The time is 3 o'clock. Schickele Mix with Peter Schickele is coming up next.
[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 how good it is to report with gratitude that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this splendiferous radio station, within whose cloistered halls I sit surrounded by state-of-the-art stuff.
Our program is distributed to the world at large by PRI, Public Radio International.
My father's father, René Schickele, was a well-known German writer before World War II. He was Alsatian, and apparently, and I say apparently because very little has been translated into English and I'm not fluent in German, but apparently one of the main themes of his novels, poetry, and plays was the tragedy of the traditional enmity between France and Germany. In fact, he sometimes wrote in French as well as in German.
He was granted the dubious distinction of having a play closed down by the Kaiser in 1914 and then having his books burned by the Nazis a generation later. But in the interim, the good years in between, in 1928, a German literary magazine contacted a bunch of poets and asked them if they still had the very first poem they'd ever written.
The editor of the magazine described my grandfather's reply as a genuine Alsatian morsel. I don't know exactly how old René was when he wrote this poem on the backside of an old shed at the rear of the garden, but he was, by his own account, a schoolboy who found nine out of ten girls to be clueless, stupid and deceitful dolls. One, however, had obviously caught his attention. Here's the poem.
Vor der Kirche hat der Regen mir ins Gesicht gehaut, Nach der Kirche hat die Claire mir ganz in Gesicht geschaut. Liebe Claire, süße Claire, Wenn ich nur dein Bruder wäre, Vrai, je saurais bien que faire.
Before church, the rain beat me in the face. After church, Claire looked me straight in the face. Dear Claire, sweet Claire, If only I were your brother, boy, I'd know what to do.
Now, you can make of that what you will, but whatever you make of it, in its charming bilinguality and its ambiguous morality, it serves us today as an introduction to a show called First Things First, a program of musical juvenilia that will include several works that are, as far as can be ascertained, the very first pieces written, or at least preserved, by their composers.
Composers tend to start early, some of them very early. Take Mozart, for instance. He was not what you would call one of your late bloomers. By the time he was four, he had learned some of the pieces in his older sister's keyboard book, and soon after his fifth birthday, he started writing his own music. This, compositionally speaking, is Mozart's very first baby step.
[music: Mozart, "Menuett & Trio in G (KV 1)"; Walter Gieseking]
Minuet and Trio in G, No. 1 in the Köchel catalog by the 5-year-old Wolfgang Mozart, performed here by a grown-up named Walter Gieseking, and I thought he got through it very well, too. Köchel was the man who numbered all of Mozart's pieces in chronological order, that is, to the best of his ability with the information he had available at the time. So, what does Mozart's next piece have in common with a Himalayan peak?
That's right, they're both called K2.
Oh, man!
[sound effect: the "pun punisher"]
The powers that be have installed a pun punisher here in the studio. It sends a jolt of electrical chastisement through the seat of this chair. I mean, they say it's only set off by the most egregious transgressions, but I don't know, it seems pretty close to workplace harassment to me. Maybe even harassment.
Anyway, what I was about to say is that that little Minuet and Trio is supposedly by Mozart, but the manuscript, which still survives, is not in the handwriting of a five-year-old. The hand is that of Mozart's father, Leopold. So all we've got is Daddy's word that the piece was really composed by little Buster.
And especially since Daddy was an accomplished composer himself, the thought naturally arises that perhaps Daddy improved on what Buster actually played. Of course, that's perfectly possible. But knowing what little Wolfgang did later, it's not hard to believe that he made up that minuet. But if you're skeptical about it, you had plenty of company among Mozart's contemporaries.
He was regularly asked in his youth to prove that there was no fakery involved. Here's a little piece he composed when he had reached the age of 10. It was written on the back of a handbill advertising a concert he gave in Zürich. And the assumption is that it was composed on the spot in front of witnesses.
[music: Mozart, "Contredanse in F (KV 33B)"; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Contredanse in F, K. 33B, by a kid from down there at Salzburg named Wolfgang. It was played by members, very few members, of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Now, the thing about Mozart, though, is not that he wrote music at such a young age, but that he wrote music, at least by the time he was 8 years old, he wrote music that sounds like Mozart.
