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 it's good to know that our bills are being paid by the fine radio station in which I
am ensconced and to which you are listening.
As composers go, and they do just like everybody else, I got interested in music quite late.
The summer I turned 8 years old, my parents said I had to take piano lessons and if I
didn't like it I could quit.
And I didn't like it and I quit.
Although I must say I can still do quite a rousing rendition of In a Wigwam by John Thompson.
I think I must have gotten a gold star pasted to that page.
But I don't think I ever made it to book 2.
Anyway, the family moved to Fargo, North Dakota when I turned 12 and I started hanging around
the record department of DeVoe's Music Store.
By the way, that department was eventually run by a nice guy named Bill Buck who told
me that someone had come into the store once and said to him, I don't know anything about
classical music, but I heard a piece on the radio I liked a lot.
It was by somebody named Mozart and I think it was called I'm Inclined to Knock Music.
I don't know.
You think that really happened?
Now my friend Walter Prausnitz, who knows Bill Buck very well, he says that...
Okay.
Man.
Now it's true, I was straying from the point, but did you notice how long that irrelevancy
alarm sounded?
I think it has a prejudice against puns.
The point I was groping towards is that I can remember coming home one afternoon and
saying to my mother, boy, you know what I saw at DeVoe's today?
A record with a piece on it called Fugu.
Can you believe that?
Okay, so maybe I wasn't the most cultured kid in the world, but hey, come on.
It's spelled F-U-G-U-E.
How would you have pronounced that when you were 13?
Well within a few years I was writing fugues.
And we're going to be hearing some delectable examples of the genre, which is why today's
show is called The Fugal Gourmet.
One of the characteristics of a fugue is that the various vocal or instrumental parts come
in one after another doing the same melody.
What does that remind you of?
That's right, a round.
So let's start at the beginning.
So let's start back at the beginning.
Here's the earliest preserved round in Western music.
In this case, the two bottom voices do a short repeated figure that's sort of a musical rug,
an accompaniment that has nothing to do with the imitation.
But after that is set up, you'll hear the first main voice sing through the whole melody.
Then he goes back to the beginning and this time a second voice comes in with the same
melody but four beats later.
The third time they add the third voice four beats after the second.
And the last time there are four singers singing the same melody, each one starting four beats
after the previous singer.
Sumer is a coming in, which I happen to know is old English for summer is a coming in,
was written around the year 1240.
Sumer is a coming in, which I happen to know is old English for summer is a coming in,
was written around the year 1240.
Sumer is a coming in, which I happen to know is old English for summer is a coming in,
was written around the year 1240.
Now although the fugue developed more than 400 years later, I'd like to mention here
that the entry of the different parts in Sumer is a coming in, creates the
feeling of voices chasing each other, which is what the Latin word fuga means.
Now let's skip ahead to the second half of the 16th century and hear an excerpt from
a mass by Palestrina.
Here too the voices enter in imitation, but they don't always start on the same pitch
as the previous voice and also after they imitate the first few notes of the previous
voice they proceed freely.
There are several different melodic ideas that get imitated, at the beginning there's
ah-n-yoo-s-day, then later qui-to-lis or qui-to-lis or sometimes qui-to-lis, we're not talking
strict imitation here.
Then later still mi-ze-re-re gets traded around.
These are called points of imitation.
I suppose if Palestrina had written a mass when George Bush was president he would have
used a thousand points of imitation.
But here he makes do with just a few.
Ah-n-yoo-s-day.
Top voice.
Another episode.
Bass voice.
Top voice, winding down.
It seems only fair to Johann Sebastian to listen to the piece again without any blabbering on my part,
and also to hear it on an instrument that the old guy might have played it on himself, the harpsichord.
This is Glenn Wilson.
Harpsichord solo.
Glenn Wilson playing the second fugue, the fugue in C minor, from the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.
When I said an instrument that Bach might have played it on, I didn't mean that the piano wasn't invented in his day.
It had been invented, but he didn't seem to be partial to it.
Bach is to the fugue what Shakespeare is to modern drama.
He didn't exactly invent it, but he might as well have, whatever that means.
I guess partly what I mean by the Bach-Shakespeare comparison is that the same person who wrote the earliest examples of the genre that we still enjoy
is also regarded as the greatest purveyor of that genre.
That's not true, say, with the symphony or the novel.
Okay, we've heard a pithy utterance.
Now let's hear a major speech from the master of the fugue.
Harpsichord solo.
Boy, there is something just satisfying about a good fugue.
It just builds up a tremendous sort of visceral drive.
That was the fugue in G minor by Bach, played by Lionel Rogue.
And this album, he seems to have been playing on a bunch of different organs.
I'm not sure which organ that was.
I know you organists out there want to know, but you'll just have to get the album.
I really like the way he plays that, too.
Those of you who heard our program on words to instrumental music
may remember the words that somebody put to it,
because this guy named Ebenezer Prout wrote words for all the subjects
of the Bach fugues in the Well-Tempered Clavier.
Well, somebody else wrote words to this subject, saying,
Oh, Ebenezer Prout, you are a silly man.
What on earth inspired your stupid little plan?
You who make Bach fugues as nasty as you can.
But those words can't ruin that fugue.
I'm Peter Shickley.
The program is Shickley Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
The second and last suite today consists of three fugues,
all of which are based on unusual themes,
or themes that have something special about them.
