Good afternoon, you're tuned into WOUB, a broadcast service of Ohio University. This is Peter Schickele, and I'd like to introduce you to some of the great endings I have known.
[music excerpt: promo medley, ending with Garland/Razaf, "In the Mood" (Big Band Jazz, Volume III); Glenn Miller & His Orchestra]
Recording: Yeah, man.
There's more where that came from on this week's Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International, on this radio station. That's what's coming up next at 3 o'clock on Schickele Mix with host Peter Schickele, right here on
[music]
[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. But not all the good things in life are free. So I'm glad to report that our program, unlike a romance novel, is underwritten. By, to be specific, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this courageous radio station, which dares to provide me with the studio facilities to go where no single pair of ears has gone before, producing discoveries that are distributed to the farthest galaxies by PRI, Public Radio International.
I once heard a performance of Schubert's Trout Quintet many, many years ago. The players were either serious amateurs or part-time professionals. I can't remember. Anyway, there seemed to be a certain amount of friction between the pianist and the string players.
I don't expect it was conscious, but when the piano part had a lot of fast notes and the string parts were easy, the string players would push the tempo a bit so the pianist really had to scramble. And then when the situation was reversed, the pianist would speed up so that the string players were hanging on for dear life. I don't know if it was personal animosity or simply a lack of ensemble experience, but whatever it was, it must have gotten to the violinist.
[music excerpt: Schubert, Quintet for Piano & Strings in A, Opus 114 (“Trout”), 5th Mvt.; Serkin/Laredo/Naegele/Parnas/ Levine]
Now with the help of my trusty, authentic instrument here, which comes with the studio, I'll try to recreate the performance I heard back there in the 50s. The violinist didn't just play the last note out of tune, he played it a full half-step sharp, that is, he played the next note up. And of course, since he didn't know until it was too late that he was going to play a wrong note, he played it with great conviction.
[music excerpt: Schubert, Quintet for Piano & Strings in A, Opus 114 (“Trout”), 5th Mvt.; Serkin/Laredo/Naegele/Parnas/ Levine]
Even fine players occasionally play a wrong note, but if you're going to do it, you'd better hope it happens somewhere in the middle of the piece. Because if it happens on the last note, it sits there. It hangs in the air. It slides down the walls, like when the top comes off the blender. Now, it stands to reason that the last thing you experience in a piece remains a strong part of your memory of it.
As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to memorable gestures, endings are as important as beginnings. I'm talking mostly about Western music here, by the way, and music intended for formal performance, whether it's in a concert hall or a dance hall. In some cultures and in some kinds of music, you just sort of gradually get going and eventually you sort of turn it off.
Today's show is called Great Endings I Have Known, and we're going to start off with a pair of surprise endings. Both of these pieces close with a real gotcha. I'll be back in about eight and a half minutes.
[music: Mozart, Symphony No. 30 in D (K 202), 4th Mvt.; Prague Chamber Orchestra/ Mackerras]
[music: Garland/Razaf, "In the Mood" (Big Band Jazz, Volume III); Glenn Miller & His Orchestra]
Two Surprise Endings The last movement of Mozart's 30th Symphony, Sir Charles Mackerras with the Prague Chamber Orchestra, and then Glenn Miller, In the Mood. The surprise there wasn't at the very end but before the last time through. That pairing illustrated both the soft gotcha and the loud gotcha. Other types are discussed by Guido d'Arezzo in his 11th century treatise, In re Gotchorum.
Now let's hear a couple of cute endings. Cute endings, it seems to me, also involve a bit of a surprise, as well as the kind of precision timing associated with the work of a good comedian. Now I usually like to let you know as little as possible about what's coming up in these suites, but the text of this first number, even though it's in English, is sometimes hard to understand, but it does merit close attention.
The selection is entitled, Vowels of Love, and right after the beginning, you'll hear the ensemble singers intoning A-E-I-O-U. Here are two cute endings, along with the pieces to which they're attached. See you in about four and a half minutes.
[music: "Vowels of Love" (Dangerous Doo-Wop); The Poets]
[music: Barber, “Excursions,” Opus 20, 4th Mvt.; Jeffrey Jacob]
Cute Endings Vowels of Love by The Poets, from an LP called Dangerous Doo-Wop, and the last of Samuel Barber's Excursions for Piano, played by Jeffrey Jacob. By the way, I spell the two in two cute endings, T-W-O, but there may be those who would spell it T-O-O. Hey, lighten up.
