Schickele Mix is next. Are you ready, Peter? Hey, I'm supposed to be ready. I'm ready. 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. As a rule, our bills are paid by this terrific radio station where I'm provided with this small yet modest studio space. As a rule, our program is distributed to the Four Corners by PRI, Public Radio International.
And, as a rule, there were certain things that classical European composers just wouldn't do. I mean, they weren't that kind of girl, and don't you forget it, Buster. And one of the things they wouldn't do, even if they had fallen on hard times, was to write parallel fifths. Parallel fifths occur when two parts are at the interval of a fifth from each other. One, two, three, four, five. That's a fifth.
And then they both move the same distance in the same direction.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Here they both move up one step, resulting in consecutive or parallel fifths.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Now, when you play them alone like that, they have a hollow sound that we Westerners tend to associate with Chinese music. But, even if the other parts in the texture disguise that hollowness,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Even then, it was a definite no-no to write parallel fifths among your law-abiding late Renaissance Baroque classical and early Romantic composers. I mean, European composers went out of their way to avoid writing parallel fifths for about 400 years, say 1500 to 1900, something like that. Now, that's a pretty powerful taboo.
I've mentioned on other shows that musical rules are descriptive, not proscriptive. That is, they simply describe what composers of a given period happened to do. But there are some rules that were thought of as rules at the time, and that were almost always observed by even the most adventuresome composers. Here's a nice anecdote about Beethoven, and I am quoting it verbatim. I'm not making this up.
You know, the romantic picture of Beethoven makes him out to be so monumental and Zeus-like. You think of him as sort of a mobile Mount Everest. You never think of him simply taking a walk with a friend. This is from the memoirs of Ferdinand Ries, a sophisticated musician who knew Beethoven well.
Once, while out walking with him, I mentioned two perfect fifths, which stand out by their beauty of sound in one of his earlier violin quartets in C minor. Beethoven did not know of them, and insisted it was wrong to call them fifths. Since he was in the habit of always carrying music paper about him, I asked for some, and set down the passage in all four parts. Then, when he saw I was right, he said, Well, and who has forbidden them?
Since I did not know how to take his question, he repeated it several times until, much astonished, I replied, It is one of the fundamental rules.
Again he repeated his question, whereupon I said, Marpurg, Kirnberger, Fux, etc., etc., all the theoreticians. And so I allow them, was his answer. Now, the significance of that story is not only that old Ludwig obviously had a lot of attitude when it came to authority, but also that the rule against parallel fifths was so regularly observed that on the rare occasions it was flaunted, the flaunting was noticed and remarked upon.
You know, speaking of flaunting, I got curious about that word, and I looked it up, and it says, I'm not going to read the meanings, but in usage it says, Although transitive sense 2 of flaunt undoubtedly arose from confusion with flout, F-L-O-U-T, so I looked up that, flout, and it says, Probably from Middle English flouten, to play the flute.
I mean, how about that? What does treating with contemptuous disregard have to do with playing the flute? Well, now you know what flutists really are. You know, the old musicians' saying, what's the difference between a flutist and a flautist? A flautist earns more money. Anyway, I hope that henceforth you will treat flutists accordingly. Speaking of flutes, and of rules, I read a good story somewhere about Quantz, who was a composer and a flutist who worked for King Frederick the Great, Quantz was his teacher.
So, one evening, they're playing through a new piece by King Fred, and at one point, there's an infelicitous passage. The king had committed a compositional gaffe. Maybe it was parallel fifths. And Quantz, he just coughed. He wasn't about to criticize the king in front of other people. He just coughed. And the king later went back and revised that spot.
