The time is three o'clock. Shickley Mix with Peter Shickley is coming up next.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickley, and this is Shickley 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, Rene Shickley, 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 1936,
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 Rene was when he wrote this poem on the backside of a
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 wär, Vrai, je saurais bien que faire.
That's, 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 interesting way to describe the life of a Christian. I'd like to take this 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.
Minuet and Trio in G, number one in the Kuschel catalog, by the five-year-old Wolfgang Mozart, performed here by a grown-up named Walter Gieseking, and I thought he got through it very well, too.
Kershaw 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. Ow! Ow! Ow!
Oh, man!
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... ten. 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.
Contradans in F, K33B, 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 eight 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.
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 eight-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.
. .
.
. .
.
Gerhard Unger, singing a bit of Frisch zum Kampfe, from Mozart's Abduction, as it were. Cripps and the Vienna Philz 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.
. . .
2021, 2-2, 3 .
OK, 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.
.
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?
I hate to turn that down.
That was Mozart in his mid-twenties. Here he is at the age of eight.
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 Maranata. He was the first composer to ever play the clarinet in the Academy of St. Martin in the field. They also played the Serenade. Take it from me, i.e. Peter Schickely.
The show is Schickely 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 Schickely Mix. And today's tidbit is a seminal opus entitled The Chic 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 I don't have any cactus needles here for today. I'm not sure this phonograph, but I think it'll work with a regular one. Here we go.
And there you have it, The Chic of Palamazoo, composed by the host of Schickely Mix.
It was performed by Jerky Jems and his Bommie 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 Chic 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 Jems and his Bommie Brothers, Felix Mendelssohn was a real child prodigy. At the age of eight, get this, at the age of eight, he could play all nine 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 Seekman, the children rose daily at five 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 Jems and his Bommie 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 eleven.
Well, 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 twelve 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. Man, when did he have time to watch TV?
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 twenty.
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 twelve, followed by the last movement of Mozart's first symphony, written when he was eight.
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.
Thank you.
Well, 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 Mariner 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 Shickley and the program Shickley Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Now, talking about composers' first pieces, which is what we've been doing, Shickley 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 descendant and 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 Weinam Rhein. I refer to the Sanca 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 Sanca 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, 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 second 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 Sanca 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 you.
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 family, 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
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 PDQ Bach album, and he is also responsible for defining the three periods of PDQ
Bach's creative life, the initial plunge, the Saust 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 PDQ 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 PDQ Bach's Sanca Cantata.
This is radio station FSRS of the International Network.
At the sound of the tone, it will be 11 p.m.
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 a new edition of the Sanca Cantata. It's a new edition of the Sanca Cantata, and it's
the newly discovered Sanca Cantata by PDQ Bach. The soloist in this evening's performance is Sir
Osbrank Chappie Bart, who is also responsible for bringing the cantata to light. 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 music of the late 19th century. The 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. Sir Osbrank has graciously consented to an interview here in the green room of Blarneggie Hall in New York Mills. And Sir Osbrank, did you find it
necessary to make any changes in the scoring of this cantata? 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. I see. How did you happen to get the cantata? I
think it's important to come across this masterpiece. 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-tone rose there. Whereupon I made my way
to southern Germany, singing for my bread, which was invariably stale and moldy. 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. Pointing down this clue led me to the Leckendachschloss, where I found the cantata being employed as a strainer in a car caretaker's percolator. Well,
sir, you can imagine... Thank you, Sir Osbrank Taffy Bart. I'm sure that this premiere will live
up to the high standards that you have set for your former concerts here. Well, here we are in
the announcer's booth, and the performers are ready to begin the Sankha Cantata of P.D.Q. Bach.
The Lord
Praise as to the Lord
For he died For he turned
And his justice His mercy For
Praise Praise be to the Lord The Lord
Sing praise as to the Lord
And suddenly there came from the multitude A cry of great joy For there appeared the heavenly host
He's abed He's abed
Sing a song Sing a song Sing a song Of pockets full of rye Of six-pence pockets
Of six-pence pockets full of rye
Of six-pence pockets
Of six-pence pockets full of rye
Sing a song of sixpence pockets full of rye. Sing a song of sixpence pockets full of rye.
Sing a song of sixpence pockets full of rye.
Full of rye.
You have just heard the two movements and recitative of PBQ's box, Sanca 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. The performers of tonight's work were
Sir Osbronk Chappie, Bart, baritone, George Ellichix, violin, David Bracha, viola, L.E. Heath, cello, Johann Zipfegott, serpent,
and Petronica Schicolos, harpsichord. The producer was Pierre Felsenstein, the technical director, Einrad Djal.
So, until next time, this is your announcer Robert Bob Dees of the NDAC Music Department saying good night.
The historic 1953 recording of the only performance of PDQ box, there I said it, Sanca Cantata, is a fascinating document.
Isn't it amazing that PDQ box 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 Broad Street. 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 Sanca Cantata was the first of PDQ box 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 PDQ box 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 PDQ box Howdy Symphony, one of the benchmarks of the South period, played by a fully professional orchestra, the New York Pickup 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 inter-relational cross-confluences quite illuminating.
Thank you.
The Overture to the Civilian Barber recorded at the Hunters on New Year's Day 1950. 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 Shickley Mix
conducting the New York Pickup 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 Hydraulikus, a comedy with song by Albrecht.
The devil as Hydraulikus? Don't ask me.
Paul Angerer and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony take us out on Shickley 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 Shickley 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.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Shickley Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E Shickley Mix. Care of Public Radio
International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
PRI, Public Radio International.