I hope you're having a wonderful Friday evening. I'm Courtney Hembree, and outside it is currently 56 degrees and sprinkling all over town. Coming up right now is the Schickele Mix, only on 89.7 KCU.
Ready is my middle name. 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 it's always good to express gratitude for the fact that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this singularly unique radio station, whose four walls enclose this state-of-the-art launching pad for yet another flight of musical fancy, which flight is being distributed to the ends of the universe by PRI.
Once upon a time, in a far-away, forgotten land, one of the king's equestrian musicians discovered that if he held one of those curled-up hunting horns with one hand, and then, while blowing a note, inserted the other hand into the bell, the flared open end of the instrument. An interesting thing happened. Not only did the note get softer, which was, after all, to be expected, since he was cutting off most of the only way for the sound to get out of the instrument, but it changed the pitch of the note, lowering it a significant degree, and it also changed the tone quality of the note. That is, it gave the sound a new color, different from the same note simply played softer without the hand in the bell.
Well, boys and girls, that musician lived many, many years ago. But the kind of instrument he played is still around, and it's called the French horn. Of course, it's all gussied up now with fancy valves and other highfalutin modifications, but that revolutionary playing technique, discovered by our hero centuries ago in the Bois de Whatever, is used by horn players to this very day. Here's how it sounds.
[music excerpt: Britten, Serenade for Tenor, Horn & Strings, Opus 31; Jerry Hadley, tenor/Anthony Halstead, horn/English String Orchestra/Boughton]
That's Anthony Halstead, playing part of Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. The technique is called stopping the horn. Now the trouble with trumpets and trombones is that their bells point straight out, so it's really not practical to reach around and stick your hand into them. I mean you can do it but you just can't get the same kind of control. But sometimes you want the brasses to be very soft and maybe a bit mysterious as well. And that's why mutes were invented. A mute for a brass instrument is a conical air chamber made of wood, metal, or some other substance. The material the mute is made of, the shape of its air chamber, and the extent to which it blocks the airflow all affect the sound it produces. We're going to let Uncle Igor Stravinsky provide us with the the next batch of examples, here's a great solo for just plain open trumpet from Petrushka.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Petrushka"; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Rattle]
Now here's a great duet for two muted trumpets from the Rite of Spring.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; London Symphony Orchestra/Bernstein]
But you know it's a mistake to think of mutes only in terms of making an instrument softer.
As a matter of fact, in a way those were lousy examples for me to have picked. Fast and loud music for the open trumpet, slow and soft for the muted trumpets. It doesn't have to be like that. In fact, one of the scariest sounds in the orchestra is muted trumpets blowing their guts out.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Petrushka"; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Rattle]
Petrushka again. Thinking of mutes only as a way of dampening the sound is a boring and limiting thing to do, so don't do it. Much better to think of them as agents of mutation, ways to change the color of the sound, not just the volume. This is why today's program is called Mutes and Mutability. Now in practical terms, almost anything mechanical you do to change the sound of an instrument is going to dampen it.
But the results don't have to be used in a dreamy fashion. Here's a phrase from the Ebony Concerto, first with the trumpets open, then muted.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Ebony Concerto; London Sinfonietta/Rattle]
As I mentioned before, the construction of the mute affects the sound. Researching this show, I was amazed at how much variety there was among three different performances of the same passage in the Rite of Spring. This has, I would think, more to do with exactly what mutes the players picked than it does with how they played it. Here's the same phrase performed by trumpets in the London Symphony Orchestra under Bernstein, The Cleveland Orchestra under Boulez and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Salonen.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; London Symphony Orchestra/Bernstein]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; The Cleveland Orchestra/Boulez]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; Philharmonia Orchestra/Salonen]
The last one sounds as if it's a different kind of mute entirely. Trumpet mutes go back to the early 17th century, and if a part simply says mute, most players will use what is called a straight mute. But the 20th century has seen an explosion in mutes, both in terms of frequency of use and variety of construction. Early jazz musicians used their derby hats and also their beer glasses as mutes.
Then you've got straight mutes made of a variety of materials, although I've never seen one made of pasta, but you've got cup mutes, solotone, Mic-A, bucket, Whispa, Buzz-Wow with tissue paper like a kazoo, wah-wah, and the venerable plunger, which is often actually the rubber and the rubber end of a bathroom implement. You can drape a piece of felt over the bell.
