And time now on WFMT for Schickele Mix with Peter Schickele. Ready, Peter?
Uh, Peter? All set?
Peter, we're getting a little concerned.
Don't worry. I say, don't worry. 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 the fact is, I say the fact is, that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional support from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
And from this fine radio station, I say this fine radio station, which puts up with me and then puts out what I come up with, which is, when all is said and done, distributed far and wide by PRI, I say PRI, Public Radio International. You've probably noticed that I seem to be repeating myself today. And that's because I've been thinking about Echo.
I don't mean the Italian author Umberto Eco, although maybe he does repeat himself a lot. I don't know. I've never read one of his books. You know, come to think of it, isn't the title of his most famous book The Name of the Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose by Any Other Name? That's pretty repetitious in an almost palindromic sort of way. But what I'm talking about is when you're in the mountains or canyon lands and you shout out something and hear it come back to you.
Usually the terrain is complicated enough so that you hear multiple echoes bouncing around. But sometimes the lay of the land is such that you get just one echo or one strong echo. Like if you're standing on the rim of a very sheer canyon, one that doesn't have a lot of little tributary canyons at right angles to the main one, and what you shout out goes all the way across the canyon and comes all the way back.
Hello! [echo] Hello!
Now I'm talking about natural canyons here. It's not necessarily the same if the canyons are created by skyscrapers, for instance. One of the greatest things to do in New York City is to go down to the Wall Street area on a sunny Sunday morning. There's practically nobody around, and the streets are very narrow, and the buildings are very high, and it really is like wandering around in a network of canyons.
But of course, being New York City, the physics, that is the laws of acoustics, are somewhat different.
Hello! [echo] I don't want to get involved!
Today's show is called Sonic Boomerangs. We're going to talk about echo techniques in music, beginning with some pieces in which the natural phenomenon of echo is quite realistically reproduced.
This charming, if somewhat limited, idea goes way back in European music, but it became especially popular in the 17th century, and it has remained with us right up to the present day, at the very least. If not earlier, in fact, more or less. I say more or less. But before we hear these works, let me remind you that if you shout out something longer than hello, the echo may start returning before you've finished what you're saying.
For instance, here we are back on the rim of that canyon.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alumni Association. [echo] Technology Alumni Association.
So when that happens, all you hear clearly of the echo is the end of what you said. And two of the three pieces in our first suite make use of that phenomenon. The overlapping part of the echo is not reproduced by these composers. That could get a little bit too chaotic harmonically for your pre-20th century composer. But we hear the clear part of the echo at the end, and it's delightfully evocative.
I call this the simulated real thing echo suite, and I'll be back in less than seven minutes.
[music: Lasso, "Echo Song" (The American Boy Choir on Tour); American Boy Choir/Litton]
[music: Neuninger, Jr./Kierner/Verlag, "Wo’s Echo Schallt ist Meine Heimat" (“Die Schönsten Jodler der Berge,” Volume 2); Neuninger Baum]
[music excerpt: Purcell, “The Fairy Queen,” “May the God of Wit Inspire”; Michael Chance/Laurence Dale/ Anthony Michaels-Moore/Concentus Musicus Wien/ Harnoncourt]
The simulated real thing echo suite began with Orlando di Lasso's Echo Song, sung by the American Boy Choir under the direction of James Litton. Then we heard Friedrich Neuninger, J-U-N. It says after, I guess that's junior? I don't know. Anyway, he's singing, Wo's Echo schallt ist meine Heimat, where the echo sounds, that's my home.
I guess another translation of that title might be, if you lived here, you'd be home by now.
Be that as it may or may not be, Henry Purcell closed out the suite with an excerpt from Act II of The Fairy Queen, a trio beginning May the God of Wit Inspire, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting Michael Chance, Laurence Dale, Anthony Michaels-Moore, and the Concentus Musicus Wien.
Looks like English singers accompanied by a German-speaking group with a Latin name, if you'll pardon my French. Ja, und ich bin der Peter Schickele, et le programme s'appelle Schickele Mix, from P.R.I., Radiosus Publicus Internationalis. Our program today is called Sonic Boomerangs. We're dealing with the phenomenon of echo in music.
You know, I was thinking that an echo is the audio equivalent of a mirror image, except that the time delay involved in an echo is replaced by the remove in space between an object and its reflection. No, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, scratch that, I've got that all wrong.
Okay. There's the... Okay, come on! That's the sloppy thinking alarm. Hey, at least I realized it before the alarm went off. No, the truth is folks, that both, of course, both an audible echo and a visible reflection involve a remove in space and a delay in time. Right? Because light, like sound, travels at a certain speed. I mean, it's not instantaneous.
Light travels at 186,281 miles per second. Everybody knows that. And what that means, I never thought about this before, what it means is that when you look at yourself in the mirror, the you you see in the mirror is actually a tiny fraction of a second younger than you are when you see it. In fact, what did I do with my calculator? Oh, come on now. I just had it. Oh, here it is. Okay.
Now, here we go. 186,281. Okay.
