Hello there, I'm Peter Sickily and this is Sickily 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 boy do we have a treat in store for you.
As you may know, our bills are paid by this fine radio station and our program is distributed
by PRI, Public Radio International.
And they are inviting you to be a guest at the Gala Benefit Concert, which is about to
begin here in Oatson Hall.
A beautiful chamber music auditorium, Mr. Oatson not only provided the money for building
the hall, he has also donated its use for this glittering gathering of avid aficionados
and stalwart supporters of real radio.
Radio that makes a gosh darn difference.
Now in about three quarters of an hour we are going to be witnessing the world premiere
of a brand new quartet for flute, violin, viola and cello composed especially for this
occasion by, well, modesty forbids.
And I don't mind telling you, I am not only excited, I am also just a wee bit nervous
because I am not usually called upon to write a piece in one day.
I heard once that Darius Millot, the French composer, was commissioned to write something
for a famous conservatory's anniversary.
And other composers were given commissions for big orchestral and choral and chamber
music pieces and he was only asked to write a modest piano piece.
So he called his work Une Journée, One Day, which is how long he spent writing it.
But listen, Millot was notoriously fertile.
I usually like to mull material over for weeks or even months.
But when the station manager called up the night before last and said that the vocal
instrumental group scheduled to perform at this concert, the Pavarotti Domingo Carreras
Chamber Music Ensemble, when they cancelled at the last minute, I was informed that I
had to write a new piece for the occasion.
Well, a man's got to do what a man's got to do if you catch my drift.
So he did sweeten the pot a bit by offering to let me use his cabin on Lake Purdy to compose
the piece.
And I must say, it's very nice.
But man, talk about pressure.
So since I also had to do my show today, I decided to kill two birds with one stone by
fulfilling a project I've always wanted to do for Shickley Mix.
I'm sure all composers get asked, how do you actually go about writing a piece of music?
And I'm not kidding, people do ask that a lot.
So what I'd like to do on today's show is share with you the composing of the piece,
the rehearsing of the piece, and the final result.
And I want to make a little truth in advertising announcement here.
I will admit that I fool around a bit on this show, and that I might even be doing some
fooling around on this edition.
But when it comes to how I wrote and rehearsed this piece, I'm being completely on the level.
This is no gag.
I composed the quartet in 9 hours from 1245 to 945 pm, including a couple of breaks.
And I kept the tape recorder rolling during the time I was at the piano.
I also had the tape running during the rehearsal.
And it's a straight ahead piece of chamber music, nothing outrageous.
So you are going to witness the birth of this composition almost from its initial conception.
And I say almost only because I did write a couple of fragmentary ideas in my sketchbook
before I got to where I wrote the piece.
Now I compose almost every day, with or without a piano, in hotel rooms, on airplanes, driving
around on back roads.
I always take my current sketchbook with me on my travels.
And even without it, I'm usually working on something in the back of my mind.
But what makes this a bit scary is that you can't sit down and decide to write a masterpiece,
even if you use masterpiece in the modest sense of personal best.
And also, even I can't talk as fast as I think, and I certainly can't write as fast as I talk,
and I'm not much of an improviser.
So this isn't going to be like watching Picasso paint a picture.
It won't surprise regular listeners that I'm a very low-tech guy.
I still work with pencil and paper.
I chose the combination of flute, violin, viola, and cello, which combination is often
referred to by musicians as a flute quartet, because I'd never written one before.
And here's how it started.
Okay, got the tape machine on, and what do we got here?
We got an electric piano.
Let's turn it on.
Okay.
It's okay.
Those electric pianos go.
Okay, now, what I started out with is in my sketchbook here.
I wrote down two things.
Got these ideas while I was driving around.
One of them I've written down this.
I should mention, by the way, a lot of composers, probably most composers, are better pianists
than I am.
So you're just going to have to bear with me on that.
Now, when I wrote that, my idea was always that you'd actually hear the lower parts first,
and then the second time you heard it, the flute would be added on the top.
In other words, you'd hear this.
And then later, you'd hear the flute with it.
Okay, but anyway, then before we get back to that, there's already something I don't
like in that.
