Announcer: This is Classical Radio, KSUI, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, at 91.7 FM, serving Dubuque at 101.7 FM. And now, Schickele Mix. Peter, are you ready?
Oddly enough, I am. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Oh 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 the bills for the good stuff we're about to hear are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and also by this wise and good radio station, which provides me with a home away from home, within whose nurturing walls I hatch my intellectual eggs, and whence the resultant birds of wisdom fly to the four corners, with the navigational help of PRI, Public Radio International.
Recently, I celebrated, quietly, with my wife, on a night we were going out to dinner anyway, an approximate anniversary. I don't know the exact date of my first effort, but it must have been when I was twelve and a half or thirteen. It suddenly occurred to me, recently, that I've been writing music for fifty years. It's hard to imagine. Here I am, still trying to figure out how to behave around members of the opposite sex, and yet I've got a half a century of continuous endeavor in my chosen field behind me.
It has also occurred to me that a piece I wrote over 45 years ago, which was later published, is still being played occasionally, judging from my royalty reports. Wowie zowie! I might almost feel that I'd written a war horse, or what in the popular field they call a standard, if it weren't for the fact that most of the occasional performances that piece gets are on concerts that I conduct.
But there is something very satisfying about having a piece pull away from you and develop a life of its own. Performances you don't know about, people you've never met being affected by it. It's a bit like watching your kids grow up. And it's not so much an ego thing. Well, okay, I guess it is an ego thing, but it's not necessarily a fame thing. Even if people don't know that you did it, it's nice to have something you did be part of the community culture.
It's happened a couple of times in conversations about Christmas music that people have said how much they love the Joan Baez album Noel without realizing that I wrote the arrangements. Now, I'm no saint of self-effacement, that's for dang sure.
I'm not pretending that when that has happened I've kept my mouth shut about my involvement, and I have no illusions about whose name and beautiful voice and musicality have kept the thing in print, but it really makes me happy to think that, more than thirty years after the album came out, Joan and I are still spreading Yuletide cheer to a far-flung bunch of complete strangers.
Now, imagine being a composer whose works are still being played 100 years after his death, like Brahms, or 200 years, like Mozart, or 300 years, like Purcell. Okay, how about having something you wrote still be well known more than 700 years after you're dead and gone?
Unless you're a musicologist, the chances are pretty slim that you've ever heard of Tommaso di Celano, but you might very well recognize this melody.
[music: Anon., "Introit: Requiem (Gregorian)"; Choeur des Moines de l'Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes]
The first six verses of the sequence Dies irae, Day of Wrath, sung by the monks of the Abbey Saint-Pierre de Solesmes. It's part of the Mass for the Dead, or Requiem Mass, and it has an interesting and perhaps unique history among Gregorian chants. The man to whom it is attributed, Tommaso di Celano, died in the 13th century. It became popular outside Italy in the 14th century. It became an integral part of the Requiem Mass during the 16th century.
And in the 19th century, it started appearing in secular pieces to signify death or damnation. If you recognize the melody and you're not a Catholic, you probably know it from one of those orchestral works. Now, I'm no music historian, but I can't help wondering if the Dies irae isn't the oldest melody in our culture that is well known to non-specialists.
It's certainly older than Greensleeves. It's from about the same time as Sumer Is Icumen In, but how many people know that piece? I can't think of any other...
[sound: phone rings]
Ah, excuse me. Hello? Who is this? Is this Joan? Hello? Hello? Huh. I pick up the phone and there's the beginning of that Noel album I was talking about. Joan Baez singing,
[sung: the opening line of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"]
Well, whoever was playing it has a good point. That carol may be as old as the 13th century. I believe it comes from the Plainsong era. You know, that's an interesting question. What's the oldest, well-known music in our culture? Anyway, the Dies irae is a good contender, and we're going to be hearing a lot of it today. Old Tommaso was a Franciscan, so he must have placed great value on humility.
And if he has a radio up there in heaven, today's program will surely try his resistance to the sin of pride. Let me read you the first six verses in an English translation. Some of it's a bit stilted, but I've chosen this translation because it matches the meter and rhyme scheme of the original Latin. Day of wrath and doom impending, David's word with Sibyl's blending, heaven and earth in ashes ending.
Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth When from heaven the judge descendeth On whose sentence all dependeth Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth All before... That's a tongue twister. Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth All before the throne it bringeth Death is struck and nature quaking All creation is awaking To its Judge and Answer-making. Lo, the Book exactly worded, Wherein all hath been recorded, Thence all Judgment be awarded. When the Judge his Seat attaineth, And each hidden Deed arraineth, Nothing unavenged remaineth.
Strong stuff. Apocalypse, if not now, soon. Okay, before we go on, let me play you the opening again. I'm doing this because the opening is the easiest part to remember, and also because many of the later pieces that refer to the Dies irae only quote the opening.
[music excerpt: Anon., "Introit: Requiem (Gregorian)"; Choeur des Moines de l'Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes (opening, again)]
Now, here are some excerpts from what is probably the first polyphonic, or multi-voiced, setting of the Dies irae.
[music excerpt: Brumel, Sequentia: "Dies irae, Dies illa"; Huelgas Ensemble/Paul van Nevel]
The Dies irae by Antoine Brumel, who died in about 1520. The Huelgas Ensemble under Paul van Nevel. It's very beautiful, but very restrained music. There's no attempt to emphasize the apocalyptic nature of the text. Let's compare that with another setting done four centuries later.
It's like the difference between a sepia photograph by Matthew Brady and a technicolor movie by James Cameron.
[music excerpt: Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, Opus 14; Boston Symphony Orchestra/Prêtre]
Part of the last movement of the Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz. That movement is called Dream of a Witch's Sabbath, and it was played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Georges Prêtre. The 19th century Romantics developed a fascination with everything that was morbid, or decaying, or lurid, or extreme, or preferably all four. That was the century that gave us Frankenstein, Dracula, and Freud, not to mention newly-built ruins.
I should mention, by the way, having compared a Requiem Mass with a secular symphony, that most requiems use the text, but not the plain-song melody we've been dealing with. The Mozart and Verdi requiems, for instance, don't use Tommy's tune. They set the text to completely original music. But they do share with the Berlioz symphony a fire and brimstone quality compared to the Brumel.
Okay, it's Tidbit Time, and we're going to be hearing an instrument that, I must say, is a new one to me. Now, I know of a bunch of instruments that are named after people. The Sousaphone, the Saxophone, the Heckelphone, the Theremin, the Sarusophone, the Wagner Tuba, but they are all named either after their inventors, or in the case of Sousa and Wagner, after the composers who specified what they wanted.
By the way, speaking of the 19th century, which is when these instruments were invented, most of them, can we make a case for the age of individualism here? Are there any pre-19th century cases of people naming new instruments after themselves? Interesting question. Anyway, the instrument we're about to hear is the only one I know of that is named after a singer, and it's an interesting story.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? No, the English horn was not named for Lena Horne. She's American. Man, these people must have me on speed dial.
So anyway, here's the story behind this instrument. The French writer Emile Zola had a brother who married a singer named Celeste. In spite of her name, she had an unnaturally low voice, which was so terrifyingly awful that everyone called her the Gorgon, after the snake-haired sisters of Greek mythology who, if you looked at them, you turned to stone.
So, when a Parisian instrument maker invented a sort of a cross between a bass trombone and a didgeridoo with a tone that sounded like a consumptive walrus, he named it after her, and the recording I'm about to present is the first time I've ever heard anyone play the gorgonzola. But before we hear it, let me back up a bit.
A few days ago, Kenneth Mattel, one of the co-directors of Ken and Barbie's early music consort, brought me a recording of an anonymous 17th century English air he recently discovered and asked my opinion of the performance. Here he is singing My Joy, It Knows No Bounds.
[music: Schickele, "My Joy, It Knows No Bounds"; Peter Schickele]
Well, I told Ken that it sounded fine to me, except for one thing. I reminded him that in the 17th century it was customary to double the bass line being played by the harpsichordist's left hand. You know, they would have a cello or a bass or a bassoon or whatever was available double the bass line. So I'll be darned if Ken doesn't have a gorgonzola in his instrument collection. And he overdubbed it, and this is the new version. He just brought it to me before the show.
Now, I want to emphasize that there's nothing new in this version in terms of notes. It's just that now the left-hand harpsichord part is being doubled by the gorgonzola. Here we go.
