I'm now on WFMT for our regular Sunday night feature, Shickley Mix, with Peter Shickley. Time to go to work, Peter. You ready?
No rest for the weary. Here's the theme.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickley, and this is Shickley 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 if it is good, most of the time it takes a good bit of moolah to make it happen. So I'm happy to say that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts,
and by this good radio station right here on your good old digital dial, within whose all-encompassing walls I produce these prodigiously,
provocative programs, which are then distributed to wherever they're distributed to, by PRI, Public Radio International.
Now, folks, most of you know me as a commentator, and a composer, and a pianist, and an entertainer, and a musicologist, and some of you also know me as a father, and a husband, and a son,
and a brother, and a cousin, and a nephew, and a great-grandson, and a brother-in-law, and a second cousin once removed on my mother's side, and a taxpayer, and a... Oh, all right.
That irrelevancy alarm never lets me have any fun. What I was going to say is that today I'm going to start the program in another capacity.
Not as any of those things I've just mentioned, but as a singer. That's right. I'm going to sing... Great way to start the show. Hello?
Oh, hello, sir. Oh, listen. Oh, don't worry, sir. Really. I... I tell you, I don't want anybody else to know, but I'm not really going to do, you know, like an aria or anything.
I'm just going to sing a phrase or two to illustrate a point. That's right. Not to worry. Bye. Okay. Boy, he called me quickly. He must have me on speed dial.
Anyway, folks, as I was saying, you are about to hear Peter Sickley, the singer. And my first selection will... Oh, man. What do you mean? What's irrelevant about me singing something on a music?
Wait a minute. It's doing its printout thing there. Just a second. Let's see what it... Okay. It says, just kidding. Very funny. Listen, everybody.
Like it or not, I am going to sing. I'm going to sing. I'm going to sing. I'm going to sing, sing, sing. And what I'm... Hey, isn't that a Gene Krupa number? Sing, sing, sing. Sing?
Or it could be a Glee Club session at a penitentiary on the Hudson River. Oh, no. It's the Pun Punisher. That smarts.
Man, I'm lucky the Pun Punisher doesn't go off very often. Sometimes it's worth it, though. You know? I mean, a man's got to do what a man's gotta do. Okay. I'll admit. That was pretty egregious.
You've worn me down, world, no more games. Look, folks, I'm not going to sing Lohengrin or Death and the Maiden. I just want to tell an anecdote about Mozart that is not very well known, and I have to sing a little to tell it.
Early in 1785, just as he was starting to work on a piano concerto, Mozart came down with a very bad case of the American measles.
He was really out of it, and the best he could come up with for an opening theme was a rather boring, plodding melody with a note on every beat.
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
He knew it wasn't up to his usual standards, but he was too sick to care. In fact, he was so weak he couldn't even write the theme down. Just about then,
the famous composer Salieri, who had heard about Mozart's illness, paid a visit and asked Mozart's wife if there was anything he could do to help. And Constanza said, well, he really needs somebody
to write down his concerto for him, but he's very contagious. I wouldn't go up there if I were you. And Salieri said, okay, I'll tell you, Voss, even though he was Italian, he spoke very good German.
He said, I happen to know the family that lives right across the street. I'll go up to the room that's directly opposite Mozart's and open the window, you do the same in his room, and tell him
that I'll count out two measures and he can start singing. I should be able to handle about eight
bars at a time. So that's what they did. But what Salieri forgot about was how slowly sound travels.
If you've ever seen someone who's 50 yards away from you using a hammer or an axe, you know that sound travels much more slowly than light does. The visual and the audio,
they're out of sync. So when Mozart sang his plodding one note on every beat theme, this is what it sounded like to Salieri.
So Salieri wrote down what he heard, which was every note starting between the beats.
And when Mozart saw the manuscript, he realized immediately that it was much better that way. It now had a sort of a restless, romantic quality, instead of being square and
dodgy. When he got better, he added a short note to fill up the space at the beginning,
and it ended up sounding like this. Quite by accident, and thanks to Salieri's desire to be
helpful, the D minor piano concerto K466 turned out to be one of Mozart's best. That kind of
rhythmic displacement of notes, from strong parts of the measure to weak parts, is called syncopation. In terms of notation, the D minor piano concerto K466 is one of Mozart's best.