But before we get back to that, it occurred to me that maybe we shouldn't start right
out like that.
We should start more quietly and without the flute.
In other words, start with a slower introduction for just the string trio.
And I wrote down this idea.
That's all I've got.
I've got E flat written one here.
In other words, I had, and I wrote, maybe this should be an E flat, I don't know.
And then I wasn't sure where that was going to go.
Anyway, we're also going to get back to that, because just coming here, I had yet another
idea, which is that maybe it should start even more quietly than that.
Maybe we should start with just the cello.
And by the way, this, that thing that I played, I'm going to call that the Sarabande rhythm.
In the old Baroque and Pre-Baroque dance, the Sarabande, it's in three, and the motion
stops on the second beat.
So you get one, two, three, one, two, three, one.
And a lot of people use it.
I mean, Copland, the beginning of Billy the Kid, has that rhythm.
But just to refer to it simply, I'm going to call that the Sarabande rhythm.
So see, in the beginning, I hadn't even written this down.
I just got this idea of the cello going all cello, just on two different strings at once.
Maybe instead of starting right out with the Sarabande rhythm, maybe what I should do is
have a single note first, and then go into the Sarabande rhythm, just for the sake of
variety.
Since the other one starts with the Sarabande rhythm, start with a long note here.
Want to vary it a little bit there, vary the rhythm.
So now the interesting thing here that a composer has to think about is, I can't go, if I repeat
the top note, I've got to repeat the bottom note too, because this is one instrument playing
with only one bow.
It's virtually impossible to re-attack that note without re-attacking the other two.
So it's...and then maybe the trio comes in...now, I don't know that I like that a lot, but maybe
I'm going to put off a decision on that to let me get a little bit further into it.
As a matter of fact, I'm sure I'm going to change that.
By the way, you know what a composer tries to do?
Stravinsky said, when I play an A on the piano and it's a trumpet note, I'm hearing a trumpet.
That's what a composer tries to do.
You play this thing on the piano that you're writing for the cello, you try to hear it.
You try to hear the cello playing it.
So after that little cello opening, the whole string trio comes in with the chorale.
And I like...I think I like that better than...but actually what often happens is, it might be
nice to go to this later sometime as a little surprise after having done this.
And then there's a little technical thing here, the cello, it's...I'm going to have
the cello go up to here because of the way the strings are set up.
I won't get into that, but it'll be a nice little variety of texture that you can't hear
on this piano, but you'll hear a little bit in the strings.
The cello will actually go up to...now, where does this go?
That's one possibility.
That's sort of nice and hymn-like.
I don't know, it's a little bit too constant and too calm for what I want there, so...or
maybe this.
Use this C major chord, put this seventh in it.
I like that, sort of bluesy.
Keep it simple.
And then there come in the strings, the other sketch there.
I think that's good.
It's nice and simple.
Okay, I'm going to take a little break.
I think it might help me...often you see things when you write it down, you actually get ideas
by seeing things on paper that you don't necessarily get just playing it or in your head.
So I think I'm going to take a little break and write that down, maybe walk around a little.
But here we are, back in Oatson Hall, waiting for the world premiere of my quartet.
Now while me, the composer, is taking a break, and having heard the initial version of the
first section, I did make some changes, let's jump ahead now to the rehearsal and hear how
it actually sounds on the instruments.
By the way, there is no piano in this work, but I should perhaps mention that the word
piano also means soft.
Once again, I want to remind you that I'm not pulling any legs here about the process
of bringing this piece into being.
The copyist took my pencil score, containing 82 measures of music, and with the aid of
a computer, produced a much better looking score from which he extrapolated the individual
parts for flute, violin, viola, and cello.
When I walked into the rehearsal hall this afternoon, none of the musicians had seen
a note of the music.
You really want a piano high C?
Uh, where's that?
Measure 40.
Oh, well, let's see what happens.
Okay.
You don't stay on it long.
That's good.
Right, right.
You wouldn't want me to.
So let's just start.
And, wait a minute, hold on, let me get my metronome out here.
Oh, and the thing is, let me say, these are, of course, the first time these parts have
been used, so if you see even obvious mistakes, please tell me about them so I can get them
corrected.
