Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue (HENDERSON/LEWIS/YOUNG) Performer: Jim Kweskin What Ever Happened to those Good Old Days at Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass. with Jim Kweskin and His Friends (Vanguard VSD 79278)
How High the Moon (HAMILTON/LEWIS) Performer: Sarah Vaughan Best of the Jazz Vocalists (Verve 845 466 2)
Autumn Leaves (KOSMA/PREVERT/MERCER) Performer: Yehudi Menuhin/Stephane Grappelli ’Jealousy’ & Other Great Standards (EMI CDM 7 69220 2)
Laura (RASKIN) Performer: The United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra The United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra Invites You to an Evening of Beautiful Music
All the Things You Are (KERN/HAMMERSTEIN) Performer: Elly Ameling Sentimental Me (Philips 412 433 2)
Sweet Georgia Brown (PINKARD/BERNIE/CASIE) Performer: Yehudi Menuhin/Stephane Grappelli ’Jealousy’ & Other Great Standards (EMI CDM 7 69220 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. And I'd like to take the stand here and publicly thank the American Public Radio Program Fund, whose contributors include the Ford Foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also this radio station for their valuable, no, make that invaluable financial support.
A long time ago I taught at Juilliard and when people ask me why I quit teaching I usually say something about wanting to be free to tour or that I wanted to spend less time talking about music and more time making it or as a composer wanting to get out of the academic environment and those are all true. But I think the real reason is something that happened in one of my classes one afternoon. This is before Lincoln Center. Juilliard was still uptown there.
And there were some classrooms on the ground level which looked right out on the sidewalk. And sometimes in the spring when the windows were open and you had a class in the middle of the afternoon when school let out, kids would come by, look in the windows, and start shouting obscenities or whatever. There really wasn't much you could do about it. Anything you did just encouraged them.
Well, one time, the day before the last regular meeting of the class, I was walking by a drugstore in the neighborhood and noticed a display of water pistols. And I thought, man, at the risk of starting a rumble, I'm going to be ready if those kids show up tomorrow. So I walked in and bought one. You know how easy it is to buy a gun in New York.
And the next day, just before class, I filled it up with water, put it in my pocket, went in, taught the class. Well, the kids never showed up. Forgot about the whole thing, forgot I even had it. Just as the class was about over, I said, okay, now I'm gonna give you the exercises for which you'll be responsible at the exam, and this little organist in the front row says, okay, shoot. I said, what did you say? He said, shoot. What could I do, man? I pulled out the pistol and gave it to him.
Actually, he was very agile. He ducked. The guy behind him got it. That was Philip Glass. But I mean, how could you go on teaching after that? I mean, how could you ever top it? It's bound to be downhill all the way. You just don't get setups like that very often. I did get another on the 57th Street Crosstown bus in Manhattan once. 57th Street is the street that Carnegie Hall is on, but it was a few blocks away, and the bus stopped at I was at the bus stop and the driver, I was sitting right behind the driver, driver opened the door and this woman stood out there on the sidewalk, I swear to God, and she said to the driver, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? And I said, practice. And nobody laughed. I mean, nobody in that bus laughed. Now what is it? Is it that I just can't tell a joke? Or is it that New York audiences really are that tough? Or is it that that joke is so old that nobody is ever going to laugh at it. Certain jokes have been around so long that nobody tells them, but people use the punchline in appropriate situations.
There's another musical one like that. A guy goes into a restaurant and he selects a table, sits down, and puts his hat on the chair next to him. He notices a piano over in the corner, and sure enough, pretty soon, a blind pianist comes in with a seeing-eye dog. They go over to the piano. The pianist sits down, starts playing. Dog starts wandering around. He comes over to the chair beside the customer and he starts eating the customer's hat. Guy's outraged. He goes over to the piano player and he says, Do you know your dog's eating my hat?
And the piano player says, No, man, but if you hum a couple of bars, I'll fake it.
I don't think anybody has probably actually told that joke for 50 years. But what if it weren't a joke? And the piano player says, The piano player says, no man, but if you hum a couple of bars, I'll fake it. And the guy says, okay.
The piano player says, you mean like this?
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
The guy says, no, no, there's something different about this end there, a different chord or harmony or something like that. And the piano player says, maybe like this?
