Announcer: This is your public radio station, WHQR Wilmington. Coming up in an hour, it is Massenet's Werther with The Met. And first, Peter Schickele, if he's ready.
I'm ready to roll. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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 what could be better than having one's bills paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this extremely with-it radio station, wherein I'm provided with the coolest of studios, and whence what gets confabulated therein gets distributed to the wide, wide world by P.R.I., Public Radio International. On another edition of this show, I mentioned the Passacaglia and Chaconne, two Baroque variation forms that grew out of dances. I guess the original Spanish dances were pretty raunchy, certainly smoldering, perhaps even salacious. But musically, they evolved into very rigorous forms for very pure art. I'm sure that wasn't the first time that music born in seedy surroundings ended up being transformed by the Henry Higgins of history into concert pieces that you had to dress up to listen to.
And I know it wasn't the last. Jazz was born in bordellos and smoky clubs and parades, but it wasn't long before she was being gussied up and taken to the best restaurants, and eventually they even let her into Carnegie Hall. Along the way, she entranced a lot of classical composers, and today we're going to listen to some of the results of those flirtations.
Sometimes they were more than flirtations. In some cases, a serious romance developed that lasted many years. Here's a piece played by a pianist who was no stranger to low-life joints, followed by a concert prelude.
[music: Johnson, "Carolina Shout" (The Indispensable Fats Waller); Fats Waller]
[music: Nancarrow, "Prelude" (The American Innovator); Alan Feinberg]
Fats Waller, playing Carolina Shout, followed by Alan Feinberg, playing a Prelude written by Conlon Nancarrow in 1935. Stride piano meets imitative counterpoint. Conlon Nancarrow is an interesting guy. Not only does he have a rather unusual name, C-O-N-L-O-N-N-A-N-C-A-R-R-O-W, It's always sounded to me as if it must be an anagram for something, but he ended up composing for an unusual medium, the player piano. Having gotten into political hot water in the late 30s, I guess the American authorities deemed him prematurely anti-fascist or something, and took away his passport. He moved to Mexico City and lived pretty much in isolation. By punching holes directly into piano rolls, he avoided the necessity of having other musicians around to play his music, and he discovered the freedom of writing for the piano without writing for pianists.
That is, what he wrote didn't have to be playable by human hands. He took advantage of this freedom not only by writing notes that human fingers couldn't reach, but also by employing rhythmic relationships too complex for the human brain to handle. And yet, at least for quite a while, the jazz influences remained strong. In fact, hearing his player piano pieces, it's hard to avoid the feeling that Nancarrow was influenced not only by ragtime and stride pianists, but by the piano rolls made by those pianists.
There is a certain sound to them. Here's a piano roll made by Jelly Roll Morton in 1924, followed by one of Conlon Nancarrow's Studies for Player Piano.
[music: Morton, The “Jelly Roll” Blues (Blues & Stomps from Rare Piano Rolls); Jelly Roll Morton]
[music: Nancarrow, Study No. 2 (Studies for Player Piano); Conlon Nancarrow]
The Jelly Roll Blues, a piano roll made by Jelly Roll Morton, and the Study No. 2 for Player Piano by Conlon Nancarrow. I don't know where I get off making remarks about Nancarrow's name. Mine's not exactly John Smith. What it is is Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. Today's show is called All That Jazz: The Early Years.
I like to throw in a little pomposity now and then. We're talking about the influence of early jazz-related styles on classical composers and just to be ornery, we're avoiding the famous examples like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Milhaud's The Creation of the World. We're cruising along the little-known byways of the suburbs of Jazzville, where the shopping mall's the concert hall and they dress differently from how they do downtown.
Here's some ragtime piano and white tie and tails. In the first piece, it just makes a few brief postcard appearances in a work that is otherwise anything but ragtime, although it was written around 1908 at the height of ragmania. The second piece of this pair was written many, many years later, in 1982, and it sort of catches ragtime up on some of what went down in the interim. See you in about nine minutes.
