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I have seen the future, and it's here. And here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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 here's a good deal. Our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by this stellar radio station, where I'm ensconced in this stellar studio. The amazing news is that the program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
Chopin once said that the only thing more beautiful than the sound of a guitar is the sound of two guitars. Okay, well, so, what's more beautiful than two guitars? That's easy. Five bassoons.
And I'm really looking forward to this program because it's about bassoons, and I'm an old bassoonist. I used to play the instrument. In fact, that's why I'm in such a good mood, because I don't play it anymore. Just kidding, folks. I love the bassoon like it was my own brother. Although I must say, I don't have to make reeds for my brother. Actually, I solved the reed-making problem by never learning how to do it. But to go back to the beginning, what happened was that when I was about 12 or 13, I started fooling around on the old clarinet that my mother still had left over from her college days.
When it became apparent that I was pretty interested, I was sent to a fine clarinetist named Bertram McGarrity. And as soon as he heard me, he said, Peter, you've got so many bad habits on the clarinet already that it would be easier for you to start a new instrument, and he suggested the bassoon. I realized later that he had an ulterior motive. Fargo-Moorhead had a pretty good and quite adventuresome community orchestra, but no bassoonists.
So eventually, one of my high school friends and I became the bassoon section of that orchestra.
Meyer and I both felt passionately about music. And of course, the bassoon is one of the few instruments in the orchestra that sticks up above head level, sort of like a stovepipe. And I remember once the conductor took us aside after a rehearsal and asked if we might be able to restrain ourselves a bit. Audience members might be distracted by all that bobbing and weaving around. Have you ever had the experience of sort of blanking out at a key moment so that afterwards you can't remember what you did?
There's this very prominent bassoon duet towards the beginning of Sibelius' second symphony, and the first bassoon part goes up to an A, which was pretty tricky for me back then. Here's how the passage goes.
[music excerpt: Sibelius, Symphony No. 2 in D, Opus 43, 1st Mvt.; The Cleveland Orchestra/Levi]
Now that's no problem for the bassoonists of the Cleveland Orchestra, but it was for me in those days. I practiced and practiced, and sometimes I could cut it and sometimes I couldn't. So I was really sweating bullets by the time the performance came around. It was on a Sunday afternoon in the high school auditorium, which had big windows with heavy curtains over them. And all I can remember about the precise moment of that high note was looking up into a bright burst of sunlight coming through a crack in the curtains.
I have no idea whether I nailed that note or not. Hey, you don't hear stories like that on your average radio program, do you? Well, one of the great friends of the bassoon was Igor Stravinsky. Although he never wrote a concerto for the instrument, he did write a lot of wonderful passages for it in his orchestral and chamber music, including what is probably the most famous bassoon solo in the symphonic repertoire.
When the by then aged composer Saint-Saëns heard the beginning of the Rite of Spring, he's supposed to have said, What is that instrument? Because the solo not only lies in an unusually high register, but begins up there. It doesn't work its way up from more familiar-sounding notes in the usual range. Let's have a little collage here. About five and a half minutes of nice bassoon stuff from Stravinsky, starting with the Rite of Spring.
I love it, but I am just as glad I never had to play this solo in public.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps," Introduction; Orchestre symphonique de Montreal/Dutoit]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Symphony in Three Movements, 3rd Mvt.; Columbia Symphony Orchestra/ Stravinsky]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Petrushka," "Chez le maure"; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Rattle]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Octet for Wind Instruments, 2nd Mvt.; London Sinfonietta/Salonen]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Firebird," Lullaby; London Symphony Orchestra/Dorati]
Our Stravinsky Bassoon Collage included excerpts from the Rite of Spring with Dutoit conducting the Montreal, then the Symphony in Three Movements with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra under Uncle Igor himself, Simon Rattle and the Birmingham doing Petrushka, Salonen leading members of the London Sinfonietta in the Octet, and the Lullaby or Berceuse from the Firebird, Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra. Particularly in that opening solo from the Rite of Spring there, you could hear one characteristic of closely miked bassoon solos, that is, you can hear the keys clicking.
Take it from me, my name is Peter Schickele, and that of the program is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called For He Heard the Loud Bassoon. The line comes, of course, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the famous poem about Sir Neville's father getting frostbite. Now, I've told you how I got started playing the bassoon. My favorite story about that comes from a professional bassoonist who says that when she was in high school, they took everyone into the band room and said, OK, now we're going to name the instruments. You say what you want to play.
