The Magnificent Seven (ELMER BERNSTEIN) Performer: The Toyota Pipes & Drums Amazing Grace (Lismor LILP 5133)
Tidbit Time
Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle & Balloons (P. D. Q. BACH) Performer: Maurice Eisenstadt, bagpipes/Robert Lewis, balloons/Peter Schickele, bicycle/The Royal P. D. Q. Bach Festival Orchestra/Mester Vanguard VMD 79223
Pipes & Voice
Old Wedding Song (LAKODALMAS) Performer: Muzsikas Blues for Transylvania (Hannibal HNCD 1350)
Sweaters (ANDERSON) Performer: Laurie Anderson/Rufus Harley, bagpipes/David Van Tieghem, drums Big Science (Warner Bros 3674 2)
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.
Which meant that we only made it to Butte, Montana that first night. So the second day in the afternoon, we were going over the Red Lodge-Cook City Highway, and maybe five, no, probably more like 10 or 15 miles up towards the mountain pass. One of those freakish things happened that you couldn't duplicate in a million years.
One of the wheels of the car hit a rock in such a way that it shot up and punctured a hole in the gas tank. I think it's the only time I ever saw my father speechless. He just sat on the guardrail on the side of the road as the gas poured out of the tank, unable to say a thing. Well, we turned the car around and we coasted back down to Red Lodge.
The little bit of gas that was left in the tank because the bottom had been dented up, we saved that for the level places or the few uphill places and just coasted the rest of the way. Well, it was Sunday. There were no mechanics on duty. But being a small town, the guy at the gas station said, Look, we'll lend you one of our Jeeps. Why don't you put your camping stuff in that and go and camp We'll fix the car, which we did. Well, it took him several hours to fix the car, so we were wandering around Red Lodge, and we started to hear something, and we gradually realized that it was bagpipes.
So we started sort of walking around, turning a few corners, it's not a big town, Red Lodge, until we finally saw about a, well, I'd say he was in his 60s, a man with overalls and work boots, but a tam-o'-shanter on his head. And he was walking up and down the board sidewalks of Red Lodge, playing the bagpipes. We asked somebody who he was, and they said he was a sheepherder, who spent the summer months high up in the hills.
But he had a little radio, and sometimes he would bring his bagpipes down to town and celebrate a special event. We asked what he was celebrating, and that's how we found out the Korean War was over.
Maybe that's one of the reasons I love bagpipes so much. Especially the slow tunes, and especially solo piping. One guy, or gal, there are some female pipers now, walking slowly back and forth, playing those long, strident, mournful melodies. But when I started thinking about doing a show on bagpipes, I realized that I had a problem. It's not just that they drive some people up the wall.
I remember years ago, there was some hit record with bagpipes. It wasn't Amazing Grace, it was before that. But anyway, there was one disc jockey who broke the record up into little pieces on the air in order to make his feelings about it quite clear. It's also that a lot of my favorite stuff is very long and repetitious. Things from the collection of ornamented melodies called the piobaireachd. Don't ask me to spell that, it's got about 87 letters in it.
My son plays the Highland Pipes, and when I talked to him about this show, he lent me an LP and said that track so-and-so is a good introduction to piobaireachd because it's so short. Well, it's over eight minutes long, which is tricky for a show with this kind of format. But I think the real problem is that much of the stuff, especially piobaireachd, just isn't radio music, at least in this day and age and place.
You want to be there in person, or you want to put an album on the hi-fi and turn the lights down and levitate. It's not the kind of thing you want to listen to while you're driving or fixing a meal or whatever you're doing right now. It's too relentless. So today's show is called Pipes and All. We're going to listen to selections that feature various kinds of bagpipes in combination with other things.
The basic characteristic of bagpipes is a bellows or a bag, usually made of animal hide, that the player blows into. In either case, the air going into the actual sound-producing pipes is continuous. It's hard for an old woodwind player like myself to get used to the fact that the sound is not going to stop when you take a breath. Now that means that there's no dynamic variation. It doesn't make any difference how hard you blow into the bag.
It also means that with most kinds of pipes, you can't play short notes, you can't even play repeated notes, because you can't do any tonguing. Your mouth is not in contact with the pipes that contain the double reeds that actually produce the sound. So if you want repeated notes, you have to separate them with grace notes, little short notes.
[music excerpt: Trad., "Cearcall A’ Chuain" (New Spring); Battlefield Band]
In the Scottish tradition, those grace notes have become very elaborate and exhilarating, and of course they're used not only between repeated notes, but between many other notes as well. Now many, but not all, kinds of bagpipes also have one or more drones, pipes that play one note continuously, in addition to the pipe upon which you play the melody. We're going to start out with a suite called Pipes and a Few Others.
A few, for the purposes of this suite, means from one to four other instruments. Only one of the five sections features the Scottish Highland Pipes. The other pipes come from... Well, I'll tell you about it in eleven and a half minutes.