[music: Ives, Study No. 20 (The American Innovator); Alan Feinberg]
[music: Bolcom, "Twelve New Studies, 8th Mvt."; Marc-Andre Hamelin]
Okay, the first piece was Charles Ives, study number 20, played by Alan Feinberg. It's a typically remarkable, innovative, prescient, in-your-face, cantankerous, bull-in-a-China shop Ives piece with everything but the kitchen sink paraded before our stunned ears. It reminds me of one of those southern Italian seafood stews where they drop the various creatures live into the boiling water.
Then we heard the eighth of William Bolcom's twelve new etudes, marked Rag Infernal, Syncope Apocalyptique, performed with diabolical esprit by Marc-Andre Hamelin. It's a dazzler. Ragtime was, of course, primarily a piano phenomenon, but the most popular numbers were often arranged for instrumental ensembles.
Here's one such arrangement, followed by an example of what American ragtime sounded like after passing through the filter of one of Europe's strongest musical personalities.
[music: Joplin/Hayden, "Sun Flower Slow Drag" (The Red Back Book); New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble/Schuller]
[music: Stravinsky, "Rag-time for Eleven Instruments" (Igor Stravinsky Plays & Conducts); Igor Stavinsky & various artists]
That ragtime duo began with Scott Joplin's Sunflower Slow Drag, from the collection of instrumental arrangements known as the Redback Book, with the New England Conservatory Ragtime Ensemble under the direction of Gunther Schuller. Then, Igor Stravinsky's Ragtime for Eleven Instruments, written in 1918, with the composer conducting an ensemble including a zimbalom, the Hungarian zither, to which Stravinsky took a highly impractical liking.
The guys who play zimbalom don't tend to read music, and Stravinsky's charts aren't easy to learn by rote. That is one spiky piece. It was recorded in 1934, and I was just noticing that the percussion player was Jean Morel, who by 1957 was teaching conducting at Juilliard. At his best he was a sublime conductor, but he had a truly monstrous temper.
He was doing a reading recording of a student piece in the spring of 1958, and at one point he blew his top at the first bassoonist. Oh, this is impossible. You should not be a bassoonist. You should be a shoemaker. I cannot do this. He went on and on and on. And the next day, the student was sitting with the recording engineer editing the tape. And they came to that place and the student thought, got to save that piece of tape. Got to have that in my private collection. But he knew he couldn't ask for it because the recording engineer could never let that out.
When the recording engineer snipped that piece of tape off and threw it in the waste paper basket, the student looked exactly at which strand of tape it was and waited, and about 15 minutes later, the editor had to get up and go into the other room to get something, and as soon as he was out of the room, the student leaned forward to get the tape and heard the editor from the other room say, Put that back, Peter!
Yes, folks, that student's name was Peter Schickele. And yes, the name of the program is Schickele Mix. And yes, it's from PRI, Public Radio International.
We're talking about all that jazz, all that early jazz, and its influence on classical composers. Specifically, at this point, those faded, jaded composers of post-World War I Europe.
At least that's what some people thought. We are now going to hear a scene from an opera that in its day was internationally famous, even infamous. It's called Johnny Spielt Auf, Johnny Plays On, and both the libretto and the music were written by the Viennese-born composer Ernst Krenek. It was translated into 18 languages and was performed on more than 100 stages, including that of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. According to the liner notes here by Katherine Allen, it says, At the time of its composition, Johnny Spielt Auf seemed the height of novelty and notoriety.
Two technical advances, a wireless radio and a real locomotive, eat your heart out, Robert Wilson, are featured on stage, and the story touches on a scandalous subject, entanglements between a black jazz musician and white women. The plot itself concerns two thefts, of love and of a violin, and the ensuing craving for revenge.
The theft of the violin by Johnny, the black jazz musician from Daniello, the classical virtuoso, metaphorically questions the value of established musical idioms. In fact, Krenek apotheosizes Johnny in the final scene while he kills off the classical violinist. The libretto definitely casts America. This isn't Katherine anymore. This is me, folks. The libretto definitely casts America, represented by jazz, as the future, which is to be embraced.
The text of the last chorus is, The bell has rung, the old time goes, a new time begins now. Don't miss the glorious path. The crossing is announced into the unknown land of freedom. They're going to America here. The crossing has begun, the crossing has begun, and Johnny plays for us to dance. For now the mighty new world comes across the ocean and overpowers old Europe through the dance.
