And now, Schickele Mix. Uh, Mr. Schickele, we're ready.
Oh, yeah, hold on just a second. Uh, here we go, and 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 it is good to express my gratitude for the fact that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By the National Endowment for the Arts And by this fine radio station right here on your dial I guess that really dates me, doesn't it?
Saying right here on your dial Anyway, this fine radio station right here on your digital readout Where they give me everything I need to do the show Which is then distributed all over by PRI, Public Radio International Well, actually they give me almost everything I need Now, as you regular listeners know, Schickele Mix is sort of like a really good retirement home for LPs.
They can live here, as hundreds of them do, and still make a meaningful contribution to society. But even I don't have occasion to play 78s very often. And this studio, although it still has a rotary dial telephone, does not have a turntable equipped for 78s. So, for today's show, I've had to bring in my old portable phonograph. It's a wind-up, you know, so you could bring it on picnics or take it to your friend's house if he didn't have a record player.
You used to have to, especially with the portable ones, you used to have to replace the needles fairly often. And during the Second World War, steel was so scarce that they used cactus needles for phonographs. But I still have some unused steel ones, so it should sound pretty good. I was 10 years old when World War II ended, living in Washington, D.C., and on Friday nights, my dad would take my brother and me to the movies. It was almost always a Western.
My dad grew up in Germany, but he used to play Indians with his friends when he was a kid. Because of a series of books by, I think his name was Karl May, but I may have that wrong, he was a German author who wrote about Indian life, even though I don't think he'd ever been to North America, much less lived with Indians.
My dad did not regard the Indians as bad guys, and our favorite westerns were the ones in which the villain was a rustler, or a wealthy ranch owner, or a banker, whoever was being played by Brian Donlevy, rather than the cowboys and Indians kind, where the U.S. cavalry saves the day. Of course, Indians were almost always played by whites in those days, and the presentation of Native American music was about as authentic as the casting.
When I was about 12, I loved listening to our copy of the original cast album of Annie Get Your Gun. And for me, like millions of other Americans, Indian music sounded like this.
[music excerpt: Berlin, "I’m an Indian Too" (“Annie Get Your Gun” Original Cast Recording); Ethel Merman]
Ethel Merman singing the beginning of I'm an Indian Too from Annie Get Your Gun. By now, the lyrics to that song are pretty embarrassing. And of course, what I really mean by that is that by now the lyrics are pretty embarrassing even to many white people. I assume they were always embarrassing to Native Americans. And the imitation of Indian music in the song is based on an inaccurate and condescending stereotype that had been around for a long time.
You know, one rhythm you just about never hear in real North American Indian music is bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Now, when I was a teenager, after the family moved to North Dakota, we made a trip one summer to Mesa Verde Park in southwestern Colorado. And in the gift shop there, I heard, for the first time, records of actual Navajo songs and dances.
And I bought some of them. And the amazing thing is that I still have a couple of those 10-inch 78s. Let me crank up the old phonograph here and play you one of them. This is a song called The Train to Gallop.
[music: Trad., "The Train to Gallop"; Mesa Verde National Park Team]
The Train to Gallop. A Navajo song recorded at Mesa Verde, or at least somewhere there in the Four Corners area, probably in the late 1940s or early 50s. Let me turn this thing off here. The crank comes out and fits in under these little clamps. Hey, it's no Walkman, but it's still a pretty nifty machine. It's about the size of a portable typewriter, if you remember what typewriters are. It's certainly smaller than some of the boom boxes I see being carried around.
So anyway, one of those records I bought at Mesa Verde had a song on it that I particularly loved. I memorized the melody, which was lucky since I seemed to have lost or broken the record itself. And decades later, I was still thinking about that song. I can't remember what it was called, but I do remember that the drum, instead of being continuous, stopped every once in a while, left out a beat, as in this Zuni song.