63.
Okay, here, so why don't we just start, okay?
One, two, three.
Okay, okay, we got off there.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
In the twelfth bar, violin and viola has dotted quarters, and the cello moves on the second
beat, so you don't move together there.
Cello moves on the second beat, violin and viola on the and of two.
Should we start at eight?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, just a second, excuse me.
That's supposed to sound crunchier.
Okay, mistake in the cello part.
In bar fourteen, where's my pencil?
In bar fourteen, that D is a D flat.
Put a flat in front of the D, please.
And I'll just warn you right now, the viola has a D natural, so I want that crunch there.
Now, can we go back to the beginning, please?
Sarah, the G sharp in bar six sounded too sharp.
Okay.
If it helps to think of it as an A flat, maybe it just sounded too high.
And then, let's make a very slight comma before bar eight.
Just very slight, not a great big pause, but just E.
And also, can I hear the beginning without mutes, please?
And let's also put a little comma, eight, nine, ten, eleven, a comma for a little breath
at the end of ten, eleven, please, eleven, a little comma there.
Okay, let's start at the top, and I'll just get the tempo.
Let me get it.
Let me do that.
You start with your...
No, I'm not.
I'm not.
I can, though.
You want me to?
No.
Sarah.
Let me get it.
I feel like I need a little more violin.
Yeah.
We've got eight.
I'm sorry.
A little bit less violin, a little bit more violin.
Can we do right on eight?
Okay, let's make more, more, a real common.
I think I might.
Man, it is a thrill, let me tell you, it's a kick and a half to hear those tiny little
specks of graphite you put on pieces of paper turn into flesh and blood music.
And what a serendipitous piece of serendipity that the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra just happened
to be in town on tour here and I got four of their best musicians to play my piece.
Julia Bogorod, Stephen Copes, Sabina Thatcher, and Sarah Lewis.
I must say that it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
And I'm referring, of course, to Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public
Radio International.
Our program is coming to you today from Oatson Hall, where the Grand Gala Benefit concert
will soon begin, a concert featuring the first performance of a piece which I decided at
the last moment, as I prepared to send the music off to the copyist, to call Pastoral.
I composed this piece at the request of the station manager, knowing, as I do, which side
of my bread is buttered, and he let me hole up in his cabin on Lake Purdy while I wrote
it.
There is a tradition of incarcerated composing.
The child Mozart was once locked in a room so that he could prove that he really wrote
his music, and they used to lock Rossini up just to get him to finish the damn opera.
He was a party animal.
Dmitri Shostakovich, on a dare from a conductor, sequestered himself in a room and produced
an orchestral arrangement of T for Two in 45 minutes.
And in 1936, when King George V died, Hindemith wrote a piece for viola and string orchestra
in one day and played it the next at the public ceremony.
If they can do it, so can I.
And so I did.
Let's return to the composer of my quartet as he works on the middle section.
Okay, we're back here.
I think, yes, that is rolling.
And a lot has been going on here.
I not only took a little walk, but I also, I got going, I'm afraid I got going.
I've done actually quite a bit here without you, sorry about that.
But the thing is that, like I said, sometimes it just works better on paper.
So what I want to do is tell you what I've done.
I got up to that, what I think of as the second section here, that original sketch.
And now it's going to be a little bit faster.
I've written faster comma flowing.
Composers are very different about this.
I just noticed recently in John Adams' Violin Concerto, the first movement, it just says
quarter note equals whatever it is, 76, and that means 76 beats to the minute.
It's actually something that involves a certain amount of controversy.
Beethoven wrote metronome markings that most people think are sort of off the wall, although
more and more people are beginning to take them seriously.
Brahms wouldn't use metronome markings.
And my feeling is you should learn it.
The first time you read through the piece or something, use my metronome markings, and
then when you know the piece and you feel it going differently, go ahead and do it differently.
I probably do it differently myself at different times, and also I don't expect it to keep
exactly the same all the time.
Anyway, I'm going to do the metronome markings later.
I'm not going to worry about that right now.
I want to put something on the third beat because of the way the motion's been.
