Announcer: The time is 11 o'clock. Schickele Mix is next.
Announcer: Well, are you ready, Mr. Schickele?
What difference does it make? 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 goodness gracious how good it is to be able to say that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this peachy keen radio station, which provides me with the wherewithalial infrastructure necessary to produce these supersaturated clusters of musicological ontology, which clusters are then thrown to the winds and wolves by PRI, Public Radio International.
You know, for the sake of mental health, it's a good idea to be consciously aware of your successes, your talents and accomplishments, as well as your failings. Sometimes I get to feeling pretty low. I start thinking about how, as a composer, I don't have any students to carry on the tradition and, well, here I am over 60 years old and my music is not recorded in its entirety like Mozart's and Webern's.
And even as a comedian, I don't have a whole book devoted to my witticisms the way Richard Nixon did. But when I'm feeling down like that, all I have to do is remind myself that there is one thing that I'm very, very good at. I can call cows. I'm not kidding. I can come upon a field with cows in it, pull the car over to the side of the road, walk over to the fence, and start mooing.
And nine times out of ten, the cows will look up, listen for ten or fifteen seconds, and then start walking over towards me.
Back in the early fifties, my brother and our friend Ernie and I, right around the time, as a matter of fact, that the three of us recorded the Sanka Cantata, which was the beginning of the great P.D.Q. Bach revival, David and Ernie and I made an eight-millimeter movie called How High Brows Thou, Brown Cow? The title line came from a poem in the comic strip Pogo. The film was shot on location north of Fargo, and the plot was my brother played an artist who sets up his easel at the edge of a bovine-filled field and starts painting the bucolic scene.
I played a guy who, for no apparent reason, pulls up about 50 yards down the road, gets out of his car, and starts mooing to the cows. It was a silent movie, by the way, except for an independently recorded musical score, but the idea came across. It was pretty obvious what I was doing. Before long, the cows start moving over towards me, and the artist is infuriated by this disruption of the visual composition of the scene he was painting.
One shot shows the cows running towards me. It takes a lot to make a cow run. Now let me tell you this, folks, that the reason, the only reason, that How High Brow's Thou, Brown Cow was never up for an Oscar in the special effects category is because there were no special effects. The only thing that caused those cows to walk and then run was my mooing. Fortunately there was a fence between me and them.
I say fortunately because there were a lot of disappointed cows on the other side of that fence. So anyway, then the enraged painter starts running after the cow caller and from then on it's a typical Hollywood action flick, one big chase. Although, I don't think there is a fraction small enough to represent the budget of our film as compared to that of a Hollywood action flick.
Let's see, 8mm film was about maybe 10 bucks a pop at most, and that movie was a single reeler, I think, and our parents were paying for the gas. My character did end up sitting in about a foot and a half of water in a muddy ditch beside the road, but I doubt if I had to throw those clothes away. I don't know, maybe the shoes. You know, with my brother and friends, and later my wife and other friends, I was involved in a lot of 8 and 16 millimeter movies between the ages of 12 and 31.
I should get those things transferred to video. Although I'm very old fashioned about that. The movie image is so much more beautiful than the video. Even those home movies, some of them look gorgeous. I can remember in 1964, we made one in Berkeley called Yo Jumbo, and the...
[sound: irrelevancy alarm]
Okay, okay. Okay, it's hard to argue with the old irrelevancy alarm this time. But I did have a reason for stepping into this cow business. I just wanted to point out that throughout history, various human beings have gotten very good at imitating various other animals. Now, of course, I'm sure that one of the oldest uses of that talent was to improve the supper menu, but it's also often an expression of admiration for the animal.
And I'll bet that the practice of adapting animal sounds to human music is at least as old as the line about how courtship is when a man chases a woman until she catches him. We're talking about cavepersons here.
But what we're interested in on today's show is not simple imitations of animals and other things on the one hand, or songs about animals and other things on the other hand, but rather a combination of those two things: songs in which the human voice actually imitates animals and other things. We'll start with the Avian Suitelet, whose two numbers last about seven and a half minutes. See you then.
[music: Trad., "Corrocloclo" (Canciones de Espana); Germaine Montero]
[music: Janequin, "Le Chant des Oiseaulx" (Sacred & Secular Music from Six Centuries); Hilliard Ensemble]
The Avian Suitelet began with Germaine Montero singing a folk song, a Spanish folk song, Corrocloclo. "I bought a hen and chicks for five duros, Corrocloclo, Corrocloclo," I won't try to say all those... "I bought it in the morning and in the afternoon it lost its way. My dear neighbors who live around me, have you seen a hen yesterday which lost its way in the afternoon?" That very close imitation of hens being sung.
