Flea to Bee, You and Me

Schickele Mix Episode #152

Part of The Schickele Mix Online Fan Archive

Official description
A program about … er, bugs
Premiere
1998-01-07
“Peter, are you ready?”
The buzz around the station is that I am.

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You can listen to this episode on the Internet Archive, and follow along using a transcript.

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Transcript

[This is a machine-generated transcript, cleaned up and formatted as HTML. You can download the original as an .srt file.]

Well, Professor Schickele, we're ready to go with Schickele Mix, if you're ready to go. The buzz around the station is that I am. Here's the theme.
[No speech for 13s.]
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. But when it comes to radio, you can't taste the honey if you ain't got the money. So I'm glad to report that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by this on-the-go radio station, a veritable hive of activity that lets me hover around long enough to produce these globules of sweet-tasting yet educational nectar, which globules are then borne aloft and distributed far and wide by PRI, Public Radio International. Well, there's nothing like a little contest to liven up the everyday conduct of business.
When I was a kid, you'd sometimes see a store window with a huge jar displayed. And the jar was filled with jelly beans, for instance. And the contest was to guess how many jelly beans were in the jar. And the person whose guess was closest got a prize. You know, depending on what kind of store it was. Like a gallon of Butterbrickle ice cream, or a set of six dress patterns, or a crank-type hand drill with a hollowed-out place in the handle to store the extra bits. Anyway, obviously, a contest like that isn't very suitable for radio. Because you can't see the jar, you know.
So here's what I've come up with. What I want you to do is guess which insect is most often represented in the Schickele Mix record collection. Now, I'm using the term record loosely here. I mean recordings. And I would say, oh, my guess would be that we've got about 2,500 CDs in the studio, and maybe a thousand LPs, and probably about a hundred forty-fives. Of course, a few of those are extended play. And, uh, well, let's forget about these 78s and cylinders. So, out of about 3,600 recordings, how many pieces are inspired by insects?
Or rather, what I'm really asking is, which insect is most often the subject of a piece? And I'm using the word insect loosely, too. You know, little flying things and creepy crawly things. In general, members of the phylum Bugs. You don't have to try to guess how many songs or pieces there are about any given insect. Just which one comes up most often. Okay, okay, here we go. Hello?
You're on the air, sort of. Uh, that's right. And what's your guess? No, I'm afraid that's not, uh... As a matter of fact, I can't think of a single song about tsetse flies. Uh, but I'm sure there are some.
They just don't happen to be a staple of my particular collection. Sorry, but thanks for calling. Okay, we're rolling here.
Hello?
Hi, Fern. What's your guess? Fid? What is a fid? A fid isn't an insect. Isn't a fid a tapered wooden pin used to separate a bird? Or to separate the strands of a rope? Oh, a fid! I'm sorry for it. Sure, of course it is. Yeah.
Well, that's an interesting guess, Fern. But I'm afraid I didn't run across an awful lot of a fid pieces. I guess the collection just isn't strong on a fidiana. Mea culpa, I'm sure. But, uh, well, I guess that's the way the cauliflower crumbles. Bye.
And...
You're talking to the eponymous host of Schickele Mix. My name is Schickele. What's yours? Pieri? What's your first name, Mr. Pieri? Oh, you're not gonna tell me. You only use your first initial. Okay, Mr. A. Pieri, what's your guess?
That is absolutely correct, Mr. Pieri. The bee. The humble bumblebee. As the poet says, where the bee sucks, there suck I. And that's absolutely true, by the way.
I really suck when it comes to taking care of flowers. Congratulations, Mr. Pieri. Yeah, you're right. I did drop a few hits there at the beginning of the show. But you were the first one to pick up on them.
So now you are the proud winner of four jars of honey. And we're not talking your everyday clover honey here, Mr. Pieri. This is exotic stuff.
You'll be getting one jar each of lotus honey, venus flytrap honey, kudzu honey, and poison ivy honey.
So just give your name and address to the receptionist when I hang up, and then tell your honey to get out the bread and butter. Bye now, and enjoy. Okay, I'm glad we finally got a winner here so we can get on to the music.
Here are three pieces in the key of B. Get it? No, I shouldn't kid around here. These are three perfectly serious pieces. The first one is imitative.
The other two use the B fancifully in the lyrics. I'll see you in about 11 and a half minutes.
How does a lady know if she's really in love?
A lady just does. She's got a feeling.
