... I’ve never seen a Butterfly here ... (PAPE) Performer: Lise-Lotte Nielsen, soprano/Geir Draugsvoll, accordion/Soren Kaas Claesson, violin Marco Polo 8 224028
Chamber Suite No. 2: "L'Allegro"
A Feugo Lento (SALGÁN) Performer: Horacio Salgán Evita’s Tango (Milan 35794 2)
Ping Pong Polka (MARCLAY) Performer: Guy Klucevsek Emergency Music (CRI CD 626)
Liesure Moments (REGONDI) Performer: The Giulio Regondi Guild The Great Regondi, Vol. 2 (Bridge BCD 9055)
Bumble Boogie (FINA/RIMSEY) Performer: Jo Ann Castle Legends of Accordion (Rhino R2 71847)
Serenade in A (REGONDI) Performer: The Giulio Regondi Guild The Great Regondi, Vol. 1 (Bridge BCD 9039)
Announcer: I'm delighted that you've decided to join us, and now let's see if Peter Schickele is there. Peter, we're counting on you.
I knew you were going to say that. 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 it's also good to acknowledge that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by this fine radio station right here on your digital dial, where I hole up to hone these wholesome packets of perspicacity to perfection and whence the finished work of art is diligently distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
It's a beautiful, lazy summer afternoon, and you're lying on a reclining chair in your backyard, half asleep, half awake. Gradually, you become aware of an ominous sound.
[music excerpt: Evans/Reeves/Damerell, "Lady of Spain" (Legends of Accordion); Dick Contino]
It disappears around the house, but you know you're in trouble, because it has to be one of only two things, a swarm of killer bees, or an accordionist launching into Lady of Spain. No time to think about which would be worse. You bolt for the door, but it's coming around the other side of the house.
[music excerpt: Evans/Reeves/Damerell, "Lady of Spain" (Legends of Accordion); Dick Contino]
You made it. You're safe, at least for the moment. Then you suddenly remember that you left a window open upstairs, and to your horror, you realize that it's already in the house. It's coming down the stairs. This time, there's no place to hide.
[music excerpt: Evans/Reeves/Damerell, "Lady of Spain" (Legends of Accordion); Dick Contino]
Wake up! Wake up! Come on! Come on! Wake up! It's okay. It's only a dream. You're having a bad dream, but everything's alright. You're listening to Schickele Mix. Just relax. Everything's fine. Listen, if it makes you feel any better, you're not the first person to have that nightmare. But I hope you won't hold it against the accordion. It's not the instrument's fault that too many people play Lady of Spain.
By the way, having just had one, did you ever wonder where the word nightmare comes from? It is not, as you might have guessed, some kind of vampire horse. No, mare is a Middle English word akin, I happen to know, to the Old High German mara, meaning incubus. It's an evil supernatural being that causes bad dreams. It's also related to the Serbo-Croatian word for...
Okay, okay, okay, I guess I can't argue with the ump on that call. Heeding the exhortations of the irrelevancy alarm, let's return to today's topic. The accordion was invented in the first half of the 19th century, and by the beginning of the 20th century, it had, like killer bees, spread all over the world.
But it has always been, and continues to be, primarily what the music dictionary calls an instrument of the people, as if audiences at classical concerts weren't people, you know what I'm saying? Well, we all know what it means. You know, it's interesting about reverse snobism. I know a clothing store whose merchandise includes overalls and work shirts and stuff like that, and their motto is, real clothes for real people.
And so, of course, I shop there. Hey, I don't want to risk becoming imaginary. The store is miles from my home, but I drive there regularly. And the accordion is used in all sorts of non-classical music and listened to by all sorts of very real people.
On another edition of this show we hear examples of the German polka band tradition, the Tex-Mex tradition of Tejano music, the Parisian tradition, the Tango tradition of Argentina, and the Cajun tradition of Louisiana, and there are many others. But as a matter of fact, there is some classical music written for accordion, and today we're going to check some of it out. Don't worry, we won't be hearing enough of it to turn you into a non-person.
Like the players of other instruments with small repertoires, classical accordionists often resort to transcriptions, but we're going to be concentrating on original music. Having said that, I have to mention that the opening movement of our first suite was originally written for harmonium. But playing a harmonium piece on the accordion hardly counts as a transcription, since in terms of sound production, the two instruments are practically identical.
