Got a Feelin’ (DOHERTY/PHILLIPS) Performer: The Mama & the Papas If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears (MCA MCAD 31042)
Toccata et Fuga Obnoxia (P. D. Q. BACH) Performer: Dennis James P. D. Q. Bach: The Short-Tempered Clavier and Other Dysfunctional Works for Keyboard (Telarc CD 80390)
Le Sacre du Printemps (STRAVINSKY) Performer: piano roll supervised by Stravinsky, controlled by Rex Lawson Masters MCD 25
Le Sacre du Printemps (STRAVINSKY) Performer: The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York/Stravinsky Golden Legacy GLRS 107
Le Sacre du Printemps (STRAVINSKY) Performer: Boston Philharmonic/Zander Masters MCD 25
Rhapsody in Blue (GERSHWIN) Performer: George Gershwin piano roll/Denver Symphony Pops/Wayland Pro Arte CDD 352
Announcer: Coming up in an hour, following Schickele Mix.
Recording: Hello, and thank you for calling the WHQR Anniversary Hotline. You know what to do. Here's the beep.
This is Professor Peter Schickele, sole discoverer of the music of P. D. Q. Bach, and I take great pleasure in wishing WHQR a happy 20th anniversary and many more to come.
Announcer: Thanks, Peter. Now are you ready for your radio show?
I'm all wound up and I'm ready. 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. Now the bills for all this goodness are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this very radio station, which tolerates my presence long enough each week for me to hatch these culturally edifying audio eggs, which are then taken to market by PRI, Public Radio International.
Now, folks, I'm really sorry about this, but I have to ask your indulgence while I make a phone call. Naturally, I try to take care of business before or after the show, or at least during the longer musical examples, but I'm really wondering what happened to a package that I was supposed to get delivered here in the studio.
Excuse me just a minute. Charlene? It's Peter. Man, you really have been on the phone. Where's my package?
No. And it's been almost an hour since you called.
Well, I've been here.
Okay, look, listen, I'm on the air now. Could you please see if you can find out what happened to it? You know, I'm curious to see what it is. Okay, thanks. And thank you, patient listeners. Hey, I don't get packages that often and, uh, well, anyway, we're going to start off today with a piece by Haydn. He published it under the title Allegretto per il clave cembalo o pianoforte. And I suppose that many a sweet young 18th century thing played it on her parlor harpsichord or piano.
But we are going to hear the work on the instrument for which Haydn originally wrote it.
[music: Haydn, "Allegretto, from an original musical clock"; Musical Clocks]
An Allegretto by Haydn, one of the 12 pieces he wrote for a musical clock made in 1793 by a friar named P. Primitivus Niemich. You remember good old Primitivus, don't you? He was a pupil and friend of Haydn's, and the latter presented that clock to his patron, Prince Esterhazy, as a memento. These clocks must have really been nice. Every hour, a different tune was played. There were 12 of them in all. Now, as you will have noticed, the musical clock of 1793 was not the tinkly fairy tale instrument of the 19th century. It was, in fact, a miniature pipe organ with a bellows powered by a spring or weights and played, as it were, by a cylinder with pegs in it, like that of a modern music box. There was a time when the most illustrious composers of the day, tunesters like Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Strauss wrote pieces for mechanical instruments.
Of course, nowadays, professional musicians worry about machines making them obsolete. I've spent many evenings sitting in a Holiday Inn bar somewhere in this great country listening to a young but already hardened singer in her sexy dress belting and crooning to the accompaniment of her young guitar-playing husband and a dorky drum machine. Although I must say, even decades ago, some of those drum machines were already pretty sophisticated.
I remember a jazz organist in a club in Denver who had a two-channel drum machine with stereo speakers and one of his show-stopping routines, along with lifting the organ with his knees while he played, was interrupting a tune with a Battle of the Drummers.
He'd stop playing the keys completely and just manipulate the controls as he alternated channels, and the adrenaline level in the room would rise until it was almost as if Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa were up on the stage. Although their use now is often dictated by financial considerations, musical machines have been a hit at least since the Renaissance. Here's a mechanical virginal.
[music: Anon., "A piece for an automatic virginal"; Divisions, compiled by David Fuller]
An anonymous piecelet played on, or rather by, a 17th century mechanical harpsichord.
