Good afternoon, Sunday, March 12th. You're listening to 91.1 FM KISU, Pocatello. Please stay tuned for Shickley Mix with Peter Shickley, coming up next.
Just keep your knickers on. Here's the theme.
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.
But when you're talking about high-tech dissemination, there ain't no beauty without bread. So it's lucky that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this beauty-bound radio station. That's beauty-bound as in muscle-bound. Where I am furnished with this stratospheric...
high-tech studio, except for the rotary-dial telephone, whence the program is distributed to stations all over the place via satellite. Now, it's true that our satellite is not the newest one up there.
It's been around a while. In fact, it was launched by David right after he slew Goliath. But it gets the job done in the expert hands of the folks at PRI, Public Radio International.
I was kidding about it being launched by David. That couldn't have happened then. It was too late. It was too long ago. But one thing that did happen is that Felix Mendelssohn met Queen Victoria.
He was already a famous composer when he first visited England, and she requested a meeting. His letter describing that visit is delightful.
The Queen was obviously relaxed and friendly, not haughty at all, and she expressed a desire to have him accompany her as she sang one of his songs.
Mendelssohn found his first published collection of songs, among her music, and this is the one she picked. The words are about how beautiful Italy is.
SINGING SINGING SINGING SINGING
SINGING SINGING SINGING SINGING SINGING SINGING SINGING SINGING
Thank you for watching.
Italian from Mendelssohn's Opus 8, performed here and now by Laurelin Kolb and Arlene Schwut, but performed over a century ago in royal quarters
by Queen Victoria and the composer. Well, actually, that's not true. Because Mendelssohn, who said that the Queen sang the song very nicely indeed,
had to admit to her that he had not in fact written the song. It had been composed by his sister Fanny, but because the family did not approve of a woman publishing her music,
Felix included it in his collection just to get it out in the world. I'm sure that the Queen was very interested in that revelation, but she said that she'd like to sing one of his as well,
and they selected another one to perform. I just love that story, not only because it's a charming and revealing and sobering story, but, well,
can you imagine Pierre Boulez visiting the White House and the President greeting him, Hey, Pete, how the H.E. double-toothpicks are you? Come on in and take a load off. You know, I'd like to sing one of your songs, Pete.
Maybe something from Marto Salmetra. Yeah, I know, I know. It was written for a woman to sing. But I've really got a thing for post-symbolist poetry, you know, and let's see, the score's around here somewhere.
Oh, it's right over there under the People magazine. So what do you say, Pete? Let's get the dog off the piano, bench, and make with the tone rose. Okay, now let me say right away here
that I am not engaging in executive bashing. The reason that vignette is so inconceivable has less to do with the current state of culture in the White House
than with the fact that 20th century classical music got so virtuosic and so far away from any folk roots that amateurs couldn't perform it even if they wanted to.
I guess you could almost imagine Jackie Kennedy singing one of Aaron Copland's songs with him at the piano. Anyway, getting back to the Mendelssohns,
there's no doubt that Fanny was a victim of male chauvinist piggery. But it's worth pointing out that there was a strong class aspect to the family's porcine behavior.
The Mendelssohns were wealthy, brilliant, and well-known even before Felix's fame. And they hobnobbed with the cream of society, royalty, aristocrats, the moneyed elite.
Fanny's talent was recognized and encouraged by the family. But when it came to the idea of publishing her work, that was a different matter. It was all right for a widow or a woman of little or no means
to have a profession. Somebody had to support her. But it's obvious that even Felix felt that it would be an insult to the family for Fanny to do something that involved being paid money.
Even after, or maybe especially after, she met Fanny. She married a man named Hensel, of the law firm Hensel and Gradle. Just kidding, folks. Can't seem to stop myself today. Hensel was an artist.
Fanny did eventually publish under her own name, by the way. She even had two publishers vying for her work. But it was obviously an extremely difficult decision.
And she was greatly relieved when Felix sent her good wishes, even if they were rather begrudging. The little I know of her music is very good, but it's tantalizing to think how much better it might have been
if she had been allowed a professional life. Music, like drama, is not meant to be confined to the page. So much of what a composer learns comes from rehearsals, performances,
and the reaction of audiences. It's hard to think of a great composer who was as isolated from the interactive musical life as Emily Dickinson was from that of poetry, for instance.
There are, of course, in spite of conditions, and continuing prejudices, many fewer restrictions on women now than in the past, and there are more professional women composers. And the question is bound to come up.
Does music written by women sound different from music written by men? Well, what do you think? Here's a suite of pieces by four different composers, and I'd like to see if you can guess
which pieces are by women and which by men. Now, I've chosen obscure pieces by all the composers. There's not much point if you guess right because you know the piece.
But open up your blue test booklets now and get ready to write down the gender of these four composers. I call this suite Cherchez la Femme, and I'll collect the books in about 13 1⁄2 minutes.
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Cherchez la Femme was the name of that suite, and it also happens to be the name of today's show. Well, I played a little trick on you there, and I'll bet some of you knew I was going to do that too.
All four of those pieces were by women. The first one, that very tasty classical symphony, was from a Sinfonia in C
written in 1770 by Marianne Martinez, a Viennese-born composer of Spanish background. She studied with Haydn, among other people, and apparently was known to
have played four hands with Mozart. And then the second piece, that very beautiful part of the Mass, was from an Amy Beach Mass, the Grand Mass in E-flat
major, written in 1885 when she was 18 years old. I'll bet her name wasn't Beach then, but I don't know what it was. She was always known as Mrs. HHA Beach. And
that was the Sanctus Hosanna from the Mass, and it's arranged there for organ, harp, and percussion.
