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 acknowledge that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this very radio station, within whose hallowed walls I whip up this weekly concoction, which is catered, as it were, to the outside world by PRI, Public Radio International.
And those food images are no accident, because today's show is called Musical Fruit. We're going to hear everything from Yes, We Have No Bananas to the theme song from the Chaplin film Limelight. Get it? Limelight?
And, well, let's see, we'll hear a suite of pieces by New York composers called Music from the Big Apple, and, uh, oh, there's also a... Huh, I don't believe this. Um, excuse me. Hello?
What do you mean it's a stupid idea for a show? I don't go around telling... Well, well, no, I mean, you're right. Anybody could do it, just look up the titles, but give me a break. Do you have any idea how many shows I've done?
There's no reason that every single one of them has to deal with heavy-duty technical and philosophical things like augmented 13th chords or whether the idea of following a leader makes the fugue an inherently fascistic form. I like to lighten up every once in a while, you know? What do you want from me? I mean, right now. Here we are. You're interrupting the show. What do you want me to do? Okay, and what's your idea of a more interesting subject?
Well, I've got quite a bit here, you know. Yeah, I'm sure I have that. That I know I have. In fact, the Mozart Clarinet Quintet is right here. I've been working on an idea for a program about composers whose last names start with M.
Monteverdi, Mompou, Moe, he wrote a song for the Three Stooges once. But come on, we're on the air here. What's your idea? Yeah, yeah, I've read that.
Okay, look, I'll do that, but then I'm going to go back You have to prepare these shows, you know. I mean, you have to pull the albums, and you can't just improvise them on the spot. But okay, I'll start off with this. Okay. Okay, bye.
It's been suggested that we begin the show with something a bit meatier than musical fruit. That listener who just called in was playing a CD of the Ravel Piano Concerto last night, and the liner notes told about how Ravel said that he had modeled the theme of the slow movement on the theme of the slow movement of Mozart's clarinet quintet, bar by bar, that's a quote. And this listener can't hear the relationship and wants me to discuss this.
It is an interesting subject. We often talk about the influence of one composer on another in general terms, But it's not often that a composer says he modeled a movement in detail on a specific piece by someone else without actually quoting the piece, I mean. So here's the opening of each of those two slow movements. First the Mozart, then the Ravel.
[music excerpt: Mozart, "Quintet in A Major for Clarinet, Two Violins, Viola & Cello (KV 581), 2nd Mvt."; Sabine Meyer/Philharmonia Quartet Berlin]
[music excerpt: Ravel, Concerto for Piano & Orchestra, 2nd Mvt.; Martha Argerich/London Symphony Orchestra/Abbado]
Martha Argerich playing part of Ravel's Piano Concerto with Claudio Abbado conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Before that, Sabine Meyer and the Philharmonia Quartet Berlin playing part of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. I gotta say, it's a bit of a poser. Now what I did was I wrote down the Mozart theme while it was playing. I know the piece pretty well, but I wanted to really have it in front of me. And then I stared at the Mozart while the Ravel was playing.
And I must say that, although there were certain confluences, I had to ignore so many non-confluences that I can't help wondering if I wouldn't have noticed certain confluences listening to any of a number of aria-like slow movements by any of a number of composers. There are certain similarities in the melodic outlines, but if there's anything consistent, I can't hear it.
Of course, if it's consistent but really arcane or obscure, I'm not very good at that kind of analysis. But let's face it, in terms of enjoying the piece, it's all beside the point. Ravel didn't call the movement Fantasy on a Theme by Mozart. He was just trying, apparently, to use the Mozart to nudge his own inspiration. He wasn't concerned with consistency. I wish we could talk to Ravel on the phone and ask him about it.
Hey! I didn't know that Schickele Mix is carried in heaven! Hello, Maurice? No, I'm just kidding around. So anyway, are you happy? I mean, I'm sorry I can't come up with some insightful commentary about the relationship, but you know, I'm not the composer. I can't presume to... What? What do you mean, the whole program? Well, no, I mean, the idea of a whole program based on my own music does have a certain attraction.
A measurable amount of appeal, I can't deny that, but, well, you're right, I do have that advantage over Ravel, I'm here, I can be asked about the specific influences in my music. So what do you want to know? That's the first quartet, yeah? The last movement, you mean the beginning of the last movement? Jean Ritchie, definitely. The inspiration for that section comes from a couple of Jean Ritchie's early albums, specifically the cuts in which she accompanies herself on the dulcimer.