Now, even though a lot of music was written specifically for these musical Frankensteins, they were also used as a way to enjoy the latest hits, even if you couldn't afford your own orchestra, or even if you could afford your own orchestra, but didn't want them in the bedroom with you when you retired with your wife or your mistress. But sometimes you did have to adjust your standards, fidelity-wise and performance-wise speaking.
In the early days of phonograph recordings, people were so entranced that they were willing to put up with tinniness and scratchiness and wobbliness while you wound it up halfway through and interruptedness in the case of longer pieces. And I'm sure you've known people, maybe you're one of them, who will watch TV even if the picture looks like it was shot during a blizzard or on the high seas during a storm.
Well, even allowing for the fact that an early 19th century musical clock may no longer be in a good state of repair, still, there's quite a difference between these two renditions of the Overture to the Marriage of Figaro.
[music: Mozart, "Le Nozze di Figaro," Overture; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra/Levine]
[music: Mozart, "Le Nozze di Figaro," Overture; Divisions, compiled by David Fuller]
The Overture to Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, played first by James Levine and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and then by a musical clock from around 1830. Not only are the clock's pins in need of adjustment, but it only has 22 notes, so some pitches had to be changed, sometimes to startling effect if you know the piece, and the piece had to be significantly shortened to fit 10 revolutions of the cylinder.
I assume that the cylinder with the pins sticking out of it moves sideways as it revolves. By the way, those runs, dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee, if they sounded a little uneven, if they sounded dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee, that wasn't just because of the bad state of repair of the instrument. This was a French instrument, and the French often swung eighth notes. Instead of playing dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee, they would go dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.
So presumably that was reflecting a performance practice of the period. I'm not saying that Mozart played it that way. There was one popular kind of mechanical instrument, you still see them today, that was housed in the base of a birdcage containing a mechanical bird.
[music: Anon., "A piece from a mechanical bird"; Musical Clocks]
Such machines were used not only to imitate birds, but sometimes to teach birds, like finches, new songs. By the way, you know, Mozart had a bird for a while there. I think it was a starling, maybe, that he wrote songs for. Anyway, during the 19th century... Excuse me, please. Hello? Hi, Charlene. Did you find the package?
You're kidding. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hold on. I can't believe this. You're telling me that there's a vocal recital going on in the big studio and my package is being used to prop up the piano lid? Who did you give it to? Well, that figures.
Okay, look, would you please just let me know as soon as that thing is over? I'll bop over and get it during a piece or something. You know, I'm really anxious. Okay, right. Thank you.
Man, there's a certain guy at this station, I won't say his name, but giving him something to deliver is like chicken delight hiring a fox to make deliveries. Forget it, you're never going to see it again. Anyway, let's hear some later 19th century mechanical instruments. First, a musical clock, and then an orchestrion, one of which you might have in your home if you had a great deal of money to spend on domestic entertainment. It's sort of the music box equivalent of wall-sized TV. Here are two chart toppers, one by Strauss and one by Lehar.
[music: Strauss, Jr., “The Blue Danube” from a picture clock; Musical Clocks]
[music: Lehar, “The Merry Widow,” “Women’s March” played by an Orchestrion; Musical Clocks]
The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss, Jr., and the Women's March from Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow, the latter played by a large mechanical instrument called an orchestrion, which, as you can hear, has a lot of percussive effects on it. I must say that the end of that march wanders a little bit. I don't think that Women's March was, you know, a meeting of the WCTU. That's a great name, isn't it? Orchestrion. It's certainly a better name than Peter Schickele, although I guess it's true that Orchestrion Mix is a bit of a tongue tester compared to Schickele Mix, which is coming at you from PRI, Public Radio International. We're listening to mechanical instruments today. The show is called Leave the Playing to Us. You supply the instrument, we'll supply the performance. Anyone can play. No training required.
All you need is money. The best things in life may be free, and they may come in small packages, but they don't make a noise like this.
[music: Anon., "A piece from an Orchestrion"; Musical Clocks]
[music: Thys (arr.), "Marsala Rumba from a mechanical dance organ"; Gaudin et Cie]
Two examples of the top end of the mechanical instrument line. Neither the title nor the composer of the first piece is known, at least to the compilers of this LP, and therefore to me, but it was being played by an orchestrion built in Vienna about a century ago. The second piece was the Marsala Rumba played on a huge mechanical organ that took up one whole end of the dance hall for which it was built in 1920.
