You can listen to this episode on the Internet Archive, and follow along using a transcript.
[This is a machine-generated transcript, cleaned up and formatted as HTML. You can download the original as an .srt file.]
| And now, Schickele Mix. Ready, Mr. Schickele? Hey, man, I'm readier than Eddie's brother, Freddy. Here's the theme. | |
| [No speech for 15s.] | |
| 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 the good news is that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station. | |
| The program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. I'm a little, I guess I should apologize, folks. | |
| I'm a little bit disorganized here because, well, I do work on these shows right up to the last minute, I must admit. And this one seems to have taken a bit of a left turn here. And I'm not sure. I mean, if I follow this track. If I follow this tangent that has reared its interesting head, then I probably can't use the program title I was going to use. See, this show is going to be about influences. | |
| And I was going to start out with a little quasi-sweet or whatever, a piano piece by a famous American composer preceded by two excerpts from pieces whose language probably influenced, I don't mean necessarily those specific pieces, but the language of the composers of the two excerpts, influenced the third composer. | |
| You with me here? Well, let's go ahead and do it. Let's do it anyway. And we'll just see where we end up. Two excerpts from pieces by highly influential composers, followed by a complete piece that seems to show their influence. See you in seven minutes. | |
| [No speech for 423s.] | |
| All right. First, we heard part of the story of Our Town from Aaron Copland's Our Town Suite. Then part of Claire de Lune by W.C. | |
| And then Single Petal of a Rose by Duke Ellington from the Queen's Suite. The pianists were Eric Parkin, Martin Jones, and Joseph Smith. | |
| Okay, this program, I've done some others about the influence of jazz on classical music, and this one was going to be about the influence of classical music on jazz. | |
| Now, aside from the fact that the whole harmonic basis of jazz is mostly out of European models, there's no doubt that the music of Debussy and Ravel had a tremendous influence on jazz pianists, especially when they play ballads. I know I'm not the only person who sometimes gets a bit tired of that. As a matter of fact, jazz pianists who play lean and tough when it's up-tempo and then get very mushy and sentimental in the ballads. Little sidelight here, by the way. Debussy himself tried to block publication of his early Sweet Bergamask, which was a very popular piece. Which includes Clair de Lune. | |
| Anyway, the particular Ellington piece we just heard was written in the 1950s, and it has some of the sort of Americana-type harmonies that are associated with Copland as well. By the way, in talking about these influences, I don't mean at all to ignore the fact that Ellington was an extremely influential composer himself, although probably more through his band than his piano. | |
| But here's the thing that's... that's come up, that got me thinking as I was putting that group together. You see, I decided to stack the deck a little bit. I decided to emphasize the classical side of Single Pedal of a Rose by using a recording on which it's not played by Ellington, but by a classically trained pianist. The notes are Ellington's, but Joseph Smith plays it much more serenely than Ellington does. The Duke plays it more forcefully, at least on the recording I've heard. And that brings up a whole area that, well, I mean, it's obvious, but I hadn't planned to delve into it, really, and that's that when you're dealing with the fascinating, sometimes hard-to-define boundary between jazz and classical, you're not only talking about what notes are played, but also how they're played. And I don't just mean swinging the eighth notes, either. There are a lot of crossover albums around now on which big classical names get together with big jazz or pop names, and the purists... ...say, man, those classical cats just cannot swing. And it's true that sometimes the eighth notes sound more like Lawrence Welk than Lester Young. Bum-ba-dum-ba-dum, bum-bum-ba-dum, bum-ba-dum, bum-ba-dum. Lawrence leaps in. But it's more than that. | |
| It's the whole way the tone is produced, and especially with pianists, the way notes are accented. Let's face it, two different classical pianists can play the same Beethoven piano sonata, very differently. But here, we're talking about night and day, apples and oranges, hammocker and schlemmer. I got out a couple of albums while the music was playing there, and I'd like to lay a pair of Thelonious Monk tunes on you. Actually, one's an original and one's a standard, but I mean they're both Monk improvisations. The notes are pure melodious thunk, as his wife called him. But one of them is Monk playing, and the other is a transcription being played by a classical pianist. Your mission, should you be the kind of person who accepts missions this easy, is to figure out which is which. | |
| [No speech for 363s.] | |
| Ruby, my dear, and I should care. The first transcription of a beautiful monk solo of a monk tune was played by Alan Feinberg, and the second was Monk himself. | |
| I didn't mean to be arrogant back there about being so easy. You know, if you don't know Monk's music, it's perhaps not that easy, except that I've never heard a classical pianist play the way Monk plays. | |
| I mean, Monk's piano playing, like comedy, is not pretty, even by the aggressive standards of hardline post-bop New York. He punches notes, he stabs them, sometimes he seems to miss them altogether, and you can feel him thinking, building the house brick by brick, considering the possibility. | |
