The End (LENNON/McCARTNEY) Performer: The Beatles Abbey Road (Parlophone CDP 7 46446 2)
“The Musical Sacrifice” (S. 50% off), “Fuga Meshuga” (P. D. Q. BACH) Performer: Susan Palma, flute/Stephen Taylor, oboe/Lauren Goldstein, Gerald Tarack, violin Two Pianos are Better than One (Telarc CD 80376)
Piano Sonata in B Flat (K 507), 2nd Mvt. (MOZART) Performer: Peter Schickele "Schickele Mix" recording
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. As everybody knows, pleasure is fleeting, but bills are eternal. So it's good to know that ours are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this pleasant radio station, whence float the mellifluous strains that are the result of centuries of motley music-making, strains that would be mere entertainment were it not for the mind-expanding comments of your pleasantry-prone host, whose noble and never-ending efforts are distributed to the world at large by P.R.I., Public Radio International.
The great 18th century Vietnamese poet Liang Nah, who was strongly influenced by a long sojourn in Japan, wrote a haiku that goes, Yesterday in snowy fields, tomorrow in your arms, today the bridge. It's a beautiful poem, and believe me, as a musician who has toured a lot, I'm familiar with the feeling.
They say you know you're spending too much time on the road when your kids start calling you Uncle Daddy. Now, when you put it that way, of course, it sounds very contemporary. But obviously, Liang Nah was dealing with the same thing two and a half centuries ago when he wrote that haiku, Yesterday in snowy fields, tomorrow in your arms, today the bridge. I guess it goes without saying that you really ought to read it in the original.
The calligraphy is so interlocked with the word for bridge echoing. Just kidding, folks. I can barely read English, much less Vietnamese. It is clear, even to me, that the sub-meaning of today the bridge is spring, the transition between winter and summer. And today we're going to talk about transitions, musical transitions to be specific. Now the very concept of transition implies or entails a gradual process.
Most of us would not consider this a textbook example of transition.
[music excerpt: Schubert, Symphony No. 8 in B minor (“Unfinished”), 1st Mvt.; Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Solti]
That's about as abrupt as you can get. You know, maybe that's why Schubert never finished that symphony. Maybe in the third movement he wrote a pause that was so long that he died before it was over. Anyway, in some kinds of music, transitions are very easy to spot. They're shorter than the two themes they transition between, and they usually move the music into another key.
Viennese waltzes are full of little bits of connective tissue such as these, which range from the perfunctory to the substantial.
[music excerpt: Johann Strauss, "Tales from the Vienna Woods Waltz"; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/Kunzel]
Waltzes like that, which was Johann Strauss' Tales from the Crypt, I mean Vienna Woods, often had quite a few sections in several keys, and these sections were frequently interfaced with transitional software. This next number is based on the opening theme throughout, but about halfway through you'll hear the trumpets blaring out octaves and then shifting things up into another key. It doesn't take long to get the job done.
[music: Strayhorn, "Take the ’A’ Train" (Big Band Jazz, Volume 3); Duke Ellington and His Orchestra]
Duke Ellington and his famous orchestra playing the Billy Strayhorn classic Take the A Train. Ellington and Ray Nance were the soloists and Strayhorn was the arranger. I've always wanted to write a tune about Quakers called Take a Thee Train, but I probably never will. You have that to be thankful for. Now here's a progenitor of the big multi-sectional Strauss waltzes like the Blue Danube and Tales from the Phil Woods.
That's a little jazz joke there. See, because I'm Mr. Jazz. I know all there is to know about it. [mispronouncing] Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Earl Fatha Hines, Gerry Mulligan, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester the Prexy Young, Lady Di, I knew them all. You know, come to think of it, I guess the flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons of New York City's major orchestra could be called the Phil Woods.
[sound: pun punisher]
There goes the pun punisher. I think it's safe to sit down again. But I guess the better part of valor would be to go back to what I was talking about, which was and is a delightful set of German dances by Mozart. The piece has about six sections, each in a different key from its predecessor, and each followed by a nice little modulating bridge to the next. Wolfgang, who loved dancing by the way, rounds it all off with an extensive coda featuring one of the best and also one of the very few piccolo solos in 18th century music.
I was about to say, take it away, Wolfie, but he's probably down there on the dance floor. You know, they say he spends a lot of money on clothes. Take it away, Antonio!
[music excerpt: Mozart, "6 German Dances (KV 509)"; Vienna Mozart Ensemble/Boskovsky [?]] Mozart's German Dances, K. 509, played by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Neville Marriner.
