This is your public radio station, WHQR Wilmington. We're pleased to have a day sponsor for today. Today's programming on WHQR being made possible in part by a gift from Teak on Water Street, sellers of the finest Teak furniture in North Carolina. We thank them for their support. Peter Schickele, are you ready for your radio show? Professor, are you ready?
Okay, let's do a countdown. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, wait a minute, I have to use the other hand, five, four, three, two, one, 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's always a good idea to acknowledge one's benefactors. Our bills, that is to say, are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this finissimo radio station right here, within whose too, too solid walls I concoct these morsels of musical melangerie, whereupon they are distributed, via the wide blue yonder, to the far reaches of this fair and far-flung country, by PRI, Public Radio International.
The word scale can mean several different things. Scale means one thing to a mountaineer, it means something quite different to a weight watcher, it means something else again to a model builder, and it means nothing whatsoever to a gerbil. To a musician, however, the notes of a scale are the basic building blocks of melody and harmony. A scale is a way of dividing the octave, and it's usually presented as a succession of adjacent tones in ascending or descending order. Most of the music we hear is based on a seven-note scale. Half a millennium ago it was referred to as the Ionian Mode, now it's called the major scale,
[sung: the major scale, do to do, in solfège syllables]
The eighth tone I sang there has the same name as the first because it's not regarded as a completely new note, but rather as the first note transposed up an octave. We talk about the octave phenomenon on another edition of Schickele Mix, and we don't have the time to do it now, but just take my word for it. You could go on forever.
[sung: the scale continued upward through further octaves, in solfège syllables]
You could go right on up to the highest limit of human hearing, or even farther if you're into conceptual art. But you'd still be dealing with a seven-note scale. By the way, I guess I should mention that tones that lie between adjacent scale tones are sometimes used for color, but they're not regarded as basic scale steps.
Now you can tune those scale steps any way you want. If you play the white notes on a piano from C to C, or should I say from C to Shining C, that's the major scale. Here, let me turn the authentic instrument on. I'll pick one of the good piano settings here. Let's see. Let's choose the Black & Decker 9-foot Concert Grand. Okay, here's a major scale. Now remember, in our culture, when you're playing a scale, it's traditional to include the octave transposition of the first note. In other words, when you demonstrate a seven-note scale, you're going to play eight notes.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
The major scale. White notes of the piano starting on C. If you play the white notes starting on A,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
that's one kind of minor scale. But a scale doesn't have to have seven steps. If you play all the piano keys, white and black, within an octave,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
that's a 12-note scale called the chromatic scale. By the way, chromatic. Remember how I said that those in-between notes were often used for color? It's no accident that the scale that includes all the color notes is called the chromatic scale. I'm telling you, it helps to have a good background in entomology. Anyway, one of the most common scales in the world has five notes.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Now many people, if you just play the notes of a pentatonic scale as I just did, many people think of Chinese music. And it's true that a lot of Chinese music is based on pentatonic scales.
[music excerpt: "Fishing Boats Singing in the Night" (Music from China); Chinese Blossom Orchestra]
That's the beginning of Fishing Boats Singing in the Night, composed by M. Lim and performed by the Chinese Blossom Orchestra. It's a very characteristic sound of that area of Asia, and it has often been imitated by European composers for exotic effect, and parodied as well, as in the overture to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
[sung: a phrase from the overture to The Mikado]
But I'll bet that everyone listening to this program knows at least several melodies that are pentatonic, but they don't sound Chinese at all. Like this one, for instance.
Pamela Warrick-Smith singing the first verse of Amazing Grace, which is a completely pentatonic melody. Speaking of entomology, by the way, penta, of course, is the same prefix as the beginning of the word pentagon. So pentatonic literally means quinine water used by the military.
Did I get you there? I mean, for just a minute or a second or two, huh? Well, of course, I was just pulling your leg there ever so gently. In this context, tonic means having to do with tones, so pentatonic actually means military music. Now, it's easy to tell if a tune is pentatonic because of the way the intervals in pentatonic scales are arranged. If you can play it on the black keys of the piano, it's pentatonic.