A sort of squirm.
Like little fish was swimming in your veins. Well, I never felt none of them little fish. That's why I went to see the hungan today.
Why can't you stay away from that voodoo man?
Well, at least he told me something useful when I asked him.
Ain't there a sign, some magic sign, that can tell a lady for sure if she's in love? Oh, violets, violets.
One as young as you did not believe in magic. Very tragic. So to help you. In your quest.
We have some magical shenanigans to suggest.
Pluck a hair from your man's head. Drop it in a glass of wine. If it turns into a flower. Then a true love, it's a sign.
If you find a shiny pearl inside a cantaloupe. It's a solemn sign you're loved.
Maybe so.
But the hungan told me there's only one real sign. And what's that? Ask a bee. Ask a bee? What you give the hungan for this information? My gold bracelet.
But it was worth it to know that all a lady has to do is catch a bee and hold him in your hand. And if it don't sting you, if it don't fly away.
Then you're a queen.
When a boar bewitched.
And deep in love's long looked after land. Where you'll see a sun up sky.
[No speech for 25s.]
Leave what just passed. For the taken. I'm so happy at last.
Maybe our dreams. But he seems.
Sweet golden as untold me.
I'm beat off.
The bee stings you.
Why then she ain't in love. She just in misery. Look Violet. There's a bee.
Let's see you catch him.
Go on. Don't you want to know if you love Mr. Jameson? He's not going to fly away. Let's see.
Sleep on me.
[No speech for 118s.]
where smiles and sweet lilies sit, where a rose in chair, where smiling roses and sweet lilies sit, keeping thy spring-tide grasses, keeping thy spring-tide grasses, keeping thy spring-tide grasses away,
keeping thy spring-tide grasses,
[No speech for 17s.]
let's switch back here, all sweets are hard to get,
let's keep the sharp,
all in one plan, was never that sharp,
[No speech for 23s.]
was never that sharp,
so sharp, so sharp, and yet do you love me, when you're done?
[No speech for 44s.]
I call that sweet, be serious. That's B-E-E, serious. A little joke there, even though the pieces were not jokey at all. Just introducing a bit of cognitive dissonance between title and content. What I'm going for here is a sort of a Brechtian distance. Oh, okay, okay, okay. The irrelevancy alarm has saved you from an explanation of my artistic and educational procedures. The Be Serious Suite began with what has to be the most famous insect piece in our culture, The Flight of the Bumblebee, which is from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Czar Sultan. How could I not include that? The London Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Harry Rabinowitz. The middle piece was A Sleepin' Bee from the musical House of Flowers by Harold Arlen and Truman Capote. The principal singer was Diane Carroll with Ada Moore, Dolores Harper, and Enid Mosier. And the conductor was Jerry Arlen.
And last, that sweet as honey madrigal was by John Wilby. Sweet honey-sucking bees, why do you still serve it on roses, pinks, and violets? As if the choicest nectar lay in them, wherewith you store your curious cabinets. Ah, make your flight to Meliswavia's lips. There you may revel in Ambrosian cheer, where smiling roses and sweet lilies sit, keeping their springtide graces all the year. Yet sweet take heed, all sweets are hard to get. Sting not her soft lips, oh beware of that, for if one flaming dart come from her eye, was never dart so sharp, and then you die. Nice twist in the second part there. You know, it occurs to me that, poetically speaking, the bee is the animal kingdom equivalent of the rose, combining the highly desirable and the potentially injurious. That was performed by the Hilliard Ensemble and listened to by, among others, Peter Schickele, host of Schickele Mix. From PRI, Public Radio International.
The bee's knees. To make a bee line, I've got a bee in my bonnet, and what it is, is none of your beeswax. To be or not to be. We be talking bee today, no doubt about it. You know, to be or not to be, that would be good for making a rebus. You know, one of those riddles where pictures represent words. You'd have a number two, and then a picture of a bumblebee, and then a picture of some ore, you know, like iron ore. Oh, okay, okay, that's a little tricky, I admit. To draw a picture of a bee is to draw iron ore, so it's recognizable. Anyway, then comes knot, you have a shoelace with a knot in it, and then another number two, and another bumblebee.
To be or not to be. Oh, man, I should draw that up and submit it to Mensa. I'll bet somebody there could figure it out. Anyway, we've heard three serious evocations of apiarian ardor, some beautiful, delightful pieces, but let's face it, there is something funny about the name bee. I mean, it just invites words to play. See, it's almost impossible not to make fun of a bee, or, to change the word order of that sentence, it's almost impossible not to make fun of a bee, see? Get it? A, B, C.
