Announcer: And now, Schickele Mix. We're ready for you, Mr. Schickele.
Okay, here's, I say, 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 good to know that our bills are paid by this world-class radio station where I'm provided with this state-of-the-county studio space. Our program is faithfully distributed to the Four Corners by PRI, Public Radio International.
Well, the world's going to hell in a handbasket, right? Things aren't what they used to be. I mean, kids these days. I'm telling you, it's the end of civilization as we've known it. A lot of people feel, when they get to be a certain age, that they're living in a sort of cultural twilight. But, of course, their kids don't feel that way. Change is in front of them, not behind them. We all know, or should know, that history is a continuum, not a series of neat chapters.
But still, with enough hindsight, certain general divisions seem tenable, as long as it's recognized that the edges will always be fuzzy. With the 20th century behind us, it remains clear that in Western music, if not culture in general, the period right before the First World War was truly pivotal. The ending of one era and the beginning of another.
Two literally epoch-making works were premiered in 1912 and 1913, Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire and
[music excerpt: Schoenberg, "Pierrot Lunaire"; The Contemporary Chamber Ensemble/Weisberg]
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps"; Columbia Symphony Orchestra/Stravinsky]
Those two pieces defined, or illuminated, two different approaches that remained major preoccupations throughout the century. Now, I'm not talking here about dissonance, that old bugbear of so-called modern music. Both Pierrot and Sacre are very dissonant by traditional standards. I'm talking about repetition. Pierrot cultivates a minimal amount of perceivable repetition, whereas the Rite of Spring shoves the insistent repetition of small melodic fragments in your face.
Now, because extremes are easier to compare than close neighbors, let's listen to two excerpts, one written considerably before those pivotal years, and one written considerably after. They're both easy to listen to. Even the modern one has none of that unsoundly halitosis of extreme dissonance, but their philosophies are very different. The first was written in 1893.
The first movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra. That's the beginning of what is usually called the second theme section, and it's the epitome of romanticism. Lush, surging, sentimental, no pejoratives intended. It's a singable melody, it could be, and in fact has been, made into a popular song. The dynamics wax and wane like the sighing of a heart.
And the tempo fluctuates too. Nobody with any feeling would play this music to a metronome. There's an obvious climax, literally a high point, to the melody, followed by a relaxation, and then a reiteration of the second half. The harmonies are completely tonal, basically fitting in with the harmonic procedures of the previous two centuries. Certain chords feel like they have to be followed by the chords they're followed by.
Okay, here's part of a piece that was finished in 1945.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Symphony in Three Movements, 1st Mvt.; Columbia Symphony Orchestra/Stravinsky]
From the first movement of the Symphony in Three Movements by Igor Stravinsky with the Columbia Orchestra conducted by Uncle Igor himself. Although this symphony is not organized at all like Tchaikovsky's, the part we heard has the feeling of the beginning of a second theme section after a loud opening. But Stravinsky's tempo is rock solid.
The dynamic changes are jagged and punchy instead of graduated, and the feeling is cool, especially compared to the fervid oven of Tchaikovsky's yearnings. But, more to the point, the Stravinsky passage doesn't go anywhere. It has no climax, and it's based on very little musical material. Two, eventually three chords in the top part, alternating unpredictably, and a repeated three-note figure in the bass.
It almost sounds as if it could be the accompaniment to a missing melody, and as a matter of fact, I have to confess that on one edition of this show, I had the temerity to compose a melody to go with it, but that was just a caper. I love it the way it is.
Anyway, in terms of today's show, what interests us is the repetition of small melodic fragments in a comparatively mechanical way, leading to a musical narrative that is more static and less directional, more trance-like and less overtly emotional, more quantitative and less novelistic than that of most classical and romantic pieces.
The variation form of the 18th and 19th centuries is a closed, cyclical form based on repetition, but what's repeated is usually a harmonic pattern, not a melodic one. One of the earliest pieces of written-down Western music, Sumer is icumen in, has a repeated bass figure throughout, but between then and the 20th century, the Baroque, the 17th century, is the only period I can think of that really favors the technique.