I'm going to put on the third beat the cello doing a pizzicato harmonic, and a harmonic
is when with the left hand, the fingers of the left hand, instead of pushing one of the
strings all the way down to the fingerboard, you just touch the string without pushing
it down to the fingerboard, and you get this flute-like sound, and when you pluck it, it's
hard to describe and completely impossible to imitate on a piano.
Here comes the flute, oops, like this, I'm trying to do, I'll try to sing the cello part.
Okay I'm going to give up trying to play it now, but I do hear several things coming up,
something I like to do which is one part follows the other a beat later.
And then we get the cello doing this that he did before, but this time the flute comes
in with it and leads to a different key.
This has been G, now we go one.
It's awfully sweet, so I wanted to immediately introduce a little spice, I mean it's a sweet
piece, but, and the cello has this sort of figure, it's sort of like a lullaby version
of an old fifties rock and roll tune or something, and then the violin, and then the viola and
the cello, and they repeat this.
And what I like to do over there, you get a repeated thing and then do something on
the top.
And then this time the flute comes in sort of imitating the violin.
It imitates it for a couple of bars but then not exactly, and you get this sort of web
that is way beyond my abilities as a pianist to recreate.
But finally it builds up to where I've got three voices here basically, flute, violin,
viola and cello, and three of them are playing the tune.
And only the cello is doing something different.
And this is sort of a high point, and I'd also like to, I mean it sort of gets louder
and this is some kind of a working up to a climax here.
And I've got to say something that I don't know if other composers have this problem.
It occurs to me now that I've never talked to other composers about this.
But I have a thing that sometimes you repeat things so much to work them out.
I'll sometimes just play something, you know, twenty times in a row, trying different notes.
And I get sort of going faster and faster because I'm really just trying different notes.
And what I have to really watch is that I sometimes find the tempo in my mind getting
faster and faster, and what I realize later then is that I've lost the original feel of
the tempo and it's sort of gotten faster without my meaning it to.
It's fine if you really want to get faster, but sometimes just through my, I assume, faulty
working habits here, it gets faster without my realizing it.
And that's one thing I've had to sort of watch here.
Anyway, we get this high point and it's time for something else, and I'm not sure what
it is.
So fortunately, I have to go to the bathroom, I'll turn this thing off.
When nature calls, composers respond.
Is the flowing lyricism of the middle section of my quartet the result of working in the
station manager's cabin on the wave-kissed shores of Lake Purdy, or is it just the way
I write music?
Probably the latter.
All right.
Okay, let's go home.
You know, this is something I've changed my mind about, Julie.
In bar 48, can you make your last note an F instead of a C, and then you may want to
tongue that next A. Just have the slur go to the F.
Question.
Yes.
In this unison that we have here, do the E flats alternate?
No, they're all...
Oh, yeah, there's some missing, right, okay.
Yes, I see that, for instance, in bar 36, 37, 38, there are no E flats.
Yeah, 38, 40, there are no flats.
They're always E flats.
Always, okay.
Always E flats, so...
Our instincts told us to keep them E flat, even though what we saw was...
Your instincts were right.
Why don't we just here, to get the notes, let's start right now at 37, please.
Okay, Julie, were you playing, I meant the high F in 48, not the low one, yeah.
Go up a step from the E flat.
Now let's try, you're right, Julie, about the high C. In bar 42, let's put a little
crescendo and go to more like a mezzo piano or mezzo forte in 43, yeah, in 43, sort of
working our way up to the forte later.
What should we call it?
Should we call it mezzo forte in 43?
So starting again in 37.
Sorry, one more question.
Yeah.
Are we unison in 37?
We have different notes.
On the first beat.
Just that first beat, yeah.
I have an F.
Oh, you do.
I have an F.
Oh, yes, right.
No, you're supposed to have an F. Excuse me, I didn't notice that.
The viola is supposed to have an F on the third note.
Oh, you do.
I don't have an F. I have an F on the first note.
No, I mean that, what I mean, viola, your second note should be A flat, not G flat.
A flat, there we go, okay.
Can we go back to 19, please?
Start there.
Okay.
It's gotten fast.
Too fast.
Yeah.