Speaking of vowels, you can go a long way on just two vowels – Peter Schickele, Schickele Mix, P.R.I., or you can use them all – Public Radio International. We're talking about wrapping here – wrapping it up, that is – as I have the pleasure of introducing you to, or getting you back together with, some of the great endings I have known.
And now Tidbit Time is upon us. That special time when I pull something off the shelf that's just a little bit unusual or maybe downright jaw-dropping. Today's tidbit is so unusual that it's a fine illustration of the adage, the exception proves the rule. The rule, by which I mean, as always, a description rather than a prescription, is that early symphonies end with a tutti.
Well, we've already heard a Mozart symphony that doesn't end loudly, but I would be willing to bet that today's tidbit is the only symphony written during the first, say, hundred years of symphony writing that ends softly and with only two instruments playing, two muted violins.
It's a great story. Haydn's employer, Prince Nicholas, spent more and more of his time at his country estate called Esterháza, built over a swamp between 1720 and 1766. It was a beautiful palace, but way out in the boondocks.
For five years, it had been the prince's habit to spend the spring and summer in Esterháza and the winter in Eisenstadt, only 30 miles from Vienna, which is where the musicians came from. But in 1772, not only were the musicians' wives and children forbidden, for reasons of space, to live at the country palace, but Prince Nicholas stayed later and later into the fall without giving any sign that he planned to go back to Eisenstadt or Vienna at all.
The musicians asked Haydn for help, and he wrote what is now called the Farewell Symphony. Okay, now just picture this. Here we are. It's a dark afternoon towards the end of November 1772. The prince and his court sit down for the usual concert. Musicians stood to perform in those days, and each music stand had a candle holder.
Haydn composed the music in such a way that during the last section of the symphony, the players, one at a time, snuffed their candles out and left the room until only two violins were left. Let me just read this here. The stately music room was almost dark, with just Haydn and Tomasini playing, their shadows casting strange shapes on the stuccoed walls.
Then the piece ended and the leader and princely kapellmeister blew out their candles and left. The Prince now rose and said, If they all leave, we must leave too. The musicians had meanwhile collected in the antechamber, where the Prince found them, and smiling, said, I understand, Haydn, tomorrow the men may all leave. Whereupon he gave the necessary order to have the princely horses and carriages made ready for the trip.
That's from H. C. Robbins Landon and A. C. Dease, Haydn biographers, quoted in this good little Nimbus CD program booklet. I'm telling you, what would I do without liner notes? Here's the last part of Haydn's Farewell Symphony, surely one of the most brilliant uses of music in the history of diplomacy.
[music excerpt: Haydn, Symphony No. 45 in F Sharp minor (“Farewell”), 4th Mvt.; Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra/Fischer]
The final section of Haydn's Symphony No. 49 [sic], The Farewell, performed by Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra. I wonder if they have a baseball team with an Austro-Hungarian umpire. Probably not.
Anyway, we're going to move on now to a kind of ending that is quite new in the history of music. The fade-out. This technique is dependent on the recording studio and really hit its stride in the 1960s. Here are two vanishing endings. Two endings written with disappearing ink. I, however, will reappear in less than eight minutes.
[music: Stevenson/Gaye, "Dancing in the Street" (Dance Party); Martha & the Vandellas]
[music: Gil Evans (arr.), "Saeta" (Sketches of Spain); Miles Davis]
Two vanishing endings. Dancing in the street with Martha and the Vandellas. Love that cut. Who would have ever thought that one of the great lyrics would be "Philadelphia, P.A."? And then the saeta from the Miles Davis, Gil Evans album, Sketches of Spain. Now I have to say a lot of people disapprove of the fade out. They feel that it's not only a fade out, but also a cop out. You don't have to make a real ending.
Of course, like any technique, it can be overdone. But I think those cuts are two beautiful uses of it. With Martha & the Vandellas, it gives me the feeling that the dancing is going to go on forever. That was a very 60s feeling. It's going to go on forever and ever and ever. As a matter of fact, I think it fades out too fast myself.
And with the Miles Davis cut, we had a fade in, sort of, and a real fade out to simulate one of the few examples of fades that people heard in the pre-electronic days of yore, namely an arriving and departing procession with a band in it. According to the liner notes, the saeta in flamenco music is the arrow of song. One of the oldest religious types of music in Andalusia, it is usually sung without accompaniment during the Holy Week religious procession in Seville.
It tells of the Passion of Christ and is usually addressed to the image of the crucified Christ that is carried in the march or to the Virgin Mary.
As described by Gilbert Chase, the singer, usually a woman, stands on a balcony overlooking the procession, grasping the iron railing firmly in both hands. The grip tightens as the emotion grows. The procession stops so that the image which is being addressed remains stationary while the saeta is being sung. A fanfare of trumpets gives the signal for the procession to move on.