The repeated melodic pattern is called a ground or a ground bass, and although it may have as few as four notes, it usually has more, like this one, which has 24 notes.
[music: keyboard demonstration, the 24-note ground]
Here we go again. In the piece you're about to hear, those 24 notes are played over and over and over again, 14 times in all, without any change whatsoever. But, what happens in the upper parts changes plenty, and in the most delicious manner.
[music: Purcell, "The sparrow and the gentle dove"; Paul Esswood, countertenor/Johann Sonnleitner, harpsichord]
The Sparrow and the Gentle Dove by Mr. Henry Purcell It was sung by Paul Esswood, countertenor, accompanied on the harpsichord by Johann Sonnleitner. Okay, now that's a ground bass. An ostinato is also a repeated melodic figure, but it usually isn't as extensive. It doesn't have as many notes. Here's one in the string bass with four notes.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "L'Histoire du Soldat"; Columbia Chamber Ensemble/Stravinsky]
And here's one down in the bassoon with only two notes.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, "Le Sacre du Printemps" (again); Columbia Symphony Orchestra/Stravinsky]
Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale and The Rite of Spring, respectively. Hey, I suppose you could consider repeated notes a one-note ostinato. Huh? What do you think? Say, okay, here's your ostinato figure, and here it is repeated.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Woo! In a Wigwam, from Book One, I think, of John Thompson's Teaching Little Fingers to Play. Must be Book One; I doubt if I ever got to Book Two. Hey, I learned that in 1943, when I was eight years old, and I think you've got to agree that I still play the pants off it. Okay, now the next...
[sound: phone rings]
Oh, brother, what now? Hello? Well, I know that I can.
I can too. Oh, yes, I can. Listen, the middle part doesn't fit what I was talking about. That's the only reason I didn't play it. Oh, yeah? I assure you my left hand is fully up to the task. Here, I'll play the whole thing, Mr. Smarty Pants. Don't hang up. I'm putting the phone down right by the authentic instrument. Okay, here goes.
[music: keyboard demonstration, the whole piece]
You hear that? Well, I'd like to see you do better. Boy, a little bit of macho braggadocio in the John Thompson Book One department there.
Anyway, ostinato is our game today, and we're going to take a very quick tour of the ostinatos from then till now. We'll hear ostinatos from the 19-teens to the 1990s. But before we do that, I want to provide some perspective here. I mentioned earlier that Schoenberg represented a compositional approach that minimized perceivable repetition.
About a decade after writing Pierrot lunaire, he codified that approach in what is usually called the twelve-tone system. Now is not the time to describe that system in detail, but its basic premise is that you don't repeat any given pitch, which means a note name like C-sharp, until you've used all the other 11 pitches.
This philosophical aversion to discernible repetition gradually spread to include other parameters of music, such as rhythm, dynamics, and even orchestration. So, by the 1960s, the Schoenberg line of evolution had led to music like this.
An excerpt from Relata I by Milton Babbitt. That was Paul Zukofsky conducting the Juilliard Orchestra. This is music of constant change, music that zealously avoids the expected, the very opposite of static, and certainly no place for ostinatos. Now, the interesting thing about the evolutionary tree, branches never grow completely straight, is that towards the end of his long life, Stravinsky felt himself more and more drawn to the 12-tone school.
But by then, his earlier music had cast a shadow that was to extend over the whole century. Here's that passage from the Symphony in Three Movements again, with the ostinato in the bass and the irregular repetition on top, Followed by part of a piece written four decades later by a composer associated with minimalism.
[music excerpt: Stravinsky, Symphony in Three Movements, 1st Mvt. (again); Columbia Symphony Orchestra/Stravinsky]
[music: Adams, "The Chairman Dances"; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Rattle]
An excerpt from The Chairman Dances, a foxtrot for orchestra by John Adams. Unfortunately, I had to cut it off there when I got to the great syrupy ballad. Terrific piece. Well, I think that the next...
