whom I have described as the worst composer who ever trod organ pedals, and I mentioned that I was going out to play with some real podunk type orchestra, Sometimes people would say, oh, that'll be perfect for P. D. Q. Bach, but that's not true. It works best with a great orchestra because then the gross things really stick out like sore thumbs. In fact, even the gross things have to be done well. So you want to work with good players and singers.
Speaking of good singers, one of the bright lights in the early days of the Glyndebourne Opera back in the 1930s was a soprano named Ina Souez. Here's a little showcase of her talent, two arias featuring Ms. Souez.
[music: Mozart, Così fan tutte, "Come scoglio immoto resta"; Ina Souez, Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra, Busch]
[music: Arditi arr. Brandt/Jones, "Ill Barkio" (Spike Jones Is Murdering the Classics); Ina Souez, Horatio Q. Birdbath, Spike Jones]
Souez, she died recently and I noticed in her obituary that she had sung with both Glyndebourne Opera and Spike Jones.
And sure enough, I don't pay much attention to names, but sure enough, she was on the Glyndebourne recordings I grew up with. My folks back there in the late 30s used to save up and buy these big albums of 78s, one act at a time. As a matter of fact, they never got around to buying the third album of Così fan tutte. I know the first two-thirds of that opera much better than the last third. Così fan tutte, the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Fritz Busch, with Ina Souez as Fiordiligi, and then we heard Spike Jones, Ill Barkio, with vocal refrain by Ina Souez and Horatio Q. Birdbath.
Musical humor, rule number two, parody what you like or have some affinity for. Victor Borge studied to be a concert pianist, Anna Russell studied to be an opera singer, they loved that stuff. Spike Jones flourished in the swing era, he hated rock and roll and he couldn't do good parodies of it because of that. P. D. Q. Bach started out very casually without a career in mind. I had no idea in my wildest dreams that more than a quarter of a century later it would still be going strong. But in retrospect, it's obvious that he had to be a late 18th century composer because then he could write in the style of his father, Johann Sebastian Bach, and his contemporary Mozart, two of my favorite composers. Here's a piece by Debussy poking fun at a stodgy Englishman.
It's called Homage to S. Pickwick, Esquire, P. P. M. P. C.
[music: Debussy, Préludes, Book 2, No. 9, "Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq., P.P.M.P.C."; Walter Gieseking]
Walter Gieseking playing Debussy's Homage to S. Pickwick, Esquire, P. P. M. P. C. I'd say the title in French. I can say Homage à S. Pickwick, and I can even say Esquire, but I don't know how to say P. P. M. P. C. in French. P. P. M. P. C. I don't know. We know it's supposed to be humorous because of the title and the God Save the Queen quote.
But man, talk about heavy handed humor. The beginning is so ugly and the rest of it is so un-English. I've heard the jazz pianist Marian McPartland, who came from England, do much better send-ups of English pomp and circumstance. And I know I'm not alone in that opinion of the Debussy. But it is just my humble opinion, Claude.
Ok next, the best parodies are enjoyable even to those who don't get the reference. Here's a delightful poem from Alice in Wonderland. It goes, you probably know it, How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale? How cheerfully he seems to grin, how neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws.
I think that's a wonderful poem. But imagine how much kick it would have if I had been, or you were, a 19th century person who undoubtedly would know the Isaac Watts poem, the very moralistic poem, How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower? How skillfully she builds her cell, How neat she spreads the wax, And labors hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes. It's an example, I think, of something you can enjoy without getting the reference, but obviously the reference increases the enjoyment.
For instance, here again, apparently in the 19th century, almost everybody knew this Robert Southey poem. I'll only read the first two verses. You are old, Father William, the young man cried. The few locks which are left you are gray. You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man. Now tell me the reason, I pray. In the days of my youth, Father William replied, I remembered that youth would fly fast, and abused not my health and my vigor at first, that I might never need them at last.
And the poem goes on with Father William saying all these wonderfully healthy things. And of course, Lewis Carroll changed it too. You are old, Father William, the young man said, and your hair has become very white, and yet you incessantly stand on your head. Do you think at your age it is right? In my youth, Father William replied to his son, I feared it might injure the brain.