And I would love to hear the full orchestral version, but I couldn't find a
recording of the same. And then the next one, the Viola and Piano piece, has an interesting little history here. According to the liner notes, in 1919
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the great American patroness of the arts, announced an international competition for a sonata or a suite for viola and piano to be performed at the Sanctus Hosanna.
The competition was the second Berkshire Chamber Music Festival in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. There was going to be a $1,000 cash prize. Seventy-two works entered
the competition anonymously. After much deliberation, the judges were evenly divided between two works, a sonata and a suite. Mrs. Coolidge, according to the
rules of the competition, had to cast the decisive vote, which she did in favor of the suite by Ernest Bloch. The runner-up sonata was by a young English woman, who
was known as Rebecca Clark. And we heard the second movement, the Vivace, from that Sonata for Viola and Piano by Rebecca Clark, played by Yitzhak Schulten and Catherine Collier
at the piano. And then the last piece was from the same CD as the first one was. This
was a piece by Elizabeth Jaquette de La Guerre, cantata number four, Jonas, written in 1708. And she apparently stands out as one of the most famous pianists in the world. And she
was one of the most successful and highly acclaimed French composers of her time. Hailed as the marvel of our century and the foremost female musician in the world, de La Guerre
enjoyed a tremendous amount of prestige and recognition for her talents as a composer and harpsichordist with unsurpassed gifts for improvisation. Me, I'm a man. My name
is Peter Schickely, and that of the show is Schickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. And now it's tidbit time.
Hey, I hate to pull this on you, but it's exam time again, too. I've got another guessing game. This one is for the jazz aficionados out there. For ten points, the question is, who is this tenor player?
Too easy going for Illinois Jaquette? Not really. Breathy enough for the hawk?
No folks, that's President Bill Clinton playing Summertime with a Czechoslovakian rhythm section. How do you like them apples?
By the way, you know, I grew up saying Illinois Jaquette, but according to an article I read in the Times, it's Jacket, so what do I know? Hey, I've got to play you this whole cut. It's really great. It starts with the club
band playing an arrangement of part of an overture by Smetana, who is in the top niche of the Czech musical pantheon, and then they break into a vamp. I love it. It's a real showbiz
jazz vamp for the entrance of Presidents Vaclav Havel and Bill Clinton. And you hear Havel presenting Clinton with a tenor sax, after which they launch into Summertime. Clinton
isn't the only sax player, by the way, on this cut, but he takes the opening choruses and he also winds things up. For this rendition, you might call this tune Summit Time.
Mr. President. My dear guest, I have something for your collection. It is a Czech-made product.
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All right. Surely the best guarded tenor player ever to play summertime.
President Bill Clinton, introduced by Vaclav Havel and backed by several Czech jazz musicians. No one would mistake him for Lester Young, but hey, not bad for the Prez.
That tidbit, of course, has nothing to do with the subject of today's program. The program is called Cherche la Femme, but I was reminded of it by the Mendelssohn visiting Queen Victoria story.
You know, it's the closest I could come to visiting. I'm sure that was all worked out with Clinton beforehand, you know, to make sure to pick a tune that he plays and knows the chord changes.
I mean, there's such a spotlight on anything the president does. You really can't put him up there in a public situation and ask him to play enormous changes at the last minute. He certainly sounds a lot better than I would.
Of course, I haven't played tenor in about 45 years. But I still remember some of the fingerings, and I still remember my name, which is Peter. Peter Shickley.
And it seems to me the name of the show is Shickley Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Getting back to the subject of music composed by women, here's an interesting item from a gossip column. It says,
In the upcoming ABC miniseries, Telling Secrets, Sybil Shepard plays a sociopath who commits a brutal murder.
Shepard says she nearly didn't sign on for the role because the idea of playing someone who does what she does was a lie. She says she was very distasteful. The actress says she detached herself by playing different music, quote,
when I was Faith the Killer and when I was myself. I went into a record shop and asked if they had music to kill someone by, and ended up with depressing classical atonal modern numbers.
The music I bought to play when I was out of character was by women composers in the Netherlands. It was also classical, but was upbeat and filled with life. Very interesting.
interesting. A woman I know, who's both a good composer and a good friend, says that she was talking once to someone who was a judge on a panel handing out awards to musical compositions.
The manuscripts were submitted anonymously. And just for the heck of it, they decided to see if they could guess the gender of the various composers. And they couldn't at all. No correlation
between their guesses and the reality. Now, there are feminists who say that if women were really given free reign, there would and should be a recognizable feminine quality to their music.
They say that if women's music is indistinguishable from men's, it's because to get along in a world run by men, women have to write like men. Other feminists say that the differences between men
and women are greatly exaggerated in the popular mythology. Katha Pollitt, for instance, has written that, she says, Difference feminists like to attribute women to their music.
Ruthlessness, coldness, and hyper-rationality in successful women, Margaret Thatcher is the standard example, to the fact that men control the networks of power and permit only women like
themselves to rise. But I've met plenty of loud-mouthed, insensitive, aggressive women who are stay-at-home mothers and secretaries and nurses. And I know plenty of sweet, unambitious
men whose main satisfactions lie in their social, domestic, and romantic lives, although not all of them would admit this to an inquiring social media.
Well, aside from questions of meaning in music, questions we don't have time to go into on this show, I don't see any reason to expect less variety among women composers than we find among men.
Joyce Carol Oates is a fan of boxing. Nabokov loved butterflies. I'll be back in 13 minutes.
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Thank you.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Schickely Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickely Mix.
Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.