I'm going to make an educated guess and say yes.
Here's the theme.
Hello there. I'm Peter Shickely and this is Shickely Mix,
a program dedicated to the proposition that all music's are created equal.
Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good.
And how sweet it is to say that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
and by this tightly run radio station, which so far at least lets me do my thing here,
which thing is then distributed around by PRI, Public Radio International.
Well, we've got an interesting situation here on today's show.
When I told the station manager that I was going to do something new for Shickely Mix,
which is to devote an entire program to the first movement of Mozart's Prague Symphony.
You know, I always play short pieces or sections of longer pieces to illustrate a point or a zone.
But I thought it would be a good idea to really get into a piece, one piece, and see what makes it work formally and everything.
Well, the station manager demurred, actually hit the ceiling is more like it.
He said, we've got to give listeners what they want and they don't want to listen to one Mozart piece for an hour.
But I stood my ground. I still think it's a good idea.
So do you know what he did?
He drew up a list of pieces people want to hear. I'm making those little quote signs with my fingers there.
And he had one of the staff announcers put together a one-hour show to run concurrently with mine.
Presumably it's rolling right now in the studio across the hall.
And if it's decided that what I'm doing is getting too boring, then they're going to switch over to the other show, just like that.
Can you believe that?
I'm just warning you. So you'll know what's going on, you know, if you suddenly find yourself listening to Pachelbel's Canon or something.
It's because, oh, oh, and here's the kicker. I didn't tell you this.
The station manager is out of town at a radio convention and guess who he's put in charge of deciding if and when to switch over to the alternate show.
You ready for this?
His 15-year-old son.
That's what I said.
I mean, I've met him and he seems like a perfectly nice kid if perhaps a bit over-relaxed.
But, hey, the thing is he's probably into heavy metal or grunge or cyber rock or whatever.
It's a good bet he'll be getting bored before ten minutes are up.
It's hard to believe that the fate of today's show is in the hands of the rebellious teenager who's sitting in the studio across the hall with his finger on the red button.
The launch button, as it were.
Hey, you know, I can switch us over to that alternate feed.
Let's see, it's this switch right here by the red light.
Here's what you'd be listening to if Chip had already gotten bored.
Well, what did I tell you?
Pachelbel's Canon.
Well, I'm going to hope that Chip has his virtual game boy in there with him and won't care what he's listening to.
The show's being taped so the manager can hear it when he gets back.
But I am going to proceed with my plan, which is to immerse ourselves, to wallow in one of my favorite pieces in the whole wide world,
Mozart's Symphony No. 38 in D major, nicknamed the Prague Symphony.
You know, the folks in Bohemia loved Mozart.
And ever since the abduction from the Seraglio, Prague couldn't get enough of Wolfie.
And when he went there at the end of 1786 for the local premiere of The Marriage of Figaro,
he brought with him this newly composed symphony, which became a great favorite.
I'd like to say a few things before we get going.
It has been pointed out that some commentators confuse Mozart's development as a composer with that of the symphony in general.
When I point out new techniques, I don't mean to imply that Mozart necessarily invented them.
Some of these changes were being brought about by Haydn and other contemporary symphonists as well.
The symphony developed from the Italian opera overture, which was usually fast, slow, fast.
And in the days of Mozart's early symphonies, the 1760s,
even those that were not originally written as opera overtures were generally played as a prelude to some kind of entertainment.
Their job was to entertain and get people in a good mood.
By the end of the century, symphonies were substantially longer, they were written for larger forces,
and they had become self-contained vehicles for artistic expression.
They also got a lot harder to play, which put an end to one practice, that is in the symphony orchestra.
It still survives in Broadway orchestra pits.
Recognize this piece?
In our theme song, if I may use the vernacular, we hear two flutes and no oboes.
It's the middle movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 24, by the way.
But in the first movement of that same symphony, we hear two oboes and no flutes.
Now that's because the pairs of flutes and oboes were played by the same two guys.
They're called doublers.