The drone and the dulcimer, her serenely beautiful voice singing the tune, while she plays a counter melody on the top string of the dulcimer, the counter melody sometimes parallel to the tune and sometimes not. I remember quite clearly that when I was working on the last movement of the string quartet, that's the sound that was in my ears. No one particular song, I guess, and I certainly filled out the texture.
But I do... What? Oh, yeah, I've got them here. Really? You think I should? Well, why not? Here, I'm going to put the phone down. Or actually, I might as well hang up and you can turn your radio up. Okay? Yeah, bye. Well, like Oscar Wilde, I can resist anything but temptation. So I hope that you all share that caller's feeling that it's interesting to hear a composer talk very specifically about the influences on a particular piece.
One musician, who has played my first quartet a lot, says he thinks of the opening of the last movement as a prairie benediction. It's a nice phrase, a good evocation. And it certainly ties in with my Iowa and North Dakota roots but when I hear the section I tend to think of Appalachia with which I feel a powerful bond even though I'm a Yankee who has hardly spent any time there it's a bond forged completely by music music like that of the young Jean Ritchie.
[music: Trad., "Black is the Color" (Singing the Traditional Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family); Jean Ritchie]
Jean Ritchie singing Black is the Color, accompanying herself on the dulcimer. How old is that record?
It's not only an LP, folks, it's a 10-inch LP, Elektra. The catalog number is 2. That was followed by the Audubon Quartet, playing the opening of the last movement of the String Quartet No. 1, subtitled American Dreams, by the less and less young American composer Peter Schickele, who I understand has a radio show now called Schickele Mix. I think it's distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
Little change of course here. This show was going to be called Musical Fruit, but I've been persuaded to turn it into a show about influences, very specifically identified influences, taking advantage of the fact that in the host of this show, you have a live and breathing composer who, well, who doesn't mind talking about his own music, and who is willing to fess up to where he stole things from. In other words, I'm the horse's mouth.
Although that's not the only part of the equestrian anatomy that has been applied to me. And I've pulled out a bunch of recordings here... Hello?
I'm doing it, okay? So stop calling. What do you mean, be specific?
That is exactly what I was about to do, okay? Okay. Man. On other editions of this show, we talk about the influence of jazz or folk music or Asian music on various composers, but it's been pretty general. Now we're going to get down to the nitty-gritty, the time, the place, the scene of the crime, and what was taken.
In 1960 or 61, I was visiting a friend in the Bay Area, and I needed some photos of myself for some reason, and my friend knew a serious amateur photographer, and he agreed to shoot me, and, while he worked, he put on a bluegrass record by Earl Taylor and His Stoney Mountain Boys, a record that, as regular listeners to this show know, became one of my all-time favorite albums. It's mostly standard bluegrass songs, done with incredible energy and great harmony singing. Many, many years later, I wrote a piece for cello and piano called Mountain Music I, the middle movement of which, shall we say, pays homage in a very direct way to two of the cuts on that Earl Taylor album. Ruby features one of my favorite bluegrass textures, long, mournful melody notes sung over a boilingly busy instrumental accompaniment. I even lifted the phrase
[sung: "Ruby, Ruby"]
from the song. In the Pines has some classic in-the-cracks harmony singing, but what I used was the beginning of the melody, and the general feeling, which I exaggerated, of a bumptious waltz, as opposed to the refined strains of old Vienna, although that bumptiousness in my piece alternates with more lyrical sections.
Actually, I was about to say, okay, here are the pilferees and the pilferer, but of course it's more complicated than that. Earl Taylor didn't write those songs or even invent those textures. They're standard bluegrass issue, going back to Bill Monroe and others. But the Stoney Mountain Boys simply do it so well. They tackle the songs with such vigor and feeling. And on the other hand, there's a lot more original material in my piece than there is borrowed material.
But it certainly is a case of working under the influence. See you in about nine and a half minutes.
