And now, Schickele Mix. Ready, Mr. Schickele? Yes, uh-huh, that's right, I am. Yep, 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 although I've done it many times before, it's always 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 top-notch, I'll say it again, top-notch radio station whose top brass repeatedly, time after time, again and again, provide me with the wherewithal to make yet another installment of this intellectual tryst that you and I share, this ongoing weekly tête-à-tête, which, as intimate as it is, is blabbed all over the place.
As an instrumentalist, I've always been known more for my fearlessness than my finesse. As a teenager, I actually practiced the piano and bassoon every day, but I also played saxophone in a dance band occasionally, and my grandfather's tuba was in our basement, so I fooled around on that enough to get a little one-time gig in an ambulatory polka band during a fair celebrating the founding of Fargo, North Dakota, and my best friend played trumpet. I can still do the fingerings for most of the trumpet parts I write, but you wouldn't want to hear me. My tone sounds like a wet wash rag in a bowl of gumbo. And I played the old Albert System clarinet my mother still had from her college days. And I studied cello for a month, but it was too much trouble to carry around. And when my brother started playing square dances on the fiddle, I sometimes backed him up on string bass.
Now in some ways that was the easiest gig of all, because you don't have to use the bow and most fiddle tunes are in one of about three keys and the main notes of those keys are open strings on the bass, so you can go a long way without even using your left hand except to hold the thing up. And you get to watch people having fun dancing as opposed to playing in combos for frat parties The lights are too low for you to see the necking going on in the corner, and what you can see on the dance floor is guys bending girls over backwards so far that I don't see how they could walk afterwards. Maybe that was the idea.
And the other good thing about square dances was that sometimes the cake and cookies were homemade instead of coming from the day-old section of the supermarket shelves. But there is a downside to being a part-time square dance bass player.
Aside from having to carry what is essentially an extremely expensive and fragile ranch-style doghouse, you have to play for what feels like hours at a time. And if you don't do it every day, you lose the calluses on your fingers. And when you notice blood trickling down the strings, and you look out and see that your best friend is still three partners away from the one that he started with, you begin to suspect that that young blonde sitting over against the wall is Sissy Spacek, and she blames you for the fact that she's not dancing. A reel may go on for twenty minutes. That's not only a long time for a reckless amateur bass player, it's a lot of music, period. It's four or five times as long as your typical ballroom dance arrangement, your Glenn Miller arrangement. Man, it's half as long as Brahms' First Symphony, and he took years to write that. Whether it's a folk musician or a conservatory-trained composer, somebody has to make up the music that gets played at dances, and sometimes it feels as if it's being ordered by the yard. So one thing that almost all social dance music has in common is a highly sophisticated musical technique called repetition. In certain situations, the closely related technique, endless repetition, is used. Western musical notation employs two vertical lines to define a metric unit called a measure, or bar.
If you surround a group of measures with double bar lines with a pair of vertically aligned dots next to them in the middle of the staff, you have indicated that that section should be repeated. Now, I'm no expert in the history of notation, but my theory is that the two dots derive from the Cro-Magnon practice of holding up fingers to indicate how many times a passage is to be played.
Our first suite today is called The Band on the Stand. It has four numbers and they're all dance music. And you'll notice that just about everything that gets played, gets played again. Okay everybody, out on the floor. I'll see you in about nine and a half minutes.
[music: Praetorius, 6 Dances from “Terpsichore,” Volte (Dance Music of the High Renaissance); Collegium Terpsichore/Neumeyer]
[music: Trad., "Perrodin Two Step" (Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys); Steve Riley]
[music: Trad., "Krivo Horo"; A Harvest, a Shepherd, a Bride: Village Music of Bulgaria]
Great set. The band on the stand. Four bands, actually, playing music in which almost everything is repeated. We began with a wonderful old album that first came out in 1961, dance music of the High Renaissance, Michael Praetorius, a Volte from Six Dances from Terpsichore, played by the Collegium Terpsichore, conducted by Fritz Neumeyer.
And then the second one was the Cajun one, was Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys doing the Perrodin Two-Step. Third one, one of the great dance composers of all times, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a little Contra dance in G Major called Les Filles Malicieuses, Malicious Ladies. That was the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra playing without its conductor as usual. And then finally, that really wild one was from Bulgaria, naturally, it's the Krivo Horo, and that was the Pitov Orchestra, you remember them, don't you, that's the, you know, that's the band with Atanas Volchev on Godulka, and Rumin Surikov on Tambura, and Gospodin Tanev on Caval, and Nikola Altanov on Gaida, and Simeon Georgiev on Tupan, great Tupan player.
Okay, that was our first suite there. You know, I used to love being on the bandstand playing. But I do have one regret, and it's a big one. The combination of being a musician and shy about, you know, girls, meant that I almost never went to dances as a dancer. And I remain, to this day, El Dancer Lousy.
I used to dance a bit in the 60s when lights were low and consciousness was high and everybody did their own thing. But I really love real couple dancing. I'd love to be part of one of those old couples you see at resorts effortlessly gliding around the floor. I truly believe that dancing is right up there with singing and meditation. It's good for your body and good for your soul.