Let me swing around to the authentic instrument here. Amazing Grace, for instance.
[music: keyboard demonstration, "Amazing Grace" on the black keys, Schickele singing along]
We just heard it, but I just want to show you.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
All black keys. Or, okay,
[music: keyboard demonstration, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" on the black keys, sung by Schickele]
Okay, and let's see. There's Goodbye, Old Paint.
[music: keyboard demonstration, "Goodbye, Old Paint" on the black keys, sung by Schickele]
or whatever it is. I don't remember how the rest of that goes, but anyway, it's all black keys, take my word for it. Um, okay, now here's one that's almost all pentatonic. Those of you who are my age or older, do you remember Buttons and Bows?
[music: keyboard demonstration, "Buttons and Bows"]
Now that note right there, that is not a pentatonic note, that's a white key, that F there.
And so that's an example of a tune that is almost pentatonic but not quite. I think Buttons and Bows was from a Bob Hope movie, wasn't it? Was it from Paleface, maybe? The pentatonic quality was supposed to make the tune sound a bit like American Indian music, which is sometimes pentatonic. Be that as it may or may not be, it's Tidbit Time here at the old Black Key Ranch, and today's tidbit is an anthropological field recording of some natives performing their indigenous music. They did not know that they were being recorded, by the way, so this performance is completely spontaneous.
[music]
Recording: So I'm like, well, if you do meet me after school, I'll puke in your face. That's what I want.
Recording: Hey, buddy, what are you doing standing there? I'm just... What do you got under that coat? It's just a...
Two American folk songs, one of them completely pentatonic and the other mostly so, Played, except for the two non-scale tones, on the black keys of the piano in the cafeteria at the high school in my neighborhood. I wanted to record them surreptitiously to avoid any self-consciousness, and fortunately the principal of the school is married to my college roommate's older sister, so what could have been an ugly situation was resolved before it made the papers.
But you know, that may have been how the pentatonic scale started, you know? Well, I mean, four or five thousand years ago, a bunch of Sumerian teenagers fooling around on the cafeteria piano at Ur High, you know, that might explain why the pentatonic scale is so widely disseminated around the... Rats. I hate it when this happens. Hello?
Well, well, sir, I think that everybody knew that I was kidding. Oh yes, I was kidding.
Okay, I'll make that very clear. Okay, thank you, sir.
Well, there's a feeling in certain quarters that it might not have been obvious that I was just joking when I said that pentatonic meant military music. Of course, the prefix penta is the same as in the word pentagon, but that doesn't mean that it signifies anything military. It is, in fact, the same prefix as in pentameter, which, as some of you may know, is a device for measuring the amount of emotion that people have pent up inside them.
The well-known iambic pentameter is a special version of this device for use on people who think that they are ballpoint pens. Fortunately this disorder is rare. So the actual literal meaning of the word pentatonic, this is on the level folks, is musical tones used to express bottled up emotions. Now, people with bottled up emotions exist all over the world, and so do pentatonic scales.
In fact, until the communications explosion of the last century rendered isolation almost obsolete, the pentatonic scale was probably the most widespread musical scale in the world. I feel a suite coming on. And I ought to know. I'm Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. The show today is called Five Finger Exercises, and we're talking about the pentatonic scale.
We're about to hear five pieces from all over the world using five note scales. Now I should mention that the exact tuning of these notes is not necessarily the same in different cultures, but they're all close enough so that if you were to play these melodies on the black keys of our high school cafeteria piano, everyone from all over the world would recognize them. I call this suite Around the World in Five Tones. The trip lasts about 12 minutes.
