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The day I'm not ready, there will be icicles on Satan's beard. 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.
And before we proceed, I'd like to give major thanks to our benefactor, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also this particular radio station,
whence my meandering musings reach your elegant ears. Today's show is called A Pair of Chords That Will Last. For five years, I've been a music critic. Five hundred years now.
That's a long time, folks, for half a millennium now. The last sound in most pieces of Western European-type music has been one of two chords, a major triad
or a minor triad. They're called triads because, stripped to their basic position,
they have three notes, and those three notes are built up in thirds on the scale. The D major triad is a triad of a major triad, and the generating note is called the root. When we use the major scale, one, two, three, one, two, three,
we've got our major triad. Use the minor scale, one, two, three, one, two, three, we've got our minor triad. Notice that the outside notes are the same in both of them.
The only difference is the middle note. The middle note is one half step lower in the minor triad. Not only are these two chords the most frequent peace-enders,
they are far and away the most often used chords in this period, period. They are the red and white corpuscles of Western music. Here's a little sweetlet,
three excerpts that juxtapose parallel major and minor chords very explicitly.
Our little major-minor sweetlet there began, of course, with also Sprach's Zarathustra, with Antal Dorati, and the D major triad. And then the Emerson String Quartet,
playing the beginning of Schubert's late quartet in G. And then finally the end of the elegy in Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor Horn and Strings. That was Anthony Halstead playing the horn.
If you go through pieces, at least up until the 20th century, and count the different kinds of chords, which is the kind of thing people do for Ph.D. theses,
you'll find more major and minor triads than any other string quartet. But not only triads are major or minor. The scales with which the triads are built are major or minor,
and according to which scales and therefore chords are used most predominantly, we say that a piece is in a major or minor key. Most people in our culture seem to agree
that the minor, if we may use a color analogy, has a darker hue than the major. Dare I say a sadder feeling? Here's a little progression. Here's a little progression in the major.
And the same thing in the minor.
Now, is this a universal feeling? That music in minor keys is sadder, or at least sterner than music in major keys? We're going to be dealing with that question today,
but I'll tell you right now what my conclusion, anyway, is going to be, which is that I haven't got the slightest idea. A friend of mine absolutely poo-poos that notion, but I'm not so sure. It's complicated.
It's complicated by the fact that some other cultures use such different scales from ours and organize their music so differently that major-minor doesn't mean much. I do know this, though,
and that is that notes have overtones. If you play a low note on a piano, there are overtones sounding above it.
With most instruments, they're not nearly as loud as the principal note, but they're there. See, you can feel that. You can hear it if you look for it.
Now, one of those overtones is this note right here, and that's the third, that's the major third of the scale based on the bottom note. And so if you play a major triad like that,
you're reinforcing that note. But if you play a minor triad, you're playing a note right there that is right next to this overtone that is sounding anyway. Not very loud, but a little bit.
And that, I think, is what gives the minor triad its dark hue anyway. We'll forget for the moment about sadness. What's interesting is that, at least for the last quarter of a millennium or so,
there has been a tremendous preponderance of major over minor. Just to pick a few examples, Bach wrote six Brandenburg concertos and four orchestra suites. Only one of them is in the minor,
although the proportion is higher with concertos and cantatas. Mozart wrote over 40 symphonies. Only three are in minor keys, the two in G minor, and a recently discovered youthful effort in A minor.
The percentage is a little bit higher with Haydn's symphonies. I think it's 11 out of 108. Beethoven went two for nine in the minor league. And later in the 19th century, things get a little bit darker.
Hey, 50% of Brahms' four symphonies are in a minor key. And with Tchaikovsky, it's five out of six. What can I tell you? He was Russian. In the area of popular music,
there's an overwhelming preponderance of major. It's hard to think of pop standards or top 40 songs that are in the minor. There are some, but not many. I think Come Out of My House was in the minor, wasn't it?
And it seems to me that a fair amount of heavy metal is in minor keys. But there are whole genres that are majorly major, such as 50s-type rock and roll, waltzes, and rags.
We're about to hear some exceptions to that last statement, but I think you'll agree that there are exceptions that prove the rule. That is, they sound like exceptions. I mean nothing pejorative when I call them
three unusually minor pieces. See you in about nine minutes.
