This is WMUK Kalamazoo at 102.1 FM. You can also listen at our website, wmuk.org. Affirmative. Here's the theme.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickley, and this is Shickley 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.
Say it once and say it twice. Our bills are paid, and that's very nice, by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and also by this radio station right here on your radio dial.
I must be the only guy to grow up in this country after World War II who has never sung 99 bottles of beer on the wall, at least the entire opus.
Eh, I probably did. I probably just blocked it. My first summer job when we moved to Fargo, North Dakota, was detasseling corn. You see, with hybrid varieties, you don't want the corn to go to seed naturally,
so you hire a bunch of junior high school kids, pile them in buses, and take them out into the fields to walk up and down, pulling the seed-bearing tassels off of each stalk. So what did we do on those bus rides? I can't remember.
But I do remember something that our family used to sing on trips. My father grew up in Germany and Switzerland, and he taught us a beautiful round by Mozart called Alles Schweigert.
Here, let me sing it for you with a little help from the authentic instrument. Not a reconstruction, folks. An original, early 1990s Casio tone bank here. Let's see. I'll sing my mom and dad,
and the authentic instrument can be Peter and David in the back seat.
Awesome.
Alles Schweigert Alles Schweigert Nachtigallen
Flüssen mit süßen Melodien
Tränen ins Auge, Schwermut ins Herz Flüssen mit süßen Melodien
Tränen ins Auge, Schwermut ins Herz Et cetera. You can go on for hours with a good round if you want to. Well, I don't know about hours,
but there is a kind of trance-like feeling that can set in as the miles go by. Alles Schweigert All is quiet. Nightingales flow with sweet melodies.
Tears in the eye, heavy mood in the heart, or something like that. You know, when I was singing that as a kid, I had no idea what the words meant. It wasn't until I studied German later. In the opinion of your humble host,
rounds are one of the great musical inventions, and I think that's what you're talking about. Today's show is called Imitation is the Sincereest Form, and we're going to be dealing with pieces in which all the voices,
every individual part of the texture, are based on the same single line of music. Such pieces are called canons. We'll talk about that word later.
And by far the most popular kind of canon is the round, which is simply a melody that sounds good sung in unison, but is written in such a way that it also works with staggered entrances,
the voices coming in one after another. It's also circular. When you get to the end, you go back to the beginning and keep doing that until you're not having fun anymore.
The important thing is you get this rich polyphonic texture from one tune. By the way, 99 bottles of beer on the wall is not a round. It's more like a mantra.
If that melody is sung with staggered entrances, it's for another reason. And it won't work either. It won't sound good. But just about everybody knows, a few rounds at least. Who hasn't sung
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream? Or Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, Dormez-vous, dormez-vous?
We're going to start off today with some lesser-known examples of the genre. Four of them, to be exact. A round of rounds lasts about eight and a half, nine minutes, after which I'll be around again.
Oranox Bistarechter Ochs Bona notte Liebe Notte Bonne nuit We must go far away Good night, good night
The best time is now
Good night Sleep well, child
And stay well, little bird
Bona nox
Bistarechter Ochs
Bona notte
Liebe Notte Bonne nuit Bistarechter Ochs Bona notte Liebe Notte Bona nox Bistarechter Ochs
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, a round of rounds. We began with La Banna, an album called The Circle is Cast, a wonderful album of
rounds and pieces that apparently they use often to warm up. That was a Russian lullaby. It says traditional Russian, also of Jewish origin. And the soloist was Susan Robbins.
Then we had Mozart, a round called Bonne Nox, Bistarek der Ochs, which you may have noticed has some Latin and some German and some English in it.
And this was sung by a group called Le Lieder Quartet from a Mozart Lieder Duos, Trios, and Quartets, vocal quartets album, a French group.
And I can't help noticing, I've seen this round in other sources, and I can't help noticing they're singing a cleaned up version of the words.
You know, Mozart did not have a very clean mind when it came to humor. And their version was quite clean. I happen to have with me here the original words.
Yeah, well, they are singing a cleaned up version. Then the next one was from an album called The Art of the Body Song, sung by the Baltimore Consort and the Merry Companions.
And that was a tune called Dainty Fine Aniseed Water, anonymous, from 1652. Quite a nice little round. And we ended up with a round by the regarded American composer Peter Schickely.
That was from one of the concerts. One of the concerts of my comparatively serious music that I do in New York City. And that was the Candacum Novum Singers.
I want to thank them and their conductor, Harold Rosenbaum, for permission to play that tape. And it refers to singing get-togethers at the house of Richard Peasley. A good composer and a good friend.
We get together over there every once in a while. It gets harder and harder as we all seem to get busier and busier. And we sing some madrigals. And we sing some... Very often the composers in the group bring something.