You know, I tell you, I find it much easier to explain this using the blackboard. So I brought one in here. Okay, okay, I know this is radio, but just bear with me here. It helps me visualize it,
even if it doesn't help you. I'm going to draw vertical lines representing the beats in a 4-4
measure. First beat, second beat, third beat, and the first beat of the following measure.
Now, there are eight eighth notes in a 4-4 measure. That's why they're called the 4-4 measure.
So I'll write two eighth notes in each beat here. Now, we know that the notes of the theme,
as Salieri heard them, all start between the beats. But I mentioned that Mozart added a short note at the beginning to fill in the space. So that's the first eighth note here. The notes of
the theme proper, the next 31 notes, are all quarter notes, which are equal to two eighth notes. So I'll draw a tie. A tie is a horizontal but arched line. So I'll draw a tie, and I'll draw a tie, and I'll draw a tie, and I'll draw a tie.
It's sort of like a rainbow or the trajectory of a human cannonball. I'll draw a tie from the second note to the third note, from the fourth to the fifth, from the sixth to the seventh, and from the eighth to the beginning to the first note of the next measure.
Now, I really wish you were here, because if you were, you could see that every one of the horizontal tie lines intersects a vertical beat line. So after that first beat,
every beat for the next eight measures is in the middle of a tied note. Now, the way our notation system is set up, you don't always have to use ties to represent syncopation. But every
syncopation can be represented as a note beginning on a weak unit and tied over the following strong
unit, which is why today's show on syncopation is called The Ties that Bind. The strong unit doesn't have to be the quarter note, by the way, depending on how fast the rhythm of the music starts.
is the strong unit can be the eighth note, the quarter note, the half note, even the whole note. Let's see, what are some well-known syncopated melodies? Well, take
the Messiah. I'll clap more loudly on the beat that has a note tied over it.
Then there's the Mozart G major string quartet, and oh yeah, Brahms fourth.
The thing that makes the beginning of Mozart's piano concerto sound especially restless is that the syncopation
goes on continuously for eight measures but in the final version he doesn't have Salieri clapping out
the beats maybe Salieri wasn't available he has the cellos and basses playing only on the down beats every fourth beat preceded by a few fast pickup notes so all the melody notes in the
middle of each measure are floating off the beat but nothing is audibly defining the beat
okay the next piece is all about syncopation but there's always one voice playing every beat while the other voice plays in between the beats in order to make sure there's no confusion about
where the beat is the composer starts out with the beat in the bass part because low notes are inherently stronger that is they have more resonance than high notes which is why symphony orchestra is a great instrument for playing the bass and the bass is a great instrument for playing the bass and the bass is a great instrument for playing the bass and most symphony orchestras have
about half as many cellos as first violins you'll hear four measures after the beginning he switches and puts the beat in the top part and the syncopations in the bottom part and it sounds a
little bit less stable in terms of sound the offbeats are now stronger than the beats
Kenneth Gilbert playing the sixth of Bach's two-part inventions now you may have noticed that every once in a while
Bach throws in a passage without any syncopation just by way of contrast and in fact keeping consistent syncopation going on for a very long time can sometimes be not only tiring but confusing
you know those optical illusions where you have two lines with different things around them and one line looks longer than the other but they're actually both the same length well here's sort of an aural equivalent of the same length but it's not the same length but it's the same length but
I'll start clapping here nice strong beat right beat beat beat beat get out there and walk those
feet okay now listen to what happens when I start singing freres
if you're like me you start to hear the clapping as off beats and the notes of the melody as on the beat
Let me do it again. The rhythm of the clapping does not change. Just in case you don't know French, I'll sing it in English this time. Okay, here we go.
Nice and strong beat. Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John, Brother John
Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing I slipped back into French there at the end. Sorry about that.
The whole point of syncopation is to throw you off your balance. Sometimes the feeling of disorientation is very mild. Other times the composer really tries to mess with your head, or at least with your feet.
When you get the whole ensemble playing off the beat, there can be a tremendous sense of release when they finally return to it.
In this next excerpt, I'll play the whole previous strain so you can get settled into the beat. And then when it goes into the bridge, although you can hear some foot tapping on the beat,
the whole group is playing off the beat. And two bars later, when they finally get back with the beat, it's like, well, you know what it's like.
The whole group is playing off the beat. The whole group is playing off the beat. The whole group is playing off the beat. The whole group is playing off the beat.