This thing has over 1,200 pipes, plus chimes, xylophone, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, wood blocks, not one, but two wood blocks, and triangle. This is a particularly grand example of the kind of instrument that has become associated with merry-go-rounds.
Now, there used to be a kind of... Excuse me. I've got to get this. Hello? Great. Great. I'll be right over. Thanks. Bye. Looks like I'll finally get my mystery package. And while I do that, I'm going to lay a tidbit on you. I'm going to move ahead to the 1960s here and play you a sweet song that I'm very fond of in spite of its impeccable easy listening credentials. It's got a nice tune, fresh chord changes, and felicitous voice leading or counter melodies, or whatever I mean. But the reason I'm playing it for you is that it has this nifty sort of clockwork accompaniment figure that I've never been able to figure out what is. I mean, what instruments are playing it? Is it really mechanical or is it just played to sound mechanical? And in either case, what is it? You can hear it very clearly at the beginning and the end. I'll be back in a few minutes.
[music: Doherty/Phillips, "Got a Feelin'" (If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears); The Mamas & the Papas]
Anyway, that was The Mamas and the Papas with Got a Feelin', featuring a very cool and to me mysterious kind of ticking accompaniment figure. Meanwhile, I finally have my package. In fact, I just barely got back in time here. The back door to the big studio was locked, and I had to go all the way around by the employee lounge there. It's from my grandmother. I don't quite why, but let's see what it is here.
I wonder what she's sending. Okay, here's a card. It says, Dear P.D. She's a very dear lady in spite of the P.D. business. Dear P.D., I'm sorry to have missed your birthday this year, but I was in the hospital. I know how much you like music, so I hope you enjoy this little gift. I got it at the Hallmark store that your cousin Bertha's friend Nancy runs. Many happy returns. Love, Biddy. This is very nice of her. Let's see what it is. Hey, it's a music box. What do you know? Is this a coincidence or what? We're doing a program on mechanicals. Okay, let's see what it plays. I think it's the kind you just open the lid here. I guess it needs winding. Okay, here's the key on the bottom.
All right, let's try that again now.
[music]
Oh, that is so sweet. I know what it is. It's the middle movement of Anton Webern's Variations for Piano, Op. 27. How did she know that that's one of my favorites? I can't get over this. What a great granny. Let's play that thing again.
[music]
Oops, winding down here. Well, that is just the cutest present I've ever gotten. I mean, it does leave out the repeats, but still. Maybe I can hook this up somehow to a timer so I can wake up to it in the morning.
Okay, now folks, the thing about mechanical instruments is that they are programmed by people. That used to mean pounding pins into a cylinder or punching holes in a disc or a strip of paper, but now it can be done digitally. Next we're going to hear part of a work for theater organ by P. D. Q. Bach. It is performed on a beautiful privately owned instrument that is hooked up to a digital system that records not the sound, but the performance. That is, it records exactly when each key is played and each change in registration is made. Now, all the percussion you'll hear is part of that theater organ and played by depressing a key. But every organ is set up differently. And for technical reasons, Dennis James had to record the regular organ stops first and then go back and lay in some of the percussion things, overdubbing as it were, except that no sound was yet being recorded.
In fact, it was really weird. I was there while he was recording it. There was a lot of noise in the building while Dennis was playing, vacuum cleaners or whatever, but it didn't matter. He's playing away. You know, usually in recording sessions, everything has to be quiet. He's playing away, all sorts of noise going on. Then that night, when the building was quiet, the mics were turned on, a button was pushed, and, while Dennis sat around twiddling his thumbs, the organ reproduced his performance for the audio tape.
[music: P. D. Q. Bach, "Toccata et Fuga Obnoxia" (P. D. Q. Bach: The Short-Tempered Clavier and Other Dysfunctional Works for Keyboard); Dennis James]
Toccata et fuga obnoxia, from the Pechelbüchlein, the little pickle book for theater organ and an almost obsolete instrument called the Dill Piccolo. Dennis James at the mighty console with the Dill Piccolo part performed by members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Stupid Funding for the so-called arts.