And then a beautiful piece by Janequin, a French 16th century composer called The Song of the Birds. I won't read all the words, but it begins, "Wake up, sleeping hearts. The God of love calls upon you. The birds will work wonders this May Day to dispel your worries." And then it mentions the Song Thrush, and the Nightingale, and of course, the Cuckoo. Okay, now let's move on to another...
[sound: phone rings]
Oh man, if they would only let me disconnect this phone during the show.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Well, who is this?
Look, it's very rude to start a conversation with, who is this? You tell me who you are and I'll tell you who I am.
Okay, how do you do? I'm Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International. Well, okay, that's very interesting, but now that you've got me on the phone, what do you want?
Oh, no, I'm sorry. Well, it's just, it's not the place, you know. It's, sorry, but I really ought to get on with the show. Goodbye! I was afraid that would happen. I suppose now everybody wants to hear me call cows. Listen folks, it's one thing out there in the middle of the country, but it's sitting in a radio studio, you know, you can't help but feel self-conscious.
By the way, I should probably mention that I've tried it in Switzerland and Sweden, and those European cows don't seem to understand my accent. And you know, I'm not even saying that what I do sounds exactly like a cow. I'm just saying that it has a demonstrable effect on cows, even though I'm not going to demonstrate it.
Today's show is called Vox Omnia, and we're talking about how the human voice can, or at least tries to, imitate almost anything, and often does so in a musical context. I'm not going to tell you what animals are going to be imitated next, but I call this pair of pieces the Felino-Simian Suitelet. Oh yeah, and that's right, we do have a very old recording alert here.
The second one is a very old recording, V.O.R. I'll be back in about nine minutes.
[music: Rossini?, "Duetto buffo di due gatti"; Felicity Lott/Ann Murray/Graham Johnson, piano]
[music: Trad., "Ketiak" (Musique de Bali); Chanteurs de Pliatan]
Okay, the Felino-Simian Suitelet. I bet I gave it away there, didn't I? It began with the cat's duet, the Duetto buffo di due gatti by Rossini. At least it's always been said to be by Rossini.
Now, according to the liner notes on this album, on Wings of Song, it's duets with Felicity Lott and Ann Murray, according to these liner notes, it is now ascribed to a certain Robert Lucas Pearsall, so maybe it isn't by Rossini after all. Anyway, it's an often performed fun piece for classical singers.
And then we had from Bali, the Kecak, the Monkey Dance, and this is the Gamelan Orchestra and Singers of Peliatan, Indonesia. And imitation certainly doesn't get much more literal than that. Okay and now it's Tidbit Time here in the peaceable kingdom. Like everything else, the art of imitating animals has been taken over by technology.
A hunter can buy a duck call in a sporting goods store. He doesn't have to learn how to do it with his mouth. But that ten buck duck call is... Hey, I wonder if you can get a ten duck buck call. I doubt it. Anyway, that ten buck duck call is small potatoes compared to a sampler. With digital sampling technology, you can record any sound at all, including any animal and play it back at any pitch you want. This kind of thing is done all the time now. The world has truly become Sampler's Planet. We've all heard humans imitate animals, but these days, perhaps for the first time in history, we can hear animals imitating humans. This seal, for instance, feels good.
James Brown's I Got You, also known as I Feel Good, performed by Sealy Dan, from an album called Barnyard Beat on Kid Rhino, appropriately enough, although actually the rhinoceros is one of the few animals that is not, as far as I can recall, represented on the album.
Well, to be truthful, there are a lot of animals not represented, such as the alpaca, the bush baby, the crayfish, the dingo, the emu, the ferret, the gecko, the hellbender, the ibis, the jaguar, the kangaroo, the lemming, the marmot, the nyala, the octopus, the panda, the quagga, the rabbit, and Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Vox Omnia. Humans are not content to imitate other animals. They'll use their voices to imitate other instruments. What if, for instance, you are some Russian peasants and you want to dance but there are no instruments handy? Well, you set up a soloist in a vocal group, and the vocal group imitates a balalaika with their voices.
[music: "Vologodskie chastushki ‘pod yazik’"; Pan Glossary #1]
Pod yazik, performed by an amateur vocal group in the Volgogod district of Russia. Apparently they call it a dance to the tongue when singers imitate instruments for dancing. But you know, they're really imitating the instrument in a very general way. Here are some humans really imitating instruments. I guess I'll call it the Instrumental Suite. And before I start it rolling, I want to point out that the first number is completely a cappella, no instruments at all. Now the upper voices, although they're singing instrumental lines, are not even trying to imitate instruments.
But I want to make sure you know that there is nobody playing bass or drums on the first cut. See you in ten.