Nowadays, a lucky doubler in a Broadway show orchestra might have to bring a flute and an oboe
and a clarinet and a saxophone and a bassoon to work every day.
He may get a hernia, but he cries all the way to the bank, because he gets paid extra for every double.
Anyway, by the time the Prague Symphony was written, the woodwind parts had gotten hard enough
to require specialization among the players.
Mozart did have a lot to do with the much greater importance of the winds.
It has been said that Mozart learned how to take full advantage of the string quartet from Haydn
and that Haydn learned how to take full advantage of the orchestral winds from Mozart.
And finally, the later symphonies took on the full range of expression that you might find in an opera.
Here's the slow introduction to the first movement of Mozart's 38th Symphony.
This is no longer the free drink you get with your meal at a dinner theater.
This could be a scene from Don Giovanni.
Mozart's 38th Symphony
The opening of Mozart's Prague Symphony, played, as will be all our excerpts,
by Charles Makaris conducting, appropriately enough, the Prague Chamber Orchestra.
Let me lay upon you now a little bit of the overture to Don Giovanni,
which, by the way, was commissioned by Prague after the success there of the Marriage of Figaro.
Most of the symphony introduction is in the key of D minor, as is the beginning of the overture to Don Giovanni.
Mozart's 38th Symphony
Okay, now let's go back to the Prague Symphony.
We're talking about that cadential which means closing material.
It has three segments.
In the first, the strings play virtually the same thing three times
and the winds play literally the same thing three times.
We can call that the you heard me section.
Then there's a section where the basses go
which is exactly the same harmonic progression as
is the 18th century version of
So we'll call that the doo wop section.
Then there's some hammering away on the note A
in a way that leads us to expect, if we've been reading our textbooks,
the second theme proper.
Well, we may expect the second theme, but we ain't gonna get it.
What we get is a varied version of the opening of the exposition
with the long note theme, the magic flute theme, and the square theme
being combined and tossed around in a way that the textbooks say
isn't supposed to happen until the development section after the exposition.
We go through some excitingly unexpected harmonies
and then instead of keeping that texture and loud dynamic right up till the next theme
Mozart stops short two bars early, shifts down into soft
and introduces three wispy filigrees
the last of which turns out to be the pickups to the new theme.
Now this is a new theme and it is a lyric theme
and the first half of it is eight bars long.
You expect the second half to be the same as the first half but with a different ending.
But our sly friend presents the second half in the minor
so it's the same melody but in a darker form
and with the bassoons filling in the rhythmic cracks.
Then he does something that I find both delightful and touching.
As I said, he has switched to the minor form of the scale
but otherwise he's repeating the first half of the theme exactly.
Then five and a half bars in with another couple of bars to go
the tune stops dead in its tracks.
In the middle of the measure it simply quits
leaving the cellos and basses plunking out a bass line
and the high woodwinds holding chords as if they were accompanying a melody
but there's no melody.
Or they are suddenly the melody
even though they don't seem to have much to do with the melody
we thought we were going to hear completed.
Music
Now Mozart pulls his thematic accompaniment trick again.
The bassoons come in with a sort of rhythmically reversed version of the lyric theme
but hey, what do you know?
It turns out also to be an accompaniment to a new lyric theme in the violins
leading to some more developmental type stuff.
Music
Now the rest of the exposition has four segments
three of which relate to material from the first half of the expo
as musicians never call it.
We've got the doo wop section
a very intense loud rendition of the long note theme
the I told you so section
and four bars of hopping around on the notes of the A major triad or chord.
Before we heard the I told you so section followed by the doo wop section
now we have the doo wop section followed by the I told you so section
separated by a new version of the long note theme.
Okay look, I don't expect you to keep all these themes straight as I rattle them off.
I'd be confused myself if I didn't have the score in front of me.
All I'm trying to get across is that even when Mozart repeats material
he's repeating it in a different order or in a different version
and what that does is it enables him to combine familiarity and surprise
which is a very neat trick.
Here's the end of the exposition.