[music: Trad., "Tsagaan Sar" (Pan Glossary #1); Melodies of the Steppes]
[music: Trad., "Mele O Lanakilakekiahial’I" (The Other Side of Hawaii’s Golden Treasure); George Naope]
[music: Trad., "Sigit"; Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia]
The amazing throat singing of the people of Tuva, northwest of Mongolia. Anyway, the Around the World in Five Tones Suite began with something from a Pan Glossary budget sampler here. That was Tsagaan Sar, White Moon, a song from central Mongolia dating from the 19th century about the Mongolian traditional celebration of White Moon, which goes back to shaman worship of the sky, performed by the ensemble Melodies of the Steppes. Jean Ritchie singing Old George's Square, a very sad sailor song. And then from Africa, something called Bwola, from an album,
Kikwabanga,
Songs and Dances from the Land of Ngali, which I think is Uganda now, and that was the Ndere Troupe, terrific stuff there. And then from Hawaii, a chant called Mele O Lanakilakekiahial'i. By the way, that only had four notes, not five, but it sounds a lot like pentatonic stuff. And then finally, this music from Tuva, this amazing throat singing.
It's important that you realize that that was only one person. According to the notes on the album here, these singers, by precise movements of the lips, they sing a very low, or actually there are different ways of doing it, but a low fundamental note, and then by precise movements of the lips, tongue, jaw, soft palate, and larynx, the singers can selectively intensify vocally produced harmonics.
So you're hearing the harmonics above. These are natural notes according to the overtone series. The notes that a bugle could play without any keys, or the notes that you get when you just lightly touch a string on a violin and bow it, rather than pushing the string all the way down. It's absolutely a beautiful and haunting effect. So now let's move on to yet another pos... Oh man, here we go again. Excuse me. Hello? Oh hello, sir.
Well, yes, let's see, ordinarily there is a dictionary here in the studio, but I was, actually I was looking for it earlier, and I think somebody must have borrowed it and not brought it back, I can't, that's right, penta, penta is the prefix, oh, you looked it up, five, are you sure, oh, I'm sorry, no, excuse me, sir, of course, if you looked it up, you know what it says, but, I don't know, it's just that, well, you know, in the modern romance languages, The low numbers are all related to the old Latin, like in Italian, you know, uno, duo, tre, quattro, and then five. Cinque, or French cinq, from quintus, quinque. It doesn't seem to have much to do with penta.
Oh, Greek? So you're saying that pentatonic means five tones?
Well, that does make a certain amount of sense because, in fact, there are five tones in a pentatonic. Yes sir, thank you sir. Well, you live and learn, and so do I. I still think it's weird, I mean, when you have five kids at once, they're called quintuplets, not pentuplets.
Well, anyway. Anyway. There's one thing I do know, and that's that the word pentatonic, which has given us so much trouble today, is pretty much always used to describe five-note scales that can be played on the black keys of the piano.
That is, it's that order of intervals, major seconds and minor thirds. But it is possible to construct other five-note scales that cannot be played on the black keys. Let's hear some more of that truly awesome throat singing from Tuva.
[music: Trad., "Medley of various throat singing styles"; Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia]
Throat singing from Tuva in Central Asia, with a plucked instrument and a Jew's harp accompanying. Now if you combine the lower sung notes with the overtone notes, you get this scale.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
This scale has exactly the same intervals as the usual pentatonic scale, three major seconds and two minor thirds, but in a different order. Instead of major second, major second, minor third, major second, minor third, this scale is major second, major second, minor third, minor third, and major second. That one little change of order renders the scale unplayable on the black keys. This note is a white key, and no matter how you transpose the scale, you cannot stay on the black keys and play it.
A more significant difference, the placement of black and white keys is, after all, more or less arbitrary, between this and the regular pentatonic scale is that the Tuvan scale has a tritone in it.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
This very striking interval, often regarded in Western music as unstable but therefore powerful, cannot be obtained playing only the black keys, in other words in a regular pentatonic scale. Listen to this beautiful unaccompanied Tuvan song. The first time I heard it, I experienced a delicious feeling of shock and surprise when the singer skips up a tritone, partly because I didn't know yet what the notes of the scale were.