They're identical. They're both free reed organs. The main difference between them is that on the harmonium you work the bellows with your feet, and on the accordion you do it with your left arm. Okay, the International Suite for Unaccompanied Accordion has three movements and lasts about six and a half minutes. I'll see you then.
[music: Reger, "Romanze in A minor"; Helmut C. Jacobs]
[music: Kernis, "Phantom Polka" (Emergency Music); Guy Klucevsek]
The three movements of the International Suite for Unaccompanied Accordion were by Max Reger, Leif Kayser, and Aaron J. Kernis. Reger wrote the Romanze in A minor in 1904. It was performed here by Helmut Jacobs. Leif Kayser is a Danish composer and the little piece we heard, marked Quasi Waltz, comes from a work called Confetti.
The accordionist was Geir Draugsvoll. My apologies if my pronunciation of Norwegian isn't up to snuff. There seems to be a lot of interest in the classical accordion in Scandinavia. Hey, they go for months without sunshine. A sweet little interlude. Then our finale was the Phantom Polka by Aaron J. Kernis, which is based on a series of visual images.
The composer says, For a reason I can't explain, soon after beginning this polka I thought of a movie, Abbott and Costello in the Haunted House. The specific images brought to mind were those of a translucent ghost appearing on a stairway and the same essentially tame yet scary apparition in a large ballroom dancing with hundreds of fellow phantoms. This vision appeared in thirties or forties black and white on a fuzzy sixties TV.
The polka is formed as a little story and as in many of my compositions it is eclectic. Aye, that it is. It was played by the man who commissioned it, the American accordionist Guy Klucevsek. My apologies if my pronunciation of American isn't up to snuff. The liner notes say that he grew up in a Slavic community in western Pennsylvania and developed Sorry folks.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Yeah, but I tell you, I rarely have guest artists, and when I do it's planned well in advance. You know, today's show is all mapped out. Hey, I really can't talk right now, okay? Why don't you give me your name and number and I'll call you after the show, okay?
Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Lou S-Q-U-E-E-Z-E-A-N-A? Squeeziana? Your name is Lou Squeeziana? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Lou Squeeziana. Okay. Don't tell me you play the accordion and you live in New Orleans, right? An agent for accordionists. Same difference. What's the number? Got it. Okay. I'm on the air here. I cannot talk now. I'm going to have to hang up. Bye!
I hate to do that, but agents are like door-to-door salesmen. I'm old enough to remember them. They were hard to get rid of. Hello, I'm the Fuller Brushman. Do you have a minute? My name is Peter Schickele, and I moonlight as the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Announcer: The Carol Flowers Society recognizes those listeners who have made a commitment to WNYC's future by including the station in their estate plans or by making a life income gift. If you've done so, please let us know. We want to thank you. To learn how to include WNYC in your estate plans, call Deidre at 212-669-8982. You have the power to make a difference.
You're listening to Schickele Mix on 93.9 WNYC. We're talking about the accordion, an instrument of the people and its relationship to classical music. You know, the kind of music associated with effete snobs like myself. I call today's show Beer Drinker at a Cocktail Party, and we're about to hear some accordion music that is about as far from the beer barrel polka as it's possible to get.
We're dealing now with what the composer-performer, whose concept it is, calls the expanded accordion. This is meditative music that takes the accordion where no man has ever gone before. Which figures, because it's by a woman. This is a section from a larger work, and I'll be back in about five minutes.
That was This Great Fool's Stage, the fourth section of Crone Music, which the composer, Pauline Oliveros, wrote for a production of Shakespeare's Lear. It's a beautiful, engaging river of sound. I would have liked to have seen the production. Here's a description of the expanded accordion. Oliveros uses four digital delay processors.
During performance, each output from the right and left hand is sent separately to a processor which she controls to accomplish layering, pitch bending, or modulation. Pitch bending is controlled with foot pedals. The results are sent to two other processors for reverberations which simulate a variety of aural experiences from landscapes and indoor spaces.
The second pair of processors in the mixing is controlled by a second person, Panaiotis.