Music
You know that place right after the doo wop section
where the brasses and timpani blare out repeated A's
pushing the piece to an unexpected intensity.
It always reminds me of this place.
Music
Now I don't know if Beethoven ever heard Mozart's Prague Symphony
but I do know for a fact that Mozart never heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
at least not with earthly ears.
My, what heavenly ears you have Wolfgang.
Is it better to hear what that schlumpf Beethoven has swiped from me?
Just fooling folks.
Mozart's Mozart, Beethoven's Beethoven.
And I'm Peter Shickely, host of Shickely Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
The subtitle of Mozart's 38th Symphony could have been For Prague with Love
and it is the subtitle of Shickely Mix today.
I'm devoting the whole show to one of my favorite pieces
in spite of the fact that the station manager's 15-year-old son
is sitting in a studio across the hall with instructions to,
if he thinks it's getting boring, to flick a switch
and send an alternate program out over the air.
It could happen at any time, I guess, completely without warning.
Well, actually there would be a bit of warning.
There's a red light on this console here that would flash for five or ten seconds,
whatever it is, before the switchover.
But so far, so good.
Hey, my feeling is if all you wanted to hear was the Pachelbel Canon
and Vivaldi's Four Seasons, you wouldn't be listening to Shickely Mix, right?
Let's see what you would be hearing now if Son Chip had flicked his switch.
Let me flick mine here.
Oh, another arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon.
That's very enterprising.
Okay, now we've reached the development section of the Prague Symphony,
the B of the ABA description of sonata form,
exposition, development, and recapitulation.
The development section usually, but not always, takes material from the exposition
and subjects it to various kinds of fanciful treatment.
Melodies are often fragmented, although in this case,
most of the melodic material in the exposition is already in short fragments.
The fragments are often thrown around from player to player, section to section.
There is often a liberal use of sequence.
That's when you take a melodic phrase and repeat it,
but starting on a different scale step.
La da da dee, la da da dee, la da da dee, la da da dee.
And the music usually goes through at least several keys before arriving back at the tonic.
Now, all of those things happened, at least on a small scale, in the exposition,
and that's why you have to beware of two things,
Greeks bearing gifts and textbooks bearing pat descriptions of musical forms.
In fact, by the time you get to Beethoven,
the line between exposition and development is thinner than that which separates lying and diplomacy.
But it is usually true that because of these characteristics,
the development section has a sort of a restless quality
that is not resolved until the recapitulation.
I was just remembering I once rehearsed a PDQ Bach piece with an orchestra,
and I said, okay, let's go back to the development.
A few seconds later, before we started playing,
one of the horn players really cracked up, and he just started laughing.
I said, what's so funny?
And he said, oh, nothing.
And I said, hey, come on.
Well, apparently one of the other horn players had quoted a famous line from one of the old radio comedies.
Some character used to say, what a revolting development this has turned out to be.
Mozart's is anything but revolting.
Let's see how it starts.
Okay, so what is that?
That's the rainbow theme from early in the exposition, the one in the woodwinds.
I told you so.
Seemingly trivial little two-bar tune heard but once in the exposition,
but, as you will hear, it becomes a major player in the development,
which also makes extensive use of the magic flute theme and the sort of upside down sixteenths.
There's one place where Mozart pulls off a bit of a fast one.
It's a sort of a false recapitulation in a way.
He quotes almost 13 measures of the exposition verbatim, or notebatum,
which leads you to expect what followed it before to follow once more,
which it starts to do but then goes off on its developmental way again.
Finally, with a beautiful pair of descending sequences subsiding into the recapitulation.
The development section of Mozart's Prague Symphony.
You know, that serene series of descending phrases at the end there that leads to the recapitulation,
like a hawk circling down and then finally landing in a tree, is a favorite device of Mozart's.
He used that general idea more than a few times, and I always love it.
When I was putting this show together,
I realized that that passage must have been the inspiration for the similar passage,
the end of the development, in PDQ Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos versus Orchestra.