Maybe it wasn't parallel fifths. Maybe the royal boo-boo was parallel octaves, equally frowned upon, which is actually perhaps easier to understand than the outlawing of parallel fifths. Basically, it's the same deal. Parallel octaves occur when two voices, and I mean voices here as independent parts in the texture, not necessarily singers. Two voices are an octave apart,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
and they move the same distance in the same direction,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
creating consecutive octaves.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Now the rationale in this case is quite clear. Traditional harmony and counterpoint are often taught as separate disciplines, but they're really just different aspects of the same thing. Even in the quintessential example of harmonic writing, a Protestant church hymn, in which all four parts, soprano, alto, tenor, bass, have the same or virtually the same rhythm, melodically they're regarded as four independent melodies.
Each part, if sung separately, should sound like a reasonable, not necessarily a fascinating, but a reasonable melody. And the craft lies in creating a beautiful succession of chords by combining four independent melodies, but if two of the melodies are doing the same thing, the alto goes G F and the tenor goes G F at the same time, then for that moment there are not two melodies. They're one melody doubled up at the octave. In terms of counterpoint, you've gone from a four part texture to a three part texture.
You've wasted an opportunity for contrapuntal interest, for melodic interplay. There's a Mozart piano sonata in B-flat that I've been playing since college days. And part of the first movement goes like this.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Sonata in B-flat (K 570); Peter Schickele]
Okay, that's as much as we need, which is just as well, because that's where the fast notes come in. What we've got here is a three-part texture. We've got the melody,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
and then we've got the bass line.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Put those together.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
And then in the middle you've got the [sings the figure] part.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
So let me play all three of those together, and very slowly.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Parallel octaves! Everything was independent until then, and all of a sudden
[music: keyboard demonstration]
I can't help it! This has bothered me for almost fifty years now. I mean, it bothered me then, it bothers me now. I even looked up an authentic edition of Mozart's sonatas to make sure that's what he really wrote, but I guess he didn't care. Now, I certainly don't go poring over scores, looking for parallel octaves in the inner parts or anything, but when it's prominent and compromises the independence of the voices, I tend to notice it. Sorry, I can't help it.
Like, I was listening to a CD that a friend gave me for Christmas. It's a nice little novelty album called A Toolbox Christmas.
[music excerpt: Trad. arr. Phillips, Wassail Suite (A Toolbox Christmas)]
Okay, now let me just play the outside voices, the melody and the bass line here.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Now it's right, it's right here.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Hear that? You see, the bass line and the melody line are the same there. Up till there it's been a beautiful counterpoint between the melody and the bass, very independent, but all of a sudden they're in the same notes. Listen to it again, just in the original; see if you can spot it.
[music excerpt: Trad. arr. Phillips, Wassail Suite (A Toolbox Christmas)]
You know, it's the lack of counterpoint, the lack of consistency in terms of independence. By the way, Toolbox Christmas, I know it sounds pretty weird. It is pretty weird, but it's a very tastefully done album, very clever arrangements. Now, I'm not complaining about parallel octaves when they're consistent, when they're not pretending to be two different parts. For instance, at the beginning of Mozart's 40th Symphony.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Symphony No. 40 in G minor (KV 550), 1st Mvt.; Orchestra of the 18th Century/Brüggen]
Okay, now in that opening, the first violins are playing the melody here,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
and the second violins are playing it here.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
So together they sound
[music: keyboard demonstration]
That's one melody, contrapuntally speaking, one part, in which octaves are used as an instrumental color. It got sort of overused in the 19th century perhaps, but it's a beautiful color, violins in octaves. In 18th century orchestral music, the cellos and basses are almost always in octaves. That's not parallel octaves, that's just a different color for the melody. Then there's a sort of hybrid texture in between parallel and independent that I've always loved.
You hear it in traditional Asian music a lot. But this piece is from medieval Europe. The basic melody is on the bottom, and the recorder is playing above it, following the tune, but adding all sorts of embellishment notes. So it's the same but different, but it's consistently the same but different.
