Hello there, I'm Peter Schickely, and this is Schickely 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 it won't sound good if you can't hear it. Fortunately, we can hear it all, thanks to the fact that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this eternally young radio station, which, in its youthful wisdom, has provided me with this to-die-for studio.
I mean, it is up-to-date in every way. Not only do we have digital this and digital that, and the authentic instrument, and one of those pencil sharpeners that you just put the pencil in,
and it does it, you know? You know, they're really neat. Although, I must say, they don't work so well on the mechanical pencils I use. I've had to go back to turning the eraser into the pencil by hand.
Anyway, we've got the echo chamber, and the built-in stopwatch, and now, over there on the east wall, we've got one of those fold-down changing tables. I think we're ahead of most other studios on that one.
I don't have any use for it myself these days, although I have been known to store some CDs on it, you know, when I do a show. I know that uses a lot of those big boxed sets, but no.
These days, my babies are these programs, which are born here and led out into the world by PRI, Public Radio International.
And today's baby is called Ah Youth. You know, they say youth is wasted on the young, but let's face it. Maturity is often wasted on the mature.
And that is often, sadly, true of artists, through no fault of their own. The fact that artists acquire more experience, practice, and wisdom as they get older does not necessarily mean that their art gets better.
Our show today is going to look at the connection between youth and maturity. Some composers sound like themselves, as it were, almost from the beginning.
Regular listeners to Shickley Mix know that on more than one occasion, we have heard parts of Mozart's First Symphony, written when the brat was eight years old, and commented on how Mozartian it sounds.
Not only is it assured and fresh-sounding, but many of its stylistic traits are recognizable in the mature Mozart's music.
Now, even in the 18th century, when the pressure to develop a very individual style was not what it is today, that's fairly amazing.
Remember, in modern American terms, we're talking about a piece by a third grader. Then there are other composers, who take a comparatively long time to develop their voices, stylistically speaking.
Here's a little piece by a 19-year-old composer, his first published work.
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very idiomatic quite virtuosic piano writing and very French in its harmonies not many people I
dare say would associate the music of that 19 year old with this by the same composer two decades
the music of Aaron Copland his first published piece called the cat and the mouse
followed by a selection from the score to the movie our town released in 1940 both played by
Eric parking the cat and the mouse sort of like French Tom and Jerry their now
here's another piece by another 19 year old composer part of the graduation thesis of a
19-year-old composer old conservatory student. No problem connecting that with another scherzo written by the same composer 13 years later.
Two second movements from Shostakovich symphonies, his first and his sixth, both
performed by Naima Yarvey and the Scottish National Orchestra. The mixture
of lyric grace and sardonic humor, delicacy and bombast, the sudden changes of dynamics, they were all there by the time Dimitri hit the streets looking for
a job. Me, I've got a job. The name on the office door is Peter Schickely, or would be if there were a door. The job is Schickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
We're talking about the ties that bind youth to maturity in music. And next we're going to hear from a couple of 16-year-old composers. The first is Franz Schubert, a
movement from his fifth string quartet. So many of the characteristics of the Schubes' well-known chamber music pieces are already present. The dramatic gestures, the fondness
for triplets, and dotted rhythms.
The slippery tonality, and a kind of obsessive quality. Taking a rhythmic figure and driving
it into the ground, driving it as far as it'll go, and sometimes considerably farther. What's missing, it seems to me, is a good sense of judgment about which ideas are worth driving
into the ground and which aren't. Here's the first movement of Schubert's string quartet number five, played for us by the Mellos Quartet. We, by the way, are going to hear it by the end of the show.
The chances are that the only time he heard this piece is when his family played it. His brothers, Ignaz and Ferdinand on violin, Franz himself on viola, and their father doing the
best he could on cello. It's interesting, you know, until the age of the great piano virtuosi of the mid-19th century, it was assumed that all composers would learn to play the
violin as well as the piano. But quite a few, including Bach, Mozart, and Schubert, preferred playing viola in chamber music. And this is the first movement of Schubert's string quartet. Here's Franz as a high school junior.
