Hang on to your hairpins. Here we go with 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 speaking of good, what could be gooder than having your bills paid by somebody else? In our case, the goodness is supplied by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and also by this particular radio station,
at which I loiter long enough to launch these musicological missives, which are then directed in all directions by PRI, Public Radio International.
When Bill Walters and I were traveling around the country doing PDQ Bach concerts, we spent a fair amount of time in the Atlanta airport,
either because that's where we were going or because that's where we had to go to get where we were going. And they have one of those completely automated shuttle trams that go from the airport to the airport. It goes from one terminal to the next. No human operator on board.
And they've changed it now, but it used to be that the voice that told you what terminal was next and everything was a synthesized voice, and it was like a parody of a robot voice.
And I'm talking about a grade Z movie robot voice, the kind of voice that makes Hal sound like Laurence Olivier. You know, it was like, Please step all the way into the car.
The doors are closed. And then it would be like,
The next stop will be Terminal C.
Make sure you have all your belongings and use caution in exiting the train. One time, when we were exiting the train, Bill suggested that once everybody's off,
the voice should say, Y'all come on back now, you hear? Too bad that large institutions can't afford to have a sense of humor. And they probably can't. Almost anything you say stands a good chance.
Of offending someone. Anyway, what makes that robot type voice sound so impersonal? Well, there are three ways, as I figure, that most humans,
I mean, fully animate organisms such as you and I, although there are days when we may not feel fully animate. Speak for yourself, John Alden.
Okay, that's enough out of you, solder brain. There are three ways we show feeling in our speech. Timing, inflection, and volume.
Now, that robot voice wasn't too bad in terms of timing, a bit stilted, but it wouldn't be so noticeable if the tone quality were better. But inflection, the voice is all on one note,
whereas we use many notes when we speak. You know, most of us don't tend to think of speech as having particular pitches, pitches that you could play on a musical instrument.
But if you listen to me saying this, but if you listen to me say, that's a specific pitch. Duh.
When I started writing movie scores, I did mostly documentary and educational films, and I learned early on why you hear more solo flute in such scores than you do solo bassoon or cello.
Most of those films have a voiceover narration, but the male grackle soon tires of this domestic arrangement, and it's usually a male voice.
And the central part of the bassoon range, for instance, is exactly the same as the standard range of your typical announcer guy. So the bassoon gets in the way, it makes it hard to understand the words,
while the flute sails serenely above the hustle-bustle of narrative life. Then there's volume. We usually vary the loudness at least somewhat when we speak.
When my daughter was in grade school, she had her gang of friends, and one of them, the most conservative one, used to say, I can't believe you guys!
A nice example, actually, of extreme timing, inflection, and volume. So it's the complete absence of any variation in inflection and volume
that made that robot voice sound so stupid.
I'd like to see how smart you'd feel after saying, please step all the way into the car 1,200 times a day,
seven days a week, 50 weeks out of the year. 50 weeks? You mean you get a vacation?
Hey, cauliflower brain, I have to be serviced. Don't you ever go to the doctor and dentist.
Yeah, well, you just proved what I was talking about. You can't even say, I'd like to see how smart you'd feel. You can't even do that properly. Blow it out your ear. Oh, okay, hey, hey.
Hey, you want to get something going here, huh-huh? Is that it? You want to...
Yeah.
Oh, hello, sir. Is it really? Time flies when you... Okay, yes, I think you're right. It's time for some music. I'll get right to it. Okay, bye-bye.
Okay, folks, what I was leading up to is that the constant and fairly small variations in volume that we make when we speak are also made by singers and players in most kinds of music.
But in general, composers don't notate them in detail. As a matter of fact, in much of the history of Western music, and I should think, and that of other parts of the world as well,
dynamic indications of any kind are absent or rare. Subtle changes in loudness are part of the expressive techniques that are left to the discretion of the performers
or assumed to be part of common practice. But in the first half of the 18th century, an orchestral technique was developed that you definitely had to indicate. You couldn't take it for granted.
It came to be known as the Mannheim Crescendo because it was perfected by the Crackerjack Orchestra in that city. The idea was to get louder very gradually
over a period of many measures rather than just a few beats. In this excerpt, you'll hear two Mannheim Crescendos, the first after about 25 seconds and the other after about 40 seconds.
Okay, big deal, right? Long crescendos, often much longer than those, became so common in later music that the ones we just heard are hardly noticeable to us.
But it was a big deal at the time, and it caught on big. That was part of a symphony in G by Karl Stamets, one of the leaders of the Mannheim gang,
Matthias Bamert conducting the London Mozart Players. Now, here are three pieces from three centuries, all featuring a long crescendo.
This suite is called Mannheim on my Mind, and it lasts about nine and a half minutes. See you then.