You had plenty of money in 1962 You let other people make a fool of you Why don't you do right
Like some other girls do
Get out of here Get me some more Money too Sitting down
Wondering what it's all about If you don't get no money I'm gonna put you out
Why don't you do right
Like some other girls do
Get out of here Get me some more
Money too
If you saved your money
Twenty years ago
You wouldn't be going from door to door
Why don't you do right Like some other girls do
Get out of here Get me some money too
You had plenty of money in 1962 You let other people make a fool of you Why don't you do right
Like some other girls do
Get out of here Get me some money too
Three unusually minor pieces. Pieces in a minor key in genres that tend to avoid minor keys. We began with Fats Domino singing a sullen rendition
of Why Don't You Do Right. It's quite unusual to hear those triplets, those yup-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up that is so much a part of 50s and rock and roll and those bass lines that go
boom-bee-doo-dee-boom-bee-doo to hear those in the minor key. Why don't you do right, a tune that has also been covered by Sinead O'Connor and Jessica Rabbit.
Then from an album called Snapping the Strings by Bob Brosman, we heard the anniversary waltz and this is an interesting one because the words to this, at least the English words,
are happy. Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed da-dee-da-da-da It's such a soulful tune for what should be, I think,
a happy occasion. My guess is, however, that the tune is an old world tune and maybe, you know, Middle European or Russian where they like minor keys a lot. And then finally, we heard the beautiful,
beautiful rag called Graceful Ghost by William Balcom played by Paul Jacobs. But even looking at the key of a piece doesn't give you the whole story because a lot of works that begin in the minor
end in the major. That is true both mackerely and microly speaking. Many a symphony or string quartet that starts out and is listed as being in a minor key has a last movement in the major.
It's extremely hard to think of an example of the opposite. Brahms' third symphony is in F major and the last movement starts in F minor but the sun comes out by the end of the movement.
And on the smaller level, many individual pieces or movements in the minor end with a major chord. This, for instance, has become a sort of a cliché of liturgical music.
I'm going to illustrate this on our authentic instrument here, the original early 1990s Casio tone bank. Fortunately, it has a pretty good organ stop, which is number 46.
Here's the ending cliché I was mentioning.
Organists always hold last chords very long. That major third, that major triad at the end of a minor piece is called a picardy third for some reason.
Hey, Grove's dictionary doesn't know why, so don't expect me to. Here's a lovely little piece by Josquin de Prey who died in 1521. So he was working in a different kind of
instrumental system from that of Mozart and Beethoven. But it's still fair to say that the mode he's in here has a minorish feel to it. Most of the chords created by the vocal lines are minor, including those built on what turns out
to be the final root tone. But the very last chord, the piece is only about a minute long, the very last chord is major, the only time we've heard a major chord on that note.
And the effect is one of...
Ah...
Petite Camusette, by Josquin de Prey, performed by the Ensemble Clément-Jean-Nicain and the Ensemble Les Elements. Elemental Ensemble? Anyway, I'm Peter Schickely,
and the program is Schickely Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International. One of the things that first attracted me to country music was that at a time when mainstream pop songs
were ignoring just about any unpleasantness other than the absence of one's sweetheart, country songs were dealing with infidelity, divorce, drinking, gambling,
and having your dog die on you. I remember after seeing the movie Five Easy Pieces thinking that Texans and Russians have a lot in common. They think big, they act big, they party big,
and at least, judging by their music, they wallow in suffering. And yet, whereas lots of Russian music is in minor keys, country music is hardly ever in the minor.
Here's part of a song about a heart-wrenching situation. His gal leaves him, then she comes back, but he knows she's gonna leave again. I know somebody in that situation, and it's terrible. Well, you can tell this guy's suffering
by the way his voice breaks and all. But not only is the song in the major, the accompaniment is positively jaunty.
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And I'm leaving this morning
With my heart full of been crying
And I'm leaving this morning With my heart full of been crying I have to leave my baby
But she treats me so unkind
I got me things I got me things all on my mind I got to leave my baby
But she treats me so unkind
Robert Johnson singing his Ramblin' on My Mind. And now it's tidbit time. And today's tidbit is not just in a minor key.