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
The guy says, yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it. Well, right there, the piano player can finish the song, and the guy starts singing.
[sung: "Your Dog Is Eating My Hat"]
And they became lifelong friends. So why could the pianist do that? Because certain successions of harmonies are used by so many songs. And that particular one is based on something called the circle of fifths. Well, today's program is called Taking the Fifth. And let's start out by considering the fifth as a melodic interval.
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
A lot of melodies begin with a fifth. Let's see, off the top of my head I can think of
[sung: the Eroica theme]
Beethoven's Eroica.
[sung: a Lieutenant Kijé theme]
Lieutenant Kijé, Prokofiev. Let's see, oh,
[sung: a Brahms theme]
Brahms' Sextet in G major. There's [sung], also Also sprach Zarathustra, sometimes known as 2001. Well, [sung: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"], and then,
[sung: "Fugue for Tinhorns," from Guys and Dolls]
Those are all fifths, da da, dee da, dee da, which actually makes me realize that all the other some other themes I sang featured the fifth ascending, going up from da to da. How about some melodies that start with a descending fifth? It seems actually to be harder to come up with them.
There's [sung: "Feelings"], um, oh,
[sung: the theme of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony]
Unfinished Symphony of Schubert. You know, I wonder, I can't prove this, but I actually have a feeling that there may really be more melodies in our culture that start with an ascending fifth than with a descending fifth. But that's a guess. You know, I should apply for a grant to study that. Anyway, here's the beginning of a quartet in which the fifth is so prominent that the piece's nickname refers to the interval.
The opening melody begins with a descending fifth followed by another and in this excerpt there are very few spots where some instrument isn't playing melodic fifths.
[music excerpt: Haydn, String Quartet in D minor, Opus 76, No. 2, 1st Mvt.; Takacs Quartet]
Haydn's Quinten Quartet, or if you prefer, Quinten Quartet, Op. 76, No. 2, played by the Takács Quartet. Now, if you play both notes of a perfect fifth simultaneously, it sounds like this.
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
You hear fifths a lot in hoedown-type pieces, because the strings of violins, violas, and cellos are tuned a fifth apart.
Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops playing the opening of Richard Hayman's Pops Hoedown. Fifths are often used for mysterious things, ghost music or caverns, because we're so used to hearing three note chords that taking the middle note away produces a sound that feels empty to our ears.
Here's an enchanted garden. The strings are playing chords based on fifths,
[music excerpt: Ravel, "L’Enfant et les Sortileges"; London Symphony Orchestra/ Previn]
Ravel's The Child and the Sorcerers, Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra. Here's one of the most famous examples of parallel fifths. I'm talking about the accompaniment, not the melody. Even after the melody comes in, keep listening to the bass lines. They're all parallel fifths.
[music excerpt: Mancini, the Theme from “The Pink Panther”; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/Kunzel]
Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops again with Mancini's Pink Panther theme. Okay, let's get back to Your Dog is Eating My Hat. In traditional Western European harmony, the most closely related chords are based on the notes a fifth away from the tonic or home base note. Here's C major.
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
The most commonly used other chord in C is based on the note a fifth higher, G.
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
And the second most commonly used chord is based on the note a fifth lower, which
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
is F. Those are the three primary chords in C major.
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
And there must be about 47,000 country and folk songs that use only those three chords.
[music: keyboard demonstration, with humming]
[sung: a three-chord country song, after "Walking the Floor Over You"]
Well, I think maybe that's one for the circular file.
Speaking of circles, if you arrange the notes of a scale around a circle so that each note is a fifth away from its neighbors, you've got the circle of fifths. And one of the most basic progressions in Western music is what Sigvald Thomson, my composition teacher way back in Fargo, used to call the forward progression. It's not a commonly used term, but it's a good one. The root or generating note of each chord is a fifth lower than the previous one. You're just going around that circle of fifths.