[music: Trad. arr. Osborne Brothers, "Ruby" (Folk Songs from the Blue Grass); Earl Taylor & His Stoney Mountain Boys]
[music: Trad. arr. Taylor, "In the Pines" (Folk Songs from the Blue Grass); Earl Taylor & His Stoney Mountain Boys]
[music: Schickele, “Mountain Music I for Cello & Piano,” 2nd Mvt.; Astrid Schween, cello/Peter Schickele, piano]
We began with Earl Taylor and his Stoney Mountain Boys performing Ruby and In the Pines, and that was followed by the middle movement of Mountain Music I, written in his spare time by the host of Schickele Mix, and performed in concert by Astrid Schween on cello and the composer at the piano.
That movement, by the way, is called Stoney Mountain Holler, as a tribute to Earl Taylor and his band. Okay, now in this next family, I'm not answering that.
[sound: phone rings]
All right.
[sound: phone rings]
In this next family, the child doesn't perhaps look quite as much like his parents as in the last, but the family resemblance is still pretty obvious. We'll begin with the grandfather, as it were.
African thumb piano music, played by a virtuoso in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Then come the parents. We'll hear part of an African piece played by Balafon, an American marimba ensemble. This is the piece that directly influenced mine, along with another African piece played by Gary Kvistad and his friends at a percussion quartet concert in Woodstock, New York, in the summer of 1993 or 94. Unfortunately, I don't have a recording of that one. Then the third piece in this set will be a movement from an orchestral suite by yours truly. See you in about six and a half minutes.
[music excerpt: Schickele, “Thurber’s Dogs,” “Dog Asleep”; Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus/Russell]
We began with part of a piece called Nhimutimu, played by John Kunaka on a 24-key mbira or thumb piano. Then came part of Mashamba Ntsu or Tsao from Southern Africa, played by the Balafon Marimba Ensemble. And finally, from Thurber's Dogs, a suite for orchestra inspired by the drawings of James Thurber, we heard Dog Sleeping, performed by the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus under the direction of Timothy Russell. The composer of that last piece and the host of this radio program have the same name, i.e. Peter Schickele, and that of the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. Our show is called Under the Influence, and I'm owning up to some, I hope we can all agree, petty larcenies, compositionally wise speaking.
Or maybe a better metaphor is demonstrating some plant cuttings I've made, and how I grafted them to other plants, and what the results were. Sometimes composers are influenced by a particular kind of music, ragtime, gamelan, tango, and sometimes by one particular piece. If you ask what single Western piece written in the 20th century has influenced the most composers, it would have to be the Rite of Spring, Stravinsky's 1913 ballet score.
Just a few years ago, a rather self-deprecating composer acquaintance of mine showed me the score of his latest piece and said, Yet another attempt to recompose the Rite of Spring. I guess that would be the Rewrite of Spring. These days, of course, many of us get to know more music through recordings than through live performance. And especially in non-classical music, you can sometimes develop an inordinate attachment to one particular cut on an album.
My knowledge of jazz is very scattered. I didn't hear much of it till I got to college in 1952, and I didn't hear much of the harder edge stuff till I got to New York in 1957. I don't even remember how I came to acquire an LP by Lennie Tristano, not exactly a household name, but I had it by 1960, and I was listening to it a lot. The very first cut on the album made a huge impression on me. Single melodic line, hard driving, exaggerated accents and also de-accents, no chordal fill, and great use of the middle and low middle range considerably below where the typical piano solo lies. Piano parts inspired by that cut have appeared in several of my chamber works, and if I ever write a concerto for piano and orchestra, I'm sure it'll turn up again.
Here's the Tristano tune, called Line Up, followed by the slow movement from my Serenade for Six. After a few minutes of serene slow music, probably partially inspired, come to think of it, by the slow movement of the Schubert Cello Quintet, the door bursts open and the ghost of Lennie Tristano charges in. I'll be back in about 11 minutes.
[music: Schickele, "Serenade for 6," 2nd Mvt.; The Schrickel Ensemble]
Lennie Tristano, Line Up, followed by the middle movement of the Serenade for Six, written by Peter Schickele, who also, interestingly enough, chose the music for this program, and performed by the Schrickel Ensemble, performed beautifully. Now, we've had a lot of my stuff on this show. Let's go out with someone else's music. I think it would be nice if...
Okay. Hello? Now, we've had a lot of my stuff.
There's not time for another whole piece. Mom, I'm a grown-up guy. It's my show. I can do what I want, okay? We're going out on somebody else's stuff. Bye.
Let's go out with the Balafon Marimba Ensemble. I love this cut.
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. 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 number 97.
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.
[No speech for 198 s.]
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 Sixth Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403.