This is ultra-minor music. In 1917, when the Tsar abdicated, the ballet impresario Diaghilev asked Igor Stravinsky to come up with something
to replace the Russian national anthem, God Save the Tsar, which was to have opened a concert. The following arrangement was dictated by Stravinsky
to the conductor Anser May in great haste one night. And it's about as Russian as you can get.
The Song of the Volga Boatman,
as orchestrated by Igor Stravinsky, performed by Anser May and members of the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande. My name is Peter Shickley. The show is Shickley Mix,
from PRI, Public Radio, International. Major and minor keys that are built on the same note are said to be parallel to each other. C minor is the parallel minor of C major.
In the standard classical repertoire, the most common way of achieving tonal variety is to go to a key based on some other note. But sometimes composers opt for the parallel major or minor.
And that's an interesting kind of variety, because the home-based note stays the same, but the scale based on it changes. Going to a completely different key is like traveling somewhere.
But going to the parallel key is like being in a room and somebody opens the window and a breeze comes in. Or like being on a picnic and the sun goes behind the clouds.
The scene stays the same, but the conditions change. We're going to end with two sort of ABA situations here. These are excerpts from longer works,
in which the middle sections are in the parallel key. One is minor-major-minor, and the other is the opposite. The first piece starts with a funeral march,
which, like most funeral marches, is in the minor. The first part of this is quite long, and sometimes it's in a major key based on another note. But finally, the march ends,
and the basses have this great little corny pickup to the parallel major section. It goes . . . BOOM BOOM BOOM DOOM BOOM BOOM
And then after a couple of minutes, it returns back to the minor and the opening material. This music has been described in many ways.
The middle section is the sun coming out, or my favorite is, I think, by George Bernard Shaw. He envisioned a funeral carriage drawn by horses, slowly and solemnly parading through town.
And then when it gets outside of town, it picks up speed and saunders along, clippity-clop, to the next town, whereupon it slows down and resumes its solemn pace. Now, of course, you don't have to have any image for music.
But when people do choose images, the major key section always seems to evoke more light, or more lightness, than the minor.
The opening of the second movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, his third symphony, with the London classical players, under the direction of Roger Norrington.
Our next example is from a theme in variations, and that is the one musical form in which the parallel key is the most common tonal contrast.
But this piece is a bit atypical, in that usually, when the theme and most of the variations are in the major, the one or two minor variations will be slow.
I'm not saying that's always true, but there does tend to be a link, is this the same? Sadness factor again? Between minor and slow.
For instance, the towering 18th century example of the genre, Bach's Goldberg Variations, of which there are 30, has three minor variations, all of them slow.
And the towering 19th century example of the genre, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, has four minor variations, three of them slow.
But in this piece, two of the three minor variations are fast, it's a nice change. We'll hear the first three variations of this set.
The first three variations of Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn, as far as I'm concerned, his best orchestral piece.
Sir Colin Davis conducting the Sinfonia Orchestra des Bayerischen Unfunks. And the second variation of those three variations, was the one in the minor, although, as we've seen so often happens,
it ends in the major. We'll take it on out here with one of the most famous and fast pieces in a minor key.
My brother once went to a violin recital by Jascha Heifetz, and he ended up with one of his big show pieces, and the guy sitting next to my brother in Carnegie Hall said afterwards,
Boy, that was great! You know, fast! So we're going to go out great and fast. This is a very well-known piece in the minor key,
and since it is fast and energetic, is it therefore not sad? Or, on the contrary, is it desperate, sad in a tragic, driven sort of gypsy way? What it is, of course, is music.
Hey! That was the fifth Hungarian dance by Brahms, orchestrated by Brahms. And that was Claudio Abbato in the Vienna Philharmonic.
Here's a piece that's slow and in the major. And what is it? I mean, if you're going to worry about this thing, is this piece happy or sad or wistful, maybe?
Whatever it is, it's beautiful. Mozart's 24th Symphony. And 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 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 the Big Five-O. And this is Peter Sickly 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.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Sickly Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Sickly Mix.
Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, MN 55403.
PRI Public Radio.