Okay, it's coming up now.
I love that little hoo at the end.
I don't know if that's somebody's dog or one of the players. Mannheim on my Mind. We began with the overture to The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Mariner
on an EMI Classics CD. Then came an excerpt from The Twilight of the Gods by Wagner. That was Lauren Moselle in the Berlin Philharmonic
from an interesting tell-arc album called The Ring Without Words. And finally, the Royal Garden Blues, as performed by the Sextet from Hunger on a McGregor 45 RPM.
If you want the catalogue number on that, it's 45060. Thank goodness I still have some of those little plastic center thingies. Hey, this one has something written on it. It says,
Property of P. Schickely. You know, I'll bet that's Peter Schickely, the host of Schickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
If you're a composer, and you want to indicate that the music should get louder, you can make a sign that looks like a long, thin letter V lying on its side, with the closed end on the left
and the open end on the right. Musicians often call this sign a hairpin. Hairpins aren't really practical if the crescendo goes on a very long time, say, more than a whole line of music.
In that case, it's better to write C-R-E-S-C, the abbreviation for crescendo, perhaps followed by poco a poco, little by little. But the hairpin is an extremely satisfying sign,
simple but very graphic in depicting what's going on dynamically. So I've decided to use the symbol freely in the title of today's show, which is about long crescendos and diminuendos.
This program is called Hairpins for Really Big Hair. And we're going to hear some that go on longer than Tommy Toon's legs. The idea of long crescendos really took off in the 19th century.
The very beginning of Wagner's Ring Cycle has the feeling of a crescendo that lasts over five minutes. It may not be literally getting louder at every single moment,
but the overall effect is of an extremely prolonged crescendo. Ravel's Bolero has the same feeling over an even longer time. Here are a couple of crescendos that go on for minutes.
The second one fits in well with the comments I've just been making, but the first one, I might as well admit right now, is a scam. It's an early 18th century piece played on the organ.
Now, in general, you can't do a crescendo on a pipe organ. Each pipe is either playing or not playing. There's no in-between. On any given set of pipes called a stop, an organist playing a melody
can't produce any more dynamic variety than that stupid Atlanta airport robot voice. I heard that. But the organist can add other stops, other sets of pipes.
And if he adds them as skillful as does the organist we're about to hear, the emotional effect is that there's a crescendo from beginning to end. You grab a hairpin on the closed end, right?
And a crescendo mark is open on the right. So this sweetlet is called Big Left-Handed Hairpins. It has two pieces, and I'll be back in about nine minutes.
Big, no, make that Big Left-Handed Hairpins. Our first crescendo was a fugue in G by Bach, BWV 577. Nicknamed The Jig,
and played by E. Power Biggs, who I imagine had to suffer through a lot of nicknames himself in his day. The ones I remember from my student days were Air Power Biggs and E. Powder Bags.
Anyway, very tasty job on that fugue. Of course, one thing that helps the crescendo feeling in a fugue is that the voices come in one at a time. So you're getting an increase in sound just from that.
Then we heard the last movement of The Pines of Rome by Respighi, with George Mester conducting the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Now, by the way, you know, in case you're listening to this program
in preparation for a music exam, I should say that the term Mannheim Crescendo would be strictly applied only to the appropriate passages in the Stamets and Mozart pieces we've heard,
not to the very long, thematically-oriented crescendos and quasi-crescendos in the other pieces. If you want to hear some spiffy examples of longer Mannheim Crescendos, listen to some Rossini overtures.
Also, I have to mention one of the most curious translations in musical terminology. The German word for a crescendo passage
is Walze, which also means cylinder or roller. It's the same word as waltz, in which the dancers roll around the room. And this has led to the translation
of Mannheim Crescendo as well, what does this
have in common with this?
They're both called Mannheim Steamroller. In the first case, it's an anachronistic translation of Mannheim Walze, and in the second, it's the name of a New Age rock group.
See the things you learn on this show? Also, I was thinking, you know, we're dealing with all these long crescendos. I was wondering, just for the heck of it, what's the shortest, famous crescendo you can think of?
The shortest I could come up with was Here's Johnny! Must have been nice to be introduced like that. But you gotta have the right kind of name, you know what I mean?
I mean, it just doesn't work as well to say Here's Peter Shinkley, host of Shinkley Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Hairpins for Really Big Hair is the name of today's show. We've been talking about pieces, or sections of pieces, that, like your least favorite uncle at a family gathering,
get louder the longer they stick around. And also about the musical sign for getting louder. A rancher would call it the lazy V, but musicians call it a hairpin.
Now let's turn the hairpin around and listen to some music that gets softer over a long period. In fact, softer to the point of extinction. Here's the end of Alban Berg's Lyric Suite.