And we usually do some rounds. And we often end up with shape notes singing from the wonderful sacred harp stuff from the South.
Our next suite consists of three rounds that have an unusual twist to them, either in their presentation or composition. As we've mentioned before, a round is a circular canon.
But another characteristic is that the entrances of the voices are equally spaced. That is, if you have a four-part round and the entire melody is eight measures long,
you know that the voices will enter two measures apart. Because eight divided by four is... Let me check that... Yep, every two measures.
Okay, but the group La Banna, whom we heard in the first suite, they do a nice variation on some rounds. Taking our hypothetical eight-measure round as an example, they go through the tune once.
Then when they go back to the top, the second voice, comes in two bars later. And then they go through the whole rest of the round with only two voices. Then on the third time through, they add the third voice, etc.
It makes for a longer period of variety. Because the thing about rounds is, especially if all the voices are in the same range, once all the parts are in, you're simply hearing the same, say, two measures over and over again.
The only difference is spatial. The stereo factor. Which group is singing which part at that moment where in the room. Otherwise it's two bars. And then it goes over and over and over again. And row, row, row your boat.
The second of the next three rounds is atypical in a different way. Usually the words repeat as well as the music. But in this case, the lyric of one of the phrases is different each time through. And since this is from a musical,
whoever has new words sings louder and the other two get softer so that we can hear the lines. And the last one of this group is a beautiful example of the trance potential,
which I referred to earlier. A round of rounds with a twist is a bit over five minutes long. I'll be back around then.
Cuckoo indeed. I could go even longer with that. A round of rounds with a twist.
We began from that same La Banna album, A Circle is Cast, with a beautiful round called Fly, Fly, Fly by Peter Eardley.
And then we heard from Guys and Dolls, one of the great works of the 20th century, the Fugue for Tin Horns, Stubby K, Johnny Silver, Douglas Dean.
And now I got to say something here. I'm all for calling things what the composers call them. You know, there are two forms called Passacaglia and Chaconne. People like to sit around arguing, well, is this really a Passacaglia? Is this really a Chaconne?
Who cares? If the composer calls it a Passacaglia, it's a Passacaglia. But hey, this is not a fugue. This is a round. Fugue is a neat word. And it has a highbrow sound.
And that sort of rubs against the lowbrow world of Damon Runyon and Guys and Dolls. I don't have any objection to calling it Fugue for Tin Horns.
But just since we're a highly educational program here, I just want you to know that's a round. It's not a fugue. We talk about fugues on another program. And then the third one, that beautiful Cuckoo,
was back again from the La Banna album. And I want to say there's no payola involved here. I just like this album a lot. A circle is cast. And that was As I, Me Walked.
And it's from Renaissance England. I'm Peter Shickley. The show is Shickley Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
And now it's tidbit time at the old Roundup. This is a nice little bridge, an umbilical cord, between the most jovial of party pieces and high symphonic art.
Beethoven knew and actually collaborated with Nepomuk Meltzel, the fellow who developed the first successful metronome. Of course, metronomes are all electronic now, at least all the ones I see.
But I'm sure a lot of us remember the pyramid-shaped boxes with the weighted metal arm that went . And we're going to hear a round that Beethoven wrote for Meltzel,
followed by the second movement of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, which he based on the same material. The words to the round are, Tick-tock, tick-tock, dear, dear Meltzel.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, fare you well, fare you very well. Tick-tock, tick-tock, giver of time, giver of time. Tick-tock, tick-tock, you great big metronome.
Okay, two very different treatments of the same material. First, the round on Meltzel.
And that was sung by the Vienna Academy Chamber Choir under the direction of Xaver Meyer. And then we heard the second movement of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony,
conducted by Herbert von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic. So what is the difference between a round and a canon? The word canon, with one N in the middle,
has nothing to do with Big Bertha or Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. It's the Latin word for Latin, which means, law or rule. And in music, it simply means a piece in which the parts, that is, voices or instruments,
imitate each other strictly according to some rule. The rule for rounds is that all the parts do the same material, but with equally staggered entrances, and it repeats indefinitely.
But you can have other rules. In other words, a round is a canon, but a canon is not necessarily a round. The rule could be that the second voice comes in two measures after the first, and that's it.
No going back to the beginning. You could have a hundred measures of music, the voices bopping along two measures apart, and when they run out of music, the piece is over. Here are three canons that begin like rounds.
The entrances are staggered, and the parts all start on the same note. But the form is not closed. There is some repetition, but it's not circular. The parts don't keep going back to the beginning over and over again. They go on to new material.
The first one of these canons has two parts, the second three, and the third six, which is why I call them How Many Times Do I Have to Tell You Canons?
How Many Times Do I Have to Tell You Canons?