A bit too fast for my taste, but I'm pretty overweight. By the way, as much repeating as there was in that piece, I took a lot of repetitions out in order to get it down to a length that this show can handle. You heard each principal section twice. Using Mozart's instructions, you would have heard each one four times. You know, I did a little arithmetic here.
Square dance bands usually don't play from written-out music. They can go on forever. But Mozart had to write it all down for a whole orchestra, and he knew the tricks. Using his instructions, this dance set lasts over 13 minutes, and yet he only wrote out four and a half minutes of music. Pretty good return on your investment, huh? Is that story about Franz Kline's mother true?
You know, Kline was the abstract expressionist artist whose most famous canvases consist of a comparatively few black brushstrokes on a white background. And I read somewhere that after he became famous, his mother said, I always knew that Franzl would find the easy way. My name's Peter Schickele, and I've certainly found it. It's called Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called Transitory Pleasures, and most of the transitions we're hearing are indeed a pleasure. But I have to admit that there's one bridge-laden genre that I'm not particularly fond of, and that's the medley. Especially the old-fashioned Broadway musical overture. Now the overture to Leonard Bernstein's Candide is nice.
It treats the theme seriously, as it were. I mean, I don't mean because he's a symphonic composer. I mean, it pays attention to the themes. The assumption in the overture we're about to hear, however, is that we already know the tunes, so the piece just presents enough of each song to remind us how it goes and then throws in a transition to the next. The themes, like Rodney Dangerfield, don't get no respect.
[music: Berlin, “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Overture” (NBC Television Original Cast Recording)]
The overture to a television production of Annie Get Your Gun, Irving Berlin, and I suppose the fact that it was a two-hour TV version of what was originally, I assume, a three-hour show at least, may account for the presence of this especially impatient overture. Musical direction was by Louis Adrian. So far we've been dealing with transitions between well-defined tunes, But the more abstract field of symphonic and chamber music uses transitional sections and, as in dance suites and song medleys, one of their most important functions is still changing the key. In this early and rather rudimentary but typically charming symphony by Mozart, he introduces a new thematic idea to transition with. Kids, don't try that word at home.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Symphony No. 10 in G (KV 74), 1st Mvt.; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Here's the transition.
Here comes the second theme.
[No speech for 44 s.]
Here's a transition.
Back to the opening material.
[No speech for 22 s.]
Here's the transition again, but this time leading in a different direction. In fact, leading right back to the original key.
[No speech for 38 s.]
Here comes another transition.
This time the transition involved not only a change of key, but a change of tempo as we go into the slow movement. The early history of the symphony is closely intertwingled, as the geologist David Love likes to say, with that of the Italian opera overture, which typically had three interconnected sections, fast, slow, fast. Sir Neville again with the St. Martin gang, performing the first movement or section of Mozart's Tenth Symphony. Later on, transition sections often had a developmental quality to them. Instead of introducing new material, they would elaborate on something we'd already heard while they changed the key.
In this quintet by Schubert, listen to the opening theme in the first violin. A little while later, when the music gets consistently loud, you'll hear the cellos holding a long note. I love this place, because at first you think that they're just holding a long note, what's called a pedal point, but then they start moving, and you realize that they're playing the beginning of that opening theme. But this time it continues differently, leading to the second theme.
The transition sounds like it's modulating, then it ends up not modulating, and then at the very last moment, the Schub slips into a new and surprising key. Transitionally speaking, our interest stops there. But I just have to let it go through the first half of the second theme. It would be cruel and unusual punishment not to. It's one of the most beautiful melodies ever written, and it's probably the most beautiful two-voice melody before the Everly Brothers.
[music excerpt: Schubert, "Quintet in C for Two Violins, Viola & Two Cellos (D 956), 1st Mvt."; Alban Berg Quartet with Heinrich Schiff, cello]
The opening of Schubert's great C major quintet for two violins, viola and two cellos, played by the Alban Berg Quintet with Heinrich Schiff on second cello. You know, that's the great thing for freelancers about the Schubert cello quintet and the Mozart viola quintets. You get your name mentioned even when the individual members of the established string quartet don't get theirs.
As we observed before, transition means a gradual change, and usually involves a key change. But you don't have to be dealing with traditional harmony to get the effect. The material in this next piece does not present much in the way of contrast. And in traditional terms, it's not always easy to tell exactly what key you're in. But there are different tonal centers, and although the material is far from smooth, It does move smoothly from one tonal center to the next.