The whole group is playing off the beat. Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, and Ray Brown playing Love You Madly, or at least part of their arrangement of it. Great album, recorded at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival.
Here's Brahms doing the same thing, but without any foot tapping even. When you hear,
If you just heard that alone, you'd assume that it's da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. But the context is, The context makes it clear that it's
da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum-bum-bum. Still, the context is ambiguous enough, and the syncopation is persuasive enough, that you're thrown for a bit of a loop,
and there's a real feeling, woof, of landing when you get back to terra firma.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Okay. movement, which appeared earlier, is based on a syncopated figure. I'll just clap through that figure on the first couple of times and then let it go.
And later in the movement, based on that theme, Brahms piles so many syncopations on top of each other that you can easily be forgiven if there are times when you can't figure out where the strong beats are.
Sergio Celibidace and the Torino Radio Symphony Orchestra with excerpts from the last movement of Brahms' Second Symphony. That's a live recording, and as a matter of fact, I think
there was occasionally some foot tapping in there. A sense of the music is a great way to express the feeling of being in the middle of the His syncopations and obscuring of the bar line can still throw amateur musicians off.
And there are places where even professional musicians, if they don't know the pieces well, have to really stay on their toes.
Here's an example of syncopation famous for its inscrutability. It's Zen syncopation, perhaps. This is the very beginning of a piece.
Three notes preceded by silence and followed by silence. You would not be sent to jail for assuming that it's baum baum baum. But it's not. It's
written baum baum baum. Well, there's no rhythmic context. How are you supposed to know where the beat is? The answer is you don't. But there are a couple of things to point out.
Stravinsky once said that musicians play notes differently if they're written off the beat. And I think that this is an example where that's audibly true.
But more to the point, you know in retrospect that those first three notes are syncopated because of the way that motif is treated throughout the rest of the piece, which is,
by the way, Schumann's Manfred Overture. That same speed of syncopation shows up later, this time with the basses defining the beat.
This piece is full of syncopation. Here's an example of the next bar line.
And here are those first three notes from the very beginning, this time in the oboe
and soft. Exactly the same syncopation, but much slower. And now with the lower instruments defining the very broad beat. We'll hear this as it happens at the end of the piece.
Michael Schonwandt conducting the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. And here are the excerpts from the overture to Robert Schumann's quasi-oratorio Manfred,
or as it's now called, Personfred. Personally, I'm called Peter Schickely, and the show is called Schickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
The ties that bind. We're talking syncopation here. And you know, with Schumann and Brahms and even Oscar Peterson, no matter how much they get off the beat, you always know that they're going to eventually get back on.
With Stravinsky, there was no such promise. He was a sort of an anti-psychiatrist. He saw it as his job to keep you unstable, to keep you constantly off balance. That little
trick I demonstrated back there with Frere Jacques, turning what felt like strong beats into off beats, Uncle Igor often pulled that trick every few seconds.
Igor Stravinsky conducting the third movement of his Symphony in C with the CBC Symphony Orchestra.
Hey, you know, it just occurs to me. CBC Symphony Orchestra. It's Symphony in C, and the first two pitches in the first movement of that symphony are B and C so it's like you got CBC.
Oh, okay. Never mind, never mind. But you don't have to change time signatures all the time as Stravinsky does in that piece to create instability. But I'll tell you the truth about history and that one though, all music comes out.
work is in four throughout, and yet there are so many cross accents and notes tied over the bar lines that a lot of us Yankees have been known to experience a certain amount
of difficulty in trying to keep track of exactly where the downbeat is.
hay goce que rico el vacilon cuando tu le tocas tu trombon
Ay, José, qué rico el vacilón, cuando tú me tocas tu trombón.
¡Habla! ¡A descargar! ¡Sacude! Ay, Roberto, no te metas, cuando suena la trompeta.
Oh, Roberto, no te metas, cuando suena la trompeta.
¡Habla el guato! ¡Vaya! ¡Y el pianista, le!
Espérale la paca. Espérale la paca. Espérale la paca. ¡A ver!
Diga melodía, para que te comas un cake que si lo tienes, está rico para el compadre.
Estoy más salsa que pecado. ¡Chino, chino, chino! Chiquitito. Chiquitito.
La candela, un poco, un poco, un poco, para bailar con mis hombres ricos.