[music: J. S. Bach, "Organ Fugue from Fantasia and Fugue"; Swingle Singers]
[music: Reisfeld/Markuse/Poterat/Leroy (Wiener Bohème), "Mein kleiner grüner Kaktus" (A Tribute to the Comedian Harmonists); King's Singers]
[music: Ellington, "Creole Love Call" (Spawn Song); Hudson Shad]
The Instrumental Suite, four numbers. The first was from a Swingle Singers album called Bach Hits Back, and that was an organ fugue in G minor, and as I mentioned beforehand, the bass sound, which it's pretty obvious that the bass sound is being done by a singer, but the drum sound, you could probably fool somebody with that drum sound. Some of these sounds are actually easier to make with a microphone than just without any kind of amplification.
Then we heard the Mills Brothers, an old recording of Tiger Rag, which of course had several imitations in it. We had our animal imitation there with the tiger, and then we had some scat singing, but then that really nice trumpet solo in the middle there was actually done with a voice, and then we also had some imitation of the bass.
Next was the King's Singers in an album called A Tribute to the Comedian Harmonists, which was a vocal group in Germany in the, I think, late 20s, certainly early 30s. As a matter of fact, they had to split up because some of their members were Jewish and some of them came to this country, some of them stayed there. This was a number called My Little Green Cactus, a silly tale of a man who keeps a cactus on his balcony to ward off undesirables.
One day the cactus falls off the balcony onto the head of a neighbor below. The neighbor politely tells the cactus keeper where he can stick it. I guess it's just as well that we didn't understand the German on that one. That, by the way, had a nice little imitation of a calliope in it.
And then finally, an album from a fairly new group called Hudson Shad, and this is also a repertoire very much associated with the Comedian Harmonists, that was Creole Love Call, Duke Ellington, with some just beautiful brass imitations, trumpet and trombone imitations by the whole group. Well, sometimes it helps to know beforehand or through lyrics what's being imitated, because the imitation just isn't that verisimilitudinous.
Believe it or not, I didn't make that word up. Even real sounds are not always easy to recognize out of context, and sound effects people know that it's sometimes easier and just as effective to fake a sound, like a shoe in cornstarch for walking in snow and crinkling cellophane for fire. Listen to this excerpt from a vocal piece and see if you know what's being imitated. By the way, if you understand French, try to pretend you don't.
[music: Janequin/Verdelot, "La Guerre" (Madrigal History Tour); King's Singers]
Well, even if you don't know French, some of the words are pretty recognizable there, especially towards the end. But various parts of it sound to me as if they could be a horse race and the birdhouse at the zoo and some of those Balinese monkeys and that "fon, fon." "Fon" could have been somebody imitating Charlie Mingus or some other heavy-duty bass player. But of course, it's called The War. I'm sure you heard Victoire at the end there.
I'm going to play it again, but first, here are the lyrics. First we start with [garbled] and that's all just translated as noises of battle here. This is, by the way, the King's Singers singing. And then, "To the standard, straightway advance, spur on your mounts, ye cavalry," and then more battle noises. "Blast and boom, bombards and cannons, thunder great curtals and falcons to help our countrymen." More noises of battle. That's the "fon, fon, fon" part.
"Courage, courage, strike your blows, pilfer, plunder, dub and leer." I must say I don't know what dubbing means. I'm sure they don't mean overdubbing. "Kill, to the death, take courage, strike, kill, gentle gallant...
Dance, be valiant, strike on, press on. Grind your steel, gobble them up. Alarm, alarm. They are in confusion, they are lost. They are showing their heels. Pursue the cowards, the jangling rabble. They are defeated. Victory to noble King Francis. Pursue, all is lost by God." This is to commemorate an actual battle that took place in 1515. I guess dub is like I hereby dub you Knight of the Realm or something.
Anyway, so the end is "Victory to noble King Francis, pursue, all is lost by God." And if you're wondering about that sudden change of mood, all is lost by God, the last few words are in German in the original, so I suppose that they are being spoken by the vanquished.
[music: Janequin/Verdelot, "La Guerre" (Madrigal History Tour); King's Singers]
The King's Singers performing La Guerre by Janequin, who wrote it as a four-voice piece, and then another composer named Verdelot came along and added a fifth voice. They used to do that kind of thing. Well, let's go out with another little bit from that Barnyard Beat album. Let's see... Maybe The Lion Sleeps Tonight, performed by Lionel Richie, which actually features a lot of birds who are actually playing the melody...
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Hello, sir. Alright, I have to... I don't have much time left, okay? I will, okay. Alright, it was like this. It goes...
[sound: Schickele moos, calling cows]
That little crack in the voice I think is what really got the cows running.
[music: Peretti/Creatore/Campbell/Kameron/Brachman, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"; Barnyard Beat]
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 118. 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: Peretti/Creatore/Campbell/Kameron/Brachman, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"; Barnyard Beat]
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.