Don't ask. Buy the album and all will be made clear. The piece was written by P. D. Q. Bach and it was discovered and edited by Professor Peter Schickele, the very best friend of Peter Schickele, who's the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. Hey, leave the playing to us. We're talking about mechanical instruments. Are they friendly Frankensteins or soul robbers? Now this business of being able to mechanically reproduce a live unmechanical performance actually predates digital technology. From 18th century cylinders to 20th century piano rolls, there are ways to hear reproductions of performances either played or supervised by the composer. And this leads to some interesting information. For instance, the original metronome marking for the last section of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is quite a bit faster than orchestras have always played it, even when the composer was conducting. But on a piano roll that Uncle Igor supervised in the 1920s, the tempo is close to what he originally marked. In a very short section, it's a half a minute shorter than his own orchestral performance. When you hear the piano roll, followed by the orchestra barely hanging on for dear life even at the slower tempo, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that the slower orchestral tempo was a necessity, not a choice.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; piano roll supervised by Stravinsky, controlled by Rex Lawson]
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; The Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York/Stravinsky]
The composer supervised piano roll of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by the composer conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York in 1940, and as I say, they are barely getting through that thing. It's an incredibly sloppy performance.
When that piece was premiered in 1913 it was considered impossible to play. The best musicians of the day couldn't hack it. It's like Tristan. The first time Wagner tried to mount Tristan and Isolde, they had literally dozens of orchestral rehearsals and then gave up. But yesterday's no way is today's no sweat. Here's the last section of the Rite of Spring played by an orchestra up to the composer's original tempo indication, which is faster than he himself ever did it with the best orchestras around. It's very exciting, and it's played by a community orchestra.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; Boston Philharmonic/Zander]
Bravo indeed. Benjamin Zander conducting the Boston Philharmonic, an orchestra made up of amateurs, students and young professionals, in the last section, the Sacrificial Dance, from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Here's an interesting quote, slightly edited. Music has suffered irreparable losses. We should still be able to enjoy the playing of all the great musicians who enraptured their contemporaries if they had known the art of recording.
Their best works would have been preserved in a style of performance that we now know only through history. Guess when that was said?
1775. All I left out, aside from a couple of names, was, if they had known the art of recording, their best works, transmitted by themselves to posterity on unalterable cylinders, would have been preserved in a style of performance that we now know only through history. The idea of using mechanical instruments to study performance practice is a fairly new one. For instance, a lot of eighteenth-century ornamentation was not written down or was notated imprecisely, just as in jazz arrangements today.
In both cases, it's because the composer or arranger has assumed that the performers are familiar with certain embellishments, so why bother to write them out? And also because in those traditions, more freedom has been allowed the individual performer than became customary in most 19th and 20th century classical music. So for a performer or a musicologist, it's very interesting to listen to an 18th century mechanical organ whose programming was supervised by the composer.
They can hear exactly how he played his piece, long before audio recording was invented. This works particularly well on organ, since even a non-mechanical organ's keys are not touch sensitive in terms of loud and soft. But by the 1920s, there were player piano systems that were capable of recording and reproducing dynamic changes as well, of course, as tempo changes. In 1925, a year after he premiered Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin sat down at a duo-art player piano, which created a piano roll in direct response to a pianist's performance. First he played the orchestral accompaniment, then he went back and overdubbed, as it were, the solo piano part. Recently, some crafty folks figured out that if you covered up the holes in the piano roll that correspond to the accompaniment, you'd be left with just the solo part. Then, if you got a good, in-tune, well-maintained concert grand piano fitted with a duo art player system and put it in front of an orchestra, you could produce a modern digital recording of George Gershwin, who died in 1937, playing his Rhapsody in Blue in Blue with a modern symphony orchestra. It's sort of like Natalie and Nat King Cole, you know what I mean? Unforgettable, especially if you're used to the way this piece is usually performed. Okay, here's George Gershwin posthumously playing his Rhapsody in Blue with the Denver Symphony Pops under the direction of Newton Wayland. Listen to some of these tempos. They're so fast. I gotta admit, they seem too fast to me. Is that just because I'm so used to how it's usually done? But you know, it can be very tricky playing orchestral music on the piano, which is what Gershwin did first. Something sound okay played very fast on a piano, but not okay played that fast by an orchestra. I think the Stravinsky sounds great at the unusually fast tempo, but I'm not so sure about the Gershwin. Still it's fascinating rhythm, you know what I mean? And it's time to take this show on out. Let's let George do it.
[music excerpt: Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue"; George Gershwin piano roll/Denver Symphony Pops/Wayland]
George Gershwin playing piano in his Rhapsody in Blue. Sometimes very exciting, other times I wish somebody would slip him some Prozac. 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 111.
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]
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.