Don't let it run away.
Let's do it 19 again.
Okay.
Let's flute.
I've decided that in bar 46, the next to last note should be a C flat, not a C natural.
Matches what the violin has just done better before.
Okay.
I've decided that you guys are right and I'm wrong.
I think the tempo should be faster.
I'm sorry about this, but.
Yes.
Yeah, right.
How does that sound?
That's 108.
What did I say before?
100.
Yeah.
Oh, I hadn't changed it from there.
How about let's try 108?
You did say 180.
No, let's not do 180.
Want to try it?
Okay.
Why didn't you say 180?
Once again, we're back in Oatson Hall, and listening to that rehearsal tape, I hear something
that always annoys me, and that is that I can focus so much on certain instruments that
I can miss wrong notes in other instruments, except later, and sometimes, once in a while,
it's been disastrously later, then all of a sudden I notice, and it sticks out like
a sore thumb.
I just have the ability to focus too much sometimes, and also not remember what I said
before.
Well, that's par for the course.
My short-term memory cuts out at about ten seconds.
Fortunately, I have this program booklet for the concert in front of me here, so I know
that my name is Peter Shickley, host of Shickley Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Our program today is called Pastoral and How It Grew.
We're in the pre-concert part of the show, broadcasting live from Oatson Hall, and I
think we've just got time to hear our exclusive documentary audio on the completion of the
Pastoral for flute, violin, viola, and cello by, as it happens, the host of this very show.
Okay?
Let's go to the tape.
Okay.
Last round here.
On some more work here, right up to the end.
And that's where I was saying it was building up to a climax here.
So we got the climax here.
Nice crunch there, one, two, three, four, ba-dum.
And now it doesn't slow down there, that's just me trying to play it, there's all sorts
of fancy rhythm things going on there.
And then we go back to a slower tempo here.
And what I was going to do is, I had this great idea, this is the opening of course.
Of course, well it is.
It was so soft in the cello at the beginning.
I had this great idea.
I thought in thirds.
One, two, three, that's called a third.
One, two, three.
One, two, three, four.
But I decided it sounds too Hamdalian.
So instead of doing the thirds, I'm just doing the octaves with all these slidey things.
And then when I put the flute in here, and the flute is sort of following, but not quite.
So it ends up on a different note.
On a piano, you know, you can't crescendo on a piano on one note.
It dies away no matter what you do.
No matter how much you vibrato or whatever, it just dies away.
But this will be, and then back to that chorale.
And at first I was thinking I'd do this.
That spacing.
And I thought maybe this.
I decided that would be too lush and also too much like the beginning.
That's where the strings are in the beginning.
So what I've done is this.
Wide spacing.
Flute on the top, violin in the middle, viola here.
And more than an octave between each voice except the bottom.
So here.
And then before it just did that.
Now I go to another chord.
Here's the bluesy note in the cello again.
This funny rhythm.
That's the flute in the real low register sounds very sexy there.
Pizzicato.
And this is that pizzicato harmonic thing.
So that'll ring.
This part here.
Still not completely.
And we just had that note, doesn't sound good to have it right before.
But I still like that.
When I said you can't do vibrato on the piano, what I meant is that some players, I've seen
players, you know wiggle their hands like they're doing a vibrato on the violin as if
it's going to make any difference.
But on the piano all you can do to approximate a crescendo is do a tremolo.
That's pretty nice.
I think I'm going to change that to that thing with the viola going up like that.
So anyway, I had a lot of trouble with the ending.
I mean sometimes the simplest things, I can get stuck for hours or sometimes even days
by something that is just a matter of timing.
A lot of people when they think of composing they think it's notes.
But the rhythm, having a really convincing rhythm is at least as important as the notes.
And I particularly love great endings.
I mean wittily timed endings, this is not a witty ending, I mean we're not talking about
a witty piece at the end here, but what I mean is just the right timing.
I really do feel a lot of those Beethoven endings go on too long.
You lose the sense of the wit sort of in the abstract sense of the timing.
Stravinsky wrote great endings, Mio too.
Anyway, so I hope that where I have the pizzicato, the flute goes.
