Words Fail Me

Schickele Mix Episode #82

Part of The Schickele Mix Online Fan Archive

Premiere
1995-01-07
“Peter, are you ready?”
If you're ready, I'm ready

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Transcript

[This is a machine-generated transcript, cleaned up and formatted as HTML. You can download the original as an .srt file.]

If you're ready, I'm ready. Here's the theme.
[No speech for 15s.]
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 our bills are paid by the good people at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, at the National Endowment for the Arts, and at this good, good, good radio station where I'm provided with this really good studio. And if the show turns out to be good enough, which, thank goodness, it has been so far, it gets distributed to a goodly portion of the country by PRI, Public Radio International.
Good, that's out of the way. I mean, I'm genuinely grateful for the support, but it's a lot of words, and I say basically the same thing every week. Do you ever get tired of words? Enough already. Or frustrated with them? I know I'm not the only songwriter who has sketchbooks or work tapes full of melodies that he's never been able to come up with good lyrics for. Why do songs have to have words?
Sometimes, even in music with texts, one is struck with how beautiful the human voice can sound when it's unencumbered with the mechanics of elaborate pronunciation.
This often happens during melismas. A melisma is a phrase in which there are many musical notes to one syllable of text. Listen to this Alleluia from a 13th-century manuscript. The word Alleluia, of course, has four syllables. But there are 39 notes in this musical setting of the word. The AH gets one note, the LU gets three, and the YA gets one. The other 34 notes are all in the service of the second syllable, LE. That syllable goes on for so long that you can almost forget that there's a text.
[No speech for 25s.]
The Anonymous Four, singing, and the Alleluia from an offertory called Felix Namkwe. Another word that often gets the melismatic treatment is Amen. Now, in the congregational church that I used to go to, Amen usually adhered to the democratic principle of one syllable, one note.
But hey, we were only the congregation.
The professional church singers of the last millennium or so have gotten to sing Amens in which the AH is like the body of a bulldog and the Men is the tail, like this one.
[No speech for 27s.]
The Anonymous Four again, with the Amen from an anonymous medieval Gloria. Now, it does make a difference what syllable you use for a melisma. Some sounds work better than others. You won't find many composers writing a melisma like, I think I'll wear my fur.
Well, maybe in a country song. But the reason so many classical singers love the Italian language is that most of its consonants are simple. There is no TH or KSJ. And its vowels tend to be pure and full, so that you can get a nice mellifluous tone on almost any syllable.
Anyway, the answer to my earlier question, why do songs have to have words, is that they don't. Today's show is called Words Fail Me, and we'll be dealing with the Vocalese, which is a composition that is sung but has no text. If you want to get picky about it, the term Vocalese is usually used for a piece featuring a solo singer, but we won't restrict ourselves to that.
The human voice can operate in a broad spectrum, ranging from expressionless speaking to singing like an instrument. And there are all sorts of fascinating places along that spectrum. Your typical opera recitative is an attempt to sound as much as possible like speaking, while still singing. Please me, please me. My darling, don't run me through with that six-foot sword.
Where did you get it anyway? Remember that I'm the man that you have loved for years.
Big deal!
Well, you won't hear many melismas in recitatives. The next two numbers, however, are at the opposite end of the spectrum. The voice is trying to sound as much as possible.
But actually, I don't mean sound in the sense of tone color. Let's say that the voice is trying to behave as much as possible like an instrument. You could also describe this as seven and a half minutes of pure melisma.
Schickele Mix is the only place you can have suites with only two numbers in them. This one is called Vocalists as Instrumental Soloists.
[No speech for 458s.]
Boy, better check your wine glasses. Vocalists as Instrumental Soloists. First we heard Alice Babs. Singing Duke Ellington's TGTT with the composer at the keyboard.
TGTT stands for Too Good to Title. Even in the title, he didn't want to be bothered with words. And it comes from Ellington's Second Sacred Concert. Then we heard the second and last movement of Reinhold Lierre's
Concerto for Voice and Orchestra. Coloratura Soprano, actually, which means an especially agile high voice. In this case, it was Valentina Maksimova with Edvard Grzegorz. Grzegorz, conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra. But I probably mispronounced that. It probably should be the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
Now before we go on, I'd like to make a distinction between Vocalese-style singing and scat singing. Scat singing...