Oh, man. Well, here are some pieces that examine the lighter side of bees. All of the four items in this suite are songs, and I want to say just a few words about the text of the second one, which is an Elizabethan poem called The Bee.
The poet sometimes uses the word flea and bird, but he's using those words very loosely. He's referring to the bee at all times. At one point, he says, beware my leather flea flap, and I assume that a leather flea flap is like a fly swatter. And then what comes next is my favorite spot, because there are certain slang words that you think must be fairly recent, right? But think again. The poet says, beware my leather flea flap, for it shall beat thy little bum, proving once again that language changes, but not always as rapidly as you might think. Bees are fascinating insects. Of course, they have a very highly organized society, and individuals are always wondering whether or not to buck authority. Yes, to question or not to question. That is the bee.
I overheard a phrase the other day. I didn't know if it referred to a certain actress's pet or to a certain kind of contest run by British conservatives. All I heard was something about a bird or a Tauri spelling bee.
And what about the guy who thought he had killed off all the members of the rock group, the police? And when he saw one of them alive, he said, sting, where is thy death? Hey, is it true
that Bee Lily had hives? A bee who took steroids and a bee who had vitamins had a fight. The vitamin bee won. Hey, why do you think the bee... I can't stop. I can't stop telling bee jokes. Must, must be just hit the, hit the start button.
Hello, playmates. And now, for no reason at all, I'm going to sing you a little song that made me famous. The song that I made famous. Well, anyway, one of us is very good and I entitle it The Bee.
Oh, what a glorious thing to be. A healthy grown-up, busy, busy bee. Why, hiling away the passing hours. Pinching all the pollen from the coffee flowers. I'd like to be a busy, busy bee. Being just as busy as a bee can be. Flying around the garden, the sweetest ever seen. Taking back the honey to the dear old queen. Honey bee, honey bee, bzz, if you like, but won't sting me. Honey bee, honey bee, bzz, if you like, but won't sting me.
Oh, Oh, what a glorious thing to be, a healthy, grown-up, busy, busy bee, making hay while time is ripe, filling up the honeycomb just like tripe.
I'd like to be a busy, busy bee, being just as busy as a bee can be, flying all around the wild hedge rose, stinging all the cows upon the parson's nose.
Bzz, bzz, bzz, honeybee, honeybee, bzz if you like, but don't sting me. Bzz, bzz, bzz, honeybee, honeybee, bzz if you like, but don't sting me.
Bzz, bzz, bzz, oh, what a glorious thing to be, a healthy, grown-up, busy, busy bee, visiting the picnics, quite a little tease, raising little nubs upon the Boy Scout's knees.
I'd like to be a busy, busy bee, being just as busy as a bee can be, flirting with a butterfly strong upon the wing. Whoopee, oh, death will its thigh sting. Bzz, bzz, bzz, honeybee, honeybee, bzz if you like, but don't sting me. Bzz, bzz, bzz, honeybee, honeybee, bzz if you like, but don't sting me. Bzz, bzz, bzz, honeybee, honeybee, bzz if you like, but don't sting me.
Bzz, bzz, bzz, ha, ha, silly bee song, isn't it? Oh, what a glorious thing to be, an iso-bedient, busy, busy bee.
To be a good bee, one must contrive, for bees in a beehive must be hive. But maybe I wouldn't be a bee, bees are all right when alive, you see.
When bees die, you really should see them, pinned on a card in a mucky museum. Bzz, bzz, honeybee. Honeybee, bzz if you like, but don't sting me. Bzz, bzz, bzz, honeybee, honeybee.
I must buzz off. Bzz if you like, but don't sting me.
A vaunt from us false bumblebee in thy busy pussy, and come not here thou crafty flea. Bzz, bzz, bzz, I must buzz off. Fly far enough prodigious fowl in thy bitter stingy, and come not here thou crafty flea.
ugly owl never good luck bringing never good luck bringing in my coming or thy bumming if thou comest hither humming thou false bumblebee in my swarming and my harping if thou chance within
my turning exorcise oh ten beware i say thou little bird of my leather flea flap and come not
here nor hither word lest it reach a sound rap for it shall beat thy little bum hear me pretty fellow and clap it thriftly if thou come arcan what i tell you arcan what i tell you in my coming or thy bumming if thou comest hither humming thou false bumblebee in my swarming and my harping if thou chance within my charming exorcise oh take
[No speech for 15s.]
in all this groan and charm this hurtful honeybee to let us hear alone you away the howl and fearful sprite and the little devil i charge thee come not in our sight for to do us evil for to do us evil in thy comest hither humming thou false bumblebee in my swarming and my harping if thou chance within my charming exorcise oh take
[No speech for 37s.]