I'm going to let Mr. Mongush sing two verses unaccompanied, and then I'm going to add a little bit of drone using notes that the Tuvans use themselves when they accompany their songs, and I think that you'll find that the high note, which sounds rather eerie when it's unaccompanied, sounds no less beautiful but perhaps less surprising when placed in the context of this deeply, physically rooted, natural, overtone-based scale of music.
[music: Trad., "Don’t Frighten the Crane"; Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia]
Sundukai Mongush singing a so-called long song with beautiful words, Don't Frighten the Crane, Jewel of the Steppe, Oh My Heart is Warming, Don't Rouse My Dear One, Don't Scare the Bird Swan, Jewel of the Forest Glades, Penetrating My Burning Heart, My Dear One, Don't Rouse Him. I am the culprit, if you're wondering about that uncharacteristic piano drone in there.
And my name is Peter Schickele. The program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Five finger exercises, pentatonic or five note scales. Let's get back to the usual black key scale with an unusually beautiful song. By the way, when I say that these melodies can be played on the black keys of the piano, I don't necessarily mean that they are played in that key. I just mean that they could be. It's a quick and easy way for anybody with a piano to play or define a pentatonic scale. The opening of this next cut sounds almost Japanese, but in fact, the tune is Gaelic.
[music: Trad. arr. Primrose/Pincock, "Cumha ruairidh mhoir" (’S tu nam chuimhne); Christine Primrose]
Christine Primrose singing a lament called, all right, I ought to give up even before I start, but I won't. Cumha ruairidh mhoir. Wrong, but I... Cumha ruairidh m... Cumha ruairidh mhoir. I have to admit that my Gaelic isn't what it used to never be in the first place.
Okay, now it's hard to get out of the mood of that, it's so serene. By perhaps overstressing the ubiquity and antiquity of pentatonic songs, I don't want to give the impression that the pentatonic stream has dried up. No way, José.
[music excerpt: Wonder, "Sir Duke" (Songs in the Key of Life); Stevie Wonder]
Okay, now there are two teeny weeny little passing notes in that riff that aren't in the scale, but otherwise it's pure black key pentatonic. Don't bother to call, put that phone down, I know that to play just 20 seconds of Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke and leave it at that would be cruel and unusual punishment. So here's all of it. And let me say that the intro and the sung melody are not pentatonic, it's just that recurring refrain, if it were Monteverdi, we'd call it a ritornello.
Then we'll segue into another kind of hybrid, a purely pentatonic melody with a non-pentatonic accompaniment. Mr. Wonder?
[music: Wonder, "Sir Duke" (Songs in the Key of Life); Stevie Wonder]
[music: Trad., "When I Was Single" (The Folkways Years 1955 - 1992); Peggy Seeger]
Stevie Wonder, Sir Duke, followed by Peggy Seeger with When I Was Single. I have just funny feelings about When I Was Single. I absolutely love that song and I love the arrangement, the guitar arrangement, which she says is based on a piano arrangement that her mother used to sing it to. But it's sort of funny. I mean, and I first knew this record when I was a student at Swarthmore College and had a friend who knew her and everything.
I got to say, I had a crush on Peggy Seeger, never having met her, just from the warmth of her voice, and I still don't know her. But here's this song, which is really a put-down of marriage and therefore sort of implicitly of men and how women get treated in marriage, and yet this Just beautiful warmth as I feel it in the singing, a somewhat strange experience, but not too strange. I love the song.
Well, I learned today that penta means five and it's Greek. A secure man is not afraid to admit his mistakes. As far as word origins go, there were obviously some bugs in my entomology there earlier in the program.
So, I've been thinking about it. I guess that Pentagon must be a combination of penta, meaning five, and agon, the Greek word for contest, which makes sense because everybody knows that what goes on in the Pentagon is a continuous struggle among the five branches of the military, that is, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and school crossing guards.
There's an absolutely terrific fiddle player named Bonnie Rideout. And with a name like Rideout, she has to be our final performer. The first tune in this set is called Bog on Lochan, and it's mostly pentatonic, and it's all great.
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 116, 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.
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.