The simplest way of muting a trumpet is by using your hand, or by playing into the music stand. You just lean forward until your bell is a couple of inches from the music, which dampens the sound without changing the color much. And then there's the tightest mute of them all, the harmon.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Ebony Concerto; Benny Goodman/Columbia Jazz Combo/Stravinsky]
You can practically see the icicles form on the bells of the trumpets. That was the Ebony Concerto again. And you know, I think it's about time we heard some music that lasts longer than a mosquito sneeze. Here's a suite of three pieces featuring muted trumpets. The first selection is for three trumpets alone, and in the order of appearance you'll hear straight mute, solotone mute, and cup mute. In the second piece, three trumpets with straight mutes play the tune first time around. Then by the third time we hear the tune, they've removed the mutes and are playing open.
The beat of the last number is nice and peppy, but the impacted sound of the harmon mute keeps the feeling super cool. Straight, solotone, cup, harmon, and open. I call this suite the Five Faces of Eve, and I'll see you in something over nine minutes.
[music: Carter, "Canon for Three"; Gerard Schwarz/Louis Ranger/Stanley Rosenzweig]
[music excerpt: Debussy, Nocturnes, 2nd Mvt. ("Fêtes"); L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Ansermet]
[music: Rollins, "Oleo" (Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet); The Miles Davis Quintet]
The Five Faces of Eve, Carter, Debussy, and Miles Davis. Elliott Carter's Canon for Three, written in memory of Igor Stravinsky, was played by Gerard Schwarz, Louis Ranger, and Stanley Rosenzweig. Ernest Ansermet conducted L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in an excerpt from Fêtes, the second of Debussy's three nocturnes, and we ended with a Sonny Rollins tune, Oleo, as performed by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones.
Actually, I was called for that session, but I couldn't make it. I had a jingle. Me, my name's Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
We're talking about mutes, and I guess the harmon is the most adjustable one. It's a metal mute, and it has a hole in the center for a tube-shaped plunger. The position of the plunger determines how tight the sound is, or you can take the plunger out and use your hand to create a wah-wah effect.
The harmon at its tightest was sort of the signature sound of Miles Davis, that most reserved, most distant of the great trumpet players. A man who had little use for social niceties, who often turned his back on the audience when playing solos.
A man who, you can't help thinking, let the injustices of racism fester inside him instead of flailing out like Mingus, or triumphing through force of personality like Dizzy Gillespie. A man who was not a virtuoso like Louis Armstrong, but who expressed solitude in a way that none of those more extroverted artists would or could.
Deep solitude. Not the temporary solitude of Frank Sinatra, attractive as that is. As a matter of fact, that's the point. Frank Sinatra's solitude is attractive because you feel like, if not tomorrow, next week, you're going to meet somebody. The Harmon Mute may have been patented, I was surprised to learn, in 1865, but it was made for Miles Davis.
Can you imagine a greater contrast of personality coming out of the same instrument than in these two snippets?
[music excerpt: Marvell/Strachey, "These Foolish Things" (All Time Standards, 1938-1954); Harry James & His Orchestra]
[music excerpt: Davis, "Blue in Green" (Kind of Blue); Miles Davis]
That first one was Harry James playing open as he usually did, big fat sound, heart on his sleeve, self-assured, and then Miles Davis with a harmon mute. These Foolish Things, Harry James, that's the music of somebody you can imagine getting into a conversation with at a bar. He's going to understand when you tell him your troubles. He's going to say, yeah, you're right, can't live with him, can't live without him.
The other guy, the tune was Blue in Green, better give him his space.
You know, I've mentioned wah-wah a couple of times. Now, you can do a wah-wah effect with a hat, or with a plunger, or with several other mutes. Here, in the trumpets and trombones, is your basic wah.
[music excerpt: "Rockin’ in Rhythm"; Duke Ellington]
Duke Ellington, rockin' in rhythm. The wah-wah is one of the most colorful innovations of the early jazz era, because it developed way beyond that simple kind of accompaniment riff into a technique that made the horn sound as if it was speaking fluent human.