[music: Prokofiev, Piano Sonata No. 7, Opus 83, 3rd Mvt.; Maurizio Pollini]
Whew! Maurizio Pollini, playing the last movement of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata. Not too shabby. I mean, both the piece and the performance. And I'm Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. And it's Tidbit Time here at our smorgasbord of transitory pleasures.
While I was doing the arithmetic on that Mozart dance set and I was figuring out how much music there was without the transitions, it occurred to me, what would it sound like to hear just the transitions and nothing else? You know, transitions, they're always regarded as relatively unimportant, connective nobodies. They're the only thing in that piece until the coda that isn't repeated, and in general it's sort of inherent that transitions aren't repeated.
Why not give them their 15 minutes of fame, or at least a half a minute?
[music: Mozart, "6 German Dances (KV 509)", the transitions only, edited together; Vienna Mozart Ensemble/Boskovsky [?]] Just the transitions from Mozart's German Dances, K. 509.
It's a little bit like seeing just the stairways of an otherwise demolished building. And not really worth hearing. Harmonic transitions are called modulations. One or more chords that are common to two keys are used to effect a gradual change. There's also metrical modulation, in which a time unit common to two different tempos is used to make the change.
The term metrical modulation is usually associated with Elliott Carter, but his music tends to be so complicated that it's not easy to follow what's going on metrically. Here's my favorite example of metrical modulation. Shortly after this excerpt starts, you'll hear the piano playing eighth notes.
[music excerpt: Lennon/McCartney, "The End" (Abbey Road); The Beatles]
According to the meter we've been in, they're grouped in pairs.
Now, during the melody that follows, the eighth note stays the same, but the grouping changes from two notes to three notes,
which slows the tempo down, that is the beat, not by some indeterminate amount, but by precisely one third. Sounds pretty esoteric, doesn't it?
[music excerpt: Lennon/McCartney, "The End" (Abbey Road); The Beatles]
The Beatles, from the end of the Abbey Road album. You know, I usually save something...
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Yeah? Yeah. His name was Liang Nah. Vietnamese, right. L-I-A-N-G N-A-H. It was a haiku, yeah. Well, I hadn't thought of that. You're right. That is hangnail spelled backwards.
Okay, look, I was brought up not to tell a lie, okay? So it wasn't written by a Vietnamese poet in the 18th century. It was written by a friend of mine named Jeff Cohen. No, no, but he... no, but he is a scholar of Japanese poetry and haiku, I mean, he's... and philosophy and everything. As a matter of fact, his friends call him Zen Cohen. And he's... he's hung up. Anyway, I still think it's a pretty poem.
Now, I often save something peppy for the end of the show, but today I'd like to end with the slow movement of a Mozart piano sonata that, along with the Schubert cello quintet and the Beatles' Abbey Road, is a particular personal favorite. The music is exquisite. I'm almost tempted to say exquisite. And the form is exquisitely simple. A-B-A-C-A with a coda.
The B and C sections are each in a different key. And in both cases, Mozart jumps directly with no transition to the new key. The keys are all closely related, so no transition feels necessary. But in both cases, he does use a transition section to get back to the opening theme, which is always in the main key. Sit back and close your eyes, unless you're driving. I'll see you in about eight and a half minutes.
[music: Mozart, Piano Sonata in B-flat (K. 570), 2nd Mvt.; Peter Schickele]
The slow movement of Mozart's piano sonata in B-flat, K. 570, played by your humble host. I knew I wasn't going to be able to get into the studio next door, so a friend of mine who works at a commercial recording studio actually, I guess maybe I shouldn't get into that right at this particular point in time.
Speaking of time, we're out of it, or at least I am. And having just heard a good chunk of Mozart, let's forego our usual theme and go back to Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. We'll hear what's around some of those transitions in Strauss' Tales from the Vienna Woods.
[music excerpt: Johann Strauss, "Tales from the Vienna Woods Waltz"; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/Kunzel]
And that's 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. Not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. We'll tell you in a moment how you can get... I can't believe...
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? I'm in a very busy... Oh, alright! I wrote the haiku. Does that make you happy? Okay.
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 93.
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. Really burns me up. You're looking good! See you next week.
[music excerpt: Johann Strauss, "Tales from the Vienna Woods Waltz"; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/Kunzel]
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.
PRI Public Radio International
Station announcer: Schickele Mix is underwritten by AM-FM Services Company, a provider of broadcast, engineering, contract and consulting services.
AM-FM Services is owned by Hal Smith, who encourages KCSE-KBCW listeners to support the fine and performing arts in Oklahoma for time, talent and financial support.
[music]
Station announcer: Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, heard in the movie Platoon.