Delighted that you've decided to join us and now let's see if Peter Shickley is there Peter
We're counting on you
You were gonna say that here's the theme
Hello there
I'm Peter sickly and this is sickly 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
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
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
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 gonna be all right
It's okay. It's only a dream. You're having a bad dream, but everything's all right. You're listening to shickly 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 instruments 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
Heating 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 snobbism
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 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
So
The three movements of the international suite for unaccompanied accordion were by max rager leaf kaiser and
Aaronj kernes
Rager wrote the romance in a minor in 1904
It was performed here by helmet yacobs
Leaf kaiser is a danish composer and the little piece we heard marked quasi waltz
Comes from a work called confetti
The accordionist was geard drogsvold
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 kernes, 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 30s or 40s black and white on a fuzzy 60s 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 klusovic
Music 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
Hello
Yeah, but uh, 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 is all mapped out
Hey, I really can't talk right now. Okay. Uh, 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 squeezy. Anna. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Lou squeezy. Anna
Okay, don't tell me you play the accordion and you live in new orleans right an agent for accordionist 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 brush man. Do you have a minute?
My name is peter shickley and I moonlight as the host of shickley mix from pri public radio international
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You're listening to shickley mix on 93.9 wnyc
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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
So
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 lyre
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
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 and the mixing is controlled by a second person
panaiotis
Okay, it's tidbit time at the sickly 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
So
Tango for piano by igor stravinsky played by his son selima 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
So
Stravinsky's tango played on the accordion by stefan husong
Who I think made the arrangement the liner notes are not completely clear on that
But 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
I met stravinsky once he was a
Person hello
look
Look, mr. Squisiana. 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
Well, this is a program about classical music for accordion. So, you know, mr. Squisiana. It's true
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 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 and 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 someday
My name is peter shickley and the show will be called shickley mix from pri public radio international
You're listening to shickley 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 number one il penseroso. I'll be back in about seven minutes
So
Hmm
So
Foreign
Chamber suite number one il penseroso
To begin with we heard the first section of a work called parterre by mary ellen childs
performed by relish
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 devine 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 teresienstadt
The soprano was lisa lotta nielsen singing in that childlike voice
The violinist was soren kass kleysen and the accordionist
Gerd drogsvold 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 number two 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
So
Foreign
So
Chamber suite number two 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. Salgan
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 klusevec 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 regandi 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 louisouisiana 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
Anyway, so what am I going to 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
So
Uh
Uh, yes
well, uh, that was miss joanne castle and a
chamber ensemble
Performing an excerpt from rimsky-korsakov's opera the czar sultan
That instrumental interlude is called flyetsky bumblebee. Anna vichka
and uh
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 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 ragondi
Serenade in a for concertina and piano
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 158
158 and this is peter sickly saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain
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
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