[music excerpt: Anon., "Istampita Palamento" (A History of Western Music); Das Studio der frühen Musik, München/Binkley]
The Istampita Palamento, that's a medieval piece. Here's a beautiful romantic example of the same idea. About nine seconds into this excerpt, the violins start following the melody in the cellos below, but with a slightly different rhythm. So it's sort of like water at the edge of a lake, lapping on the melody.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Symphony No. 3 in F, 2nd Mvt.; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Levine]
From the second movement of Brahms' Third Symphony. Now, I should mention that the principle of avoiding parallel octaves in a contrapuntal texture, where the parts are otherwise independent, is not a principle that has always been with us. Here's a lovely motet by Adam de la Halle, a trouvère who lived in the second half of the 13th century.
[music: Adam de la Halle, "J’os bien a m’amie parler" (Music of the Gothic Era); Early Music Consort of London]
The Early Music Consort of London, under the direction of David Munrow, performing Adam de la Halle's J'os bien a m'amie parler. So the piece begins like this.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
And there they are, right there, parallel octaves.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
That's funny. Those are exactly the same pitches as the Toolbox Christmas, the Wassail song. How about that?
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Ah, stop fooling around. Now, Adam de la Halle, when it came to parallel octaves, he really didn't care. Now, you could argue that de la Halle's voices are more independent than Bach's because they're free to create parallel octaves or not. Voice B is not prevented from going to a certain note just because it would cause parallel octaves with voice A. But hey, we're getting very philosophical here.
You know, true independence would mean writing parts without any regard to each other whatsoever, and then just throwing them together and seeing how they sound, or hearing how they look, or smelling how they feel. Whatever. Whatever you can think of, it was probably done in the 20th century, the century in which chance took a stance and pulled down all our pants. But I must say, I'm a child of my training when it comes to parallel octaves.
In the context of independent parts, I don't like to commit, as it were, parallel octaves at random. Which brings me to a true and painful confession. Here's a piece I wrote in college, as an exercise in Handelian style.
[music: Schickele, "Ceremonial March"; Peter Schickele]
I'm not in the habit of publishing my school exercises, but more than 40 years after I wrote it, I still have a soft spot in my heart for that one, and a bunch of people have used it in their wedding ceremonies, and some of those marriages have even remained intact. I finally had it published recently, simply titled Ceremonial March, and I hope it continues to contribute to happy occasions over the years.
But there is a deep, dark secret attached to the piece. In the third measure here, let me play it without the middle voice.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Parallel octaves, parallel octaves! Now, I don't know if I noticed that when I wrote the piece or soon thereafter, but it's been nagging at me on and off for lo these many years. When I prepared the piece for publication, I even tried to think of a way to change it, but I couldn't come up with anything that didn't call attention to itself, that didn't disturb the serenity of the passage, and I sort of feel like it does have a certain serenity. So I let it stand.
As a composer, I like the heart and the head to agree on things. But when they don't, the head loses out. What the hay! Mozart wrote parallel octaves, and he was Mozart. Sorry, I'm just Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called Playing by the Rules. Now, when I said at the top of the show that the rule against parallel fifths was so regularly observed that when it wasn't, people noticed, I didn't mean that everybody noticed. I'm not saying that your average Yosef Blow, sitting on a stool in the corner bar, I'm not saying he noticed.
And Yosef, what do you got to say for yourself?
Have you ever noticed the parallel fifths in Beethoven's C minor quartet? I have. Okay, Yosef, that's it for you tonight. No, what I'm saying is that connoisseurs noticed. Most people couldn't care less, except that good composers sound better than bad composers, even if you don't know why.
Well, how about you? Are you a connoisseur? Here's your chance to find out as we present another Schickele Mix special.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us here in Studio P as we get ready to play, well, excuse me, the game of the rules and those who break them. It's our job to see that they get caught. Our show is sponsored by the Downtown Burbank, the bank that has what it takes to take what you have. Remember, the folks at the Burbank won't leave you out in the cold.
Okay, are we ready to kick some coda? All right. All right, today's subject is parallel fifths. Now, we're talking about musical fifths here, not the other kind.