And you don't even have to worry about only being able to go around once. Vivaldi is happy going around the circle of fifths till the cows come home. What our little ad hoc song at the top of the show does, and thousands of other pop songs do, is to start at home base, called the tonic, then jump abruptly away to a distant chord, and then go around the circle of fifths till they get home again. Here's a fine example of a song that jumps abruptly to a very distant chord, five notches away, and then circles back home. I'll count it out the first time around so that you can see that the root of each chord is five steps below the previous one
[music: Ballard, "Mr. Sandman" (The Best of the Chordettes); The Chordettes, with Schickele counting along]
The Chordettes with guest star Peter Schickele, host of Schickele Mix on APR.
I once had an occasion to spend a fair amount of time in the hospital and there were four of us in the room, all of us fairly young, I think I was 18, 19, and we all had radios which we'd usually keep very low, but we had a tradition that anytime that song came on. That was the summer that it was popular. Fall, I guess it was.
Any time that song came on, we would all turn to that station, and we'd hold the volume down, and then when it got to the line, and lots of wavy hair like Liberace, we'd all turn the volume up all the way.
Very mature, sophisticated humor, but I gotta tell you, it was nice if you're gonna be in the hospital for a long time to be with a bunch of guys that did things that made the doctors come in and remind you all that we are in a hospital. Can you please keep it down?
We're taking the fifth here and going around the circle. Your Dog Is Eating My Hat is one of a large number of songs, or at least it would be if it existed, that abruptly jump four notches away and then circle home. Here are four more examples of that. Two excerpts followed by two complete pieces, the first of which is a tune in which not only the main part of the song, but also the bridge or middle part goes around the circle.
[music excerpt: Trad., "Basin Street Blues"; Olympia Brass Band]
[music excerpt: Beethoven, String Quartet in F, Opus 135, 3rd Mvt.; Amadeus Quartet]
[music: Henderson/Lewis/Young, "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" (What Ever Happened to those Good Old Days at Club 47 in Cambridge, Mass. with Jim Kweskin and His Friends); Jim Kweskin]
We began with the Olympia Brass Band with Basin Street Blues, and Beethoven's 16th String Quartet played by the Amadeus, Jim Kweskin and Five Foot Two, and Misha Dichter playing Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3. Let me point out, by the way, for those of you who are especially keen of ear, that the The main notes I'm counting between are the roots, the generating notes of the chords, which may or may not be the same as the notes the bass instrument happens to be playing.
Now, if you jump three notches away on the circle of fifths here, three notches would be one, two, three, and then cruise on home, you've got a harmonic pattern that is used in not just thousands, but millions and billions and trillions of songs.
Now, if you take those same notes and put them into one octave, that is, within the same limited range, you get
[music: demonstration, the same chord roots within one octave, played with sung accompaniment]
Hey, I gotta go. I'm supposed to be in study hall now.
[music excerpt: "Sh-boom" (Dangerous Doo-Wop); The Chords]
[music excerpt: Beethoven, String Quartet in C, Opus 59, No. 3, 4th Mvt.; Amadeus Quartet]
[music excerpt: George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin, "I've Got Rhythm" (Amazing Grace); The Toyota Pipes & Drums]
Sh-boom by the Chords, and then the Amadeus playing Beethoven again. I wonder if Beethoven knew he was using the Sh-boom changes when he wrote his Opus 59, No. 3. And finally, I Got Rhythm, played by the Toyota Pipes and Drums. Yeah, you're right, that is an unusual cut, isn't it? Ordinarily, the piano solo wouldn't come in until after the whole tune had been stated. And it's Tidbit Time on the Circle Five Ranch.
Today's tidbit is one of the most popular of all the songs using the Sh-boom chord pattern. And your mission, should you accept it, is to figure out who's singing. Now, no fair raising your hand if you've heard it before. Let the people who are guessing have a chance.
[music: Rodgers/Hart, "Blue Moon" (Self Portrait); Bob Dylan]
Blue Moon, as rendered by Bob Dylan, from the Self Portrait album. Me, I'm Peter Schickele and the show is Schickele Mix on APR.
Taking the Fifth is what we are shamelessly doing here. Now we're going to hear some tunes in which instead of jumping abruptly away and circling back towards the tonic, the composer starts on the tonic and circles away, often ending up in another key. Let me mention that because the regular scale has seven different notes in it, it works out that going down five steps involves the same notes functionally as going four steps up.