[sound: phone rings]
Oh, come on. Hello? Oh, hi, Mrs. Mudridge. For me, how big a package? Oh, okay, well, I'll run down and get it during the next, you know, music I play. Okay, thanks.
The receptionist says there's a little package for me. I'll get it during this great little morsel I've got for today's Tidbit Time. This is part of a late Beethoven string quartet, and the three bottom instruments are playing an ostinato.
It's a five-note ostinato that's so fast it almost sounds like an embellishment. And then on top of it, the first violin is playing a riff that I swear could have been written by Stravinsky. I mean, it's just noodling around, but brilliant noodling around, on a few of the notes of the A major scale. That sort of repetition, but off-kilter repetition that Stravinsky did. You know, like those jazzy chords in the Symphony in Three Movements, or the end of Pulcinella.
[sung]
Well, anyway, put it all together, and, well, as far as I'm concerned, this is the birth of minimalism.
[music excerpt: Beethoven, String Quartet in F, Opus 135, 2nd Mvt.; Emerson String Quartet]
Okay, here comes the Philip Glass part.
[No speech for 31 s.]
That bit of out-there downtownism was the trio section of the scherzo from Beethoven's last quartet, Op. 135, performed with terrific energy by the Emerson Quartet. What fantastic music.
You know, my tongue may have been inclined slightly towards my cheek when I talked about the birth of minimalism, but that is truly a very, very far out passage. I don't think you'll find anything like it not only among Beethoven's contemporaries, but anywhere before Stravinsky a century later.
Well, I guess I'm ranting a bit here, but, you know, if you don't mind, I'd like to, I guess this is sort of unprofessional, but I'd like to listen to this tape cassette. It was in that package that came for me. Remember I said I was going to run down and get it during the Beethoven, which is what I did. And it doesn't say who sent it, so I'm sort of curious. Let me just slip it in here and check it out.
[music]
Oh, great.
Yeah. Hey, listen, I could play In a Wigwam that fast if I wanted to. Piece of cake. Yeah, this guy is one of those faster-is-better guys, you know, even if it means completely ignoring the essential underlying spirit of the composition. But don't worry, I don't feel threatened. I'm secure, you know, in my reputation.
I know that if people are looking for artistic integrity, they look to Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Ostinati Obbligati is the name of today's show, Obligatory Ostinatos. What I mean by obligatory in this case is that if the piece you wrote doesn't have a small, continuously repeating melodic pattern in it, I'm probably not going to play it on today's show. What we're going to do now is hear three pairs of pieces, one from early in the century, one from the middle of the century, and one fin de siècle pair.
And all six of these pieces feature ostinatos, or ostinati, if you want to be hoity-toity about it. Hoity-toity is, of course, the Italian plural of hoits-toits. Our first pair comes from the teens and twenties, respectively, and its two parts couldn't be more different from one another. The opening piece has a simple two-note ostinato that goes on throughout the piece.
In the second, the composer piles up layer upon layer of ostinatos. He brings them in, one or two at a time. This goes on for almost a minute, that's a long time in music, before the horns play a non-repeating melody. After a minute and three quarters, the ostinatos change, but the whole piece is mechanistic with a vengeance, absolutely anti-romantic.
It says, hey, you want machines? I'll give you machines. I love machines. Machines are the 20th century. But the first piece is also anti-romantic in its absolute cool and lack of emotional detail.
[music: Satie, "Sports et divertissements," "La Balançoire"; Aldo Ciccolini]
[music: Mosolov, "Zavod"; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Chailly]
You ready for that? That is one relentless bunch of gear-crunching, air-splitting, blood-roiling musical machinery. It's by Alexander Mosolov, and it's called Zavod, which means factory, or iron foundry, I guess, is the preferred title in English. Hey, it makes the factory in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times feel like a picnic, except this is meant to extol life in a factory. Nice day at the office, dear?