I assume they said flute, and all the girls raised their hands, and they said oboe, and nobody raised their hand, and clarinet, and some people raised their hand, and then they said bassoon, and she was the only person to raise her hand. But she was very disappointed when they brought the instrument to her, because she had thought they said kazoo. And yet she went on to devote her life to the singing stovepipe. Well, all we've heard so far is little snippets. It's time to hear some complete movements, at least.
Our inter-era bassoon sonata has four such movements, and they represent each of the last four centuries, although not in any particular order. I'll be back in about nine and a half minutes.
[music excerpt: Bertoli, Sonata for Bassoon & Continuo No. 1; Michael McCraw, bassoon/Julian Fifer, cello/Dennis Michno, harpsichord]
[music: Mozart, Sonata in B Flat for Bassoon & Cello (KV 292); Klaus Thunemann, bassoon/Stephen Orton, cello]
The inter-era bassoon sonata: Bertoli, Schickele, Weissenborn, Mozart.
The first movement was by a composer that I must say I had never heard of, Giovanni Antonio Bertoli, and yet I'm shocked that I hadn't because he has quite a distinction. This is from a set of sonatas published in Venice in 1645, and this is the first known collection of sonatas for any one instrument and continuo. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, composers tended not to specify what instruments should play the music. You just used whatever you had at hand. And apparently these are the first sonatas in which the solo instrument was specified. That was performed by Michael McCraw on the bassoon and Julian Fifer, cello, and Dennis Michno, harpsichord. Next, we had the second movement from the Summer Serenade for bassoon and piano by the less and less young American composer Peter Schickele. That was from a live performance, a private tape, Lauren Goldstein on the bassoon and Peter Lurie playing piano.
Then, from an album entitled Romantische Fagottwerke, Romantic Bassoon Music, which sounds perhaps like an oxymoron, we had Julius Weissenborn, an arioso. Weissenborn was a 19th century virtuoso who wrote that quite lovely little piece. It was performed by Masahito Tanaka on bassoon and Seiko Sumi on piano.
And then finally, the last movement of our little sonata was for bassoon and not piano, but bassoon and cello by Mozart, Sonata in B-flat, KV 292, performed by Carl Leister on clarinet and Klaus Thunemann on bassoon.
The bassoon is the Rodney Dangerfield of the orchestra. It don't get no respect. Now I know that the jokes du jour recently have been viola jokes. I've been known to tell a few myself. But nobody really dislikes or belittles the sound of a viola, for real, whereas the bassoon is always being referred to as a comic instrument, or at best, an instrument that sounds either mournful or comical.
I'll bet you didn't know that some 18th century pianos had a pedal which, when pressed, caused a strip of tissue paper to come between the hammers and the strings, so that any notes you played rattled like tissue paper on a comb.
You know what that device was called? A bassoon stop. Oh ha ha ha, very funny. I will admit that one of the funniest looking instruments I know is an early form of the bassoon which also, let's face it, has a somewhat amusing name. It's called the racket. That's okay, you can snicker. Unlike the bassoon, which consists of eight feet of tubing doubled over once on itself, the racket is about the size of a coffee can.
It's a cylinder of wood, but it's like wormwood inside because all that tubing is, well, it's as if it were stuffed in there like an intestine. So you've got this dinky little instrument, and yet it can play real low notes like a bassoon. It's sort of, you know, like some of those a cappella groups, like the Persuasions and everything, where often the guy who sings the real low bass notes is the smallest guy in a group, and it's funny because you expect the opposite.
But the kicker is that the bocal, that's the bendy piece of narrow metal tubing that connects the double reed into which the player blows with the main body of the instrument, the bocal on many rackets curls over once like a pig's tail. That's funny. But I've heard this passage in Beethoven's 8th symphony described as an example of his sense of humor.
What a riot! Oh man, let me catch my breath. But here's a funny use of the bassoon that's quite unusual because rather than being prominent, it's tastefully merged into the infrastructure. Spike Jones's version of Carmen. She's having her fortune told by a gypsy, and she warns him, "This may sound odd and quite ridiculous, be careful with my palm, I'm ticklish." Then he sings, "I see that," and she goes... [laughs] He says, "Then you will." [laughs] Now when she laughs, listen to the bassoon playing weird off-key notes beneath her.
[music excerpt: Bizet arr. Sommers/Brandt, "Carmen" (Spike Jones is Murdering the Classics); Spike Jones]
The band leader is Spike Jones, the opera is Carmen, the show is Schickele Mix, the host is Peter Schickele. The whole shebang is from PRI, Public Radio International.
