Announcer: And now, Schickele Mix. Ready, Mr. Schickele?
They don't make them any readier. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Well, 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 here's what sounds good to me. Our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this definitively classy radio station, within whose hallowed halls I commune with Clio, the goddess of history, and Polyhymnia, the goddess of sacred song.
My relationship with Clio is rather formal, but Poly and I go way back. In order to receive blinding insights, which must then be fashioned into mortally understandable nuggets of enlightenment, comprising the most salient aspects of the entire range of human knowledge, organized with the intuitive sureness of the seer and the searing insurance of the tutor, into comprehensive but comprehensible relevatory experiences of approximately one hour's duration, which experiences, transmogrified into a bunch of zeros and ones on a tape cassette smaller than a pack of cigarettes, is distributed far and wide by PRI, Public Radio International.
The Hawaiian Islands, of which there are about 1,500 in all, lie on a line going from northwest to southeast. They are part of a tectonic plate of the Earth's crust that is moving in a northwesterly direction over a hotspot in the layer below.
Whenever the hotspot finds itself under a weak place in the tectonic plate, it opportunistically forces hot lava up through the crust and forms yet another little bit of paradise. Now everybody, let's make a musical analogy to the Hawaiian Islands. If you had a musical composition consisting of 1500 notes all on the beat
And then you moved the tectonic plate one half beat to the northwest, I'm using the metric system here, exactly one half beat to the northwest, it
would sound like this.
[sung: demonstration, the same notes shifted half a beat]
What you have there is syncopation, as well as a piece that is only marginally less boring. You could say that syncopated notes are rhythmically displaced from their normal position, or you could describe a syncopated note as one that starts on a rhythmically weak part of the measure and is held or tied over a rhythmically strong part. Here's a seven-note pattern. The second note is held over a beat.
That's from the Overture to Così fan tutte. And here's part of the last movement of Brahms' Second Symphony.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Symphony No. 2 in D, Opus 73, 4th Mvt.; Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della Rai/Celibidache]
Now that syncopation gets more and more driving towards the end of the movement and at the very end of the movement old Johannes really leans on the horn as it were.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Symphony No. 2 in D, Opus 73, 4th Mvt.; Orchestra Sinfonica di Torino della Rai/Celibidache]
But I don't want to give you the idea that syncopation has to be loud or punchy. Here's part of Mozart's 38th symphony. We'll start with a staccato section, everybody's playing short notes. Then when the first violins come in playing legato, long notes, those first and third notes are tied over a strong beat, and the cellos and basses repeated a measure later, but nothing is punched, it's all very flowing.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Symphony No. 38 in D (K 504), 2nd Mvt.; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Marriner]
Mozart's Prague Symphony. Syncopation has been around a long time. So why, if you say syncopated music, do people think of jazz and ragtime? Well, I think it has to do both with the amount and kind of syncopation. Until at least the middle of the nineteenth century, syncopation was a spice, sometimes liberally applied, but not necessarily. Just off the top of my head, and considering only the principal easy-to-hear voices, I don't think there's any syncopation at all in the first movement of Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto.
But it's impossible to imagine a ragtime piece without syncopation. That's part of the definition of ragtime. Listen to the beginning of Scott Joplin's last rag. It's not jazzy in any punchy or hot sense. It's very laid back and easygoing. But it's got syncopation in almost every measure.
[music excerpt: Joplin, "Magnetic Rag" (Fascinatin’ Rhythm); Alan Feinberg]
Alan Feinberg playing the first section of Scott Joplin's Magnetic Rag. Joplin died in 1917 and he envisioned the day, which has perhaps actually arrived, when ragtime pieces would appear on programs alongside Chopin and Brahms. He published an exercise book called School of Ragtime and it opens with these remarks. What is scurrilously called ragtime is an invention that is here to stay.
That is now conceded by all classes of musicians. That all publications masquerading under the name of ragtime are not the genuine article will be better known when these exercises are studied. That real ragtime of the higher class is rather difficult to play is a painful truth which most pianists have discovered.
Syncopations are no indication of light or trashy music, and to shy bricks at hateful ragtime no longer passes for musical culture. To assist amateur players in giving the Joplin rags that weird and intoxicating effect intended by the composer is the object of this work. And then later he says a key thing that people forgot for a long time.
