You're tuned to 91.7 FM, Classical Radio, KSUI in Iowa City. Peter Schickele coming your way next.
Peter, are you ready? Better now than never. 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.
Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news 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 radio station, which provides me with a home away from home, the programs that result are distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
The bad news is that I have just been told that I can't do any more than 52 programs on marches. They, and of course we're talking about a corporate they, they seem to feel that one year of marching music is enough. Now how can you do a comprehensive overview of one of the most important genres in western music? Well, no point in closing the barn door after the milk is spilt. So let's just proceed as if nothing has happened. Maybe they'll change their minds. Okay, here we go with yet another installment of...
[music: Ives, "‘Gyp the Blood’ or Hearst – Which Is Worst?"; Ensemble Modern/Metzmacher]
Marches on the March!
Another installment in Schickele Mix's ongoing,
in-depth survey of every march ever written.
The P. D. Q. Bach concerts that I've given over the last few decades have been known for the unusual way they begin.
I'm not a very consistent person in most of my habits, but I do seem to be consistently late for P. D. Q. Bach concerts, and therefore consistently unable to make it around to the stage door, with the result that I've been known to make my entrance shimmying down a rope from the balcony, running down the aisle, and belly flopping up onto the stage.
Actually these days, well I've gotten too old and fat and smart for the rope part, but there is a small area on the floor of the Carnegie Hall stage, right at the foot of the audience right aisle, that is especially well polished due to countless professorial belly flops over the years. But I have to admit that a town in Texas outdid me when it comes to unusual concert openings. It was a P. D. Q. Bach program with the local symphony, and it was in the springtime. At rehearsal they said that they wanted to do a little presentation at the very beginning of the concert, so I thought, well, they're gonna thank a sponsor or something, or give a plaque to a member of the board. But when Bill Walters and I got to the hall an hour before the show, they had set up a sort of a bower downstage right, a latticework arch. I think it had some vines on it or something. At curtain time the conductor went out and the orchestra started playing
[music excerpt: Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 21 in C (K 467), 2nd Mvt.; Murray Perahia/English Chamber Orchestra/Perahia]
And from the wings, walking slowly in a widely spaced single file, appeared the girls who would be graduating from high school that spring, in evening gowns and on their father's arms. And as each couple walked through the arch, the master of ceremonies at the lectern read a list of what clubs and sports the girl had been involved in and what her college plans were, and the audience applauded.
After everyone had gotten through the arch, the orchestra ended on the next plausible downbeat, there was general applause, and things were turned over to Bill and me. It was a strange way to start a concert, especially a P. D. Q. Bach concert. I enjoyed the ritual, and I would urge the New York Philharmonic to take it up if it weren't for the size of the New York school system.
I think even that ravishing slow movement of Mozart's 21st piano concerto would begin to pall if one had to listen to it for 72 hours straight. But the point of the story, for us, now, is that I think most of us, if we hear the word march, think of a lively, military-style march played by a marching band. But actually, stately, processional marches have probably been around longer than spiffy halftime marches.
Mozart, of course, didn't intend that piece to be a march. Everybody knows he wrote it for the movie Elvira Madigan. But it works pretty well, because the plucked cellos and basses play on at least three out of every four beats, and the fact that it's so soft is okay because it was indoors. And besides, processional marching doesn't make as much noise as marching-marching, especially if we're only talking about a sprinkling of fathers and daughters.
But there have been plenty of slow marches written especially for stately occasions whether the participants were priests, firemen, or pharaohs. The opening number in our first suite was written for a priestly procession, but the second selection was actually written about, rather than for, the annual parade of the neighborhood volunteer fire company. According to the composer, it was a slow marching affair for the hook and ladder was heavy and the gong on the hind wheel must ring steady like, and coming downhill and holding back fast, and going uphill out of step, fast and slow, the gong seemed sometimes out of step with the band and sometimes the band out of step with the gong, but the gong usually got the best of it. Nobody always seemed to keep step, but they got there just the same. The third piece was inspired by the image of an early pharaoh's entourage passing in ceremonial file. So let's just call this suite Priests, Firemen, and Pharaohs. I'll be back in about ten and a half minutes.
[music: Ives, "The Gong On the Hook & Ladder"; Ensemble Modern/Metzmacher]
[music excerpt: Suesse, “Young Man with a Harp,” “Processional: Thebes, 1300 B.C.”; Dana Suesse, piano/Casper Reardon, harp/Chauncey Morehouse, drums]
Priests, Firemen, and Pharaohs began with the March of the Priests from Mozart's opera The Magic Flute with Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Then we heard Charles Ives' The Gong on the Hook and Ladder, Fireman's Parade on Main Street, performed by the Ensemble Modern under Ingo Metzmacher.
And finally, the first movement of a piece called Young Man with a Harp by Dana Suesse, or Suesse, S-U-E-S-S-E, I'm not sure about that. That movement is called Processional, Thebes, 1300 B.C., although the piece itself was written about 32 and a half centuries later. My parents had Young Man with a Harp on 78s, and what we just heard was that initial recording. You may think it's easy to find a 78 RPM turntable these days.