Carry the three. Okay. Now, disregarding the time it takes for the information to get from your eyes to your brain. You get into ontological problems there. Disregarding that, if you stand in front of a mirror and you're 10 feet away from it, you are actually .0000000050814
seconds older than the image in the mirror. The you in the mirror is 50,814 trillionths of a second younger than you are. How about that? But, hey, like I say every week, you're lookin' good. No, no, I mean it. Hey, come on, believe me, I am not kidding when I say that I would never have guessed that you are one bit older than that person in the mirror. Really.
Oh, man. Okay, look, let's listen to some more music here. Maybe that'll take your mind off it. Here's another pair of echo pieces. Pieces that in their natural state, in the situations for which they were written, would involve real spatial separation between, in the first case, two solo instruments, and in the second, not two, not three, but four orchestras.
Four small orchestras, maybe each one in a different corner of a huge ballroom, or maybe even in different rooms of the palace. We'll call this Son of the Simulated Real Thing Echo Suite. I'll see you in about seven and a half minutes.
[music: "Echo Taps" (Ceremonial Music); The United States Air Force Tactical Air Command Band/Lt. Col. Lowell E. Graham]
[music: Mozart, "Notturno in D for Four Orchestras, 1st Mvt."; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/Marriner]
Son of the Simulated Real Thing Echo Suite. It was really a suitelet, I guess. But anyway, it began with Echo Taps, played by members of the United States Air Force Tactical Air Command Band. And then we heard the first movement of Mozart's Notturno in D, K. 286, played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Sir Neville Marriner. Four orchestras, but apparently only one Sir Neville.
I've been thinking about the fact that echoes and mirror images are both reflections. And another thing that audio and visual reflections have in common is the loss of energy that takes place between the source and the point of reflection and then in the process of reflection and then again going back to the source.
When I shouted out hello at the canyon edge, the echo was not only later, but softer, and the pieces we've heard incorporate that. In fact, that's part of what makes them sound like echo pieces. Now, in a good mirror, you don't usually notice the equivalent loss of energy. It might be said that the reflection looks just as loud as you do.
But three nights ago I was staying in one of those hotels, it was in Duluth if you must know, where the wall that you face when you're standing at the bathroom sink is a mirror, and the bathroom door opens behind you and has a mirror on it so you can create that endless tunnel of reflections effect.
When I got the angle just right, I could count 14 reflected images before they veered out of the frame, arranged in pairs front and back view. And in that situation, when you look at the last reflection or two, it is noticeably darker than the first. Most of that loss of brightness occurs, I assume, at the actual points of reflection.
Anyway, the fact that an echo sounds the same as the source but softer became the basis of an extremely common Baroque practice that might be called stylized echo. Whenever a phrase was repeated or even a whole long section, it was commonly played more softly the second time.
This was such a standard technique that composers often didn't even indicate it, which created a lot of good fodder for arguments among 20th century musicians. We get into that aspect of Baroque music more on other editions of this show, but here are some examples of stylized echoes, stylized in various ways. For instance, when the echoes happen is often inconsistent.
Sections are repeated that are much too long to be echoed in nature without any overlap. And then the echo is often different from the source in more or other ways than just loudness. It might be a different tonal color or in a different octave or both. In one of these pieces, passages sung by women are answered an octave lower by men. The highly stylized echo suite has three numbers and lasts about eight and a half minutes. I'll see you then.
[music]
[music excerpt: Sweelinck, Echo-Fantasie in A minor, No. 12; Gustav Leonhardt]
[music: Scheidt, "Surrexit Pastor bonus" (A Banquet of Voices); Cambridge Singers/Rutter]
The highly stylized echo suite: Gabrieli, Sweelinck, and Scheidt. The Empire Brass and some of their friends played Giovanni Gabrieli's Canzon 13 from 1615, Gustav Leonhardt was the organist in that excerpt from Sweelinck's Echo Fantasy No. 12, and the Cambridge Singers, under the direction of John Rutter, sang Samuel Scheidt's Surrexit Pastor Bonus, The Good Shepherd is Risen.
Now, excuse me if I repeat myself here, but as Echo said to Narcissus, if it's worth saying, it's worth saying again. My name is Peter Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Sonic boomerangs. We're talking echo here. And we've been talking about how the echo is later and softer than the source. But, here's a sort of reverse echo effect. The softer, more distant sounding voice is first, and the louder, more present voice answers. It's not kept up consistently, but it's pretty nifty. The opposite order is so common that turning it around creates a rather strange feeling.
[music excerpt: Manuel/Robertson, "Whispering Pines" (The Band); The Band]
Whispering Pines by The Band. You know, only they could pull that off. I don't mean the reverse echo. I mean only the band could manage to have a song called Whispering Pines and still be considered cool. Okay, now let's get back to the classical guys. The highly stylized kind of echo, often with a bit of overlap, was a favorite developmental technique of Brahms.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Piano Quintet in F minor, Opus 34, 4th Mvt. (The Rubinstein Collection); Artur Rubinstein/Guarneri Quartet]
Part of the last movement of Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor. One of this particular fellow right here's favorite pieces in the whole wide world. That was Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet. And we'll round this part of the show off with an extremely sophisticated echo. Extending the audio-visual comparisons we've been indulging in, this reflection is like what you might see in a funhouse mirror.