[music: Furey, "Roy’s Hands" (The Irish Pipes of Finbar Furey); Finbar Furey]
[music: Purcell, "Trumpet Voluntary" (The Bagpipe); Musica Variata/Klaus Glocksin]
[music: "Saltarello" (Music in the World of Islam: Reeds & Bagpipes); Emilio & Dominico Ruffo]
[music: Trad., "The Winding Banks of Erne"; The McPeake Family]
[music: Trad., "Krivo Horo"; Village Music of Bulgaria]
E.T. phone home. Bunch of wild and crazy Bulgarians. Fantastic stuff. We began that with a tune called Roy's Hands from an album called The Irish Pipes of Finbar Furey. This happens to be one of my favorite tracks, one of my top ten tracks of all time.
It's double-tracked pipes with guitar, that is, he overdubbed the pipes with himself. And those, as I'm sure you noticed, are not Scottish pipes. Those are the Irish uilleann pipes. Very much softer, played with the bellows, you hold them on your lap while you're sitting. And they also have keys that enable you to play harmony.
And you can also bend notes, as you heard. Beautiful, beautiful piece. Then we had a rendition of Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary by Musica Variata, with Klaus Glocksin playing the Irish pipes, accompanied by organ and flute. The third number was from a fascinating series of LPs called Music in the World of Islam. We've heard some vocal music from that series on other editions of Schickele Mix.
This was a saltarello played on the Italian bagpipes. This is from southern Italy. And what we had there was the bagpipes playing the bottom drone and sort of accompaniment while the top melody was played on a shawm. A shawm is basically the predecessor of an oboe. The shawm is what you get if you take the melody chanter from a bagpipe and play it directly in your mouth.
So basically, if you've got a shawm and a bagpipe, you've got more or less the same instrument with just a different air supply. According to this album, all reed instruments, including bagpipes, but excepting the Western European clarinet, originated in the Islamic world.
Then we heard the McPeake Family doing The Winding Banks of Erne, and that was, again, the uilleann pipes, accompanied by Irish harp in this case. And then finally, that really wild stuff, was Krivo Horo from an album called Village Music of Bulgaria.
That was a small band doing that. Just amazing stuff that shows you where some of those fast movements of Bartok come from. Really fast, irregular rhythms. Oh, I'm sorry. You want to know what the rest of the instruments were besides the bagpipes? I'm sorry. They're the gadulka, tambura, kaval, and tupan. I'm Peter Schickele. This show is Schickele Mix on APR.
Pipes and all. We've heard bagpipes as part of small groups now we're going to hear them as part of large groups orchestra and band unfortunately one of the most delightful pieces that fits into this category is too long for us to use but I'll mention it because it is recorded and you might want to pick it up it's an orchestra piece by Peter Maxwell Davies called an Orkney wedding with sunrise and towards the end of the piece a Piper in full Scottish regalia appears at the at the back of the hall and marches slowly up the aisle as she plays. The piper at the premiere was a woman. It brings the house down every time, I'm sure. Besides which, it's a charming piece. I tried to see if I could use an excerpt, but it just doesn't work.
So our next suite, Pipes and a lot of others, has three pieces in it. The first one, in addition to the bagpipes, features a hammered dulcimer, a zither, a rustic xylophone, A long and narrow but small country fiddle, an alphorn, a hurdy-gurdy, and a trumpet marine, which is not a trumpet at all, but rather a bowed instrument whose one string makes a rasping sound when played. It sounds sort of like a kazoo.
Pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns round out the ensemble. The second number is a bagpipe hurdy-gurdy duet with orchestral accompaniment. And the last work features bagpipes with a band of wind and percussion instruments. I'll be back in a little over six minutes...
[music: Druschetzky, "Partita auf Bauerninstrumenten, Allegro" (Musica Curiosa); Capella Savaria/Nemeth]
[music: Elmer Bernstein, "The Magnificent Seven" (Amazing Grace); The Toyota Pipes & Drums]
Pipes and a lot of others. We began with a piece by George Druschetzky. That is part of a piece. It was the fourth movement of his Partita for Rustic Instruments in B-flat and there are as many of those rustic instruments that I mentioned before or as there are of the what you might call regular instruments that was followed by a very short excerpt the trio from the second movement of Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang, his peasant wedding, die Bauernhochzeit, which features that duet between the bagpipe and the hurdy-gurdy and then we ended with surely one of the most arresting cuts ever committed to vinyl the Magnificent Seven theme Played by the Toyota Pipes & Drums, if you will.
World Champions, 1983 Grade II, and Champion of Champions, 1983 Grade II. You know, one of the things that makes those melodies that weren't written for bagpipes sound so funky on bagpipes is that bagpipes, the Scottish bagpipes, have a scale that is very out of tune by ordinary European scale standards.