Anyway, that was the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the foreman was Riccardo Chailly. Before that, we heard Aldo Ciccolini playing Le Balançoire, or Seesaw, from Erik Satie's Sports et divertissements, which is French for sports and divertisements. Now our next pair of ostinatia comes from the early 1950s, and the inspiration comes from very different sources.
The first piece was composed by a man who also wrote many rounds, and when you think about it, a round is sort of like an ostinato, or ground.
[sung: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," twice through]
You get the idea. It repeats throughout the piece. Except that in a round, what goes on around the ground is identical to the ground. It's the same thing, just displaced in time. In this case, the composer adds layers of ostinatos, as Mosolov did in the beginning of Iron Foundry. Now, the reason I mention rounds is that this layering of ostinatos results in something that is like a round, But with the phrases assigned in a different way.
What I mean is, if I sing: 1, 2, 3, 4,
[sung: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"]
And then the second part comes in singing the same thing but four beats later And the third part comes in eight beats later singing the same thing And the fourth part comes in twelve beats later Then you've got a round. We've, pretty much all of us, I expect, sung Row, Row, Row Your Boat. But now, what if I do it as layers of ostinatos? The first voice goes,
[sung: the first phrase, four times]
And the second voice waits four beats and comes in,
[sung: the second phrase, three times]
And the third voice waits eight beats and comes in,
[sung: the third phrase, repeated]
See, it already sounds like Philip Glass. And then the fourth voice waits 12 beats and comes in,
[sung: the last phrase, three times]
If all the voices are in the same octave, you're going to end up with the same music as you did when you sang it as a round. Here's the ineffable Row, Row, Row Your Boat done both ways, recorded by the Peter Schickele Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. What I'm going to do is bring the voices in at different levels of loudness, just to separate them at first. And then, once all four voices are in, I'll equalize the level.
Here we go. Round version first, then layered ostinatos.
[sung: Schickele multitracks his own voice singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"]
The music ends up the same, except there are little differences of breathing and stuff because of the different phrasing. The round version is the traditional down-home way of building up that sound. The layered ostinatos is the minimalist path. Okay, here's our second suitelet. The first piece has layered ostinatos, and the second has a two-part ostinato. You'll hear it right at the beginning in the celesta and piano, or maybe it's a harp, I'm not sure.
Anyway, in this case, the inspiration comes from across the Pacific, specifically the gamelan music of Bali and Java.
[music: Moondog, "Theme"; Moondog]
[music excerpt: Harrison, Suite for Violin, Piano & Small Orchestra, 2nd Gamelan; Chamber ensemble/Hughes]
Moondog and Lou Harrison. You know, in crossword puzzles, you often see "a unique person," and the answer is "oner," O-N-E-R. Have you ever heard anybody use that word? "That Fred, he's a real oner." Be that as it may, Louis Hardin, who calls himself Moondog, is definitely in the oner category. He used to stand on 6th Avenue at 54th Street in Manhattan, decked out in simple but full Viking regalia, including helmet and spear, and he'd sell you his poems and little piano pieces or just chat, and he met a lot of well-known musicians, and eventually somebody made it possible for him to make a full-blown symphonic recording. I first heard that theme in the 1950s I think it was a 10-inch epic LP on which Moondog played all the parts himself on funky instruments.
And I must say, if memory serves, I prefer that earlier version to the lush arrangement we just heard, but I've never been able to get my hands on a copy of that old LP. But I love that piece. And I love the second piece, too, the second gamelan from Lou Harrison's Suite for Violin, Piano, and Small Orchestra, performed here by Lucy Stoltzman, Keith Jarrett, and an ensemble conducted by Robert Hughes.
Okay, now we're up to the 1980s and '90s, with two ostinato-driven pieces that straddle the classical-pop divide. In the first, the ostinato is played by saxophone, Farfisa organ, and voice. In the second, the ostinato is made up of interlocking and overlapping loops made from digital samplings of prepared piano notes, creating a rhythm track to which the quartet plays live.