[music: Trad., "Zuni Pueblo Rainbow Dance Song"; Native American Traditions]
That's a Zuni Pueblo Rainbow Dance Song. Now, to get back to my beloved Navajo song, I had always wanted to use it in a piece, but I could never figure out how to imitate that strange sort of nasal but powerful texture of Navajo vocalizing. Also, in addition to using non-European intonation, some parts of the melody slide around, so you're not sure what the notes are, I mean in a classical music sense.
Well, finally, three decades after getting to know the song, when I got a commission to write my first string quartet, I figured out what other composers had figured out before me. You don't have to imitate the texture. You don't have to figure out how to reproduce the pitches exactly. You can devise your own texture, perhaps making it pointedly different from the original. And you can devise your own notes for the slidey sections.
In other words, I realized that there's not much point in trying to imitate the original as closely as possible. If you want to hear the original, then listen to the original. Instead of presenting the melody as an archaeological artifact, I used it as an inspiration for my own invention, and that freed me up, even though I stuck pretty close to the song as I remembered it. In place of a rather loud texture featuring a drum and strident voices, I had the cellist softly tapping a string with the wood of his bow, while the melody is played by the muted viola.
The effect is sort of like a memory of the Navajo song, or a dream of it. And it was probably this passage that gave me the idea of subtitling the quartet American Dreams.
I'd like to play that section of the piece. The Navajo song is interrupted, by the way, by a sort of a down-home waltz that's original. But before I do, I'd like to sing this song since I no longer have the record. Okay everybody, hey, no phone calls please, no complaints from the BIA, no hastily convened meetings of tribal councils. Let me just say right up front that I am fully aware that I cannot begin to do justice to this song.
But I want to sing it so that you can hear how it was transformed when it became part of that most European of genres, the string quartet. Because the Navajo singing style is so sophisticated and so different from any singing that I've ever done, I want to say quite seriously that I'm not trying to be funny here. I'm just going to sing the melody as well as I can and then play part of the quartet. Now let me move back from the mic a bit here. Okay, here goes.
[sung: Schickele sings the Navajo song as he remembers it]
The Audubon Quartet, playing part of the fourth movement of the String Quartet No. 1, subtitled American Dreams, by a man who was born in 1935 and whose parents gave him the name Peter Schickele I must say that that makes me very proud. You know, the fact that a mother and a father would name their child after the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called Exoticism Begins at Home. On other programs, we've dealt with composers who use folk material from traditions that are close to home, culturally speaking. Today we're talking about composers who use material from traditions that are culturally quite foreign. But exoticism doesn't necessarily have anything to do with geographical distance. During the years following my youthful infatuation with Annie Get Your Gun, I not only got some idea of what some Native American music sounded like, But I also got an inkling, and I know just an inkling, of what it's like to be an Indian in an Anglo society.
For instance, once must have been the summer of 1961 probably, I remember sitting in a bar somewhere in the middle of the desert, I suppose in Arizona. It was in the middle of the afternoon, no one in there but me and the middle-aged bartender. She put a bottle of beer in front of me and she said, We don't serve glasses. We get a lot of Indians in here, and you wouldn't want to drink out of a glass after they've used it.
Separations created and maintained by social prejudices can make music that's growing in your own backyard feel pretty exotic. Of course, exotic is a relative word. The French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote a piece called Oiseaux Exotiques, Exotic Birds. In the beginning of the published score, he listed all the bird songs he'd used, and one of his exotic birds was the North American Robin.
I feel extremely fortunate in having made quite a few sightings of that bird myself. Be that as it may, or conversely may not be, I think that the most interesting use of folk material by classically trained composers probably results when the composers quote the melody but don't try to imitate the whole texture, or when they imitate the texture but make up their own melody. Here's a pair of piano pieces that are almost a century old.
Like my quartet, but unlike Annie Get Your Gun, this music doesn't hang a sign on itself. It makes no attempt to ensure that if you heard it cold, you'd say, Hey, that's music about Indians. It just uses as inspiration what I assume is an actual Omaha song in the first piece and a Navajo song in the second.