Of course, being PDQ Bach, the sequence goes on too long,
and when the orchestra finally arrives at the tonic, the pianists keep going,
and the orchestra has to back up and go to the tonic again.
So.
The end of the development of the first movement marked
Szekelegro of PDQ Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos versus Orchestra.
You know, when the first Telarc album of PDQ Bach won a Grammy,
one of the other nominees was the late comedian Sam Kinison.
I wasn't at the awards ceremony, but I heard that he said afterwards,
I can't believe I lost in the comedy category to somebody named Bach,
which is a good line.
Well, I guess he was good buddies with Howard Stern,
and people would tell me every once in a while how the two of them
would get on the air or just stern and bemoan a culture
that would give PDQ Bach a Grammy.
So eventually I was invited to be interviewed on the show,
which I accepted, having been told it would be in person,
but then it was changed to a phoner, which made me more uncomfortable,
but I agreed anyway, and of course he mopped the floor with me.
At one point he put on the PDQ Bach album,
I think it was the 1712 Overture Cut, and went on about,
this is funny? What's funny about this? Are you laughing, Robin?
Funny? Is this funny?
And then he laughed hysterically for about 20 seconds,
which is a long time on radio.
I guess the best I could say is that I walked out of the ring,
but the reason I bring it up is that he's right.
If you're not interested in, or at least sympathetic to classical music,
and also if you're impatient, if gags have to play out in the space of a one-liner,
it's not funny, and even if you are into it,
it's often not hilarious funny, it's affectionate funny.
That passage we just heard is certainly No Cocktails for Two by Spike Jones,
but if you love the ends of Mozart's development sections as much as I do,
you'll probably get a warm chuckle out of it. Since he was so good at writing development sections,
and since all but two or three of his symphonies are in major keys,
and since the musical ideas involved are intellectual property,
and therefore part of his estate in a very real sense,
I guess you'd have to say that Mozart was a major real estate developer,
or maybe you wouldn't. I can't believe that didn't get us off the air.
Let's see what you'd be hearing if it had tripped that switch across the hall.
I'm gonna switch my switch here and listen to the alternate program.
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
Well, you would still be listening to Mozart anyway.
Okay, so let's hear the recapitulation of his Prague Symphony first movement.
We won't have time, which is probably just as well at this point,
to go into it in detail. Suffice it to say that the recapitulation of the
exposition is not literal.
In the first place, the two theme groups that in the exposition
were in the tonic and dominant keys respectively, are now both in the tonic.
But composers almost always change more than would be required just to
accomplish that.
At one point here, Mozart whittles a section that lasted 54 seconds in the
exposition
down to 18 seconds. Among the measures missing are the whole build-up to
and beginning of the second theme group. See, the thing is,
composers don't or shouldn't read textbooks.
It's recap time in Prague.
So,
so
All right! The end of the first movement of Mozart's
Symphony No. 38, the Prague performed by
Charles Makaris and the Prague Chamber Orchestra,
on a Telarc CD. An exciting, propulsive performance.
I could do without the harpsichord myself, but that's my own little hang-up.
Its inclusion is perfectly authentic. You know what I love about that piece?
It combines the emotional shadows
and contrapuntal sophistication of Mozart's late symphonies
with the exuberant, kinetic dance energy of his early symphonies.
Most of... Oh, wait a minute.
Wait a minute. The red light is flashing. Schickly Mix is about to go off the air
and be replaced by the station manager's classical light list.
I guess his son, Chip, finally got bored.
Here it goes.
What the?
Wait a minute. I know this. This is the
Webern three traditional rhymes, right?
What's going on here?
Hold on. I've got to find out what's going on here.
I can't believe this is...
Oh, okay. Here comes the end.
That was
Drei Volkstexti
Hey, that's him! That's Chip!
Undrei instrumenti op 17
by Webern.
Hey, Dad. How do you like them apples?
Hey, the red light's off. I'm back on the air.
Hey, Chip. Way to go.
That is, I'm sure your father will appreciate your independent spirit.
Well, we made it.
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 151.
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.
The.
PRI Public Radio International.