I've written several pieces that consist entirely of quotes from other composers' works. And one of them is called Eine Kleine Nichtmusik. The strings play the Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, virtually without change. Now, here's an excerpt from the first movement. You'll hear in the winds the song of the Volga Boatman, and then right after the upper woodwinds play, you know, what is that thing, Do you ken John Peel at the break of day, do you ken John Peel?
Right after that, listen to the fanfare-like theme in the brasses.
[music excerpt: Professor Peter Schickele, “Eine Kleine Nichtmusik,” 1st Mvt.; New York Pick-Up Ensemble/Professor Peter Schickele]
Now, at rehearsals for this piece, I often ask if anybody knows what that theme is. Everybody has this, it sounds so familiar but I can't place it feeling. And they often guess that it's a Mozart opera, the Magic Flute, or the Abduction from the Seraglio. What it is, is the opening of Mozart's First Symphony, which was composed by the 8-year-old wretch when the family was in London. Now, I don't know if Leopold had a hand in the piece, but I do know that it's better than the Leopold-Mozart pieces I've heard, at least to my taste, and that it already sounds like a piece by Mozart.
Here's the whole first movement.
[music: Mozart, Symphony No. 1 in E-flat (K. 16), 1st Mvt.; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
The first movement of 8-year-old Wolfie Mozart's First Symphony, played by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Neville Marriner. While that's fresh in your mind, listen to the beginning of an aria from the Abduction Die Entführung aus dem Serail, written by Mozart 18 years later.
[music excerpt: Mozart, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail," "Frisch zum Kampfe!"; Gerhard Unger/Vienna Philharmonic/Krips]
Gerhard Unger, singing a bit of Frisch zum Kampfe! from Mozart's abduction, as it were, Krips and the Vienna Phil's providing backup. One of the things that's so idiomatic about the beginning of the First Symphony is the unevenness of the phrase lengths. The first phrase is three bars long, and then it settles into two bar groups for the second phrase.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Symphony No. 1 in E-flat (K. 16), 1st Mvt., opening, with Schickele counting the bars; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Okay, now here's the beginning of another aria from the Seraglio. This one also starts with a 3-bar phrase, but it stays unpredictable throughout the introduction.
[music excerpt: Mozart, "Die Entführung aus dem Serail," "O, wie will ich triumphieren"; Vienna Philharmonic/Krips]
Okay, now here's an excerpt from another work by the mature Mozart, The Great Serenade for Winds. This is the beginning of the first slow movement made famous in the movie Amadeus. It has a timeless nocturnal quality, floating, unhurried, rambling, elysian, maybe moonlit. You know that feeling of sharpened senses you have at night when you get away from artificial light?
[music excerpt: Mozart, Serenade for Winds (K. 361), 3rd Mvt. ("Amadeus" Original Soundtrack Recording); Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Hate to turn that down. That was Mozart in his mid-twenties. Here he is at the age of eight.
[music: Mozart, Symphony No. 1 in E-flat (K. 16), 2nd Mvt.; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Floating, unhurried, rambling, maybe not as elegiac as the wind serenade, but still, or rather already, moonlit. The middle movement of Mozart's first symphony, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. They also played the serenade. Take it from me, i.e. Peter Schickele. The show is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
First things first. Now, we may have the first piece Mozart ever wrote, but we don't have a recording of him playing it. We do, however, have a recording of the first piece I ever wrote, with the composer at the clarinet. Yes, it's Tidbit Time on Schickele Mix, and today's tidbit is a seminal opus entitled The Sheik of Palamazoo, scored for violin, two clarinets in B-flat, tom-tom, and suspended cymbal.
Over the years, we've played all kinds of recordings on this show, but I think this must be the first time we've ever played an acetate disc, recorded in 1948 in Fargo, North Dakota. And, uh, I don't have any cactus needles here for this phonograph, but I think it'll work with a regular one. Here we go.
[music: Schickele, "The Sheik of Palamazoo" (1948 acetate)]
And there you have it, the Sheik of Palamazoo, composed by the host of Schickele Mix when he was 12 or 13 years old, and performed by Jerky Gems and his Balmy Brothers, perhaps the foremost junior high school age comedy band in the entire Fargo-Moorhead area during the late 40s, certainly the foremost one on North 12th Street. Like many comedy bands, we had a few serious pieces in our book, of which, by the way, we considered the Sheik of Palamazoo one.