Scat singing uses words, it's just that they're nonsense words. The singer of a Vocalese usually uses a pure, consistent vowel sound, although sometimes she might change the vowel slightly or use an almost consonant, as Alice Babs did in the Ellington. And classical singers sometimes put an H in front of short notes,
to help the articulation. Otherwise, it's...
Oh, brother.
Hello? Hello? Huh. Nothing but heavy breathing. Hello? Weird.
I'd like to know who that was. I know who this is. This is Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International. We're talking about the voice.
We're talking about the vocalese. Singing without words. Now I don't know about you, but listening to the Glière there, for me, the trouble with the Vocalese is, if it gets longer than a few minutes, it... Well, it gets boring is what it gets. The Ellington was fine. It was two and a half minutes long. But the Glière, which lasted something over five minutes, I mean, I got tired of the sound. It became a bit tedious. And for me, that's true even with pieces that, to my taste, or better music than the Gliere, the Rachmaninoff vocalese or the Ravel vocalese in the form of a habanera. The thing is that in the mouths of singers, the value of words is not just in
communicating information. They enable singers to achieve the variety of sound that violinists, for instance, achieve by using their bows in different ways. The most common habitat of textless singing is opera, and what opera composers do is alternate vocalese passages with others that have words, as in the following three examples. I call this suite The Best of Both Worlds. I'll be back in about 11 minutes.
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Alas, for me, beside what was not to be, harsh necessity brought me to this gilded cave.
[No speech for 21s.]
Nothing comes, of course I'd rather like to revel. I have no strong objection to champagne.
My wardrobe is expensive as the devil.
Perhaps it isn't enough to complain of being basely tearful.
I'll show my noble staff by being bright and cheerful.
[No speech for 51s.]
Herbs and ruby, can they compensate for my fallen state?
Purchased as they were, it's such an awe. Bracelets, loveliers, can they dry my tears?
Can they blind my eyes, shield me from reproach?
Can the purest diamond, purest diamond, And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing. I'm most of that, my sapphire is a star.
I robe like a twenty-errant earring. I'll take their diamond necklace, And show my noble staff, By being again reckless.
Ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
[No speech for 69s.]
Three great numbers. The best of both worlds. We began with the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute by Mozart. That was Sumi Jo's soprano. I hope I'm saying her name right. I don't know her singing, but she's great. But, you know, the name sounds a little like Sandra Dee. Anyway, it's the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra with Roberto Paternostro conducting. And then we had, as you regular listeners know, one of my favorite pieces, Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, The Child and the Sorcerers. And that was the aria of fire.
The fire leaps out of the fireplace and says to the child, I burn wicked kids. And that was Sylvain Gilma. And then finally, of course, from Bernstein's Candide, Barbara Cook singing Glitter and Be Gay. Now, you may have noticed that all the singers we've heard so far have been women.
And although men, especially tenors, do get some vocalese work in operas, it does tend to be a female prerogative, at least with soloists. With a group, it's not quite as true.
Although, even then, the Debussy Sirene. And Holst's The Planets. They both have female choruses.
I think it's partly there simply because women's voices cut through the orchestra better than men's. But it may also have to do with the fact that both of those composers wanted an ethereal sound.
And let's face it, men who are not as modern as I tended to equate ethereal with feminine. So far, we've been dealing with bona fide soloists. But the next three numbers feature singers who are not down front. With a follow spot on them. They're singers who are treated as equals of the instrumentalists. The vocal parts in these pieces are no more prominent than those of the instruments. This suite is called Vocalists as Members of the Band. And it lasts a little over seven minutes. See you then.
[No speech for 438s.]
Vocalists as Members of the Band. We began with... A beautiful piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams. A late piece. Rafe, I guess I should say. Vaughan Williams. From the three vocalists for soprano, voice, and clarinet. That was the first one, the Prelude. Emma Johnson playing clarinet. And Judith Haworth was the soprano. Then we had from Philip Glass's album, North Star. The first cut, which is called Etoile Polaire, North Star. The performers were Philip Glass, Dickie Landry, Joan LaBarbera, and Gene Rickard. Doing a certain amount of... Overdubbing there from the sound of it.