Now, if you're not musically trained,
you probably won't know what's special about the subject of the third and last fugue,
but I'll tell you when it's over.
The subject of the middle fugue is an extremely well-known theme,
and the subject of the first fugue is a bit peculiar,
a tonally rather ambiguous melody, quite unusual for the middle of the 18th century.
The story that has become attached to this fugue is that the composer's cat
walked across the keys of his harpsichord and played those eight notes.
Naturally, musicologists poo-poo that story,
as they always do with the really good ones.
Although I do have to admit that it's hard to imagine a cat playing those notes.
At least, none of my cats has ever played anything remotely that organized.
Be that as it may, it has come to be known as the cat's fugue,
not to be confused with his pajamas.
The that's-an-interesting-subject fugue suite lasts about nine and a half minutes.
See you later.
That's-an-interesting-subject fugue suite.
We began with the so-called cat's fugue,
actually called an exercise by Domenico Scarlatti.
That is Kirkpatrick number 30.
It's in G minor, and that was performed by Scott Ross
on the harpsichord.
Then, P.D.Q. Bach's Fugue of Vulgaris,
the fugue in C minor from the Tute Suite for Calliope Four Hands,
and that was played by Emanuel Pettel
from the P.D.Q. Bach album P.D.Q. Bach on the Air.
And then, finally, we heard Bernard Ringeisen.
I'm not sure how he says that name.
He's sort of German, but he seems to be French.
Anyway, playing a fugue from the Rimsky-Korsakov Variations,
Op. 10, on the name Bach.
And let me explain that.
Unlike in our country, where we only use the letters A through G
to define the notes, in Germany they use one more letter.
The letter B in Germany means B-flat,
and for B-natural they use the letter H.
I don't know why that is. I'll have to look that up.
But anyway, that is the way it is,
and that makes it possible in Germany to spell the name Bach with notes.
B-flat, A, C, H.
And many composers have written pieces using that theme as an homage to Bach.
And the slightly creepy thing is that the last thing Bach was working on
when he died had in the alto part, right a few notes before the end,
the alto part spelled out, that B-A-C-H.
Okay, now it's tidbit time.
And for our tidbit today, we're going back to P.D.Q. Bach,
because he made what is quite a revolutionary discovery,
and I'm really surprised that other composers didn't pick this up
and follow through on it.
What P.D.Q. Bach discovered with his cantata Knock Knock
is that he just did this so that he could remember jokes better,
setting them to music.
But he discovered a wonderful system.
You set up the joke with the recitative,
and then you set the punchline as a choral number.
It's very effective. It's a good way to remember jokes,
and it also makes for a very effective recitative and fugue or whatever it is.
The last movement of the choral cantata Knock Knock
is an extremely involved joke with a long setup.
So we've got a recitative here and a chorus,
and the chorus is an elaborate fugue on the punchline.
Here we go. This movement is called So This Guy.
So this guy who works at an aquarium
Gets summoned by his boss
Who is looking very worried
And she says to him
I just walked by the dolphin tank
And they're feeling very amorous
They're doing all sorts of things to each other
And the trouble is in less than an hour
We've got three busloads of second graders coming
We can't have them watching those naughty dolphins
Behaving as if they were in a porno flick
Now there's only one thing that acts as an anti-aphrodisiac for dolphins
And that's the meat of baby seagulls
So I want you to go down to the seashore
Catch yourself some baby seagulls
Put them in this bag
And hurry on back
But be careful
A lion escaped from the zoo this morning
And though he was heavily sedated
He still just might be dangerous
Okay, get going
And make it snappy
So the guy takes a shortcut through the forest to the seashore
He fills the bag with baby seagulls
And he's walking back through the forest
When he sees a lion
And it is lying
Across the path
Directly in front of him
It's too late to run away
And the feline does seem very placid
So summoning up all his courage
He steps across the lion
Nothing happens
And so with much relief the guy begins to resume his journey
When all of a sudden a policeman steps out of the forest
He grabs a guy by the arm
And says to him
You're under arrest
The guy can't believe it
He says
Tell me officer, what's the charge?
And the policeman says
Transporting young girls across a state line
For immoral purposes
Transporting young girls across a state line
For immoral purposes
Transporting young girls across a state line
For immoral purposes
Transporting young girls across a state line
For immoral purposes
Transporting young girls across a state line
For immoral purposes
The last movement of P.D.Q. Bach's choral cantata, Knock Knock.
The soloists were Shelley Cohen, soprano, Richard Kosofsky, tenor,
Scott Hogshead, baritone, and Michael O'Hearn, bass.
That was your humble host conducting the Greater Hoople Area off-season philharmonic
and the OK Chorale.
And that's about it for our show today.
I can't believe this.
Three times?
Hello?
Okay, you're the third one, you know.
Okay, you got it.
We'll do right now.
Okay, thanks an awful lot for calling.
Bye.
All right, I think that three times constitutes popular demand.
Three people calling in asking me to play In a Wigwam from John Thompson, book one.
And I don't see how I can disappoint those people.
So here goes.
I've got the authentic instrument set on piano here.
It's the closest it comes to piano.
And I'm going to play In a Wigwam.
Now, I do have to tell you that it's been about 42 years now.
So I may not remember it exactly, but this is pretty close, I think.
Always loved that part.
And that's Sickly Mix for this week.
Our program is made possible with funds provided 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 52.
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, Minnesota, 55403.
P-R-I, Public Radio International.