It's good for flirting, and it's good for affirming. And I really wish I weren't so self-conscious about it. I love Western dancing, too. My wife and I did step out a bit a year ago or so at the Cowboy Bar in Jackson, Wyoming. The floor was so crowded that nobody could see that I was Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called, If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Again. Now, in spite of all my ranting and raving back there, trying to exorcise my dance demons, repetition is, of course, not confined to dance music, nor can its origins be laid exclusively at dance music's door. Certainly one of the most basic musical forms in the whole world is the strophic song, a song in which the same music is sung to different lyrics, different verses.
The number of verses may vary from 2 to 99. How many bottles of beer there are on the wall depends on how long the hike is. Now the idea of picking one song to illustrate this genre seems ridiculous. Using my extensive knowledge of history and musicology, as well as my command of statistics, probability, and chaos theory, I would estimate that there are approximately 79.53327 million such songs in the world today, and each one of you knows at least dozens of them.
But I am going to play one for you, not because you don't know what a strophic song sounds like, but because I want to make amends for something I did on a previous show.
Way back on Schickele Mix number 106, now this is 114, I played the refrain of an Irish song as an example of using a counter melody as an accompaniment, but I didn't play the whole thing. And I've always regretted it, because it's such a great song. And so, ladies and gentlemen, here is a fine and incidentally quite charming example of the Cantus Versus, the strophic song.
[music: Stewart, "Take Her in Your Arms" (The Celts Rise Again); Andy M. Stewart & Manus Lunny]
Our tidbit today was Andy M. Stewart and Manus Lunny doing Stewart's song, Take Her in Your Arms. Of course, when you come right down to it, repetition is a basic part of almost all...
all music, and probably almost all art, especially non-narrative art. Patterns in rugs, rhyme schemes in poetry, recurring dance steps. Sometimes it's so subtle that it's not even experienced consciously, as in the repetition of a 12-tone row in serial music. Western classical music has a great deal of repetition, and here's an interesting question. Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that it's written down?
There's certainly much more repetition in a Mozart symphony than in a Duke Ellington chart, which is mostly given over to improvisation. The whole idea of improvisation goes against the idea of repetition. Well, I'd have to think about that some more, and you can too. Obviously, I loaded the dice a bit when I picked a Mozart symphony. There's much less repetition in Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire than in a Mozart symphony. In fact, it's amazing when you take a piece like Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik, you know,
[sung: Schickele sings the opening of Eine kleine Nachtmusik]
how much of it is repeated. I have a facsimile of his original manuscript for that piece, and I sat down and counted the number of measures that are written in the piece.
One movement of the work, by the way, has been lost, but that's beside the point. And then I counted the number of measures that are played in a performance. The great majority of measures in the piece are surrounded by repeat signs. And some sections, because of da capos, which means go back to the beginning and play part of the movement yet again, some sections are played three or four times. Some identical sections that are written out in modern editions were not written out by Mozart.
He uses a da capo indication. Anyway, I counted 365 bars in the score and 784 bars in a performance of the score. That means that Mozart actually wrote out about 46%, less than half, of what is played. And to get back to our opening topic, when Mozart was writing music for actual use in the ballroom, he had a system of repeats that reduced that percentage even more.
Let's face it, not only does the dance hall require a wagonload of music, but the audience is not going to be listening with the same concentration as they would at a concert, even in those days, when concerts were much more socially active. Our second suite is called the Write It Once, Play It Twice suite. Four pieces that are not dance music but nevertheless consist almost entirely of sections that are heard more than once.
And often, by the way, the repeated sections themselves contain two almost identical phrases. I shall return in about nine minutes.
[music: "Gaude virgo salutata" (An English Ladymass); Anonymous 4]
[music: Mozart, Serenade No. 10 in B Flat (KV 371), 1st Mvt.; Blaserensemble Sabine Meyer]
[music: Webern, "Variations for Piano, 2nd Mvt."; Maurizio Pollini]
[music: Sousa, "Nobles of the Mystic Shrine"; United States Air Force Tactical Air Command Band/Major Lowell E. Graham]
The Write It Once, Play It Twice Suite. We began with the Anonymous 4 album, an English Lady Mass.
That was the first cut on it, a sequence called Gaude Virgo Salutata, a medieval plainsong. And then we heard Mozart, the Gran Partita, or sometimes called Serenade No. 10, for 13 winds, and that was played by the wind ensemble Sabine Meyer, clarinetist.
And then, that was the last movement, by the way, and virtually everything is repeated until the end. It's interesting that what often happens in these pieces is you get everything repeated, maybe an intro at the beginning and then everything repeated, but then something different at the end. That happened with the plainsong with the Anonymous 4, and it happened with the Mozart. The third piece, the very short little piece for piano, was from the Webern Variations for Piano, Opus 27, and both halves of that little piece are actually in repeat signs, and for 12-tone music, for music of the Second Viennese School, it's extremely unusual, particularly, I think, for Webern.