| Whereas you don't have that feeling with the transcription. It's a finished piece being recreated, and you can tell. I'm not saying that's necessarily bad, but it doesn't sound like Monk. Alan is not only a Feinberg, he's a fine pianist as well, and he wisely avoids trying to mimic Monk too much, which would probably sound grotesque. | |
| There's a real, actually, you know, there's a real philosophical divide on this question. My friend Tom feels that transcriptions of, you know, of his music are a great way to show that jazz solos shouldn't be played. | |
| They're improvisations, and they lose their spontaneity when they're recreated. Other people say, hey, jazz musicians are composers. When great jazz musicians play solos, they're composing great music. | |
| No reason it shouldn't be played in concert halls, just like the waltzes that Schubert improvised and then wrote down. Now, I could tell you which side is right, but I think that the wise parent lets his children figure these things out for themselves. And the ability is important too. | |
| My name, as if I had to tell you, is Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. | |
| I don't know what this particular show is called. We're talking about jazz composers being influenced by classical music, but we've also gotten off on this thing about the different playing styles of the two fields. And there are differences, even though there's no homogeneity. There's no hierarchy within either field. | |
| Bill Evans had a lighter touch than most classical pianists, and I'll bet Prokofiev could out-pound the king of boogie-woogie. There are plenty of jazz musicians who couldn't stand Munk. I remember back around 1960, I guess Munk had been winning the Downbeat magazine poll, and Oscar Peterson fans were writing letters saying, it's about time that the piano category was won by somebody who can actually play the piano. | |
| Of course, what's nice about not being a pole is, you don't have to choose. I consider myself a Munk fan, but he can tire me out. Unfortunately, I do regret that when I could have gone and seen him, I wasn't a fan. Man, you've got to carpe that old diem when you can. Here's another pair of piano pieces, one by a classical composer, the other by a jazz man. In this case, the jazz man is very influenced by classical music. Both of these pieces are classical, really. But you can still hear the difference in how the players attack certain notes. | |
| [No speech for 216s.] | |
| Pascal Roger playing the second of Poulenc's three perpetual motions, and Chick Corea playing the fourth of his own children's songs. I mean, they weren't written by his own children, they're children's songs written by him. And very affecting they are, too. Here's another example of a jazz man writing a classical piece, that is, a piece without improvisation and intended to be played by classical players, except that he includes himself in the ensemble. And this is a beautifully subtle illustration of the different playing styles. This little piece is in two parts, the only difference between them being in instrumentation. The composer plays baritone sax in the first half and lays out in the second. Listen to how his lines, which he swings ever so slightly, sound when they're played as written by the classical cats. | |
| [No speech for 131s.] | |
| The third movement of Jerry Mulligan's Octet for Seacliff, played by the composer and the Seacliff chamber players. Very tasty little morsel. Second half just like the first, except that the orchestration is different and the harmony is filled out a bit. And Mulligan plays with such a beautifully delicate lilt. So the contrast between the two sections consists not only of changed orchestration and filled out harmony, but also the straightening out of the melody line into completely even notes. I assume that if he had wanted the oboe et al. | |
| or whatever his name is, to swing the melody, he would have told them. Maybe they tried it and it didn't work. Idiomatic swing, as we've said before, is not easy to pick up. It involves an uneven articulation as well as rhythm. | |
| It might not even sound right on those instruments. Actually, probably Jerry Mulligan wanted that more classical sound for the second half. But some composers want classical instruments to swing. What a problem. Here's one solution. Have two completely different orchestras. One for the classical parts and one for the jazz parts. | |
| [No speech for 387s.] | |
| Beat Me Daddy 8 to the bar. Fritz Reiner conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Sauter-Finnegan Orchestra in the first movement of Rolf Lieberman's Concerto for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra. | |
| A work written in the 12-tone system, a very mathematically oriented system, pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg, which presents an interesting conundrum. Improvisation is regarded as being central to jazz, but it is impossible to imagine anyone improvising in the 12-tone system. Bobby Fischer, maybe, at turtle-like tempos. | |
| So, either you allow for free solos or dispense with improvising. Of course, there's no reason that a jazz-like piece has to be what purists would call jazz. I've got to read you part of the United Press Dispatch covering that concert. The headline is, Long Hair's Hepcats, Dig That Crazy Combo. | |
| Chicago, November 19th. The orchestra hall rocked last night when long hairs and short hairs harmoniously, quote, blew their brains out, end quote, before a flabbergasted but appreciative public. A mixed crowd of hepcats and classicists heard the cacophonous exposition and voiced their approval by giving conductor Reiner and his orchestra one of the longest ovations ever to be heard on Symphony Night in Orchestra Hall. This has got to be the early 50s or something. That language, the hepcats and long hairs and short hairs. | |
