Readier than I'm ever likely to be again. 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 the good guys who make it possible for this show to spread that gospel are the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also this radio station, where I'm happily hunkered down for the next hour.
I've always felt that a good survey course is nothing to be looked down upon, and I had a good fine arts one in college, Art Appreciation, or History of Western Art, or whatever it was called, that has served me well as a larger context, a sort of a grid for every museum visit I've made since.
It was taught by a fine little welchman named Hedley Rees. Mr. Rees was really quite short, and I remember him saying once that a certain statue was slightly larger than life size. And then he added, but of course everything looks a bit larger than life size to me. So anyway, I wrote a paper for that course in which I said that looking at a painting was not as visceral an experience as hearing a piece of music. And the paper came back with a note in the margin saying, speak for yourself.
And I guess he must be right, but my own feeling about that is so strong that it's hard to imagine reacting as viscerally to a painting as to a piece of music. Now don't get me wrong, I love the plastic arts and I feel very fortunate that in the last couple of decades I've come to know some good artists well. And I love that. I love being in their studios and watching things develop and being blown away by the large, universal resonance of a work of art done by somebody whom I know in a small, personal, detailed way.
But for me, looking at art always has an element of contemplation to it, whereas listening to music is more, well, visceral is the only word I can think of. A friend of mine at Juilliard, when listening to recordings, used to stand there with his hands shaking as if he had palsy because the music excited him so. My father told me he once knew a woman who couldn't attend public concerts because hearing live music made her cry uncontrollably.
And I suppose that what it is, at least for me, is the time element. Music, like blood, flows.
We could play a little game here, imagining art as a human body. Painting and sculpture are the hands, literature is the mind, dance is the feet, and music is the blood. Blood is the stuff of life, and yet most of the time we don't see it, and that to me ties in with the fact that, although there is some abstract painting and abstract dance, music is the only art that is inherently abstract.
Baldly programmatic music constitutes a tiny fraction of music as a whole, whereas the reverse tends to be true in the other arts. Music is blood. And blood is so basic that the word is used metaphorically as often as it is literally.
Okay, enough philosophizing. Today's program is called Tracks of Blood, and our first suite touches on four different meanings of the word. In the first number, it is used in the sense of spirit, or perhaps more accurately, sexual élan.
The second number treats blood in the racial sense, obliquely adding a Christian overtone via geographical nomenclature. The translation of the Spanish of that text is, The Spaniards came from Spain to this land where they found their heart's desire, beautiful dark Indian women. Those beautiful Indian women, virtuous and full of grace, were chosen as wives and bore a new handsome race. With their penetrating songs and spiritual pictures, they praised the Holy Earth, a mother to us all. In the countryside
was heard that song, that dance, echoing in the mountains they called the blood of Christ.
And the third and last song uses blood in the sense of unchangeable personality traits, the kind you want to steer clear of. The Meanings of Blood song cycle lasts about nine and a half minutes. See you then.
[music: Leiber/Stoller/Pomus, "Young Blood" (The Coasters’ Greatest Hits); The Coasters]
[music: "Himno del peublo de las montanas de la Sangre de Cristo" (Music of New Mexico: Hispanic Traditions); Cleofes Vigil]
[music: Sedaka/Cody, "Bad Blood" (The Hungry Years); Neil Sedaka]
One of their many hits, Young Blood. Next came from an album, a Smithsonian Folkways album called Hispanic Traditions, Music of New Mexico, the Anthem of the People of the Blood of Christ Mountains, sung by Cleofes Vigil, who also was playing the mandolin. And we ended up with one of the great grooves, Neil Sedaka's Bad Blood from an album called The Hungry Years.
My name is Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix on APR.
One of the main tricks of staying alive is keeping your blood inside your body. Except when it comes to menstruation and treating certain diseases, you just don't want to see any leaks in your radiator system. And it's usually bad news when you do. In the first song cycle, we were dealing with blood in a mostly metaphorical sense. Now we're going to talk about the loss of very real blood, even though it may have metaphorical overtones as well. The last song is in Latin. It's called For the Martyrs. Beautiful text: You flowering roses you who are blissful in the shedding of your blood in the supreme joys that give fragrance and moisture in the purchasing that flowed from the inner plan of the mind of him who is present before the ages and the one in whom there was no process of beginning Let there be homage to your fellowship, you who are Ecclesia's instrument, you who well up in your bleeding wounds in the one in whom there was no process of beginning.
The Blood Spilled song cycle has three numbers. I'll be back in a little over 13 minutes.
[music: Cheetham, "Blood on the Saddle" (An American Legend); Tex Ritter]
[music: Schickele/Jacques Prevert trans. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Song in the Blood" (Baptism); Joan Baez]
[music excerpt: Von Bingen, “Symphoniae,” “Vos flores rosarum”; Sequentia]
Man, that is beautiful. That was written by Hildegard von Bingen. Going back to the beginning of the blood spilled song cycle, we heard Tex Ritter singing one of his biggest hits, Blood on the saddle. And then from an album called Baptism by Joan Baez, Song in the Blood, a poem by Jacques Prevert, translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the music was written by your humble host.
Baptism was a highly unusual album. In some of the cases, as here, she read poems over original music, and in other cases I wrote songs for the poems that she sings. And it's a very powerful album. I know some people who, even though they like it a lot, feel they can't listen to it very often. It's very strongly anti-war, and they find it depressing, even though it moves them.
And speaking of being moved, we then come to the third number, Hildegard von Bingen, who lived from 1098 to 1179, and is being increasingly recognized as one of the great composers in the Western tradition. and Vos Flores Rosarum, and performed by one of my absolute favorite performing groups, Sequentia. Getting back to the Tex Ritter song, by the way, I find the mood of that song quite strange.