Okay, it's Tidbit Time at the Schickele Mix Accordion Academy. Double-barreled tidbit today. Okay, I know, I said we'd be concentrating on original classical music for accordion, but what we're about to hear is an arrangement. Now, I've got a reason for making this deviation from stated policy, but before we get to that, let's hear the original that's going to be arranged. Here's the way the composer wrote it.
[music: Stravinsky, "Tango"; Soulima Stravinsky]
Tango for piano, by Igor Stravinsky, played by his son, Soulima Stravinsky. The composer had concertized in Argentina in the 1930s, so he had heard tangos from the horse's mouth, as it were. Now, of course, one of the instruments most strongly associated with tango is the accordion, or its close relative, the bandoneon. So what happens if you play that tango on the accordion?
Well, personally, I think you can make a good argument for saying that it sounds at least as good as, and maybe even better than, the original piano version. Now, I'm not completely serious about that. One of the nice things about certain choices in this world is that you don't have to make them. Both versions are there to be heard. But I must say, the accordion version sounds pretty steamy.
[music: Stravinsky, "Tango"; Stefan Hussong]
Stravinsky's tango, played on the accordion by Stefan Hussong, who, I think, made the arrangement. The liner notes are not completely clear on that. Stravinsky actually made an arrangement himself of the tango for a bunch of instruments, and he approved of a couple of other arrangements, but none of them uses the accordion. Now, I'm not saying that just because the accordion is so strongly associated with tango music that you ought to use an accordion if you write a tango.
In fact, composers often make a point of distancing themselves when they borrow material or styles. And certainly Stravinsky was a consummate virtuoso at distancing himself. That is, no matter what he took as a model, he always sounded like himself. Even his piece for Woody Herman's jazz band sounds Russian. I met Stravinsky once. He was a...
[sound: phone rings]
I met Stravinsky once. He was a...
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Look... Look, Mr. Squeeziana, I said I couldn't... Yeah, look, I'm sure that all the accordionists you handle are good. And she may be... Well, you see, that's a problem right there. You say she's played in all the best nightclubs. Clubs. Well, this is a program about classical music for accordion. So, you know, Mr. Squeeziana, it's really not going to work out. I mean, Lady of Spain or Hernando's Hideaway. Now, I don't want you to think that I'm a snob or anything, but pieces like that simply are not going to fit in. I mean, your client really wouldn't feel comfortable at the intellectual level I'm operating at here. So, look, I'm going to hang up, and I'll call you after the show.
Please don't call back. Boy, I guess that's why he's an agent. Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, meeting Stravinsky. In 1959, I was part of a special one-week seminar at Princeton. And Stravinsky came and answered questions and we all got to meet him. I was 24 years old and terribly enamored of his music. I mean, I still love it. But in those days, well, a piece I wrote a couple of years before that seminar, I can remember working on it with the score of Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements open in front of me, that's how much I was emulating his orchestration.
Anyway, when I actually got to shake his hand, naturally, I didn't know what to say. All I could do was mumble something like, I'm very pleased to meet you. I wish I had had the courage to express what was in my heart. I should have said, I'm very pleased to meet you, and I hope you don't worry about people forgetting your music when you're dead and gone. Because long after you've kicked the bucket, Mr. Stravinsky, I'll be playing your works on the radio program I'm going to have some day.
My name is Peter Schickele, and the show will be called Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. You're listening to Schickele Mix on WNYC. Today's show is called Beer Drinker at a Cocktail Party. We're talking about the accordion in the world of classical music. About how the proletarian image of the accordion is not the whole story. And I have to say that researching this program was a real ear-opener for me.
I hadn't realized what an excellent chamber music instrument the accordion is. It blends very well and interestingly with other wind and string instruments. We're going to hear two suites of chamber music including accordion. They both have three movements. The first suite is the more introspective of the two. The composer of the opening number points out something that hadn't occurred to me, and that's that part of the reason the instruments blend so well is that they're all reed instruments – clarinets, bassoon, saxophone, and accordion.
In the middle work, we hear the accordion with a string instrument and a piano.
And the last piece is a song set to a truly heartbreaking text. It's a poem called The Garden: "A little garden, fragrant and full of roses. The path is narrow, and a little boy walks along it. A little boy, a sweet boy, like that growing blossom. When the blossom comes to bloom, the little boy will be no more." We'll call this Chamber Suite No. 1, Il Penseroso. I'll be back in about seven minutes.