My brother David was playing violin. The names of the other players will be withheld to protect the innocent. And now on to another first, the earliest surviving piece by Mendelssohn. Like Mozart, and unlike the leader of Jerky Gems and his Balmy Brothers, Felix Mendelssohn was a real child prodigy. At the age of 8, get this, at the age of 8, he could play all 9 Beethoven symphonies at the piano from memory.
His sister Fanny, by the way, could play the entire well-tempered clavier of Bach by memory at the age of 14. Before reaching puberty, Felix was a gifted artist and linguist as well as a musician. That must have been some family.
You know, according to a liner note by Jeremy Siepmann, the children rose daily at 5 in the morning to begin a day which included the thorough study not only of music, but of history, Greek, Latin, natural science, philosophy, contemporary literature, and drawing, as well as regular instruction in writing, swimming, and dancing.
Felix's first surviving piece is, like Mozart's, but unlike that of the leader of Jerky Gems and his Balmy Brothers, for piano. It's called Recitativo, and the bad news is that I couldn't find a recording of it, played by Mendelssohn or anybody else. But the good news is that the first page of it is reprinted in Grove's Music Dictionary. The bad news, however, is that some of it is barely legible at best, so I'll have to do a little fudging when I play it, which is what I'm going to do.
The good news is that they had a Friends of the Station party in this studio last night and they rolled the grand piano in here from the other studio so they'd have something to put the hors d'oeuvre and the punch on, so I don't have to play it on the authentic instrument. All I have to do is swivel in my seat here and I'm in business. Now let's see if I can read this thing. Felix Mendelssohn at the age of 11.
[music: Mendelssohn, "Recitativo"; Peter Schickele]
That's really enough. I mean, it's pretty incoherent, don't you think? My first thought, when I played all those unaccompanied passages in the right hand, it's pretty bare, you know. I thought maybe he planned to fill in harmonies in the left hand later, but no, there are rests in the left hand part. Maybe a better pianist could make it sound better. But the difference between that piece and the string symphonies he started writing one year later when he was 12 is astounding.
In one year, 1820, the Mendelssohn kid wrote at least two dozen works, ranging from small piano pieces to a cantata and two operettas.
Now, he has been called perhaps the most remarkable child in the history of music. But I would like to say a little something here before I play an excerpt from his first symphony. A few years ago, a New York music critic wrote that in his opinion, Mozart was overrated as a child prodigy composer. That he was certainly a whiz kid, technically perhaps, but he didn't start writing masterpieces until his late teens or early twenties. As prodigies go, that's a late bloomer.
Whereas Mendelssohn was writing masterpieces in his early teens. Now it's true that Mendelssohn wrote some of his best works, terrific pieces, like the String Octet, for instance, before he turned 20, but I must say that I find these early string symphonies more interesting than good. Okay, now I don't want to start a Hatfields and McCoys thing here, but I'm going to play the last movement of Mendelssohn's first string symphony, written when he was 12, followed by the last movement of Mozart's first symphony, written when he was 8.
The Mendelssohn is much more ambitious, more sophisticated in some ways, more contrapuntal. The Mozart is simpler in form, texture and harmony. But I gotta say, I find the Mendelssohn awe-inspiring, but the Mozart infectious. I don't really have a desire to hear the Mendelssohn again, whereas I've heard the Mozart many times and it never fails to bring a smile to my heart and a tap to my toes. But hey, I'm a simple-minded soul.
You may feel differently.
[music: Mendelssohn, String Symphony No. 1 in C, 3rd Mvt.; English String Orchestra/Boughton]
[music: Mozart, Symphony No. 1 in E-flat (K. 16), 3rd Mvt.; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
They're both pretty hot in the toe-tapping department. Two last movements from tyke-perpetrated symphonies, Mendelssohn's String Symphony No. 1 in C with the English String Orchestra under William Boughton, and Mozart's Symphony No. 1 in E-flat with Marriner and the St. Martin gang. So what do you think? Does my preferring the Mozart make me a simple-minded lout? It certainly makes me Peter Schickele and the program Schickele Mix, Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International Now, talking about composers' first pieces, which is what we've been doing, Schickele Mix is going to present what may be the musicological coup of the decade, if not the century.
In my long career as the sole discoverer of the music of P. D. Q. Bach, I have referred many times, in print and by mouth, to the very first work I ever discovered by the mini-meister of Wein-am-Rhein. I refer to the Sanka Cantata. But up till now, the piece itself has been heard only by a few close friends and trusted associates.