That was the Juilliard Quartet,
Samuel Rhodes on viola. Berg instructs the violist to repeat the last two notes, getting softer and softer until it's inaudible, but in any case, not to end on the lower note,
which would sound too final. Interesting philosophical thing there. You want to go until it's inaudible, but the lowest note shouldn't be the last note.
And actually, in a concert hall, different people are going to hear different notes as the last one. You see what I mean? It's a tricky thing, doing real fade-outs in live situations.
Some instruments stop responding before they get too soft to hear. So even though the cutoff may be very soft, it's still a cutoff, not a fade that is so gradual that you're not sure when the sound actually disappears.
Here are the endings of two more pieces that fade away. I don't know how the first piece was handled on this recording, but originally it was suggested that the women's chorus be offstage
and that, as they sang the final measures, the door to the stage be gradually closed. In the second piece, which was recorded in a studio, the electronic solution to this problem
has become an art form in itself. This suite is called Big Right-Handed Hairpins. It lasts a bit under six minutes.
Two pieces whose ends, I think, justify their means. The first was The Planets by Holst, which ends with Neptune, the mystic. That was Charles de Troyes and the Montreal.
And then we heard... What is that other piece called? Let's see. Oh, yeah.
Hey Jude by The Beatles. Sorry about that. These old groups, you know, it's hard to remember. I've always felt that electronic fade-outs in pop music,
even when they're not that long, and few are, that code at a Hey Jude is longer than the song proper, and the fade-out itself is about two minutes long. But fade-outs give the feeling that the music will go on forever.
The party's not stopping. It's just moving down the street. But as I said before, they're hard to pull off in person, especially with loud music for loud crowds. When The Beatles performed live,
they put regular Final Chord-type endings on songs that had fade-out endings on their records. Fade-outs were too hard to pull off technically, and not as satisfying, I suppose, for screaming teenyboppers
who could hardly hear the music even at full volume. Okay, now I think we only have time for one double hairpin. That's right, folks, a double hairpin.
That's where you start soft, get loud, and then get soft again. And it costs no more than a single hairpin. Here's the smallest example of a double hairpin.
This is a live studio performance, by the way. It wasn't easy, believe you me, getting the Berlin Philharmonic in this room. Okay, maestro, if you please.
The last chord of the first movement of Brahms' Third Symphony. Thank you very much, Mr. Flankarion. I greatly appreciate you and everybody coming here. It's really true, you know,
there's nothing like live music. Okay, that's a micro version of the double hairpin. Now... May I please have your autograph, Mr. Flankarion? Oh, man.
I would like to oblige, but I'm dead. Well, I'm not exactly the life of the party myself. Oh, all right, I'll try. I can't believe this.
Thank you very much. Oh, man.
Getting an autograph from my special guest. Boy, I never thought I'd be embarrassed by the synthesized voice, the retired synthesized voice of the Atlanta Airport shuttle train.
Well, I gotta get this music on so the orchestra can leave. Here's a macro version of the double hairpin. The whole piece goes from quiet to quite loud and then back to quiet.
The text is an old English poem.
This is the... Every night
Fire and fleet and camp
And Christ receive thy soul
When light Away Every night and all
To Winnie Mule thou comest And Christ receive thy soul
Gave us Bozeman the shoon Every night and all
Sit me down and put them on
And Christ receive thy soul And a shoon
Thou ne'er gavest name Every night and all The Winnie sheltered feet to their bane
And Christ receive thy soul From Winnie Mule
When thou missed pass Every night and all To bring a dread thou comest at last
And Christ receive thy soul
From Winnie Mule thou comest at last
And Christ receive thy soul
Gavest me to drink Every night and all
The fire shall never make thee shrink And Christ receive thy soul
Oh little people The ne'er gavest name
Every night and all The fire will burn thee to the bare bane
And Christ receive thy soul
Receive Every night and all
Fire and fleet and candle light And Christ receive thy soul
Buffy St. Marie playing the mouth bow and singing the like wake dirge.
The melody is by Benjamin Britten from his serenade for tenor horn and strings But the setting is by yours truly Who also had a hand Two hands actually
In our tidbit time piece Which is the slow movement from PDQ Bach's double piano concerto This movement contains
What is perhaps the most egregious long crescendo in all of western music The soloists are John Camara Parker and the aforementioned Mr. Truly
With George Mester conducting the New York Pickup Ensemble This is the second movement Andante Alighieri from PDQ Bach's Concerto for two Pianos versus Orchestra
Ciccoli Number 2 or better than 1
Piano music Andante Alighieri
Piano music Andante Alighieri Piano music
Andante Alighieri
And that's Sickly Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting 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 148. 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.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped self-addressed envelope to Sickly Mix. That's sicklymix.com. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Sickly Mix.
Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
PRI.