We began with an excerpt from the minuet movement of Haydn's Stradivarius, String Quartet, Op. 76, No. 2, the Quintin Quartet, played by the Takács Quartet.
That's that very clear two-part canon. It goes on to the trio, and then goes back to the canon again. Then, from an album called The Comic Mozart, an LP, we heard a canon called Heiterkeit und Leichtes Blut,
a three-part canon for the women's voices, and here again, the Vienna Academy Chamber Choir. And then we ended with a piece by Moondog,
a man who used to stand on street corners in New York, playing his music sometimes, or selling his poetry, and he was quite a sight, because he would stand there in his Viking garb.
He was blind, and he would talk to you, and I remember I couldn't help but get a kick out of it. I went up and talked to him one day, and here he is, this wild, far-out guy, I mean, strange guy,
standing there in the corner, right in corporate New York, 56th Street and 6th Avenue, in this wild garb, and I struck up a conversation with him, and he ended up saying, well, you know, young people today,
they don't have any respect for their elders. And it was just like, you know, somebody in an old folks' home. But he was quite a guy. He used to invent his own instruments. He studied somewhat with some American Indians. He wrote some wonderful rounds. He wrote a lot in 5-4 time
and 7-4 time. What we heard was in 5-4 time, and it was part of a score he wrote for Martha Graham, The Witch of Ender. This was the first part, 5-4 time.
I goofed, by the way. It's not a six-part canon, it's a seven-part canon. And unlike what I said at the beginning, there was an accompaniment here, of course. At the beginning of the show,
I said that all voices were going to be from the same material. Moondog. Back when my brother and I were around college age, we used to play a rather tricky game.
Improvising canons. Being the composer, I was always the first voice, and he was the second. It was tricky for me, because I had to make every measure I sang such that it would fit with the measure I had just sung previously.
And it was tricky for him, because he had to memorize the measure I was singing while he was singing the measure I had just sung previously. And I was the first one to do that. It's probably just as well
that we weren't doing that in the Oval Office of the White House. I doubt if those ad hoc canons deserve to be preserved and published by the New York Times. Okay, here's a canon with a different rule.
This is from Bach's Musical Offering, which is a compendium, nay, a cornucopia of canonic cleverness. Number six of this collection is titled Two-Part Canon,
but there's only one line of music, with the subtitle Querendo in Venietis, that is, Seek, and ye shall find. So he's leaving it to you to figure out
how to make that one line of music into a two-part piece. But he gives you a big clue. Those of you who read music, you know how there's always a clef at the beginning of the line over there on the left.
Well, Bach puts two clefs at the beginning of the line, one right side up, and one upside down. Here's a two-part canon with inversion. Listen to the opening melody in the right hand,
and when the left hand comes in, you can hear that it's upside down.
Now this next one, also from the Musical Offering, has a regular clef at the beginning of the line, and then there's another clef at the end of the line, pointing backwards. So we're talking about
retrograde motion here. It's called a crab canon. Both parts start together, and it takes a more acute musical mind than mine to follow it all the way through, just by ear.
But you can hear that one part starts, and the other part at the end goes,
The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, under
Neville Mariner, playing two canons in the Fox Musical Offering. Okay, we've heard regular straight-ahead canons, we've heard upside-down imitation, we've heard backwards imitation.
What's left? You guessed it, backwards upside-down, or retrograde inversion. And to illustrate this arcane technique, I'm going to dip into my own oeuvre,
and perform, live, right here in the studio, a micro-masterpiece entitled The Brothers Joad. This is what I call table music, because it's meant to be performed
by two people facing each other with the one page of music between them. Mozart wrote some pieces like this for two violins, but I can't play violins, so you're going to have to put up with my singing.
What I'll do is, I'll put the sheet of music on the table in front of me, here. Now, as in the last example by Bach, there's a clef at the beginning and a clef at the end.
Here, the one at the end is not only backwards, but upside-down as well. Also, since this is a vocal opus, there are words below the music, as usual, and there are words above the music,
upside-down, for the guy on the other side of the table. Okay, here's the first part. A banker named Mr. Joad
saw his brother John an actor coming down the road. When they met, he just kept walking on, never even slowed.
Pompous old Mr. Joad. Okay, now I am going to the other side of the table here,
where I will read the same music from the opposite angle. Fortunately, we have an omnidirectional mic here. And I have not turned the music around, reading it from the opposite angle.
Joad walking along the road saw his brother high when they met, he just kept walking by
thinking I am an artist he is a money-grubbing toad snobby young Mr. Joad Okay,
now, what I am going to do, you are going to love this, I am back in my room, in my regular spot now, and I have a great big old mirror set up in the chair opposite me. So, as I sing the first part,
the sound will bounce off the mirror and enter the other side of the microphone backwards and upside down, which is exactly what we want. It has been a long time since I took physics, but I think this is going to work. Here we go, The Brothers Joad.