But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why I do it again and again. Now let's turn to a musical parody, one of P. D. Q. Bach's most interestingly prescient works, the 1712 Overture. Of course, I didn't have anything to do with this piece, other than editing the manuscript, but if I had had something to do with it, I might have thought along these lines. Here's the beginning of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
Now, what are the most memorable aspects of that theme? Well, the first four notes, and then how it keeps going to the fourth degree of the scale.
So, ba da dee dee, da da dee dee, da da dee dee, da da dee dee, da da da dee dee dee dee, great, because it even goes, da da dee da dee, da da da da da dee da da da dee dee dee, perfect, okay.
So what one might do then is to score Yankee Doodle with exactly the same kind of instrumentation as the Tchaikovsky and also adjust the rhythm so it sounds more like the Tchaikovsky. But it's actually so different that a lot of people might not recognize it. So one might, at the beginning, before that cello-viola thing that we heard, in the 1712 Overture, one might put the theme in a more obvious way so people are set up to recognize it.
And then after the part that sounds like the Tchaikovsky hymn, finish off the Yankee Doodle theme with a kind of rhythm that both makes it fit with the Tchaikovsky and yet is completely recognizable. Here's the beginning of P. D. Q. Bach's 1712 Overture.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, 1712 Overture, opening; The Greater Hoople Area Off-Season Philharmonic, Walter Bruno]
Now, here's the climax of the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky, where the same Russian hymn theme comes back, and all the bells are ringing, and certainly one of the most famous places in symphonic music.
Okay, of course, in the P. D. Q. Bach Overture, the 1712 Overture, the theme will come back, it'll be Yankee Doodle. And you know, I'll bet that even a lot of people who figure out the theme in the beginning, that it's Yankee Doodle and everything, I bet a lot of people even forget it by the time it shows up in the middle of the piece, because there's so much going on, and it's so exciting. Now, Tchaikovsky, of course, that piece was originally played outdoors with actual church bells sounding there, and so there's always a lot of bells there.
So, what might we do? Well, we can get cowbells and triangles and tubular bells and throw in a few sirens and we can make it exciting enough so that you'll enjoy it even if you don't recognize the theme. And then, for those who listen to detail, they might notice that the strings, instead of doing the cascading scales that Tchaikovsky has them doing, in the P. D. Q. Bach, the strings are going da-da-da-da-di-di-di-da-da-di-di-di-di-di, the famous exercise for beginning violinists. Here's the climax of P. D. Q. Bach's 1712 Overture.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, 1712 Overture, climax; The Greater Hoople Area Off-Season Philharmonic, Walter Bruno]
Okay, good news, folks. We're going to be hearing that whole piece in a couple of minutes. But first, I want to tell you about a weird one. Who am I? I'm Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix on APR.
Before we go on, and before you've put your blue books away, I want to review the three rules for good musical parody. First, make sure it's well played. Two, parody what you like. Three, make it work irregardless of references. Speaking of references, you know, what's really weird is that sometimes even the person responsible for the parody doesn't get the reference.
Here's the beginning of Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 59 No. 1.
Years ago, years and years ago, it occurred to me that that theme would sound great as a march. It even ends, La-di-da. You really don't have to change a note. Maybe just add ba-dum-ba-dum before the last three notes. Here's how that theme sounds in P. D. Q. Bach's Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds & Percussion; Turtle Mountain Naval Base Tactical Wind Ensemble]
Now, I realize that outside of New York and a few other cities, there probably won't be more than one or two people in the audience, if that, who recognize that theme as Beethoven. But folks seem to enjoy it anyway, especially when the trombones and tubas stand up. But here's the kicker. I conducted that piece in New York recently, and the New York Times reviewer said that one of the most bizarre inspirations was finding a similarity between Beethoven's Opus 59 No. 1 and You've Gotta Be a Football Hero, but I don't know that song. I had to ask people, how does that song go? Apparently it's, "you've gotta be a football hero to get along with a beautiful girl," or something like that. I don't know that song, or I didn't then, but maybe I did know that song, you know? Maybe I heard it. I mean, I've shopped in stores where they have Mitch Miller singing along, you know, while you shop. Maybe I have heard it.
I'm only the discoverer.
Okay, now back to the 1712 Overture by P. D. Q. Bach in its agonizingly ingratiating entirety.