A movement from Schubert's fifth quartet. Now, here's part of a quartet by another
sixteen-year-old composer, in this case, actually performed at home by teenagers.
That was as much as you need to hear, at the very least, of a movement for string quartet that I wrote at the age of sixteen, obviously under the thrall of Schubert. In fact, I referred
to that piece as my Schubert Quartet. It was played by four of the high school kids that used to get together to play string quartets, mostly Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, at various
houses, sort of like garage bands. My brother David, who plays viola, was usually the one saying, We've got time for another one. We've got time for another one.
Because that was not a performance rehearsed for a concert, but simply a taping made for my sake, I will leave the other performers unidentified, except to say that the first
violinist is now a member of one of the top five U.S. orchestras. Now, aside from the difference in talent between myself and Schubert, the big difference between
these two Schubertian quartets is that I was imitating the style of a composer who had been dead for 128 years, whereas Schubert was simply writing contemporary music, like everyone around him.
Another edition of Schickeli Mix features the very first piece Mozart ever wrote. He was five years old, and it's a minuet in the style of minuets of that day.
All students wrote textbook counterpoint exercises in a sort of Renaissance Baroque style, but in terms of full-blown pieces for performance, Mendelssohn was probably the first great composer
to consciously imitate styles that were long since passé. His Pubertian string symphonies are jaw-droppingly sophisticated for the work of a 12- and 13-year-old,
but they pay obvious tribute to earlier styles in a way that Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert never did. Hello?
Well, that's true. Schubert's early symphonies do show an obvious debt to Mozart and Haydn, but remember, Schubert and Haydn's dates overlap. And Mozart does. He died only six years before Schubert was born.
Their music wasn't that old in 1813. It wasn't like Mendelssohn imitating Bach, who was born more than a century before he was.
Mendelssohn, of course, was the key person in the revival of interest in Bach, and Bach remained a strong influence in his music throughout his life, leading Berlioz to complain that Mendelssohn loved the dead too much.
And it's no coincidence that it was during Mendelssohn's lifetime that concert programs began to feature old music.
It's true enough to say that in the 18th century, nobody played old music. And it's true enough to say that at the end of the 20th century, nobody plays new music.
That change started during Mendelssohn's life. All right, okay, I was about to say, but that's another program.
Man, that irrelevancy alarm gets overzealous sometimes, if you ask me. Let's go on to tidbit time. A very short tidbit today, another home movie, as it were.
One of my teenage pieces, stop me if I've told you this one before, was a quintet for French horn and strings. And the main theme of the last movement is a little tricky.
Da da dee dee, da dee da dee dee, da lee dee dee dee dee dee dee da. And at the end of the movement, I give it to the French horn, and it goes up to a high E, which is just about the top of the horn's range.
And the guy who played the horn part, I don't know if you've heard him play the horn, but had switched to cello, I mean, in his general playing. He didn't practice the horn anymore, but he agreed to get it out to make this recording for me.
And he was so worried about that high E, as you'll hear, the beginning of the theme is a little funky, but then he absolutely nails the high E. It's gorgeous.
But he's so relieved at hitting it that he relaxes too soon, and when he plays the scale coming down, which should be pretty easy, well, it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard.
When it comes to doing a P-D-Q Bach concert, and trying to instruct a player about how to play a phrase funny, I don't think I could ever get something this perfect...
Thank you.
Somewhere along the line, perhaps even before I had a composition teacher, I decided to write something in the style of a line of composers starting with Bach. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert.
And the summer before I left for college, I was working on a piano quartet that was pure Brahms. Here's what I had done when I left.
Virtually indistinguishable from Brahms, except in quality. That was a snapshot of me at 17. Here I am 30 years later.