We're going to hear scene three, which is set in a Paris hotel. Johnny, the jazz musician, is making out with Yvonne, the maid of the opera singer Anita, who, after repulsing Johnny, is charmed by the classical violinist Daniello. Are you with me? The important thing is that Johnny, at the end of the scene, steals Daniello's violin.
A little historical note. Johnny Spielt Auf was premiered in 1927, one year before the Threepenny Opera.
[music: Krenek, “Johnny Spielt Auf,” “A hotel room in Paris”; Lucia Popp/Evelyn Lear/Thomas Stewart/Vienna State Opera Orchestra/Hollreiser]
Scene three of Johnny Spielt Auf by Ernst Krenek. Evelyn Lear, Lucia Popp, Gerd Feldhoff, Thomas Stewart, the Vienna Academy Choir and the Vienna State Orchestra, conducted by Heinrich Hollreiser.
I must say that Europeans seem to have had a very broad definition of jazz in those days. Listen to this little excerpt from later in the opera. What a relief! This is Johnny's Jazz Band, sings the chorus. This is Johnny's Jazz Band?
[music excerpt: Krenek, “Johnny Spielt Auf,” “The hotel terrace”; Lucia Popp/Evelyn Lear/Thomas Stewart/Vienna State Opera Orchestra/Hollreiser]
I suppose that's as close to jazz as the Mikado is to Japanese music. Now, regular listeners to this show know that I'm pretty easy going about nomenclature. I refuse to get into fist fights over names. If you want to insist that some passacaglia is actually a chaconne, that's fine with me. It's a chaconne. Whatever. I use the term jazz pretty broadly myself. Ragtime, blues, big band, all sorts of stuff.
But even I, even good old a rose by any other name would smell as sweet I, am flummoxed by what some Europeans have called jazz. Our tidbit today is the first number of a work called Jazz Suite No. 2. Got that title? Jazz Suite No. 2. Okay man, count it off. One, two, one, two, three.
[music: Shostakovich, Jazz Suite No. 2, March; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Chailly]
Hey man, take it!
[No speech for 140 s.]
If that's jazz, I'll eat my pork pie hat. The March from the Jazz Suite No. 2 by that old hipster Dmitry Shostakovich. I guess sometimes jazz just means non-heavy-duty classical. The subtitle of that piece is Suite for Promenade Orchestra. Riccardo Chailly conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Well, we have time for another tune. But before we do that, I just want to announce that I have figured out the anagram for Conlon Nancarrow. You see, when he lived down there in Mexico City, they had a great big gun that they used to use to protect the city. But finally, it got completely grooved and bent out of shape and it just wouldn't shoot the ammunition straight.
So they decided to use it for peaceful purposes and plant plants in it, flowers. And since it was now being used for peaceful purposes, Conlon Nancarrow wrote a Christmas song about the old gun. And it was called the Worn Cannon Carol.
Okay, we're going to go back to Scott Joplin. Before we do, I'd like to say I just noticed that I didn't give the proper credit for the Sunflower Slow Drag earlier in the program.
We're now going to hear Heliotrope Bouquet, a beautiful one by Scott Joplin and Louise Chauvin. And you know, listening to these rags in their orchestrated form, they sound a lot more European to me. In point of fact, Joplin considered his rags to be quite classical pieces, to be played like Chopin preludes, which some pianists do now.
And when you hear them orchestrated like this, I guess it really isn't that different from some of the things in the Shostakovich Jazz Suite No. 2.
[music: Joplin/Chauvin, "Heliotrope Bouquet" (Elite Syncopations); The Southland Stingers]
Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louise Chauvin, and that was The Southland Stingers with Ralph Grierson, arranged and conducted by George Sponholtz. That isn't an actual old arrangement from the early part of the century, but it's an arrangement done in that style. Played by Los Angeles cats. As a matter of fact, I see that Shelly Manne is playing that very hip drum part.
Okay, we're gonna go out with a little rag I like to play. Gonna turn around here to the authentic instrument and play the Gang of Wolves rag.
[music: a ragtime introduction played by Schickele at the keyboard, leading into the theme]
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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. 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 99.
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.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
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.