Before that last chord is four bars, and four bars is sort of the regular music, most music
is organized in four bars, western music.
But sometimes it sounds too regular to me, I want to put a three bar thing in there to
sort of upset it a little bit, or more, or five bars.
What I did here was I put a fermata over the rest just before the last chord, and a fermata
is sometimes called a bird's eye because it's an arc with a dot under it, and it means to
hold it longer.
You can put it over a note, or over rest, so it's long, two, three, yeah, I think it'll
do it.
Great, I guess I'm done with this piece.
I sometimes get a sort of little post-partum depression after I finish a piece, but usually
it's a bigger thing, you know, like a big 20 minute piece, I think I can handle this
one.
Well, I guess I'm out of here.
Hang on a minute, let's turn the old cassette machine off.
Okay, now do me a favor here again, this is tinkering, this is something I went back and
forth on when I was writing, and sometimes when I do that, go back and forth, I choose
the wrong one.
Can I hear what it sounds like, don't mark it out yet, in indelible ink, but can I hear
what it sounds like if you omit, if you omit bar 65, in other words, put the crescendo
on the previous bar, and just make that the one that goes to nine.
I think I'm a little tired of it, but before it gets to that bar, just before the whole
thing.
So, can we do 60, please?
I was playing it higher, because that's what I heard from him.
I thought I was going to go with you.
I don't know, it sounds really dissonant to me.
It sounds fine to me too, but I'm not sure why.
It sounds...
It may be just the voice.
Can the three of us play?
Or just the two of us?
Just the two last measures.
Can you indulge me again, please, at 67, Steve, can you play those first four bars
an octave higher?
Yeah.
Let me just hear how that sounds, 67.
That helps that intonation of that chord too, I think, yeah.
Let's put it up an octave, just those four bars, and you go as written.
How about 76, right?
Nobody plays on the downbeat.
One, two, three, one.
Greg, can we just try to play that piece together?
Yeah, we got to get the pizzicato together, yeah.
It's hard to play pizzicato.
I know.
Maybe just...
I thought about that while I was writing it.
It's hard to play pizzicato together.
Maybe just three from the end.
One, two, three.
Sorry, that's my fault.
Let's try it again.
Two, three.
I'll let you do it one more time.
I'm still trying to figure something else out.
One, two, three, one.
Sounds great.
Why don't we take a break?
And not a moment too soon, because the Grand Gala Once in a Lifetime Benefit Concert is
about to begin here in Oatson Hall.
You know, on some of his early string quartet scores, Schubert wrote the time he started
composing and the time he finished.
I guess he was proud of his fecundity.
Well, it took me nine hours to write my little three-minute quartet, and there are still
some things I might want to change, but no time for that now.
Here come the performers on stage, and be still, my heart.
We are ready to hear the world premiere of your humble host's Pastoral for flute, violin,
viola, and cello.
the world premiere of your humble host's Pastoral for flute, violin, viola, and cello.
The Pastoral for flute, violin, viola, and cello by, well, I'm just going to say it right
out, Peter Schickel.
It was performed and performed beautifully by flutist Julia Bogorod, violinist Steven
Copes, violist Sabina Thatcher, and cellist Sarah Lewis.
Oh, oh, excuse me, just a second.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Fortunately, there's no glass on the window of this booth, so I could, you know, stick
my head out.
Well, that's not the longest concert I've ever been to, but it was quite a high for
me.
I'll tell you that.
I'll probably write some more movements to go with that thing.
It's a beautiful combination of flute and string trio.
I remember the first time I heard that combination of instruments.
It was in a living room in Fargo, North Dakota.
My friend Ernie Lloyd was playing cello.
His fiancee, Polly, or were they already married?
Anyway, she was on flute, and his mother, Isabel Thompson, was on violin, and my brother
David was on viola.
It was one of the Mozart flute quartets, the one in D major, I think.
Because of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Chamber Ensemble brings Shickley Mix to a
close for this week.
Our program is made possible with funds provided by this radio station and its members, and
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 168.
This is Peter Shickley 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.
Bye.
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to
Shickley Mix.
That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Shickley Mix.
Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, MN 55403.
P-R-I, Public Radio International.