They're coming, at the rate of 300 miles a year. They started in Brazil, and came north through Nicaragua. We call them killer bees. The Sandinistas call them their freedom fighters. An evil empire of godless, Marxist thugs. How can they be so- The killer bees are coming.
Spreading fear and terror in our land. They're always buzzing, never humming. They're gonna swarm across the Rio Grande.
[No speech for 15s.]
insects don't need green cards they fly too low to be picked up on radar how can you just say no to bugs and as they spread their marxist pollen from flower to flower they corrupt our pure all american bees
[No speech for 27s.]
when the dreaded bees are due to hit our border we'll have cans across america insecticide program and every able citizen will smoke cigars and from san diego to brownsville special swat teams will stand shoulder to shoulder remember america these are red bees all workers no drones
the killer bees are coming spreading fear and terror in our land they're always buzzing never humming you get out your cannon spray and make a stand
[No speech for 12s.]
are you going to give me a fish license i promise you that there is no such thing you don't need one in that case give me a bee license a license for your pet bee correct called eric eric the bee nope no no eric the half bee you had an accident. You're off your chum. Look, if you intend by that utilization of an obscure colloquialism to imply that my sanity is not up to scratch or indeed to deny the semi-existence of my little chum Eric the Half Bee, I shall have to ask you to listen to this. Take it away Eric the Orchestra Leader. I want two, I want two, three, four.
Half a bee, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be. But half the bee has got to be, vis-a-vis its entity. Do you see? But can a bee be said to be or not to be an entire bee, when half the bee is not a bee due to some ancient injury? Singing. La dee dee, a one, two, three, Eric the Half a Bee.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
Eric the Half Bee.
Eric the Half a Bee.
Is this a wretched demi-bee? Half asleep upon my knee? Some freak from a menagerie?
No, it's Eric the Half a Bee.
A fiddly-dub, a fiddly-dee. Eric the Half a Bee. Ho, ho, ho, tee-dee-hee. Eric the Half a Bee.
I love this hive employee. Bissected accidentally one summer afternoon by me. I love him carnally. He loves him carnally.
Semi-carnally. The end. Sir old Connolly. No, semi-carnally. Oh. Sir old Connolly.
[No speech for 11s.]
All right.
I'm feeling a lot better, thanks. That song cycle was called Be All You Can Bee. It opened with the Bee song sung by Arthur Askey, new to me, who, according to the liner notes, was that much-loved diminutive Liverpudlian star of review, film, and radio. Next came The Bee, poem by T. Cutwood, 1599.
Music by the apiarianly-inspired, or to put it more succinctly, Bee-mused composer Peter Schickele.
It's part of a longer work called Bestiary, and it was performed by Calliope, singing and playing. The third song was Killer Bees by the Bobs. And last came the Monty Python classic, Eric the Half a Bee. Actually, if you cut a bee in half vertically, you get an E, which is no longer an animal. It's just a letter. Any other animal letters? Yeah, J, you know, blue J. And then, of course, there's the female sheep. A woman I knew out west once said she'd heard a newscast that warned drivers in the Loveland Pass area to exercise caution because a truck had overturned and there were ee-wees all over the road. Well, most people don't know how to pronounce my name, either.
It's Peter Schickele, and the show is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. You know, I was thinking about that Rebus thing. You know, the puzzle or riddle for the game. You know, the format that uses pictures to represent words. You could do that with sounds instead of pictures. I'm going to try one out on you. Here's part of a piece by John Field.
[No speech for 18s.]
Now, the question is, what is the name of that piece? And here are your clues.
[No speech for 11s.]
Got it? The name of the piece is...
[No speech for 11s.]
Pretty nifty, huh? I know a couple of them are a little far-fetched, but I think there's enough there to give you a... Oh, all right. I'm not even going to answer that. I'm just going to tell you.
Here's the name of that piece by John Field. Knock. Turn. In.
B.