[music: Schickele, "My Joy, It Knows No Bounds"; Peter Schickele (overdubbed version, with gorgonzola)]
Isn't that interesting? Ken and Barbie's early music consort. Now you can hear that the bass line is the Dies irae melody, the associations of which completely contradict the joyful text of the song. I think we need a new musicological term here to describe the cognitive dissonance produced by this juxtaposition. How about oxymoronic affect? We can abbreviate it OA.
That makes it seem as if the term's been around for years. Although, actually, come to think of it, I'm no Franciscan monk. I don't have to pretend that I hold humility in higher regard than chocolate. If anyone asks you who invented the term oxymoronic affect, just tell them it was the noted scholar Peter Schickele, host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called The End of the World is Nigh. The picture I get is one of those guys in a sackcloth carrying a placard on a stick, and the sound is the melody that is the subject of our show, Dies irae, Day of Wrath. Now, the guy with a placard on a stick is working on a very small budget, and he presumably believes that simplicity is a virtue anyway, so humming or singing a hymn is good enough for him.
But as we have seen, and will be seeing, many composers have erected quite elaborate edifices on this simple Gregorian chant, or even on just the opening phrase or two of the chant. We're about to hear excerpts from three such pieces. The first is from a large set of variations on the theme, the second is from a setting of a prayer written by Mary Stewart during the last years of her captivity, and the last is a Halloween piece.
A great variety of expression here. The middle work is terribly sad, even more so than the Brumel we heard earlier, whereas the outer selections are more dramatic. Three very different meditations on an apocalyptic theme. We'll call this suite, simply enough, Days of Wrath. I'll be back in eight and a half minutes.
[music excerpt: Liszt, Totentanz, Paraphrase on “Dies irae” for Piano & Orchestra; Krystian Zimerman/Boston Symphony Orchestra/Ozawa]
[music excerpt: Dallapiccola, "Canti di prigionia"; New London Chamber Choir/Ensemble Intercontemporain/Zender]
Days of Wrath. We began with the opening part of Franz Liszt's Totentanz, Dance of Death, for piano and orchestra, and we heard Krystian Zimerman accompanied by Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Then came the opening section of the first of Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia, Songs of Prison, with the New London Chamber Choir and the Ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of Hans Zender.
All three of Dallapiccola's songs are based on the words of people condemned to death, Mary Stewart, Boethius, and Savonarola, and they were composed between 1938 and 1941. According to the CD booklet, Mussolini's announcement of his radical fascism on 1 September 1938 unleashed Dallapiccola's fury, quote, I should have wished to protest, yet I wasn't so naive as to suppose that the individual is not powerless in a totalitarian regime.
The composer expressed his feelings through his music and through the symbolic choice of texts that were heavy with deeper significance, quote, given the world political situation in this situation, a few weeks after the Munich conference, it did not seem inappropriate to think about the last judgment. Furthermore, I was convinced that the use of the Dies irae in the manner of a cantus firmus would facilitate the comprehension of my ideas.
Then last, we heard the tenth movement of a piece called Brass Calendar, performed by the Chestnut Brass Company. The movements are inspired by holidays or otherwise significant days in each of the twelve months, and that was October, the month, of course, of Halloween. In a hardly surprising confluence of identity, the composer of that piece has the same name as the host of this show, to wit, Peter Schickele.
The show, incidentally, is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
The end of the world is nigh, and we're trying to stave it off by listening to works based on the Dies irae, perhaps the oldest well-known piece of music in our culture. Or perhaps not. I suppose the oldest well-known work of art in tangible form in our culture is the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. I mean, okay, okay, okay, I can't argue with the irrelevancy alarm there.
You know, the truth is, I'm trying to put off the next part of the show, because this is where I have to tell you about something I slipped up on. I have to humble myself, humiliate myself, admit my shortcomings, fess up to my failure. Get out the wet noodle folks, your seeing eye dog is blind, or anyway deaf.
When I was preparing this show, I read in several places that the Dies irae is quoted in the Danse Macabre of Saint-Saëns. So I listened to that good old chestnut, and I couldn't hear any Dies irae. I listened to it again, and I still couldn't hear it. Now I've got a fairly decent ear, but what, am I going to say that the Groves and Harvard Music Dictionaries don't know what they're talking about? Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, I can hear you snickering there. Don't think I can't hear you.
