And now, Shickly Mix. We're ready for you, Mr. Shickly.
Okay, here's, I say, here's the theme.
Hello there, I'm Peter Shickly, and this is Shickly 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 epic-making works were premiered in 1912 and 1913,
Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire...
Pierrot!
Mein Lachen hab ich verlernt!
Das Bild des Glases zerflosst!
...and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.
.
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 Botto 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.
DRUMS PLAY
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 a Koumenin, 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.
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.
Notice all the blooming spring
Into sacred gardens twine
To apparow to be destroyed
A sparrow and a gentle dove
Sacrifices pitiful love
Roses sweet and natural bring
Notice all the blooming spring
Into sacred gardens twine
To apparow to be destroyed
Let the pleasure they possess
May still increase
And still refresh
And by a more, by a more
Exalted love
Each happier to come and prove
Let the pleasure they possess
May still increase
And still refresh
And by a more, by a more
Exalted love
Each happier to come and prove
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.
And here's one down in the bassoon
with only two notes.
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.
Whoo! And 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...
Oh, brother, what now?
Hello? Well, I know that.
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.
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 Piero Luner,
he codified that approach in what is usually called the 12-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.
♫
This is an excerpt from Relata I by Milton Babbitt.
That was Paul Zukosky 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,
he 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.
♫
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...
Oh, come on.
Hello? Oh, hi, Mrs. Mudridge.
For me? How big a package?
Oh, OK. Well, I'll run down and get it during the next, you know, music I play.
OK, 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.
♫
Well, anyway, put it all together, and, well, as far as I'm concerned,
this is the birth of minimalism.
♫
Okay, here comes the Philip Glass part.
♫
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.
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 Obligati 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 20s, 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.
Boop-beep, boop-beep, boop-beep, boop-beep.
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 3 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.
PIANO PLAYS
ORGAN PLAYS
Phew! 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 Chahi.
Before that, we heard Alto Ciccolini playing le balançoire,
or seesaw, from Eric Satie's Sport et Divertissement,
which is French for sports and divertissements.
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.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
Row, row, row... 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 Masoloff 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...
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
And then the 2nd part comes in singing the same thing,
but 4 beats later,
and the 3rd part comes in 8 beats later singing the same thing,
and the 4th part comes in 12 beats later,
then you've got a round.
And you'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 1st voice goes...
Row, row, row your boat, row, row, row your boat,
Row, row, row your boat, row, row, row your boat.
And the 2nd voice waits 4 beats and comes in
Gently down the stream, gently down the stream,
Gently down the stream.
And the 3rd voice waits 8 beats and comes in
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
See, it already sounds like Philip Glass.
And then the 4th voice waits 12 beats and comes in
Life is but a dream, life is but a dream,
Life is but a dream.
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 4 voices are in,
I'll equalize the level.
Here we go, round version first, then layered ostinatos.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
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.
OK, 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.
Here's our second suitelet.
Here's our third suitelet.
Here's our fourth suitelet.
Here's our fifth suitelet.
Here's our sixth suitelet.
Here's our seventh suitelet.
Here's our eighth suitelet.
Here's our tenth suitelet.
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 in 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.
Good evening.
This is your captain.
We are about to attempt a crash landing.
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their upright locked position.
Your captain says,
put your head on your knees.
Captain says,
put your head in your hands.
Captain says, put your hands on your head. Put your hands on your hips.
This is your captain.
We are going down.
We are all going down
together.
And they said, uh-oh.
This is going to be some way.
Stand on.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
Uh, this is your captain again.
You know, I've got this funny feeling I've seen this all before.
Why?
Because I'm a caveman.
Why?
Because I've got eyes in the back of my head.
Why?
It's the heat.
Stand on.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
Put your hands over your eyes.
Jump out of the plane.
There is no pilot.
You are not alone.
Stand on.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
I want to ride. I want to 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 Cronus 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.
I am, I am Peter Shickley.
Peter Shickley, Shickley.
And the program is Shickley Mix.
From PRI, Public Radio International.
Ostinati Obligati.
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.
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, Who Do Zephyr?
Cerulean.
It's a long way back, isn't it?
From John Adams' Cerulean to Wolfgang Mozart's 24th Symphony.
Well, that's Sickly 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 Sickly 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 Sickly Mix.
That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Sickly Mix.
Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55403.
PRI, Public Radio International.