A mirror, or better yet, a camera obscura, which is a really neat thing going back hundreds of years. It's a darkened, usually free-standing room, and there's a small hole, with or without a lens, in one of the walls, and the view outside that wall appears as if projected on the inside of the opposite wall, but because of the laws of optics, it's upside down. I've seen one of those, it's just terrific. Completely natural.
Anyway, here are two musical phrases of four notes each, which are presented and then echoed, but backwards.
[music excerpt: Webern, Variations for Piano, Opus 27; Maurizio Pollini]
That's the beginning of Webern's piano variations played by Maurizio Pollini, stretching the concept of echo, perhaps to the breaking point. Sorry to play so little of that, but that's one of the clearest examples of retrograde that's really audible, that I know. You know, actually, it's interesting to think of straight repetition as echo without the loss of energy.
In the late 1940s, when tape recorders became easily available, people started experimenting with the idea of making tape loops to achieve an hypnotic sort of repetition, like a non-decaying echo. Here's Henry Jacobs in the mid-1950s.
Henry Jacobs (recorded): The sound you're hearing in the background is a loop of tape, a loop approximately eight inches in perimeter, recorded at seven and a half inches a second, spliced end to end going through a tape recorder.
Henry Jacobs (recorded): The purpose of this little tape demonstration is to give an idea of the overall evolution of my particular approach to synthetic rhythms.
Henry Jacobs was obviously a pioneer, but I'd be willing to wager my autographed Blossom Dearie LP that he was never awarded the Billy Graham Prize in Oratory. He goes on to demonstrate some of the drum and other sounds he used as basic building blocks and describes how you need at least two tape recorders, one to play the loops and another to record the result. And the rest, as they say, is editing.
So we'll start with Sonata for Loudspeaker which used some of the aforementioned instruments as well as vocal sounds.
[music: Jacobs, Sonata for Loudspeakers (Sounds of New Music)]
Well, that was Sonata for Loudspeaker in three parts using a variety of drums and vocal sounds. And that was Henry Jacobs back in the pre-Cambrian era of tape music. Okay now, stick with me on this. We're talking about really old technology here. If you're under 30 years old, you probably won't even know what I'm talking about, but I want to give you the concept here.
If you're sitting at a tape console, and the tape is moving from left to right in front of you, and in front of your left hand there's a recording head to record sounds on the tape, and in front of your right hand there's a playback head that plays what's on the tape, But instead of feeding the playback head to speakers, you wire it so it feeds right back to the record head. Then you also feed a microphone into the record head.
So what happens when you turn that puppy on is that everything you do in front of that microphone will be not only recorded, but constantly re-recorded with the time interval determined by the speed the tape is going and the distance the tape travels from the record head to the playback head. Now, if you make the volume, the loudness setting, on the playback head lower than that of the record head, the signal will always be softer when it gets back to the record head.
Which means that everything you record will not only repeat, it will decay as it repeats. Which means that we're right back with our old friend Echo, the lovely nymph who pined away for Narcissus, who was himself in love with his own reflection in the water, his own visual echo. She pined away until nothing was left but her voice.
[music]
Vladimir Ussachevsky's Underwater Waltz. Tape recorder music from the early 1950s. In this case, based on piano sounds. By the way, in case any of you women listening are in love with Narcissus-type guys, it might be some consolation for you to know that when Narcissus leaned over to kiss his own reflection, he fell into the water and drowned.
Which is pretty satisfying, and which, incidentally, makes the fact that Ussachevsky's piece is called Underwater Waltz serendipitously appropriate. But that was long ago. I don't mean Narcissus, although he was, I mean Ussachevsky. The techniques for sound manipulation are now so sophisticated as to be truly mind-boggling.
Not only what they can do with sound, but how little space they can do it in. We'll go out with Terry Riley playing a Yamaha YC-45D electric organ tuned in just intonation and modified by computerized digital delay. This is part of a piece called Desert of Ice from the Shri Camel album.
Now I want to emphasize that Terry Riley is playing live, in real time, and all by himself here. This section is full of echoes, but the nature of the echo never stays the same for long.
[music excerpt: Riley, "Desert of Ice" (Shri Camel); Terry Riley]
Heavenly echoes, produced by Terry Riley, playing a Yamaha electronic organ, modified by computerized digital delay. You know, when I was a kid, one of the groups you heard on the radio was Phil Spitalny and his all-girl orchestra featuring Evelyn and her magic violin. Well, this is Terry and his magic...oh, never mind, never mind.
Let's, you know, this is a beautiful cut. Let's go back to the beginning of it for our, you know, the music for my closing spiel. This is Desert of Ice.
[music excerpt: Riley, "Desert of Ice" (Shri Camel); Terry Riley]
That's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and from 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 128. 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. Like I said before, you're looking good. See you next week.
[No speech for 103 s.]
If you'd like a copy of the playlist that Peter Schickele 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.
This is program number 128, and the name of it, Sonic Boomerangs.