Is the singer's difficulty in saying the word blood supposed to be funny or pathetic in a touching way? So a few days ago I visited a friend of mine who's a medium, and with her help I managed to catch Tex Ritter. Now those of you who have seen the Wim Wenders movie Wings of Desire know that angels come back down to earth to bear silent witness to the troubles of those of us who are still alive. And Ritter, who always had the reputation of being a real gentleman, said that he'd try to drop by the next time he was in this neighborhood. Well, I'll be darned if he didn't walk into this studio a few minutes ago right while his song was playing. Mr. Ritter, it is a real pleasure, in fact an honor, It's a great honor having you here, and I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that song. For instance, who wrote it?
Blood on the Saddle was written by Everett Cheetham, a boy from New Mexico. He and I, when Green Grow the Lilacs together in New York, we roomed together. And then later, when I went to make the pictures in Hollywood, Everett came to Hollywood and we lived together a couple of years out there before he left to go back to Wyoming at that time. Now lives in Joplin, Missouri.
He wrote it in Wickenburg, Arizona in the late 20s, I think, when a boy was injured at a rodeo. But when they started singing it, Everett worked as a dude wrangler in a lot of the ranches, dude ranch. When they started to sing it, the people started laughing.
So it became a comedy song. I understand a couple or three years ago they wanted to use this record at a thing at Disney World in Florida called the Bear Jamboree or something. Yeah, I've seen it. I finally gave them permission to use it. I understand it's a pretty big hit in Florida, so they built it out at Disneyland in California.
They wanted me to come out for the premiere, but I didn't. I haven't seen it, but a lot of people that have seen it think it's quite a good attraction. I thought maybe that Disney Studio would send me a pass since I didn't charge them anything, but, you know, I don't suppose they're... I guess they have to make another picture to make a little more money. The only thing that bothers me is I understand that the bear that they have mouthing my voice and its Blood on the Saddle is not only big and fat, but he's old and gray.
Well, you look just wonderful now, sir. Nobody, I mean, nobody would guess that you died in 1974. And I want to thank you so much for coming on by. That was Tex Ritter, folks, and I'm Peter Schickele. The show is Schickele Mix.
Yeah, just close the door. Thanks again, sir. On APR.
And now it's Tidbit Time. One of the most famous and certainly productive holidays in history was the one Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary and John William Polidori spent near Lake Geneva in 1816. The weather was lousy, but what did they care? They had some opium with them. So they lay around reading books on the occult and having a writing contest.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and Polidori wrote The Vampire, which was published three years later. In 1827, the year Beethoven died, Heinrich Marschner wrote an opera based on the vampire story. And in 1992, the BBC did a television version of the opera for which the libretto was updated to modern London. What would a show about blood be without hearing from a vampire?
Today's tidbit is the aria, Blood. My life is in their blood. Ripley, he's the vampire, wanders by the Thames, his mind seething with misogyny and bloodlust. Wretched women disgust him. In a world where God is dead, his manifesto is kill or be killed.
[music excerpt: Marschner/Hart, “The Vampyr,” “Blood, my life is in their blood”; Omar Ebrahim/BBC Philharmonic/Parry]
Blood. My life is in their blood from the opera The Vampire by Marschner and the title character was sung by Omar Ebrahim. A turning point for Macbeth comes when he says, I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er. The connection between blood and water is a powerful one. And our last suite is called The River of Blood Song Cycle.
It begins with a scene from Berg's opera Wozzeck. The title character has stabbed his girlfriend, Marie, and goes back later that night to look for the knife. He stumbles upon her body. Marie, Marie! What's that red cord around your neck? Was the red necklace payment for your sins? He looks for the knife. He finds it and throws it into the pond. And then, in one of the great visual moments in all of opera, a blood-red moon rises from behind the clouds. Wozzeck looks up. But the moon will betray me. The moon is blood-stained. Is the whole world going to incriminate me? The knife is too near the edge. They'll find it when they're swimming or diving for snails. He wades into the pond. I can't find it, but I must wash myself. There's blood on me. There's a spot here, and there's another. Oh God, I am washing myself in blood. The water is blood, blood. And he drowns, after which the captain and the doctor come in, and the excerpt ends with the doctor saying, It's getting quieter, referring to the moaning they hear. Then he says, Now it's stopped altogether.
The River of Blood song cycle has three numbers and lasts about nine and a half minutes.
[music excerpt: Berg, “Wozzeck,” Act III, Scene 4; Franz Grundheber/Heinz Zednik/Aage Haugland/Vienna Philharmonic/Abbado]
[music: Reagan, "Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto" (Breaths); Sweet Honey in the Rock]
[music excerpt: Handel, “Israel in Egypt,” “Then he sent Moses” & “They loathed to drink of the river”; Anthony Rolfe Johnson/Taverner Choir & Players/Parrott]
We began, as you know, with Wozzeck by Alban Berg, and Wozzeck was sung by Franz Grundheber, and the captain was Heinz Zednik, and the doctor, Aage Haugland.
After that, we heard Sweet Honey in the Rock singing Chile, Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto. And that's from an album called Breaths. And then finally, from a wonderful recording of Israel in Egypt by Handel, the Taverner Choir and Players under the direction of Andrew Parrott. That was the recitative Then Sent He Moses; the tenor in that was Anthony Rolfe Johnson. And then that fugue for chorus, They Loathed to Drink of the River. He turned their waters into blood. Strange show. Unsettling. I think we need a little sanguinity, and I know just the guy to give it to us.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Mozart's 24th symphony brings Schickele Mix to a close. Once again, 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. This is program 48. 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.