Now, you are about to hear not only the first, and perhaps only, fully realized performance of the Sanka Cantata, but also the story behind the story, behind the story behind the piece.
August 1953 My brother David, our friend Ernie Lloyd and I got together and we wanted to experiment with overdubbing using two tape recorders. Now I have to tell you guys and gals out there that that wasn't as easy in 1953 as it is now. You didn't just push a button, you had to match the impedance of the two machines and everything. Ernie was into that. And so, we recorded the first movement of the 2nd Brandenburg Concerto by Bach, with my brother David playing the high string parts, Ernie playing the low string parts, and me playing the solo flute, the solo oboe, and the high trumpet part, all of them on the bassoon, two octaves lower.
The result sounded a lot like mud wrestling, but we had a good time, and we said, let's get together again next week and do this again. Now, we'd been listening to the Coffee Cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, one of his few humorous works. And so, next week, I showed up with this piece called the Sanka Cantata. And we recorded it using our fancy overdubbing techniques. And then we decided to make the tape in the form of a radio broadcast.
This is just for ourself, you know. This was not for public consumption. So, we worked up some introductory material and recorded that as well. Now, I should mention something. One is that the names of Ernie's family were his own name, Ernie Lloyd. Now, his full name was Ernest Heath Lloyd, and so that gives meaning to the text of the opening aria, Praise be to the Lloyd, for he's kind, for he's earnest.
The middle movement is dedicated to Ernie's mother, Isabel Thompson, the Heavenly Hostess. She was also an inspirational violin teacher, viola teacher, and the concertmaster of the Fargo-Moorhead Community Orchestra. The conductor of the orchestra was her husband, Sigvald Thompson, and the last movement is Sing a Song of Sig's Pants Pockets Full of Rye.
Robert Dietz, mentioned at one point, was a friend of ours, who was a pianist and piano teacher who had a radio program on which he played classical music. I should perhaps also mention the BART, B-A-R-T is an abbreviation for baronet, and I think we saw it, it was probably Thomas Beecham, wasn't he a baronet, Sir Thomas Beecham, BART, we saw that someplace, so that's how the BART got in there.
And what's interesting about this tape, listening after all these years in the first place, is that it has lines in it that I'm still using decades later. Also, what's interesting is that the person explaining the piece is actually my brother. He's being Sir Osbronk Chappy Bart there. I'm being the interrogator. I should mention that my brother wrote the liner notes for the first P. D. Q. Bach album, and he is also responsible for defining the three periods of P. D. Q. Bach's creative life, the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period, and Contrition.
And the most interesting thing, musicologically speaking, is that none of us can remember who was the one that suggested the name P. D. Q. Bach. Ernie's mother says it was Ernie, and for all I know, she may be right. Ernie himself says he doesn't remember. Anyway, my brother's the one who's singing, and here is the first and so far only performance of P. D. Q. Bach's Sanka Cantata.
[music: P. D. Q. Bach, "Sanka Cantata"]
Announcer (recorded): This is radio station FSRS of the International Network.
Announcer (recorded): At the sound of the tone, it will be 11 p.m.
Announcer (recorded): Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Robert Dietz inviting you to another half hour of listening pleasure. Tonight, the West Fargo Meatpackers Association brings you the newly discovered Sanka Cantata by P. D. Q. Bach. The soloist in this evening's performance is Sir Osbronk Chappie, Bart., who is also responsible for bringing the cantata to light.
Announcer (recorded): He unearthed it in the ancient Leckendachschloss of southern Germany early this year. It is scored for baritone, violin, viola, cello, serpent, and harpsichord. A serpent, so named because it is capable of playing all the scales, is the precursor of the modern bassoon, which cannot boast of that attainment.
Announcer (recorded): Sir Osbronk has graciously consented to an interview here in the green room of Blarneggie Hall in New York Mills. And Sir Osbronk, did you find it necessary to make any changes in the scoring of this cantata?
Sir Osbronk (David Schickele) (recorded): Well, the cantata was originally scored for caffeine. However, I feel that the modern listener is subject to so much greater strain and tension that I usually extract caffeine.
Announcer (recorded): I see. How did you happen to come across this masterpiece?