[music: Farwell, "Pawnee Horses" (Music In the Grand Tradition); Ramon Salvatore]
[music: Farwell, "Navajo War Dance" (Music In the Grand Tradition); Ramon Salvatore]
Pawnee Horses and Navajo War Dance No. 2 by Arthur Farwell, played by Raymond Salvatore. As I said before, the fact that Native American melodies are used doesn't stand out in those pieces. But if you compare them with the typical, completely European-influenced American music of the first decade of the 20th century, and I, of course, exclude Charles Ives, who is definitely not typical, You realize that the exotic input here has made a difference.
You know, it's interesting that in the second one, based on a Navajo song, the phrases often stopped at the end in a rather unusual way, just like the phrases in the song I used, the drum would stop at the end of a phrase. But of course, in the long run, influence usually runs both ways.
For Tidbit Time today, we're going to hear a simple, affecting number by a Mescalero Apache who has been open to both Indian and Anglo or Euro-American musical traditions. It's called The Handshake.
[music: Ortega, "The Handshake" (Native American Traditions); A. Paul Ortega]
Recording: I was walking down the street, an Indian stopped me, a gray old man.
Recording: His inflamed, tearful eyes, thin lips, long worn fingers. Oh, how horrible, how poverty had disfigured this once happy creature.
Recording: He stretched out to me his red swollen hand and he whispered and moaned and groaned for money. I felt in all my pockets. No wallet, watch, or change could I find, 'cause I've left them all at home.
Recording: The Indian waited, and his outstretched hand twisted and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and confused, I seized his hand and pressed it. Don't be mad with me, brother, I have nothing with me. The Indian raised his bloodshot eyes to mine, and his thin lips smiled as they returned the pressure of my chill fingers.
Recording: Never mind, brother, he said. This, too, was a gift, he said. I, too, felt that I received a gift from my brother, a handshake.
[No speech for 68 s.]
Handshake by A. Paul Ortega. The music at the beginning and the end, which I think is just beautiful, is adapted from the Zuni Sunrise song. So here's Pete's Law number three. And someday I'll get around to making up numbers one and two. If you get two traditions close enough together, no amount of prejudice will keep them from eventually rubbing off on each other.
I went into the jazz department of a big record store recently, and what was coming over the speakers was Native American singing accompanied by electric instruments and modern drums. Let's face it, everything is attracted to everything else, as Fig said to Newton, and then, of course, Newton took all the credit and became famous. Speaking of famous, nobody recognized me in the jazz department of that store, but in the classical department, a clerk came up to me and said, Excuse me, but aren't you Sigourney Weaver? I took it in stride.
No, I said, but I did see Doodles Weaver perform with Spike Jones when I was a kid, and I think he was related to her. Actually, I'm Peter Schickele, host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Exoticism begins at home, but it doesn't necessarily end there. Now we're going to hear some European composers who, well, who kept track of what the Chinese were doing musically. That is, they were Chinese checkers. A little joke there. Not offensive, I hope. And speaking of that, I read a play review recently, and the critics said, great comedy is cruel.
I'm not sure I agree that that's always true, but it certainly often is, at least. And perhaps that's why comedy runs afoul of the sanctions of what is now called political correctness. And I think that's unavoidable. You can't kid somebody who has a lot less power than you do without generating resentment. And if you kid somebody with a lot more power than you, you'd better be ready to get a black eye. You know, in a way, it's a shame about Annie Get Your Gun.
Irving Berlin's score is very strong in its corny way. The lyrics are clever and the tunes are natural and sure and apt. But the audience's attitudes, not only towards Indians, but also women, have changed enough to make the show feel uncomfortable now. I don't think it's done much. But you know, it's always a matter of degree and tone. When Gilbert and Sullivan first produced the Mikado, there were complaints from the Japanese embassy.