And also that high note is very pinched and nasal and not nearly as loud as the others and that tune particularly shows that high note off to striking I was about to say advantage but I'll say effect and it's Tidbit Time here in Bagpipeville we're going to hear the last three movements of the pervertimento for bagpipes bicycle and balloons by that Tidbit Time stalwart P. D. Q. Bach P. D. Q. actually wrote two works employing bagpipes, the Scottish bagpipes. The other one, the Sinfonia Concertante for lute, balalaika, ocarina, bagpipes, double reed slide music stand, and left-handed sewer flute, received its first modern performance at a music festival. But the guy playing bagpipes turned out not to be much of a musician. He had no idea about keeping the beat or about keeping with the other musicians in the piece. He sped up so tremendously that we ended up putting an asterisk in his part every 8 or 10 bars and his instructions were when you get to the asterisk just hold that note until the conductor points at you and then you can proceed.
But we couldn't just get somebody else to pick up the pipes and play them even though the part was quite easy. Playing the pipes is hard. I don't mean only the fingering, I mean just blowing into it. It takes incredible lung power and stamina.
I heard about a performance of the Sinfonia Concertante at a college in Long Beach, California, years ago. The students had a set of pipes, but no player. Well, they figured, we'll get some good musician, he can play it. Well, they found out differently. They ended up with two people playing one set of pipes, one fingering and the other doing nothing but blowing his lungs out into that bag. Now, in the pervertimento, I should tell you about the bicycle and the balloons.
The bicycle is played in three ways. First, you'll hear it played through the handlebars. That is, you blow through the handlebars as if they were a trumpet. And then, in the last movement, you'll hear beautiful soaring melodies played on the siren. The siren is attached to the back wheel of the bicycle. The wheel is held off the ground by a brace, and the faster you pedal, the higher the note.
There is also an interesting percussion effect in that movement achieved by inserting playing cards into the spokes of the wheel while the wheel is revolving. The very last chord of the piece is played by the balloons. There's a bunch of balloons, most of which have helium in them. But one of the balloons has air, and in the neck of that balloon, three pitch pipes tuned to a G major chord.
And at the very last chord of the piece, when the conductor points to the balloon player, he lets the balloons go, and they play the G major chord as they soar up to the ceiling. A very ethereal effect. Now, when it comes to the bagpipes, you're going to hear something that very few people, aside from pipers themselves, have heard. You'll hear the melody chanter played by itself, detached from the bagpipes, and played directly in the mouth, like an oboe.
I mentioned before that that's basically what a shawm is. And you'll hear it. It sounds like an oboe, but a very loud oboe. Then in the next movement, you'll hear the practice chanter. The practice chanter is the melody pipe with a little bag, so you've got a miniature bagpipe in a way, but no drones. And the chanter sort of sounds like a sick cow. It's very soft, which enables you to practice in your apartment without losing either your sanity or your lease.
And finally, in the last movement, you'll hear the full pipes in all their splendor. Don't say I didn't warn you.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, "Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle & Balloons"; Maurice Eisenstadt, bagpipes/Robert Lewis, balloons/Peter Schickele, bicycle/The Royal P. D. Q. Bach Festival Orchestra/Mester]
The last three movements of P. D. Q. Bach's Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle, and Balloons. The Royal PDQ Bach Festival Orchestra was conducted by Jorge Mester, or George Mester. Check one. The pipes were played by Maurice Eisenstadt, the balloons by Robert Lewis, and the bicycle by, well, modesty forbids.
Nah, I'll tell you, I played it. And my name is Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix on APR.
We're going to end our bagpipes show with pipes and voice. You don't find an awful lot of pipes and voice material, mostly because pipes are so dang loud. But our little song cycle has three numbers in it, featuring three different kinds of pipes. And three different kinds of singers, for that matter. See you in 11 minutes.
[music: Lakodalmas, "Old Wedding Song" (Blues for Transylvania); Muzsikas]
[music: Trad., "Lament for Owen Roe"; The McPeake Family]
McPeakes again. We began with a cut from a wonderful album called Blues for Transylvania by a group called Muzsikás. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. The cut is Old Wedding Song. Then we had Laurie Anderson from Big Science Sweaters. The bagpipe was played by Rufus Harley.
And finally, The McPeakes with Lament for Owen Roe. I love that low drone of the Irish pipes.
I was just looking at the liner notes of that last thing and it says that the McPeake family are both a joy and a consternation of the folklorist. A joy because of the refreshing and exuberant music they make, but a consternation because there is no tradition in Ireland of pipes being used to accompany singing. Man, I really feel for those folklorists, you know. They have got it hard. Well, that is Schickele Mix for this week.
Our program is made possible with funds provided by the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur 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 number 63.
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. Man, I love this piece. Roy's Hands.
[music: Furey, "Roy’s Hands" (The Irish Pipes of Finbar Furey); Finbar Furey (reprise)]
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 Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.