The first movement of the quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano
by the host of Schickele Mix, played by David Schifrin, Erico Sato, Fred Sherry, and David Wee. You know, that feels to me like one of my most personal pieces,
but I'm not the only one who has commented on its Brahmsian character. And I even look like Brahms. What are you going to do? You can't fight it.
I guess it comes down to a sort of a nature-nurture thing. Oh, all right. Okay, okay. Let's see now.
Sometimes adult composers quote themes that they wrote back when they were young. But that's a very different thing from a youngster writing a piece.
And I don't mean just in terms of accomplishment, of expertise. The thing is, when grown-ups look at childhood, especially if they're not parents,
they tend to see what's charming and block out what's agonizing, which leads to cuteness. Benjamin Britten, at the ripe old...
age of 20, wrote a piece called Simple Symphony, which contains some themes from his childhood. Now, already with that title, he's saying,
hey, I can write more complicated music, but this is a childhood thing. Don't take it too seriously. Whereas when Mozart and Schubert and Mendelssohn were writing their first works,
they were as serious as they could be. There was nothing cute about it, as far as they were concerned. Listen to the movement headings for Britten's Simple Symphony.
Boisterous bourree, playful pizzicato, sentimental sarabande, and frolicsome finale. Those sound like ice cream flavors.
The music itself is nice, only the endings veer towards the terminally cute. But it's a far cry from this contemporary description of the ten-year-old Mozart
improvising a song of rage on the word perfido. Quote, In the middle of it, he had worked himself up to such a pitch that he beat his harpsichord like a person possessed,
rising sometimes in his chair. Little Wolfgang may have been imitating operas he'd seen, but I'll bet he was also drawing on his own anger, tantrums maybe, as well.
Having said all that, however, I do want to add that Britten went on to write terrific music for children. The contemporary classical music scene would be a lot better off
if more composers had his sense of music, as a community necessity. Here's part of the Simple Symphony.
From Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, Op. 4, that was the second movement, Playful Pizzicato,
a truly charming movement, and considerably less cute than its title. That was played by the Orpheus, and the Orpheus, and the Orpheus, and the Orpheus, and the Orpheus, chamber ensemble.
Now, you know, I've played four of my own pieces on this program. I've sort of tasted blood, if you know what I mean. So, I'm going to do one more.
When I was working on the last movement of my fourth string quartet, the whole piece is dances, and this last movement is a polka, there was one place where I just sort of wanted to go over the edge,
and I dipped back way into my past and remembered a polka, that I wrote when I was about 13 years old. It is one of the most cliched, least interesting pieces that I've ever written.
I mean, even for those days. Now, I don't remember exactly how the accompaniment went, but the whole piece went something like this.
Well, you get the idea. The old authentic instrument is a little bit out of the way there, hard to sort of reach, and I've got a lot of other good excuses, too.
Anyway, what I decided to do in this polka is to quote that polka, which was called the Papa Polka, the one that I wrote way back there,
and let the accompaniment just really tear into it, and just sort of somehow... That simple thing to work with allowed me to just push the accompaniment over the edge.
Here's the last movement of my fourth string quartet, played by the Audubon Quartet.
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Yes, folks, that was a live performance. Of the last movement of my fourth string quartet, subtitled Inter-Era Dance Suite.
And that was performed by the Audubon Quartet. Now, instead of going out with our usual theme, nice as it is, let's go out with some Mendelssohn here. One of those early string symphonies.
I've been blabbing about them this whole program. You ought to hear a little bit of them. These were written when the composer was 12. I think that he was still 12 when he wrote this one. This is the last movement,
of the symphony number four in C minor, the Allegro Vivace.
That's William Boughton conducting the English String Orchestra, and that's Sickly 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. Not only that, our program has the honor of being 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 88. And this is Peter Sickly 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 Sickly Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Sickly Mix. Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street,
Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403. PRI, Public Radio International.