That was the composer herself on piano, Casper Reardon on harp, and Chauncey Morehouse on percussion. There is a CD of the piece made, I believe, at a concert of her music that took place in the 1960s or around there. I'm not too good on dates. But I do know that it was in the early 90s that Peter Schickele started doing a program called Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called Bang the Drum Slowly. We're talking about processionals and ceremonial marches. And I've got a little problem I'd like to ask your advice on. Now, I don't usually go around inflicting my student composition exercises on total strangers, but back in about 1956 or thereabouts, like I said, I'm not too good on dates, I was in a composition class and we were asked to write something in the style of Handel. I don't remember why. So I wrote two short pieces, one of which I have completely forgotten because it was so completely forgettable.
But the other one turned out quite nicely, and two fellow students who heard me play it and who were engaged asked if they could use it for their wedding march. Then soon after my own graduation, one of my best college friends got married and he walked down the aisle sort of looking at me with a sort of smirk on his face because, unbeknownst to me, he and his bride-to-be had decided to use that same march. And I would say that that piece has been used maybe a dozen times over the years, maybe even more, just through word of mouth by people who have asked me for a copy or gotten it from somebody they know. Now here's the thing. The piece has practically nothing to do with my mature style, if that's not an oxymoron, but I must say that it has stood up over the years in its modest way.
Let me play it for you. By the way, this isn't a gag, folks, so don't be expecting P. D. Q. Bach or anything. Let's see, the authentic instrument only has one organ setting, so let me punch it up here. Okay, here we go.
[music: Schickele, "Ceremonial March"; Peter Schickele]
So, what do you think? For those of you who just tuned in, that was a piece I wrote years ago in the style of Handel. Well, it's basically in the style of Handel. There are a few things in there that I knew Handel wouldn't have done, but I liked them so I did them anyway. I'm sure he would have done the same thing if he had written a piece in my style. So the question is should I publish it? Should I let it lie around for another 40 years? What? Give me a call and let me know what you think. The number is 1-800-HANDEL, H-A-N-D-E-L. And I've got one of those phone bank things in here today. I hooked up to the, I hope I can figure out how to work this thing. Aha! It's starting to light up. Okay, let's give it a try.
Okay. Uh, line one. Hello? Hi, what's your name? Okay, Fred. What do you think I should do with it? Very funny. Hello? Hi, Lisa. What do you think my course of action should be? Publish it. Yeah, I've been leaning towards that myself lately. Thank you. Hello? Okay, Jen. Put it up on a website. Well, that's an interesting idea. But the trouble is, I don't seem to be able to get to websites on my typewriter.
I mean, it is an electric typewriter, but I don't know, I'm really not up on these things. Yeah, well, internet. To me, internet means a hillbilly doctor-to-be consumed food. I mean, I just, well, maybe someday. Thanks, Jen. Okay, time's getting short here, folks. Let's keep it brief. Publish. Thanks. Publish. Okay. Publish. Perish. Thanks a lot. You mean the piece, I assume.
Or, or were you making a joke? You know, one of the buildings on the Swarthmore College campus is called Parrish. Of course, that's P-A-R-R-I... Oh, no joke. Okay, well, I asked for opinions and I got them. That's about all we've got time for, folks, so I'll mull it over and do what I was going to do anyway, whatever that is. Okay, that rather ungenerous suggestion, perish, although he did mean the piece, not me, but it does remind us of one of the most significant types of processional, the funeral march. It's interesting if you take the dotted note rhythm that is present in so many marches, by dotted note rhythm I mean a long note followed by a short note within one beat. You know like bum bum ba dum bum sort of gives it a snap. Bum bum ba dum bum bum bum bum or bum bum ba dum bum ba da or ba rum bum bum bum bum ba da. Bum ba dum bum ba da dum ba da.
It's interesting how poignant that rhythm becomes when you slow it way down.
[music excerpt: Chopin, Piano Sonata No. 2 in B Flat minor, Opus 35, Marche Funebre; Jon Kimura Parker]
Now here's another funeral march with dotted notes, and in this one the basses have notes that make them sound sort of like muffled drums.
[music excerpt: Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 in E Flat, Opus 55, Marcia Funebre; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Karajan]
That's Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic with the beginning of the slow movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.
And before that was Jon Kimura Parker and the funeral march from Chopin's B-flat minor piano sonata. Now here's a suite of marches associated with death. The first one, which is part of a longer movement, has a very strange ambience. It's definitely funereal, but it's also somewhat parodistic. It's tragic sounding, and yet it's based on a nursery rhyme round that most people have been carelessly acquainted with all their lives.
And later it has a take-off on the schmaltzy Viennese style of string playing, Ba-yum-ba, that kind of thing. Very weird, very fin de siècle, if you ask me.
The second number is not slow. It's not your usual measured funeral march. It's a fevered march to the scaffold, ending with the fall of the guillotine blade. And then the third and last selection is a noble but desolate dirge. These three death marches last about 13 minutes.