Flat. The pianist was John O'Connor. Now we're going to move on with the greatest of ees, which I mean literally. We're keeping the ees, moving from bees to fleas.
So, since the program deals with the flea and the bee, and you are listening to me, I'm calling today's show, Flea to Bee, You and Me.
And to start the flea phase of this felicitous farrago, I'll read a song lyric from Goethe's Faust. Once there was a king who had a large flea. He loved it not a little, but as his own son. And so he called his tailor, and the tailor quickly came. Here, make clothes for the squire, and measure him for trousers. Now he was dressed in satin and silk, and wore ribbons and a cross. And he became a minister, and wore a big star. And so his brothers and sisters also became great lords at the court. And the lords and ladies at court were greatly plagued.
And the queen and the lady-in-waiting were gnawed and bitten, and were not allowed to crack and scratch them away. But we crack and choke them as soon as one bites. Weird poem. Strange mixture of whimsy and sadism. Now we're going to hear that same text set by two different composers.
[No speech for 151s.]
Thank you for watching.
[No speech for 136s.]
Two settings of the Song of the Flea, sometimes called the Song of Mephistopheles or from Goethe's Faust.
The first was by Beethoven, and we heard Louis Berkman singing it, accompanied by Graham Johnson. And the second was by Mussorgsky. It was performed by Aga Haugland and Paul Rosenbaum. The Russian composer, it seems to me, brings out the meanness of the poem even more than the German. Mussorgsky seems to have added those interjections, flee, flee, and those demonic laughs.
I'm telling you, those Russians. You know, the epitome of incongruity would be to be in Russia and see one of those little happy faces printed on something. But it's interesting. Fleas seem to be a scourge that is often, if not usually, treated with humor. Maybe it's the irresistible cuteness of the hopping. I've never had fleas, but it must be awful. I did have lice once. Yuck. The very first mattress my wife and I bought came from one of those charity-run second-hand stores. And we decided after that, hey, when it comes to mattresses, it's worth spending the extra dough for something new. But the thing is, I should think that fleas must itch much worse than lice. But nevertheless, fleas are funny. Lice aren't. Here are two more flea songs. The first is in French, and it goes, A flea I have in my ear, alas, Which night and day itches and bites me And drives me mad. No remedy one can give. I run hither and thither. Take it out, I beg you. O fairest one, help me.
And when I think to rest my eyes in sleep, It comes to sting, to bite, to prick me, And to stop my sleeping. Now, the text is a cry of agony, But the music is light and lively, Perhaps imitating the hopping of the flea. In any case, it has the effect of giving A humorous twist to the lament. The second song is in German, And it's called The Wives with the Fleas. A great battle there was, Between the housewives and the fleas.
It began at daybreak and raged furiously. The pope, finally intervening, Issued a bull, obliging the fleas To pay an indemnity to the fair sex. Way to go, pope. I call this little sweetlet, You can run, but you can't flee. And it's all of three and a half minutes long.
[No speech for 187s.]
You can run but you can't flee the first piece was a flea by Claude Lejeune
sung by the King singers and the second was the wives with the fleas by Ludwig Zenfel performed by the Boston Camerata under Joel Cohen a renaissance flea dip dick and now it's tidbit time and we're going to hear that Beethoven flea song again but this time orchestrated orchestrated by none other than Shostakovich
[No speech for 14s.]
Oh You can run but you can't flee the first piece was a flea by Claude Lejeune sung by the King singers and the second was the wives with the fleas by Ludwig Zenfel
performed by the Boston Camerata under Joel Cohen a renaissance flea by Ludwig Zenfel
again we're going to hear that Beethoven flea , who was not a flea by the flea by him
[No speech for 18s.]
Thank you for watching.
[No speech for 57s.]
Flee, the music by Beethoven, arranged one of his last pieces, apparently, by Shostakovich for the singer who sings it here, Evgeny Nestorenko. And that was an ensemble conducted by Gennady Rozdestvensky, or something like that. And I think that's about it for Flee to Be, You and Me. We started from scratch, and now we're ready to buzz off. I kill myself. Let's go out with Buddy Merrill's version of our opening number. This one is called Busy Bee.
And that's Schickele 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. Not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International. If you're itching to know more about today's selections, we'll tell you in a moment how you can get it. We've got 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 152.
And this is Peter Schickele saying goodbye and reminding you that home is where you can scratch where it itches. And also 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 12s.]
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.
PRI, Public Radio International.