We're talking bassoon here, and I've likened it to a stovepipe, but the Italian word for it, fagotto, means a bundle of sticks. So let's have a bundle of sticks concerto already. Compared to that of some other instruments, this is not a large repertoire from which to choose. By far the best known concerto for bundle of sticks in orchestra is the Mozart, and I'm just ornery enough to make that a reason for ignoring it, as nice as it is. Our inter-era bassoon concerto has three movements. The outer ones use orchestra and the middle one strips down to continuo. I'll see you in approximately ten minutes.
[music: Vivaldi, Concerto for Bassoon, Strings & Continuo in G (RV 493), 3rd Mvt.; Klaus Thunemann/I Musici]
[music: Monk/Williams, "'Round Midnight" (The Blues; That's Me!); Illinois Jacquet]
[music excerpt: Winter, Bassoon Concertino in C minor, 3rd Mvt.; Laszlo Hara/Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra/Lukacs]
The inter-era bassoon concerto. It started with Vivaldi, one of the, what is it, something like 38 concertos he wrote for bassoon. This one is in G major, RV493, and that was our friend Klaus Thunemann again, playing the bassoon, and the orchestra was I Musici.
Then the middle movement of our concerto was Illinois Jacquet, usually heard as a tenor player, here playing bassoon on 'Round Midnight.
And what I called the continuo, which of course is the 18th century term for the sort of accompaniment instruments, here consisted of Wynton Kelly on piano, Buster Williams on bass, and Oliver Jackson on drums. Tiny Grimes is listed as guitar on the album, but I must say I can't hear any guitar in that cut. And then finally, a bassoon concerto by an 18th century composer named Peter Winter, or I suppose Peter Vinter.
Concertino in C minor. That was the last section of the piece there. That was Laszlo Hara playing bassoon with the Liszt Chamber Orchestra of Budapest under the direction of Ervin Lukács.
And it's Tidbit Time at the Double Reed Ranch. Today's tidbit is for four, count them, four bassoons, and it utilizes some unusual techniques. At the end of the brief opening section, the range of one of the bassoons is extended a half step lower by having one of the other players walk over and insert a cardboard tube into the end of the instrument. It's just the kind of cardboard tube that comes in the middle of paper towels.
Later, three of the four players are required to play on just their reeds without the rest of the instrument. What the result lacks in intonational focus is more than made up for in canardic verisimilitude. The work is by P.D.Q. Bach, and it's in the form of a prelude and fugue, entitled Lip My Reeds.
[music: P. D. Q. Bach, "Lip My Reeds" (S. 32') (Music for an Awful Lot of Winds & Percussion); Tennessee Bassoon Quartet]
Lip My Reeds, Schickele No. 32 feet, which is what you get with four bassoons, by P.D.Q. Bach, performed by the Tennessee Bassoon Quartet, as guests on this album, Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion that features in general the Turtle Mountain Naval Base Tactical Wind Ensemble.
Now, if you've got a long memory, you may remember that way back at the top of this show, I talked about how five bassoons was better than two guitars. And we heard a little bit of what is usually called the entrance of the gladiators. I think it's only fair that we hear that whole cut.
This is a bunch of bassoonists from Cologne. They call themselves the Gurzenich Bassoon Quintet. And we're going to hear the piece which is called Thunder and Blazes. This is from an album with the interesting title of Fagottissimo.
Julius Fucik, Thunder and Blazes, also known as Entrance of the Gladiators. And that was the Gurzenich Fagott Quintet, an album called Fagottissimo, Virtuosic Rarities for the Bassoon.
And we heard that played by five bassoons, four regular bassoons and one contrabassoon, which is twice as long in terms of its tubing as the regular bassoons, 16 feet of tubing, and that goes down a long way. We have time to hear at least the end of quite an amazing piece by a composer and bassoonist named Karl Almenrader. He lived from 1786 to 1843, and he was a very important person in the history of the bassoon because he helped develop the key structure of the modern bassoon and increased the range enormously.
You remember how we started this show by saying that Camille Saint-Saëns was so sort of surprised and outraged at the beginning of the Rite of Spring because the piece started so high he didn't recognize the instrument or at least pretended not to. Well, he obviously hadn't heard this Almenrader piece even though it was written almost a century before. This is the end of the Introduction and Variations Opus 4 and Masahito Tanaka is playing the bassoon again and Seiko Sumi the piano.
That note is a full octave higher than the first note of the Rite of Spring.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by this radio station and its members, for which we thank you. Not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. 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 69.
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 S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickele Mix. Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.