Pero qué bueno está, caballero, caballero, yo tengo la...
I love you.
Ray Barreto, Descarga Criolla, Criolla? The two L's are... I'm not sure how to pronounce that. I don't know what they're talking about in there, too. There's a lot of talking.
I mean, I don't know, they could be saying, eat your heart out, Uncle Igor. I may not always know where the downbeat is without thinking about it, but I do know I love it. I can't resist throwing in a little tidbit time here, folks.
It doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand, but it's on the same CD as the Barreto tune, and I thought... But hey, just for old time's sake.
Un poquito de tu amor, un poquito nada más, una mirada de tus ojos, tan solo quiero de ti.
Un poquito de tu amor, un poquito nada más, una sonrisa de tus labios, para...
Sentirme feliz.
Me quieres tú, te adoro yo, qué dicha está, así los dos, tú para mí, yo para ti, y así por siempre seguir los dos.
Un poquito de tu amor, un poquito nada más, una mirada de tus ojos, tan solo quiero de ti.
¡Aba!
Un poquito de tu amor, un poquito nada más, una mirada de tus ojos, y un poquito de tu amor.
¡Ahora! ¡La flauta, nena!
Un poquito de tu amor, un poquito nada más, una miradita de tus ojos, y un poquitico de tu amor.
Tururururá, tururururá, tururururá, tururururá, tururururá, turururururá, turururururá, y así por siempre seguir los dos.
Un poquito de tu amor, un poquito nada más. Una mirada de tus ojos, tan solo quiero de ti.
Una mirada de tus ojos, tan solo quiero yo de ti.
Un poquito de tu amor, performed by Desi Arnaz and his Latinos, and listened to by, among others, Pedro and his Shickley Mixers, from PRI. Subtitles by the Amara.org community
Public Radio International. Syncopation is the name of the game, and The Ties That Bind is the name of this particular, this very particular show.
We've been talking about beats as strong units, but beyond that there are strong beats and weak beats.
In general, in duple meters, the first beat is strong, and the second is weak, whereas in triple meters, the first is strong, and the second and third are weak.
Now, using strong and weak in this larger sense, what's interesting is that syncopated notes that are tied to the beat, are not strong beats.
Those tied over a weak beat, tend to sound punchy, whereas those tied over a strong beat, sound suspended, floating over the beat before moving on. Here's an example of each.
First is a Brahms piano concerto. Lompompompompompom. See the first note is on the beat, the second one, which is the syncopated one, sounds punchy. Lompompompompompom.
That's syncopated over the second or weak beat. Okay, now here's one where the syncopation of the beat is on the beat.
notes are over the strong beat. Mozart, Paris Symphony. Now, what really interests me is that
I know that the syncopated notes in these two examples at the tempos I sang them are the same length, but subjectively, it seems to me that notes tied over a strong beat feel longer than
those tied over a weak beat. Now, this just may be me, folks. Here's a theme that has both.
Now, that first syncopation, that note is syncopated over a weak beat and has that
punchy feeling, whereas later, those are syncopated over strong beats and they have that suspended feeling.
Listen to the whole theme and tell me if you think the first syncopated note, that one, see if you think that it feels shorter than the three later syncopations.
So, am I crazy? I can't hear you. Well, so's your old lady. The beginning of Bach's D minor keyboard
concerto. Maybe that suspended hanging quality is because you notice when nothing happens on a strong beat more than when nothing happens on a weak beat. I mean, nothing new, you know.
Here's a pair of pieces featuring lots of syncopation. The first has the punchy kind, and the second, the soft. The suspended kind. I call this sweetlet, The Boxer and the Dancer. See you in about 10.
. .
. . .
Thank you.
In fact, the entire saxophone section was cows. And when the audience expressed its disapproval in a very rude fashion, Krupa shrugged his shoulders and said,
A herd in the band is worth boo in the tush. Oh, ow. Oh, dang. Can you stop? I'm going to stand up here.
Wow. Man, it doesn't usually go on that long. But we better go out here. I think, what should we do? How about the Bach?
The Bach D minor keyboard concerto here with Andrei Gavrilov on piano and Sir Neville Mariner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Field, the first movement.
And I'll see you next week. I should be able to sit down by then.
And that's Sickly 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, whom we gratefully thank. 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 our program. Album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program number 120.
And this is Peter Sickly 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.
See you next week.