In other words, [sung, counting] So instead of the bass instrument trying to go [sung] and running out of its range, as I was doing back there when I was singing, you can cover the same notes by going either down a fifth or up a fourth.
[sung] In Mr. Sandman, the bottom Chordette was doing the same thing when she sang [sung]
as I was doing when I sang [sung]. She was in effect counting out the steps between the roots of the chords, which is probably why they were called the Chordettes. Here's Bach circling away from home, from
[music excerpt: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, 3rd Mvt.; The Chamber Orchestra of Europe]
Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, who fortunately play better in tune than I sing. Here's a place in the first movement of that piece where the bass line counts out the steps exactly as I was doing earlier when I was singing. And this is a particularly sexy example of the forward progression.
[music excerpt: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, 1st Mvt.; The Chamber Orchestra of Europe]
In classical music, the forward progression is usually used for development or modulation to another key, but in pop music there are songs that are principally based on that progression all through the main part of the song. Here's a suite of three numbers that use the circling away from home technique, arriving in the first and last selections at quite distant keys and then abruptly jumping back to the tonic.
I should say that in those two selections, the basic harmonic progression is rather obscured by a lot of harmonic elaboration, but the essential floor plan is there. See you in about nine minutes.
[music: Burke/Hampton/Mercer, "Midnight Sun" (Something Cool); June Christy]
[music: Vivaldi, "L'Estro Armonico," Concerto No. 11 in D minor (RV 565), 3rd Mvt.; The English Concert/Pinnock]
[music: Hamilton/Lewis, "How High the Moon" (Best of the Jazz Vocalists); Sarah Vaughan]
June Christy with The Midnight Sun, the Vivaldi Concerto for two violins in D minor with Trevor Pinnock leading the English Concert, the soloists were Simon Standage and Elizabeth Wilcock, and Sarah Vaughan singing How High the Moon. I'm calling our last group of songs, Where Are We Anyway? These are songs that don't start on the tonic, and in some cases don't reach the tonic or even let you know what the tonic is for quite a while.
But they do go around the circle of fifths.
[music: Kosma/Prevert/Mercer, "Autumn Leaves" ('Jealousy' & Other Great Standards); Yehudi Menuhin/Stephane Grappelli]
Autumn Leaves with Menuhin and Grappelli. We'll hear more from them later. In terms of knowing what key you're in, where home base is, this next song is one of the most enigmatic ever written.
[music: Raskin, "Laura" (The United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra Invites You to an Evening of Beautiful Music); The United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra]
Now it is true that the arranger thickens the plot there by switching keys in the middle of the song, but even in the original, you don't hear the tonic chord, the home base chord, until the 27th measure, quite far out. Laura, as interpreted by the U.S. Air Force Symphony Orchestra, from the album The United States Air Force Symphony Orchestra invites you to an evening of beautiful music.
This album is not for sale, by the way, folks. You have to be specially invited, which I guess I was, because I have it. We're going to end with two classic songs that take their time in letting you know where home is, but what nice trips they are.
[music: Pinkard/Bernie/Casey, "Sweet Georgia Brown" ('Jealousy' & Other Great Standards); Yehudi Menuhin/Stephane Grappelli]
[music: Kern/Hammerstein, "All the Things You Are" (Sentimental Me); Elly Ameling]
Yehudi Menuhin and Stéphane Grappelli first, doing Sweet Georgia Brown, and then Elly Ameling, All the Things You Are.
You know, I've been thinking about that little song that I sort of improvised at the top of the show, Your Dog is Eating My Hat, and well, during the suites I've been sort of working on it a little bit, and you know what, I think I may have a hit on my hands here. And I'm going to let you be the first to hear it. Now, the authentic instrument here that I've been playing, this is an original, early 1990s Casio Tone Bank, it does have a rhythm thing on it.
So I think I can give you a pretty good rendition, and I'm gonna select a rhythm here. Let's try Swing 1. All right! Solid, Jackson. Let's see, and I know I like warm brass, that's 01. Okay, and now let me give myself a little echo here, and do myself a favor. We're ready to roll.
[music: Schickele, "Your Dog Is Eating My Hat," sung by Schickele with the Casio's rhythm section]
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. 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. That means you and we thank you greatly. 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 64. 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.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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 American Public Radio, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.