We wish to say here that the Joplin ragtime is destroyed by careless or imperfect rendering and very often good players lose the effect entirely by playing too fast. It's a very interesting note, and also I love that expression, shying bricks at something. But after the First World War, things did get faster. Compared to the dignified Joplin, his successors feel like a bunch of hyperactive kids. Fun though.
Here's a nifty piece from the 1920s, illustrating a different form of syncopation. Instead of actually holding the note over the strong beat, if you start the note before the beat, but release it, have a rest on the beat, the rhythmic effect is the same, it's still a syncopation, but punchier.
[music: J. P. Johnson, "The Mule Walk" (Fascinatin’ Rhythm); Alan Feinberg]
Alan Feinberg again, playing the Mule Walk by James P. Johnson. But it's not only the amount of syncopation that distinguishes mainstream classical music from music influenced by Africans in the New World. New rhythmic patterns came into use, and one of the most ubiquitous was associated with a dance called the Cakewalk, or da-da-ba-dum-bum-ba-da-ba-da.
I can't think of a single instance of that rhythm in Bach or Mozart or any of those guys. We heard ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, and sometimes they'll do ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, or even ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, but never ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba- Slow that rhythm down and you've got one version
of the tango or habanera rhythm. Here are three pieces that make use of that pattern with varying degrees of obviousness. The outer works start right off with it, while the middle one folds it gently into its luscious structure. I'd like to call this suite, but the people who make up the playlists say they don't have musical notes in any of their fonts, so I'll call it Pieces of Cakewalk. See you in about seven and a half minutes.
[music: Debussy, "Golliwogg’s Cake-Walk"; Martin Jones]
[music: Cervantes, "Por qué, eh?" (Fascinatin’ Rhythm); Alan Feinberg]
[music: Joplin/Marshall, "Swipesy"; Dick Hyman]
Pieces of Cakewalk began with Martin Jones playing Golliwogg’s Cakewalk from Children's Corner by Debussy. Then that touching little piece in the middle was Por qué, eh? Why, huh? by Ignacio Cervantes, a Cuban who studied with Gottschalk. That was Alan Feinberg again. And then finally, Swipesy, a rag written by Scott Joplin and his protégé Arthur Marshall, played by Dick Hyman.
You know, maybe if the playlist people ever do get musical notes in their fonts, we can call that suite either or the suite formerly known as Pieces of Cakewalk. Me, I like to think of myself as the artist formerly and still known as Peter Schickele, and the show has quite consistently been called Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called, That Weird and Intoxicating Effect, Scott Joplin's words describing what the rhythms of ragtime produce. We're talking about the new syncopation, new that is about a century ago. By the way, speaking as we were about that cakewalk rhythm, here's an example from as late as 1945.
[music excerpt: Kahn/Moret, "Chloe" (The Spike Jones Anthology); Spike Jones]
Hey! Oh man, let me turn this down here. Wow, that is the first time I've ever heard the irrelevancy alarm be triggered by a piece of music. Usually it's something I, you know, something I've said. But I guess I can't really argue. The rest of Spike Jones' version of Chloe has nothing whatsoever to do with today's show, and I do play quite a bit of the City Slickers.
So anyway, one of the rules, and I mean the word rule to be understood as descriptive, not prescriptive or proscriptive. One of the rules of syncopation in the classical era was that if you represent a syncopated note as a note before the beat tied over to a note on the beat, The second note can never be longer than the first. It can be shorter, but not longer. It's
[sung: rhythm demonstration]
It would never be
[sung: rhythm demonstration]
That simply breaks the momentum too much. It could plausibly be
[sung: rhythm demonstration]
But never, or almost never, something longer. There are a few exceptions. One of them happens occasionally in triple time. Here's your standard 6-8 syncopation. The last eighth note in a group of three is tied over to the first eighth note in the next group.
[music excerpt: J. S. Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 (BWV 1051), 3rd Mvt.; Susanne Lautenbacher/Dieter Vorholz/Mainz Chamber Orchestra/Kerh]
The Sixth Brandenburg Concerto by Bach But in the Scherzo of Brahms' Piano Quintet, the last eighth note of the group of three is tied to a quarter note, tied to a note twice its length.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Quintet in F minor, Opus 34, 3rd Mvt.; Artur Rubinstein/Guarneri Quartet]
The Brahms Piano Quintet. But maybe that's an example of the exception that proves the rule. It doesn't sound strictly, quote, classical. It sounds pretty jazzy, doesn't it? I can't hear you! That's better. Brahms, piano quintet, Rubinstein, and the Guarneri gang.