[music: P. D. Q. Bach, 1712 Overture; The Greater Hoople Area Off-Season Philharmonic, Walter Bruno]
1712 Overture by P. D. Q. Bach. Walter Bruno was conducting the Greater Hoople Area Off-Season Philharmonic. Many people find that piece funny. That's okay with me. You know, it's interesting, but the people who object to P. D. Q. Bach, who think classical music shouldn't be made fun of or something like that, they're almost never musicians. Musicians need humor. It's a burnout profession.
Do you have any idea how many times the members of a major symphony orchestra have played the 1812 Overture, not to mention that Leroy Anderson typewriter piece? It's a highly competitive business. You have to stay very much in top form and yet play the same pieces over and over and over again, often with not great conductors.
And I'd like to end with a classic musician's story.
Jack is walking down 52nd Street in Manhattan one day, sees a guy who looks familiar. He says, Manny? Manny looks at him and says, Jack? I can't believe it, says Jack. Man, we haven't played together for, what, 25 years? Man, he says, yeah, remember it was that little club in Passaic we used to play regularly. Man, it is good to see you. Jack says, it is good to see you. Man, he says, well, what's happening? You know, how's it going?
Jack says, well, you know, it's okay. The jingle business isn't what it was, but, you know, wedding here, bar mitzvah there, it's okay, I'm getting along fine. How about yourself?
Manny says, Well, I gotta say, Jack, life's been good to me. You know, right after we played that gig in Passaic, I remember it as if it were yesterday. I happened to run into a guy who was Frank Sinatra's arranger, and he didn't have time to get a chart done. I said, I'll do it. And that started a long association with Frank Sinatra. I did a lot of his charts, several of his albums.
Jack says, Really? I didn't realize that. That's fantastic, Manny. He says, Yeah, that led to the work with Ella Fitzgerald. That was wonderful, too. And more recently, Whitney Houston and Paula Abdul. I gotta say, I really gotta give her most of the credit for my fifth Grammy. And Jack says, Fifth Grammy? You've got five Grammys? I can't believe it. Where have I been? I didn't hear about that. That's really great. And Manny says, Yeah, and you know, specials, TV specials, They always come after the albums, right? So that led to the Emmys.
And, of course, then I got into the movie business. Ended up out there in the West Coast and did a lot of movies. And, well, it's just been very good. Two Oscars, well, three Oscars actually, but the third one was really for arranging some Stephen Foster stuff. And Jack says, what have I been, on the moon or something like that? I can't believe I didn't know about this. This is real. It makes me so happy for you, Manny.
And Manny says, Yeah, and you know, I started doing a lot of work for disadvantaged children and everything, and, well, if you want to know the truth, I think that that probably is as much responsible for my getting the Pulitzer as my first symphony was, when it comes right down to it. You got a Pulitzer, says Jack? I can't believe it. I mean, I read the papers, I can't understand it. That's fantastic. I didn't know about all this. He says, Well, what are you doing in town now?
And Manny says, well, you know, I had to go down to Philadelphia because we're commissioning Quincy Jones to write a piece to keep kids off heroin, you know. It's called Cracked. It has a part for the Liberty Bell in it. So I was down there sort of getting that arranged. And I had to come back up here to Manhattan for something. And I thought, well, instead of taking the train, I think I'll take the limo and stop by that place in Passaic. And I did. I went, and you can't believe it, Jack.
But that club is still there. Ziggy's is exactly the same as it was before. I went in there and there was Ziggy. It was late afternoon. We had a wonderful little talk and Ziggy said, Hey, you know, Manny, you ought to stay, have some supper and play. We got a nice piano trio here tonight. You can sit in. And I said to him, I said, Ziggy, I haven't played tenor in 20 years. I don't even have a horn anymore.
And Ziggy said, Look, I got one upstairs. My daughter plays tenor. Look, I got another mouthpiece, no lipstick on it. Come on, have a little supper. Play tonight. Well, I couldn't resist. We had a nice time. The piano trio showed up about 8.30. I got up there on a stand, and it was, well, it was sort of like old times, you know.
But, I gotta tell you, Jack, the old fingers just didn't work the way they used to. The old chops gave out after about 45 seconds, you know. I got to admit that it just didn't sound that great. And Jack says, yeah, that's what I heard.
[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 Ford Foundation, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also by this radio station and its 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, which in this case is program number 43.
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 Schickele, Schickele Mix. Care of American Public Radio, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, MN 55403.