[music: Ellington/Miley, "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo"; Duke Ellington & His Kentucky Club Orchestra]
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, by Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley, who did the growling on trumpet. Bubber? Boober? I cannot tell a lie, I don't know. Anyway, Miley was apparently a big influence on Ellington, and you can see how that kind of playing fit into the jungle style that Ellington developed, rough, seemingly imprecise Now listen
to another Ellington cut from 1927 in which the distinction between the human voice and the trumpet is blurred as much as possible. In fact at one point when the trumpet comes in you almost think it's a continuation of the vocal.
[music: Ellington, "Creole Love Call"; Adelaide Hall/Duke Ellington & His Orchestra]
Duke Ellington with Adelaide Hall singing. Instrument imitating singer, singer imitating instrument. You may think this is my voice, but it's actually a trombone saying, I'm Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix on PRI, Public Radio International.
Mutes and Mutability. All the brass instruments can be effectively muted, although the tuba mute is so big that, in live situations, inserting and removing it tends to be pretty distracting. It looks a little like loading a clown into a cannon. Strings and pianos can be effectively muted, but they deserve programs of their own. Some organs have a set of pipes in a box with louvers that can close, like Venetian blinds, to make the sound softer.
There have been mutes for woodwinds, but they tend not to be very effective, since, unlike with brasses, the sound doesn't all come out in a woodwind in one place. It comes out of whatever finger holes are open all over the instrument, in addition to the bell. But with the advent of electronics, anything is possible. We're talking mute as in mutation here.
In the following excerpt, which was recorded at a live performance, you'll hear some intermittent twangy chords on an electric keyboard. And you'll hear a singer. Everything else you hear is played by a single electronically altered woodwind instrument, including both the two-part melody at the opening of the excerpt and the drum-like sounds at the end.
Northern Lights by Robert Dennis. It's a piece based on American Indian poems. Barrington Coleman was the tenor, Mari Kimura played the keyboard, and Peter Schubart played the WX-7, called a wind controller by the company that made it. As I say, those drum sounds at the end, that was all done with this quasi-woodwind instrument.
With electronic manipulation, what comes out of the amplifier may or may not have anything to do with what went in. We're going to continue with a pair of pieces featuring electronically altered input that nevertheless remains recognizable. In the first case, a trumpet, and in the second, the human voice. The multi-note chords that you hear at the beginning of the first number are performed by a single trumpeter and his trusty gizmo.
And in the second, much longer piece, a mere mortal singing about very mortal things sounds as if she's, I don't know, a spirit, a telephone wire spirit. Only on Schickele Mix can you hear suites with but two movements. This one is called Invasion of the Sound Snatchers and it's about eleven and a half minutes long.
[music: Ellis, "Tears of Joy" (Tears of Joy); Don Ellis]
[music: Anderson, "O Superman" (Big Science); Laurie Anderson]
Invasion of the Sound Snatchers. The first number was Don Ellis from an album called Tears of Joy and the tune is called Tears of Joy. He had a device called a ring modulator. You could use that so that a single player of a trumpet for instance could play in octaves. It was as if two trumpets or three trumpets were playing in two or three different octaves all with this little machine.
He says in the notes, the ring modulator was tuned to a low G and I happened to play a B and a whole chord appeared. I fooled around with it for a while and then the theme of the number emerged as a samba rumba-type thing in seven. So that was a ring modulator giving you that. And then the other one was Laurie Anderson, her masterpiece, O Superman. And that was Laurie Anderson using a vocoder to make her voice sound that sort of weird thing where sometimes she's speaking different pitches, but the sort of echo notes are all the same. Other times it sort of seems to be in octaves. I don't know a thing about vocoders.
I learned a lot reading up for this program about mutes. I didn't realize they'd been around as long as they have. I didn't realize until recently that Mozart, for instance, had used mutes in his opera Idomeneo. I sort of looked that up, got a recording that used mutes, but he just wanted it to make them sound very soft, as if they were from the distance. You really can't hear it on the recording that they're muted, because they don't have that much of a different color.
Still, he was a good composer, as he showed when he wrote his Symphony No. 24.
[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, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station and its members. Thank you very much, all you members. And not only that, our program, once it achieves a minimum level of competence, 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 album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program 73. 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.
[music: Rollins, "Oleo" (Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet); The Miles Davis Quintet]
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.