Okay, I can't wait any longer. I was going to listen to this after this show, but I just can't wait. You know, for years I have read about the fact that there is actually a recording of Brahms playing the piano. Listen, folks, I know I fool around sometimes on this show, but as Mr. D. Barry says, I am not making this up. I'm not kidding here. An American collector arranged for Brahms to record on an Edison cylinder.
And just before coming to the studio, I found an LP in a secondhand book and record store that has the Brahms cylinder recording on it. From what I've read, he speaks a greeting first and then plays something. I think it's maybe one of the Hungarian dances. Well, I can't wait. I'm going to play it now, folks, and I hope you're as excited as I am. Here goes.
[music]
This is incredible. You can't make out a thing.
[music]
Oh, man, I can't stand this. I can't take any more of this. I'm going to turn it down.
Man, what a disappointment. Actually, you can hear them at the beginning there, say Herr Dr. Brahms, Johannes Brahms, but then when it comes to the music, forget it.
Yeah well not quite the conflagration I was expecting. Oh by the way I read something this morning that blew my mind. Brahms died in 1897. You know what he was working on when he died? A ragtime piano piece. Now I kid you not folks that was just the beginning of the ragtime craze. Where is that booklet? Booklet for the Alan Feinberg album. Terrific album called Fascinatin' Rhythm.
Here on the seventh page, this is what it says. Europe was influenced by the American explosion. Stravinsky, Hindemith, Wolpe, Milhaud, etc. responded to the seismic shocks of America's musical scene. Even Brahms was in the midst of writing a ragtime piece when he died. It's right there in print, folks. So it must be true. How about them apples? Although you know it occurs to me that there's something that Brahms and Joplin have in common.
They were different in so many ways. Different age, different race, grew up on different continents. But there's one thing they shared. As young men, to make money, both of them played piano in houses of ill repute. That's true, you know, Joplin in Sedalia, Missouri, and Brahms in Hamburg. Of course, I suppose even there there's a big difference. One assumes that Joplin played the pieces that made him famous at work.
Whereas it's a pretty safe bet that Brahms kept his serious pieces and his barroom pieces pretty separate. I mean it's easy to imagine Joplin working on one of his early pieces at home and then playing it that night in the bordello.
[music excerpt: Joplin, "Maple Leaf Rag"; Dick Hyman]
But it's a little bit harder to imagine Brahms bringing the hard-won fruits of his compositional labor to the dockside brothel.
Okay, I can just hear the proprietors of the establishment coming up to young Johannes and saying, get lost kid, if I wanted highbrow I'd get the Berlin freaking Philharmonic. Besides there's an Italian just off the boat, his name's Enrico Mancini, and he plays what people want to hear. But wouldn't it be great to hear a ragtime piano piece by Brahms? I wonder what it would sound like.
Sorry folks, happens all the time.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Who's it from? Never heard of him. But why don't you bring it to the studio right now anyway. Okay, thanks. Sorry about that. But I've found that the longer you leave mail at the front desk around here, the more likely it is that you'll never see it. So anyway, the fact that it sounded sort of jazzy when Brahms tied eighth notes over the strong beats to quarter notes, longer notes, is no accident.
One of the most revolutionary things that ragtime brought to Western music was the practice of tying the first part of a syncopated note to a much longer note. In this famous example,
[music excerpt: Joplin, "The Entertainer"; Dick Hyman]
Now, all the syncopations in that excerpt from Joplin's The Entertainer, Dick Hyman playing, follow the classical rule except la-da-da-dee-doo-dee-ba-da, that one right there, the da-dee-dee-dee, that's a syncopation, but the really new one is da-da-da-dee-dee-dee-dee. And here's the difference. In good old classical music, a syncopated note usually feels as if it stays longer than you expect. It hangs there over the strong beat and then finally moves on.