[music excerpt: Mahler, Symphony No. 1, Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/ Abbado]
[music: Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, Opus 14, Marche au supplice; Orchestre National de France/Bernstein]
[music excerpt: Handel, “Saul,” Dead March; English Baroque Soloists/Gardiner]
Death marches. We began with the opening section of the third movement of Mahler's first symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of Claudio Abbado. As you noticed, that was recorded live at a concert. You know, I've never thought about Frère Jacques. I have to admit, "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John? Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing." I've never even thought about what kind of morning that means.
I must say this movement is the thing that made me think about it apparently it's Bruder Martin in German but as I say it's a very strange mixture of feelings that that nursery rhyme round and then music that almost sounds like klezmer music very Jewish then that Viennese portamental sliding around in the violins anyway then Leonard Bernstein led the Orchestre National de France in the March to the Scaffold. Lots of dotted note rhythms there.
That's from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, which, according to the program that Berlioz actually had passed out to the initial audience, a romantic young man who has taken opium, let's face it, an extremely romantic young man who also happens to have scored some dope, dreams that he has murdered the woman he loves for which he has sent off to be executed. Hey, I'm making fun of it, but it's a very real thing, the proximity of extreme emotions.
Berlioz expressed it with a sardonic death march. A century later, it was expressed somewhat differently.
[music: Fisher/Roberts, "You Always Hurt the One You Love" (The Spike Jones Anthology); Spike Jones]
Well, if that singer sounds a little bit too precious, even for the time, that is from the Spike Jones recording. The final number in the suite was the dead march from Handel's oratorio, Saul, which we heard performed by John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists. Nevertheless, I'm Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Bang the Drum Slowly is the name of today's show and at the moment we're dealing with funeral marches. When it comes to dealing with death, different societies and different people have different ways of handling it. Some cultures go in for loud wailing expressions of grief, spontaneous or highly stylized keening that is very foreign to me but which I imagine must be extremely purgative and helpful in overcoming loss.
One of the ways we deal with death in our culture is through humor. Now obviously, I have already made fun of the young artist's death in the Berlioz. I must say, though, that when gallows humor gets too strong, too immediate, too in your face, I can't laugh. Especially when death is sudden and shocking, as in assassinations or the astronauts on the Challenger, humor doesn't work for me. I just couldn't laugh at the jokes that were going around after the Challenger explosion. Or if I did, I regretted it.
The trouble is that the better the joke, the more wit it displays, the more wrenchingly uncomfortable it is, because you laugh but it doesn't help, in fact you feel worse. But in general, poking fun at the man with the scythe can be an effective way to deal with him. The comedian who, on his deathbed, said, dying is easy, comedy is hard, probably consoled himself as much as any priest could have. I don't happen to worry about the disintegration of the body after death, but a lot of people do, and some of them may get some bitter satisfaction in singing, "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle in your snout."
Here's a pair of easygoing examples of funereal humor. I call this suitelet, After All Is Said and Done.
[music excerpt: Sondheim, “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum,” Funeral Sequence; Original Broadway Cast]
Zero Mostel (recorded): I don't know about you, but I've suffered enough. On behalf of the body, I'd like to thank you for a lovely funeral.
[music excerpt: P. D. Q. Bach, “The Short-Tempered Clavier” (S. easy as 3.14159265), VIII in G minor; Christopher O'Riley]
When all is said and done. First we heard the funeral sequence from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Zero Mostel, Ronald Holgate, and assorted courtesans and soldiers. Talk about Venus and Mars. And Hal Hastings conducting Stephen Sondheim's wonderful score. You know, you never know in theater. I took my mother in New York to a revival on Broadway of Funny Thing. I love that show. But that revival was pretty tired, even though it had some big names in it. Really pretty sleepy.
And then once on the road, when Bill Walters and I were doing a P. D. Q. Bach concert in Ames, Iowa, we saw a production at the local university, which was absolutely terrific, much zippier than the one I had seen on Broadway. Then Christopher O'Riley played the Fugue in G minor from P. D. Q. Bach's Opus Magna Minimum, the Short-Tempered Clavier, subtitled, Preludes and Fugues in All the Major and Minor Keys Except for the Really Hard Ones. Well, this particular edition of Schickele Mix seems to have a bit of time left before its demise, so let's hear something by the composer of probably the most famous ceremonial march of our time.
[sung: the opening of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1]
A lot of people don't realize that that's only one of five Pomp and Circumstance marches that Elgar wrote. And a couple of them are not only in minor keys, but quite dark for music intended to be associated with pompous circumstances. This is number three in C minor, with Andre Previn conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. By the way, the phrase Pomp and Circumstance, like everything else in the English language, comes from Shakespeare.
[music excerpt: Elgar, “Pomp & Circumstance,” Opus 39, No. 3 in C; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Previn]
Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 3 in C minor, Previn and the Royal Philharmonic. The march at the beginning of the show was Gyp the Blood, or Hearst, Which Is Worst, by Charles Ives, played by the Ensemble Modern under Ingo Metzmacher. And we'll go out with Thunder and Blazes, or The Entrance of the Gladiators, by Fučík, played by the Gürzenich Bassoon Quintet.
Our marching time is about up, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us for another installment of...
And 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. That's you. Thank you.
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 140. 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.
[No speech for 53 s.]
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.