Joad a banker named Mr. Joad walking along the road saw his brother John an actor coming down the road saw his brother high
when they met, he just kept walking by never even slowed thinking I am an artist he is a money-grubbing toad pompous old Mr. Joad
snobby young Mr. Joad
How about that? I mean, how about that? We are Peter Sickily. The program is Sickily Mix from PRI. Public Radio International.
You know these canons that go in all different directions. There is a work by PDQ Bach called The Musical Sacrifice and when we perform that at the concerts in New York which we do once in a while
we write the music out on a huge strip of music that we then lay down on the floor and the musicians all read from literally the same piece of music but they read from the various directions
in other words in that last one you would have one musician walking along with his back to the audience reading and from the other end the second musician would be facing the audience
reading the same music and she would move along to her right and they cross in the middle and go and it makes all those relationships of the kind of canon that we are talking about very clear and very visual
it is not quite as effective on radio canon means rule and the rule can be whatever you want ok now fasten your seat belts everybody
because I have composed a canon especially for this show that's right another example of live music on radio I'm going to play the world premiere of this piece
on the authentic instrument here it's called the Not Bad Canon I'm a modest kind of guy and I want all you musical types out there to try and figure out what the rule is governing this canon
and let me warn you don't get smug at the beginning here we go
ok now how can that be a canon right I mean it starts out ok that's but it's got all that stuff that you know all that
that's in the right hand that's not in the left hand the left hand just does this I mean that's an accompaniment figure right it's not a canon there's no imitation there but that's because you don't know the rule
the reason it's called the Not Bad Canon is that the left hand plays everything that the right hand plays except for the notes
whose letter names are in the word bad no B's no A's no D's see so it starts out fine
but that's an A so the other part skips that and then all these other things all that stuff up there all those top notes are A's and B's and D's the only notes
from the bottom there are E and G did I fool you or not I'd slay myself alright now let me tell you about my brother's dream
he plays viola and one of the best pieces in the viola featuring repertoire is Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 here's how it starts
now when my brother was in high school he had a dream he had one of those panic dreams you know that you're not ready he had a dream that he was involved in a performance of the 6th Brandenburg
and somebody had lost the second viola part and my brother in his dream said don't worry I'll just play the first viola part a beat later now he remembered his dream
the next morning when he got up unlike me he went and looked up the music for the 6th Brandenburg and discovered that the two viola parts are indeed a canon one beat apart
the first one starts on the first beat 1, 2, 3, 4 and the second one starts one beat later 1, 2, 3, 4, 1
so that they interlock and speed apart this is what it sounds like when you put them together
music
that again was the
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Neville Marner the 6th Brandenburg and the story of my brother's dream he has great dreams man I never remember my dreams
but I love very close canons to me the effect is exhilarating it's like that old vaudeville exit you know where the two guys go off stage walking so close one behind the other so close that they're touching
and their legs are interlocked I love that stuff now our last suite today features three such canons the imitating voices in these pieces come in on different notes from the preceding voice
and only a beat or two later so they're practically on top of each other let's call them tailgating canons
He made heaven, he made heaven for all.
Tailgating Cannons. We began with Auf das Wohl by Mozart. To the well-being of friends, empty your glasses. Let each one among us live in joy. Long live he, hip hip.
And that was from that same comic Mozart album. As a matter of fact, I forgot to translate the earlier round we did from that. But it was the same kind of words as that one right there. Just, let's have a good time.
And that second piece, the piano piece, was from Epitaphs for Piano by your humble host, performed by the composer.
We heard the first of these pieces, dedicated to the memory of Orlando di Lasso. Back when I was teaching at Juilliard, we used to use his two-part motets in teaching counterpoint. And I always liked it. I liked them.
This piece was inspired by that. And then finally, we ended with one of the great Bach interpreting organizations, the Swingle Singers, from their first album, Bach's Greatest Hits.
A canon, a four-part canon, presented in that delayed way. First we heard the first voice, then we heard the first two, then the three, and then all four voices, each one coming in on a different pitch.
And of course, here too, there was a little bit added of bass and drums there. That canon, by the way, was comparatively recently discovered. And this performance, I get a kick out of this.
This performance, by the Swingle Singers, is apparently its first modern performance. You know, I mentioned how much I like really close, tight musical canons.
What do you say we go out with a close, tight verbal canon? That's Sickly Mix for this week! That's Sickly Mix for this week!
Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also by this program.
This program is made possible by the U.S. Department of State's 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 49. And this is Peter Schickely 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 are looking good.
See you next week.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Schickely Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickely Mix.
Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
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