This is classical radio KSCY, Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, at 91.7 FM, serving Dubuque at 101.7 FM.
And now, Shickley Mix. Peter, are you ready?
Oddly enough, I am. Here's the theme.
Well, hello there. I'm Peter Shickley, and this is Shickley 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 12 and a half or 13.
It suddenly occurred to me, recently, that I've been writing music for 50 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 Noelle 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 30 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.
Dies Irae, dies Irae, stardesse gut, infamile,
dessnerani, dessnerani, dessnerani
vandus lebo ex-budus, vandu oe ude exes benus, kundasinte disbussu.
Turamios pa gente solu, mestre per carrentino,
calce nonne santecum.
Mos rume di dell'annua, ume suceche dell'alua,
yurihani, dies valsuma. Ries ritus, parfereu,
inodorum cantileu, undemodus, yuriceu.
Nune excello, kundus ile.
Vibhilatte, atkarehni, nili urdureharehni.
The first six verses of the sequence Dies Irae, Day of Wrath,
sung by the monks of the Abbey Saint-Pierre-de-Solem.
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 a Cuman in,
but how many people know that piece?
I can't think of any other...
Excuse me.
Hello?
Who is this?
Is this Joan?
Hello? Hello?
I pick up the phone and there's the beginning of that Noel album I was talking about.
Joan Baez singing
Oh come, oh come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.
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 sibils 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.
Oh, before that's a tongue twister.
Wondrous sounds the trumpet flingeth, through earth's sepulchres it ringeth.
Oh, 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 arraigneth,
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.
Now, here are some excerpts from what is probably the first polyphonic,
or multi-voiced, setting of the Dies Irae.
Oh, before the throne it bringeth,
all creation is awaking,
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 hecklephone, the theremin,
the sarousaphone,
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.
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.
My joy it knows no bounds
No bounds my joy doth know
Doth know
Tis true you know
Tis truly so
My joy doth know
Know know know know
No bounds
Doth my joy know
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.
My joy it knows
No bounds
My joy doth know
Know know
Tis truly know
Tis truly so
My joy doth know
Know know know know know
Know bounds
Doth my joy know
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 Shickely,
host of Shickely 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 8-1-2 minutes.
piano plays in bright rhythm
Days of Wrath.
We began with the opening part
of Franz Liszt's Totentanz,
Dance of Death
for piano and orchestra,
and Zimerman,
accompanied by Seiji Ozawa
conducting the
Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Then came the opening section
of the first
of Luigi Dalla Piccola's
Canti di Prigiona,
Songs of Prison,
with the New London Chamber Choir
and the Ensemble
Intercontemporain
under the direction
of Hans Zender.
All three of Dalla Piccola's
songs are based on the words
of people condemned to death,
Mary Stuart, 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 Dalla Piccola'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
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 12 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 Shickely.
The show, incidentally,
is Shickely 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. Smarty Pants,
you think you can do any better?
Let's see, you find it.
You're going to have to concentrate.
The piece is seven
and a half minutes long,
and remember,
the tune you're looking for is
dun, dun, dun, dun, dun,
dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
Okay, wise guys, happy hunting.
piano plays softly
orchestra only in bright rhythm
The 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.
Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh.
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...
bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,
bum, bum, bum, bum,
and this...
orchestra plays
Not only did that sneaky
sans-san change it from being
in a minor type key
to a major key, from
la, da, da, da, da, da, da, da,
to la, da, da, da, da,
da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
But he also, and this is
perhaps the greater obfuscation,
he changed which notes
are accented.
In the first phrase
of the original,
D-A-C-E-R-A
D-A-C-E-L-A
the first, third, fifth,
and seventh notes are accented
because of the text.
But that cagey Camille
has the second, fourth,
sixth, and eighth notes
accented, la, da, da, da,
da, da, da, da, da.
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.
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 lighthearted
way, to the D-A-C-E-R-A,
but he was also, I'm sure,
referring to the
Berlioz symphony 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.
orchestra plays
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 D-A-C-E-R-A.
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 Sao 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 dans Macabre.
I knew that.
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 Sao 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.
orchestral music
The second movement,
entitled Butantan,
of Respighi's
Brazilian Impressions,
with George Mester conducting
the West Australian
Symphony Orchestra.
Well, I'm out of here.
I don't want to 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 Lisztotentants,
with Zimmerman on piano
and Ozawa conducting
the Boston?
We'll pick it up
right where we left off earlier.
piano plays softly
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 Shickely
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 Shickely Mix.
That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E,
Shickely Mix,
care of
Public Radio International,
100 North 6th Street,
Suite 900A, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 55403.
PRI Public Radio International.