[music: Anderson, "From the Air" (Big Science); Laurie Anderson]
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Good evening.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is your captain.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): We are about to attempt a crash landing. Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Place your tray tables in their upright lock position. Your captain says, put your head on your knees.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Captain says, put your head in your hands. Captain says, put your hands on your head. Put your hands on your hips.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is your captain.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): We are going down. We are all going down.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): And I said, uh-oh. This is going to be some day.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Stand by.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): And this is the record of the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): And this is the record of the time.
[No speech for 25 s.]
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Uh, this is your captain again.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): You know, I've got this funny feeling I've seen this all before.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Because I'm a caveman.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Because I've got eyes in the back of my head.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): It's the heat.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Stand by.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): And this is the record. Of the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): And this is the record. Of the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Put your hands
Laurie Anderson (recorded): your eyes. This is the time.
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is the time.
[No speech for 30 s.]
Laurie Anderson (recorded): This is the time And this is the record Of the time This is the time And this is the record Of the time
Laurie Anderson (recorded): Of the time
[music excerpt: Adams, "John's Book of Alleged Dances," "Judah to Ocean"; Kronos Quartet]
I want a ride, I want a ride. John Adams calls that a piece of vehicular music. It's called Judah to Ocean, which refers to a San Francisco streetcar that Adams used to live near the end of the line of. That's from John's Book of Alleged Dances and was performed by the Kronos Quartet. Before that, we heard Laurie Anderson, From the Air, from the Big Science album.
It's great, the contrast between the aggressiveness of the ostinato in the Laurie Anderson thing and the calm silkiness of her spoken voice. And you know, that Adams piece is really infectious. I can't get it out of my head.
[sung: Schickele sings the "Judah to Ocean" ostinato]
I am, I am Peter Schickele, Peter Schickele, Schickele, and the program is Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Ostinati Obbligati. Maybe our show's title doesn't mean Obligatory Ostinati. Maybe it means Accompanying Ostinati, short repeated figures that accompany melodies. With the recording technology that developed in the last 40 years of the 20th century, it became really easy to repeat things for a really long time.
When you put that together with the high regard that came to be accorded to certain trance-like states during the 60s, what you get is a lot of pieces that are too long for us to play in their entirety. The electronic keyboard became a magician's wand, and ostinatos could go on for hours.
[music excerpt: Riley, "Rainbow in Curved Air" (A Rainbow in Curved Air); Terry Riley]
Terry Riley from A Rainbow in Curved Air, quintessential late 60s, and that's just fine with me. You know, when that terrific explosion of musical energy and imagination engulfed the pop world of the 60s, and classical musicians were listening to the Beatles, and the Beatles were listening to Stockhausen, I was hoping that pop and contemporary classical music, which had become so separate, would get together and produce a new kind of common practice.
Well, it didn't happen then, but about 20 years later it did start to happen, largely through the midwifery of minimalism. Our last piece was created using synthesizers, sequencers, samplers, and probably some other S-words as well, by John Adams. Here's a classically trained guy. In fact, he studied with a student of Schoenberg, which sort of brings this program around full circle.
But here's this guy who's written pieces for many of the major symphony orchestras, writing a piece that you could imagine maybe hearing on a jukebox someplace. Some very hip place. But I don't mean to imply that it's background music. This is a rich, sophisticated, complex, sensual composition that uses a lot of repetition but is always changing, sometimes subliminally.
Morphing ostinatos are used to accompany long, soulful melodies. There's one in the middle that could almost be Miles Davis playing. This is Cerulean from John Adams' album Hoodoo Zephyr.
[music: Adams, "Cerulean" (Hoodoo Zephyr); John Adams]
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
It's a long way back, isn't it? from John Adams' Cerulean to Wolfgang Mozart's 24th Symphony. Well, that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided 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 165. 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, Minnesota, 55403.