And it's perhaps even more interesting that in this suite, which is made up of pieces that have a lot of repeats, the only piece that is completely within repeat signs is the one by Webern.
And then finally, we heard the United States Air Force Tactical Air Command Band, not one of your more compact titles for a group, playing the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, a march by John Philip Sousa. And that's conducted by Major Lowell E. Graham, Commander and Conductor. And those of you who know the P.D.Q. Bach album, Music for a Lot of Winds and Percussion, will be forgiven if that band sounds sort of familiar to you. How about that harp, huh?
Well, my name is Peter Schickele. Well, my name is Peter Schickele. And the show is Schickele Mix. And the show is Schickele Mix. From PRI, Public Radio International. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing again. You know, inveterate jokester that I am, I have perhaps overemphasized the role of laziness in the use of repetition.
Repeat signs are certainly a labor-saving device, but there's plenty of repetition in Western music that is written out. At least up to a point, people like to hear things they like more than once, especially if a certain amount of variation is used along with the repetition. We've dealt with larger sections so far, but here's a single theme that consists almost entirely of repetition.
It's eight bars long, and the second measure is a repeat of the first, the fourth of the third, and the sixth of the fifth. Then the second half of the seventh bar is a repeat of the first half, and the eighth bar is a one-time-only wrap-up. So it's A, A, B, B, C, C, D, D, E. Here it is.
[music: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F (BWV 1047), 1st Mvt.; Mainz Chamber Orchestra/Kehr]
A, repeat, B, repeat, C, repeat, D, repeat, E.
Okay, now some of those phrases end slightly differently than the first time they happen in order to, you know, make them go to the next phrase, but they are definitely basically repetitions. That was, of course, Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto. This theme is followed by a short, sort-of-contrasting theme that is not repetitious.
And then the rest of the movement alternates between material based on the two themes. Notice how often, when we're hearing stuff based on the first theme, one measure is followed by a repetition of that measure in all or some of the instruments.
[music: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F (BWV 1047), 1st Mvt.; Mainz Chamber Orchestra/Kehr]
The first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 with Günter Kehr conducting the Mainz Chamber Orchestra. Now here's another example of written out repetition. At the beginning of this symphony movement, every little idea we hear is repeated. A very brief transition to a new key, and the second section features much more variety and lack of repetition.
In fact, one of the ways we know that the transition section is transitioning is that it breaks the pattern of simple-minded repetition that holds sway up until then. By the way, I hope you know that in my book, simple-minded does not necessarily mean bad.
The first movement of Mozart's Eleventh Symphony, a delightful piece written when the little twerp was thirteen or fourteen years old. I can see it now. Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 3, The Story of Mozart's Eleventh Symphony. Sir Charles Mackerras and the Prague Chamber Orchestra.
Okay, now here's a much fancier kind of repetition. Many people think that this kind of music sounds completely formless. But if I play you just the first four phrases of this piece, I think that, Even if your idea of modern music is the waltzes that Johann Strauss Jr. wrote after the Blue Danube, even you will be able to hear that the second pair of phrases is a mirror image of the first. It goes backwards, right to the beginning.
[music excerpt: Webern, "Variations for Piano, 1st Mvt."; Maurizio Pollini]
That's repetition, but it's retrograde repetition. Rather arcane and usually hard to hear, but in this case very clear, if I may be permitted a bit of 12-tone poetry.
Let's hear all of this piece. It's less than two minutes long, mostly quite lyrical and even tender. And though it doesn't have obvious repetition like the Bach and the Mozart, you can feel the similarity of the shapes and the return to certain notes and the sense of déjà-heard. It's rigorous yet warm.
[music: Webern, "Variations for Piano, 1st Mvt."; Maurizio Pollini]
That was the first movement of Anton Webern's Variations for Piano. We heard the second scherzo-like movement earlier. That was, by the way, Maurizio Pollini playing. I think I forgot to say that earlier. Webern was smart in that his pieces tend to be very short and, at least in that piece, it doesn't strain my patience for the abstract quality of it.
We're coming to a close here. We're going to go out with the first movement of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. We won't hear all of it.
But I want you to listen to this piece because there's a lot of repetition in it but what Beethoven does is in the first place you're not sure when he's going to repeat and when he isn't. It isn't as predictable as it was in the Mozart and the Bach. And secondly although Beethoven is a composer who broke conventions a great deal and often wrote things out because he wanted to make some little change in it, nevertheless he uses a lot of repetition for a dramatic effect.
He'll repeat something over and over and over and over again for this sort of building up of tension. So it's a very different use of repetition. And in this piece, of course, the subtitle of the symphony is the Pastoral Symphony. It also, I think, has a sort of a dance connection because dance music, as we've seen, tends to have so much repetition.
This is Roger Norrington conducting the London Classical Players and we'll hear as much as we can of the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major.
[music: Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 in F, Opus 68 (“Pastoral”), 1st Mvt.; London Classical Players/Norrington]
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 114. 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: Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 in F, Opus 68 (“Pastoral”), 1st Mvt.; London Classical Players/Norrington]
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.