And then Darius Millot from his six little symphonies. A real reaction against the overblown, grand, late romantic symphony. These little symphonies, I don't think any of them last more than ten minutes. Number six is for soprano, contralto, tenor, bass, oboe, and cello. This was the second movement.
And that was Josette Domer, Marie-Jeanne Klein, Bennett Arendt, Raymond Koster, Norbert Martin, and George Malek.
Mio, by the way, is known as a... Should I answer that? Well, if I don't, it'll just keep ringing.
Hello? Right. Same thing. Nothing but heavy breathing. I wonder if whoever that is knows my identity. Which is Peter Schickele.
That of the program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
One use of the vocalese technique, singing without words, is as a method of clarifying complicated textures.
We're going to hear an excerpt from one of my own works now, a sort of a madrigal comedy for chorus called Go for Broke. It's about a guy who wins the lottery and all the people who hit him up for money.
This is part of the third movement, which is a serious number called Charity. And it begins with a four-part canon. That is, four sections of the chorus sing exactly...
[No speech for 10s.]
Okay, now the first sopranos sing the melody with the words. Then the tenors come in on the following beat, singing ooh. The second sopranos enter next, humming. And finally the basses come in, singing uh. Later, you'll hear exactly the same setup, but with everybody singing the words. And you can't follow the melody. Because of the way the parts cross. And you can't understand the words, because they're singing them at different times. But it doesn't matter, because it was so clear before. Due to the use of vocalese in all the parts, except one.
See how much you have injured certain people.
[No speech for 16s.]
Face injustice, honor.
Face injustice, what you have done.
What you have done. What you have done. What you have done.
[No speech for 39s.]
The Dale Warland Singers performing part of Go For Broke, by Peter Schickele. Well, yeah, we are actually. I mean, distantly. He's the uncle of my cousin's daughter.
That was, as you may have noticed, a concert tape. Not a commercial recording. And I thank the Dale Warland Singers for permission to use it. I mentioned that the second sopranos were humming. That is, of course, a kind of vocalese singing. Extremely limited in terms of tone and volume, but often effective in small doses. Here are two pieces that use humming. The first as an occasional color change. And the second, well, the second piece features one of the most ravishing vocalese melodies ever written. The movement has three sections.
The A section is sung as a vocalese. The B section has words. And the repeat of the A is sung a boca chiusa. In other words, shut your mouth. Which is the name of this suite.
See you in about ten minutes.
I'm a singer of love songs. Songs that are happy and gay.
And I sing my love songs.
Lover's gone away. I've got the words. I've got the tune.
I've been rehearsing under the moon. But I've got nobody to hear my song. So I'm humming to myself.
I've got the place. I've got the time. I've got a lot of love words that rhyme. But I've got nobody to hear my song. So I'm humming to myself.
I guess it just had to be.
Won't someone listen to me?
I've got the words. I've got the tune.
I like to croon it out. But I've got nobody to hear my song.
So I'm humming.
I've got the words. I've got the tune. I've been rehearsing, rehearsing underneath the moon.
But I've got nobody to hear my song.
So I'm humming to myself.
I've got the place. I've got the time. I've got those sweet love words. Love words that rhyme.
But I've got nobody to hear my song. So I'm humming to myself.
I guess it just had to be.
Won't someone listen to me?
I've got the words. I've got the tune. I like to croon it under the moon.
But I've got nobody to hear my song. So I'm humming to myself.
[No speech for 216s.]
Desi Insert Trio Solid Trio Solid II Trio Solid
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II
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Some of the most beautiful music ever made with a shut mouth.
We first heard the Chenille Sisters doing Humming to Myself, and then we heard Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasiliaras No. 5, the first movement, the aria, with Victoria de Los Angeles, and Villa-Lobos, the composer, was conducting the eight cellos. Well, that's about it for today. The clock up on... Okay, okay, listen everybody.
I'm going to pick up the phone and hold it up to the microphone so all of you can hear what I've heard twice already this hour. Okay, here goes. Hello?
Hello, big boy. Want to talk dirty? Hey, hey, you know, I liked you better without words. Sometimes words speak. They spoil everything.
Yes, there's no doubt about it. A vocalese can be most effective if it doesn't go on too long.
And that's Schickele Mix for this week.
Eat your hearts out, chipmunks. This program was 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, members. And 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 album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is Program 82. 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.
Hey, you're looking good. See you next week.
[No speech for 136s.]
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.
P-R-I.