Okay, so, Mr. and Ms. Smartypants, you think you can do any better? Let's see you find it. The piece is seven and a half minutes long, and remember, the tune you're looking for is
[sung: the Dies irae theme]
Okay, wise guys, happy hunting.
[music: Saint-Saëns, "Danse Macabre"; Philadelphia Orchestra/Ormandy]
Danse Macabre by Saint-Saëns, performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy, and, shockingly enough, an unidentified solo violinist. Now, about the Dies irae, don't tell me if you heard it, okay? I don't want to know.
So anyway, I asked my friend Rex about it, and he did a smart thing. He went to the library and got a score. Sometimes these things are more obvious on the page than they are to the ear. And sure enough, he found it, and boy, is my face red, not to mention my ears. Now, I have to say that it's quite transformed. I mean, there's quite a difference between this
[sung: the Dies irae theme, as in the chant]
And this.
[music excerpt: Saint-Saëns, "Danse Macabre"; Philadelphia Orchestra/Ormandy]
Not only did that sneaky Saint-Saëns change it from being in a minor-type key to a major key, from [sung: the chant version] to [sung: the Saint-Saëns version] But he also, and this is perhaps the greater obfuscation, he changed which notes are accented. In the first phrase of the original,
[sung: the first phrase of the chant]
The first, third, fifth, and seventh notes are accented because of the text. But that cagey Camille has the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th notes accented.
A little bit later, he at least has it in the minor, but the accents are still askew. And, in fact, in both cases, only the first phrase really retains the melodic outline of the original.
[music excerpt: Saint-Saëns, "Danse Macabre"; Philadelphia Orchestra/Ormandy (again)]
Of course, now that I've got it, it seems so obvious. But hearing it in the context of today's show made me doubly embarrassed, because I realized that Saint-Saëns was not only referring, in an ironically light-hearted way, to the Dies irae, but he was also, I'm sure, referring to the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique.
That has the same rhythmic dislocation, but there, it's very obvious, because he retains the original minor scale, and also, because it comes immediately after a straightforward statement of the theme.
[music excerpt: Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique, Opus 14; Boston Symphony Orchestra/Prêtre (reprise)]
After hearing that, the Saint-Saëns should be a piece of cake. Well, Rex works in radio, and he says that they must program the Danse Macabre at least a dozen times a year, and he never noticed that reference to the Dies irae.
Hey, Rex is a very nice guy, and it was nice of him to say that, but you know, I really am embarrassed. It's the kind of thing you'd expect a composer to be able to catch, especially if he's looking for it, and especially if he's a composer, as I am, who has squeezed a lot of humor out of thematic free association. Okay, our last quotation of Friar Tommy's tune is my favorite in terms of the reason for the quote, and I quote from the liner notes.
Butantan is a suburb of São Paulo, Brazil, where the Butantan Institute houses its world-famous snake farm, which, it appears, the composer visited during his concert tour of 1927. The music attempts to portray the composer's impression of the snakes with woodwind passages literally marked strisciante, slithering.
A curious feature is that the movement concludes with a quotation of the 13th century sequence Dies irae, Day of Wrath, which is used in the Requiem Mass and also in dramatic orchestral music such as Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre. A travel book of 1933 may explain the reference to the Dies irae. It describes the snakes in their enclosures thus.
If they want a change of scene, they can climb the little trees and hang in looped contemplation of São Paulo's remoter villas. If they want a thrill, they can then relax their muscles and fall heavily to the ground, A thing they do with surprising frequency, reckless abandon, and a kind of brittle plopping sound, which is indescribably sinister.
[music excerpt: Respighi, "Brazilian Impressions, Song & Dance"; West Australian Symphony Orchestra/Mester]
The second movement, entitled Butantan, of Respighi's Brazilian Impressions, with George Mester conducting the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Well, I'm outta here. I don't wanna be in a boring old radio studio when the world ends. I want to be either at home, surrounded by my loved ones, or on the edge of the Grand Canyon. And why not go out with a bit more of the Liszt Totentanz, with Zimerman on piano and Ozawa conducting the Boston?
We'll pick it up right where we left off earlier.
[music excerpt: Liszt, Totentanz, Paraphrase on "Dies irae" for Piano & Orchestra; Krystian Zimerman/Boston Symphony Orchestra/Ozawa (continued)]
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. 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 162.
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.
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, MN 55403.