But that hasn't kept it from becoming and remaining a classic. Making fun of people who are different from you must be as old as people. But the wise humorist acknowledges the possibility of warfare. When it comes to kidding, tone is as important as timing. Now, what could be a greater cliché for Chinese music than this?
[music excerpt: Ravel, "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges"; Jeanine Collard/Michel Senechal/Orchestre National de la R. T. F./Maazel]
The Child, from Ravel's The Child and the Sorcerers, bemoaning the disappearance of his China cup. The tone is so affectionate.
And here's the China Cup itself singing, using nonsense or humorous words like Mahjong, but the feeling remains affectionate, partly because, and I think this is important, the kinds of music being parodied in this excerpt, Chinese songs and American foxtrots, were both serious influences on Ravel, not just something he dragged in for a laugh.
The Chinese teacup will be followed by a piano piece called Pell Street, Chinatown, by a contemporary of Ravel. No slow boats here.
[music excerpt: Ravel, "L'Enfant et les Sortilèges"; Jeanine Collard/Michel Senechal/Orchestre National de la R. T. F./Maazel]
[music: Whithorne, “New York Days & Nights,” “Pell Street”; John Kozar]
An excerpt from Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, Jeanine Collard, with the Orchestre National de la R. T. F., which stands for what? Radio Transfusion French? Conducted by Lorin Maazel.
And then Pell Street, Chinatown, from New York Days and Nights, by the American composer and pianist Emerson Whithorne, played by John Kozar. Two gentle plays on the sound of Chinese music.
[music: 20th Century Fox fanfare]
And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your continuing edification and personal delight, Schickele Mix is going to trace, in front of your very ears, a Chinese melody through three, count them, three centuries. In the first half of the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Renaissance man approaching his middle age of enlightenment, published a Dictionary of Music, which, being French, he called Dictionnaire de la Musique.
In the appendices of that work, he notated a Chinese song called Air Chinois. It went something like this.
[music: Trad., "Air Chinois"; Peter Schickele]
Air Chinois, played on Schickele Mix's exclusive authentic instrument. Now, in the early 19th century, Carl Maria von Weber saw that dictionary entry and used that theme in his opera Turandot.
Then in the 20th century, Paul Hindemith, then living in America, wrote a piece based on themes by Carl Maria von Weber, one of which was, you guessed it, Our Old Friend, the Chinese Air. So that modest, unassuming song has traveled from China, to France, to Germany, and to Yale University. Who knows where it will show up next? Or when?
For me, the answer to the second question is in about 12 minutes.
[music: Weber, "Turandot, Overture"; The Philharmonia/Jarvi]
[music: Hindemith, "Symphonic Metamorphoses on a Theme of Carl Maria von Weber"; The Philharmonia/Jarvi]
The Chinese theme printed in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Dictionary of Music, followed by the Overture to Turandot by Carl Maria von Weber, And then the scherzo movement of Paul Hindemith's symphonic metamorphosis on themes of Carl Maria von Weber. The two orchestral pieces played by The Philharmonia under the baton of Neeme Järvi. Now, I got a little bit carried away in a circus-y sort of fashion there, announcing those pieces.
I think it is worth mentioning that that Chinese theme did lead Weber, particularly, I think, To write music that was not typical of his or anybody else's music in Germany in 1809. Hindemith, perhaps, not so much. We are almost out of time. I'm rushing a little bit here. I would like to show that this kind of influence is not restricted to classical music. We're going to go out here with a little bit of a Turkish folk song from the Turks on the Balkans.
This is called Koskum Var, followed by a cut from an LP by Karl Berger, the Woodstock Workshop Orchestra. And the tune is called Zeynebim, or something like that, and it is based on a Turkish folk song as well.
[music: Berger, "Zeynebim – A Turkish Folk Dance"; Karl Berger/Woodstock Workshop Orchestra]
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 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 110. 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.
[music: Berger, "Zeynebim – A Turkish Folk Dance"; Karl Berger/Woodstock Workshop Orchestra]
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.