Sir Osbronk (David Schickele) (recorded): Finding the musical situation in England intolerable, I waded to the lake isle of Innisfree in search of new music and was vastly disappointed on finding nothing but clay, wattles, and nine bean rows there. Whereupon I made my way to southern Germany, singing for my bread, which was invariably stale and moldy.
Sir Osbronk (David Schickele) (recorded): Upon biting into one particularly stiff slice, I perceived that what I had taken for black mold were actually notes in a crabbed manuscript hand. Running down this clue led me to the Leckendachschloss, where I found the cantata being employed as a strainer in the caretaker's percolator. Well, sir, you can imagine...
Announcer (recorded): Thank you, Sir Osbronk Chappie, Bart. I'm sure that this premiere will live up to the high standards that you have set for your former concerts here.
Announcer (recorded): Well, here we are in the announcer's booth, and the performers are ready to begin the Sanka Cantata of P. D. Q. Bach.
[No speech for 209 s.]
Announcer (recorded): You have just heard the two movements and recitative of P. D. Q. Bach's Sanka Cantata, based on the texts Praise Be to the Lloyd, Isabella the Heavenly Hostess, and Sing a Song of Sig's Pants Pockets Full of Rye.
Announcer (recorded): The performers of tonight's work were Sir Osbronk Chappie, Bart., baritone; George Ehrlichs, violin; David Brache, viola; L. E. Heath, cello; Johann Zipfegat, serpent; and Petrarca Schickelos, harpsichord. The producer was Pierre Felsenstein, the technical director, Einrid Djal.
Announcer (recorded): So, until next time, this is your announcer, Robert Bob Dietz of the NDAC Music Department, saying good night.
The historic 1953 recording of the only performance of P. D. Q. Bach's, there I said it, Sanka Cantata is a fascinating document. Isn't it amazing that P. D. Q. Bach should have known a family in 18th century Vienna whose names were identical to those of the Thompson family in Fargo nearly two centuries later? I find that almost incredible. But another seminal event took place the previous January.
On New Year's Day, 1953, Jerry and Phyllis Hunter gave a party at their large house on North Broadway, and I wrote a little opera for the occasion, called The Civilian Barber. Once again, the story was completely topical, but I retained a fondness for the overture, and years later arranged it for piano four hands and also for chamber orchestra. Looking back, it is now obvious that the Sanka Cantata was the first of P. D. Q. Bach's attempts to emulate the style of his father Johann Sebastian Bach, whereas the Overture to the Civilian Barber, which I published under my own name, points without a shadow of a doubt to P. D. Q. Bach's middle period, when he was trying to join the artistic company of his contemporaries Mozart and Haydn. We're going to hear part of the first movement of P. D. Q. Bach's Howdy Symphony, one of the benchmarks of the Soused Period, played by a fully professional orchestra, the New York Pick-Up Ensemble, and then we'll hear the Overture to the Civilian Barber, recorded at the Hunters on New Year's Day, 1953. I think you'll find the interrelational cross-confluences quite illuminating.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, “Howdy” Symphony, 1st Mvt.; New York Pick-Up Ensemble/Professor Peter Schickele]
[music: Schickele, Overture to “The Civilian Barber”]
Overture to the Civilian Barber, recorded at the Hunters on New Year's Day, 1953. The instrumentation, as I recall, was oboe, played by Mel Dietz, the wife of Bob Dietz we were talking about earlier, then yours truly on bassoon, two violins, my brother on viola, and three cellos, because that's who was going to be at the party.
The reason I have to go by memory here is that a lot, if not most, of the very early music I wrote has been lost due to a fire in a barn many years ago, and so I'm very glad to have these old recordings. Anyway, before that was part of the first movement of the Howdy Symphony by P. D. Q. Bach with the host of Schickele Mix conducting the New York Pick-Up Ensemble.
We are just about out of time, but instead of going out with our usual theme, let's go out with what I think was Schubert's first orchestral work. He wrote this when he was 14 years old. It's the Overture to Der Teufel als Hydraulicus, a comedy with song by Albrecht. The Devil as Hydraulicus? Don't ask me.
[music: Schubert, Overture to "Der Teufel als Hydraulicus" (D. 4); Stuttgart Radio Symphony/Angerer]
Paul Angerer and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony take us out on 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, 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 87. 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: Schubert, Overture to "Der Teufel als Hydraulicus" (D. 4); Stuttgart Radio Symphony/Angerer]
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.