But in jazz syncopation, you often feel as if you're getting to a note early. If you want to, yeah, really be cool, jazz up Haydn's Surprise Symphony, instead of singing
[sung: the opening theme of Haydn's Surprise Symphony, as written]
you could sing
[sung: the same theme, syncopated]
Aren't we naughty? As a matter of fact, that rhythm is the same as
[sung: the syncopated rhythm]
Leroy Anderson's Syncopated Clock. If he had written, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, he would have had to change the title of the piece. You're getting to the last note of the phrase ahead of time.
[music excerpt: Garland/Razaf arr. Miller, "In the Mood" (Big Band Jazz, Volume III); Glenn Miller & His Orchestra]
In the Mood with Glenn Miller. You know, that package was delivered during that last excerpt, and if you don't mind, I hope you don't, let me know if you do, but if you don't mind, I think I'll just open it here and see what it is. I'm sort of curious.
Okay, it's a tape cassette and a letter. Let's see. Dear Mr. Schickele, I really love your radio program and being something of a computer nerd myself, not really, I love the fact that the name of the show is a play on the term e-mail. Personally, I think that Schickele E-Mix is the best show on the radio here in Fresno.
Anyway, I thought you'd be interested in the enclosed recording. Since you're so knowledgeable, I'm sure you are aware of the cylinder of Brahms playing the piano, but you may not know yet that a second cylinder from that session has just been found by a professor here at Slim Pickens University. The good news is that the quality is much better than the one at Yale, and the better The better news is that Brahms plays, I don't believe this, plays a ragtime piece that he composed just before he died.
He hadn't even written it down yet. It's called Hamburg Nights. I hope you enjoy it. Yours, Donald Download Dribble. Well, I must say, the timing couldn't be better. I'm trying to control my excitement here after listening to that other cylinder, but what the hey, let's give it a try. He says it's better. Okay, here we go.
There it goes.
[music: Schickele after Brahms, "Hamburg Nights"; Peter Schickele]
All right, the swingin' Mr. Brahms. According to our pal Download there, that's Hamburg Nights, a ragtime piano piece by Brahms. And remember, folks, you heard it first on Schickele Mix. Speaking of which, I am Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix on PRI, Public Radio International.
That weird and intoxicating effect, syncopation after the advent of ragtime. Here's a set of three pieces illustrating syncopation and specifically getting to the last note of almost every phrase before the beat. Like other forms of syncopation, there's no reason it has to be punchy. These are all relaxed, laid-back pieces.
I call this the You've Got Plenty of Time to Get There Early Suite, and it lasts about ten minutes, after which I shall return.
[music: Mulligan, "Nights At the Turntable"; Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker]
[music: "Deep River Blues" (Doc Watson); Doc Watson]
The You've Got Plenty of Time to Get There Early Suite began with Gerry Mulligan, Nights at the Turntable, with Chet Baker, Bob Whitlock, and Chico Hamilton rounding out the quartet, then Doc Watson sang Deep River Blues, and finally part of the third movement of Pentangle, five songs for French horn and orchestra by your humble host, Peter Schickele. That was Kenneth Albrecht with George Mester conducting the Louisville Orchestra.
Syncopation is such a standard feature of jazz that sometimes a tune stands out because of a comparative lack of offbeat notes. In the first phrases of this tune it's a great chart, which is what we real jazzers call arrangements. The first and last notes of the phrase are syncopated, but all the other notes in between are pointedly, deliciously, incredibly coolly on the beat.
[music: Hefti, "Li'l Darlin'" (The Complete Atomic Basie); Count Basie]
Actually, you know, they are so cool that some of the notes that are written on the beat, they don't all quite get there in time. I mean, which is copacetic. It's just right. Neal Hefti's Li'l Darlin', Count Basie, the Second Testament Band. Did you get that? Second Testament Band. I am so hip at reading liner notes. Okay, let's go back to that scherzo from the Brahms Quintet in F minor. Let's go out with that. We only heard a little bit of it.
It's the Quintet in F minor, Opus 34. This is the third movement. Maybe the jazziest piece written in 1862 or 63, whatever it was. And this is Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Quintet in F minor, Opus 34, 3rd Mvt.; Artur Rubinstein/Guarneri Quartet]
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 121. 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 excerpt: Brahms, Quintet in F minor, Opus 34, 3rd Mvt.; Artur Rubinstein/Guarneri Quartet]
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.