| Anyway, throughout the piece, Reiner swayed to and fro on the podium and gave the impression of enjoying himself tremendously. After the performance, he said he saw a great future for this new type of music. He added he felt this amalgamation would do a great deal to unite both long hairs and short hairs and would, in the long run, do much to raise the public level of musical appreciation. So, do you think it's done that? I mean, this is the long run. It's been over 40 years. | |
| And what is the public level of musical appreciation? Well, look at yourself. What are you doing? You're listening to Peter Schickele on the Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. So, actually, I guess we're doing a pretty good job of coming up with musical examples that illustrate both the influence of classical music on jazz composers and the unignorable difference in playing techniques. | |
| Now, let me say, it's not that there are no players who can do both, by the way. But if you make unwarranted assumptions either way, disappointment will be your lot. | |
| Still haven't thought of a title for today's show yet, but there's still time. You know, even the instruments may be different between jazz and classical. I mean, the instruments that seem to be the same may not be. | |
| Different kind of cup on the brass mouthpieces, different strings on the string basses, differently shaved reeds on the clarinet. So it's... Oh, man. I wish I could turn this thing off. | |
| Hello? That's right. Well, not every jazz tune ever written, but... Sure, sure. I know Green Dolphin Street. Dee... | |
| Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. | |
| Um, hello? Wait a minute. How could the phone ring when it was off the hook? Uh, yeah, I heard you. Yeah, extreme provocation. Very funny. So anyway, what's the point? | |
| Well, you know, that's not bad. | |
| That's good for the back-and-forth classical jazz influence aspect, but I do think that the title also has to take into account the point about how most musicians can't play really well in both styles, you know. | |
| Hey, I like that. That's not half bad. As a matter of fact, I think I'll use it. Thanks a lot. Okay, bye. | |
| All right, folks. The name of today's show is Green Dolphin is a Two-Way Street, but It's Got a Median Strip. | |
| Pretty catchy, huh? That's a load off my mind. Okay, here is a pair of cross-pollinated pieces with interesting pedigrees. | |
| The first one, to me, is basically a classical piece. It sounds completely written out. It threatens to swing, but never really gets it on. In fact, let's see. | |
| It often doesn't even have a strong feeling of the beat in the usual jazz sense of you lay it down and I'll walk on it. | |
| But it's written for jazz orchestra, and not only do they have saxes, they simply play differently. You won't hear trumpets like this in your typical symphony orchestra. The second piece, on the other hand, is part of a very jazz-oriented symphony written in the 30s by a famous jazz musician, but scored for classical symphony orchestra. I'll be back in about seven minutes. | |
| [No speech for 330s.] | |
| Yes, indeed. | |
| First, we heard a piece called Spirals by Frank Marks, played by Stan Kenton and his Innovations Orchestra around 1950. | |
| They actually toured with charts like that. It's a long way from In the Mood. Then came the first movement of the Harlem Symphony, written in 1932 by James P. Johnson, remembered now principally as the father of stride piano, the teacher of Fats Waller and Duke Ellington, and the composer of The Charleston. That was performed by the Concordia Orchestra under the direction of Marin Alsop. That movement is called A Subway Journey, and the liner notes say that it opens with a majestic introduction as the train pulls out of Penn Station. | |
| The train passes 110th Street, the Jewish neighborhood, through 116th Street, Spanish neighborhood, and 125th Street, shopping district. | |
| Finally, cruising into 135th Street, Negro neighborhood, the train ambles back down 7th Avenue Promenade and finally returns to Penn Station with a recapitulation of the opening theme. | |
| Okay, we have time for one more piece here. I'm going to give you a little riddle here. This is a piece called Dance, and it's for clarinet and piano, bass, and drums. But there's something interesting about the piano part here. See if you can... figure it out. | |
| [No speech for 245s.] | |
| Dance, by David Baker, James Campbell clarinet, and this is from an album, James Campbell album, called After Hours. And he has two kinds of accompaniment on the album. He has Stefan Lemela playing with him on the classical pieces, and the Gene DiNovi trio, Gene DiNovi on piano, Terry Clark on drums, and Dave Young on bass in some of the jazz-oriented pieces. And the little trick here is they do the old switcheroo in the middle of this one. | |
| The classical pianist plays on the outer sections, and that middle Latin section, old Gene DiNovi slips onto the piano bench. We are out of time. But I tell you what. Let's go out with Duke Ellington himself playing his single pedal of a rose. | |
| [No speech for 22s.] | |
| 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. | |
| And not only that, our program, having been deemed airworthy, 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 the radio, and how to get it on the radio. We'll also have a link to the program on today's program with album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is Program 101. | |
| 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 70s.] | |
| 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, MN 55403. | |
| PRI, Public Radio International. | |