[music excerpt: Zarlengo, Suite for Accordion, Cello & Piano, “Interlude”; Robert Davine]
[music excerpt: Pape, "... I’ve never seen a Butterfly here ..."; Lise-Lotte Nielsen, soprano/Geir Draugsvoll, accordion/Soren Kaas Claesson, violin]
Chamber Suite No. 1, Il Penseroso. To begin with, we heard the first section of a work called Parterre by Mary Ellen Childs, performed by Relâche, the Ensemble for Contemporary Music. Parterre refers to an ornamental patterned garden. Good title for the piece. The other two composers are new to me. The next piece was the interlude from Ted Zarlengo's Suite for Accordion, Cello, and Piano, played by Robert Davine and Richard Slavich with the composer on piano.
And the final song was by Andy Pape, P.A.P.E., once again, I'm not sure of the pronunciation. He was born in California but seems to live in Denmark. Just a beautiful setting of a wrenching poem from a collection of texts written by children and adolescents in the Nazi extermination camp at Theresienstadt.
The soprano was Lise-Lotte Nielsen, singing in that childlike voice, the violinist was Soren Kaas Claesson, and the accordionist, Geir Draugsvoll, whom we heard earlier in the opening suite on the program. The accordion provided such an effective bass in that song, strong but not intrusive. Those three pieces have definitely given me some things to think about.
And you know, that's one of the highest compliments a composer can give. It usually concerns orchestration. Several years ago, after a world premiere, I heard another composer tell the composer of the new work, "There are definitely some things in there I plan to steal." Our Chamber Suite No. 2 is subtitled L'Allegro. You know, allegro has come to mean fast in music, but the Italian word actually means lively or spirited. Again, three movements, and they last about seven and a half minutes.
[music: Salgán, "A Fuego Lento" (Evita's Tango); Horacio Salgán]
[music: Marclay, "Ping Pong Polka" (Emergency Music); Guy Klucevsek]
[music excerpt: Regondi, "Leisure Moments" (The Great Regondi, Vol. 2); The Giulio Regondi Guild]
Chamber Suite No. 2, L'Allegro. We began with an Argentine tango from the 1940s or 50s that to me feels much more like a piece of chamber music than like music for social dancing. It's called A Fuego Lento and it's by the pianist-composer Horacio Salgán. The middle piece was Christian Marclay's Ping Pong Polka for accordion and turntables.
The title refers, according to the composer, to the old stereo aesthetic, the ping-pong effect, as well as the exchange between the live and the pre-recorded material. Guy Klucevsek composed and performed the accordion part. Christian Marclay himself was on the turntables. The last piece comes from the middle of the 19th century.
It was the eighth of a set of pieces called Leisure Moments by Giulio Regondi, a composer for and virtuoso on the guitar and the concertina, which is a smaller cousin of the accordion, and that's what we heard. Quintessential parlor music from Victorian England, played here by Douglas Rogers, the pianist was Julie Lustman.
Uh, well, ladies and gentlemen, I've been finessed here. Remember Lou Squeeziana, the agent who called earlier trying to get me to put an accordionist he represents on the show? Well, she's here. She's not only here, she brought three other musicians with her. I don't know what it is about the accordion. Every time I do a program on accordions, somebody shows up at the studio wanting to play. So what am I gonna do?
I've told her she can go ahead and do one number, but she knows that there's not going to be any chit-chat, and she has promised to play a classical selection. Okay, Miss Castle, it's all yours.
[music: Fina/Rimsky-Korsakov, "Bumble Boogie" (Legends of Accordion); Jo Ann Castle]
Uh, yes. Well, uh, that was Miss Jo Ann Castle and a chamber ensemble performing an excerpt from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera, The Tsar Saltan. That instrumental interlude is called Flajitsky Bumblebejanovicka and I feel duty-bound to mention that unlike most of the other music on today's program, that is an arrangement.
Okay now, Miss Castle, if you and your colleagues would kindly just wait a moment before packing up, I'll get some music on here so I can kill the microphones. We're going to go out with some more music by Mr. Giulio Regondi, Serenade in A for concertina and piano.
[music excerpt: Regondi, "Serenade in A" (The Great Regondi, Vol. 1); The Giulio Regondi Guild]
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. 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 158.
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.
[music]
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.