Great album, in the humble opinion of your host, whose name is Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. As I said earlier, the fade-out is dependent on the recording studio. Diminuendo al niente is a common instruction in music, but in point of fact, it's impossible on most acoustic instruments to diminish literally to nothing.
On a wind instrument, for instance, you can blow less and less. But at a certain point, and it comes before inaudibility, the note will simply stop. There just isn't enough air pressure to produce a definite pitch. The same is true, incidentally, with singing. Try it yourself. With a string instrument, it would require an almost superhuman control of the bow to diminish a sustained note to the point of inaudibility, at least to the player's ears.
But of course, most audience members, it is to be sincerely hoped, are farther away from the instruments than are the players. And sometimes composers have asked for a true fade-out in concert conditions.
Berg's Lyric Suite for String Quartet is an example. The composer directs that the violist repeat the last two-note figure until it's no longer audible.
The LaSalle Quartet, playing the end of the lyric suite by Alban Berg. If you want to do a live fade-out, it's easier to pull off with one instrument than with a group. Even the Beatles, great fans of the fade-out, put regular endings on their songs when they performed live, as those of us who were not at Shea Stadium know from seeing the video. What Gustav Holst did for the end of The Planets was to have a women's chorus off-stage whose singing disappears into nothingness at the end.
Now, I don't know how it's done on this recording. I suspect that the choir got some electronic help in disappearing, which is fine. But what has often been done in live performances in the past, if possible, is to have an open door between the stage area and offstage where the chorus is. And the door is gradually closed during the last measures.
[music excerpt: Holst, “The Planets,” “Neptune, the Mystic”; Berlin Philharmonic/Davis]
End of the planets as we have known them. Sir Colin Davis conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and the women of the Berlin Radio Choir. Okay, that's all very well and good, but with a recording studio you can have complete control. Here's the end of an arrangement I did of the Beatles song Rain. Does that make it an arraignment? No, let's not get legal here. By recording the brasses completely separately, that is, on separate tracks on the tape, after we had already recorded the rest of the orchestra, we could fade them to absolute nothing without having to put them out in the hall and gradually close the door.
Not only that though, there's an evocative quality to fading out instruments while they're playing with normal force. It creates quite a different feeling from having them play softer and softer.
[music excerpt: Lennon/McCARTNEY arr. Schickele, "Rain" (Good-Time Ticket); Peter Schickele & His Orchestra]
Lennon and McCartney's Rain, from the LP Good-Time Ticket, arranged by the father of my wife's daughter's brother. Now, let's get back to a couple of complete pieces. The first one is... Oops! There goes the very old recording alert. This is, are you ready for this, a 10-inch LP. Here, let me turn that off.
Now, it may be an old recording, but it's a nice, simple-minded little tune. And at the very last moment, the piece ends in a totally different key from what it's been in all along. The second number ends on the expected chord but with an altered note that we've only heard a couple of times before in the piece. The ending of the first piece is deliciously unusual. The ending of the second piece is quite usual but no less delicious.
Two delicious endings, the second of which will occur about five and a half minutes from now.
[music: Mulligan, "Bark for Barksdale"; Gerry Mulligan Quartet]
[music: Willaert, "O dolce vita mia" (La Dolce Vita); The King's Singers/Tragicomedia]
Two delicious endings. Gerry Mulligan was first with Bark for Barksdale off an old Fantasy 10-inch LP, Chet Baker, Carson Smith, and Chico Hamilton. Then that other gorgeous piece was by Adrian Willaert, a 16th century composer. It's called O Dolce Vita Mia, translated here as O Sweet Light of My Life, performed by a group called Tragicomedia on a CD called O Dolce Vita that features the King's Singers, although not, as you may have noticed, on that cut.
You know, one of the things I love about a lot of modern renditions of Renaissance and Medieval music is that they really show the Moorish influence, the Arab influence, the Middle Eastern influence with the freedom and the kind of embellishment. I'm not a scholar. I don't know that that comes from the Middle East, but it sure feels like it does from the Middle Eastern music that one has heard. Boy, that is beautiful.
Well, since we've been dealing with endings, we're going to go out with a piece which is an ending. The piece itself is an ending. Now, I have to admit that I haven't been to jazz clubs much recently, but in the old days, groups used to signal the end of the set by having a little short thing they'd play that meant they were going to take a break. And this is Gerry Mulligan's sign-off riff. He called it Utter Chaos.
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. We thank you, members. And not only that, our program, in spite of everything, 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 79. 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.