You know what they say, he who laughs longest laughs last, and therefore best. Okay, it's time to introduce our contestants, and as I say each of your names, contestants, please push the button on your individualized signal console there, so the folks at home will know who's whom. On my far left, we have a gentleman who is a sophomore at Always High, Mr. Dennis Dweeb.
In the middle, from Our Lady of Merciless Teasing, Miss Wilma Wallflower.
And finally, a postgraduate student at the School of Hard Knocks, Mr. Murphy McNerd.
Yes, sir. What a lineup. The best, or at least the brightest. And now, quiet everybody! Here's our first musical excerpt. Contestants, when you hear the parallel fifths, let us hear from you. Here it comes.
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Don Giovanni,” “Sola sola in buio loco”; Gruberova/Alexander/Bonney/Blochwitz/Polgar/Scharinger/Holl/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Harnoncourt]
Wilma Wallflower, you nailed that one! Parallel fifths between the first violins and the bass line in Mozart's Don Giovanni. Herbert, will you play that for us on the, uh, whatever that thing is in front of you?
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Yeah, yeah. Sounds very, sounds very obvious with just those two parts, doesn't it? But with everything together, it's a different story. Let's hear it again the way that naughty Wolfgang wrote it.
[music excerpt: Mozart, “Don Giovanni,” “Sola sola in buio loco”; Gruberova/Alexander/Bonney/Blochwitz/Polgar/Scharinger/Holl/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Harnoncourt]
Here it comes.
Oh, the fifths add to the sighing quality, I think, right? I've got to hand it to you, Wilma. You've got x-ray ears. I could just hear Mozart now saying, Well, excuse me. So that's 2,500 points for Wilma, and here comes our next excerpt. Prick up your ears, folks. This is a toughie. 5,000 points for this puppy.
[music excerpt: Beethoven, String Quartet in E-flat, Opus 74, 1st Mvt.; Emerson Quartet]
Ah, ah, ah, ah, nobody. Nobody heard that one, and I'm not surprised. That's from Beethoven's String Quartet in E-flat, Op. 74. And Herbert, would you play just the first violin and cello parts on that?
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Oh, boy. That is hardly there, isn't it? Especially since the, uh, that one violin note is so short. La-da. Well, it may not have bothered anyone here, but it has, in the past, bothered certain editors enough to make them change one of the notes in the cello part to avoid the parallel fifths. Well, excuse me.
Okay, Ludwig. Personally, even though I'm no stickler in the mud, I think the changed cello part is quite plausible for other reasons, too. But hey, hey, what do I know? I don't even approve of parallel parking.
That's right, okay. Here we go, contestants. Contestants, this is your last chance, and this one's worth 3,000 points. Now, Wilma's only got 2,500, so Dennis or Murphy could still win. Okay, let's roll excerpt number three.
[music excerpt: Franck, Symphony in D minor, 1st Mvt.; Philharmonia Orchestra/Giulini]
Oh! Oh! Oh! One, two, three!
Everybody heard it, but Wilma was the first, so she did it, folks!
Yes, she did it! That's right. Oh, okay, folks. Okay, okay, folks, before we announce the prize, Herbert, will you play that passage from Franck's Symphony in D minor?
[music: keyboard demonstration]
Well, excusez-moi. Yes, sir, they don't get any paralleler than that. Wilma Wallflower, you racked up 5,500 points, which means you've got a gift certificate worth $5.50 at the boutique in the downtown Burbank.
You could get yourself a plastic ATM card holder, or you could be well on your way towards the cost of a downtown Burbank tote bag.
Murphy McNerd, Dennis Dweeb, thanks for joining us, and you too, everybody out there, thanks for playing, well, excuse me.
Be good now, and don't do anything I wouldn't do. Ta-ta! See you on a wanted poster.
Well, I don't know what it says on your wanted poster, but mine says Peter Schickele, host of Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
We're still playing by the rules here, and particularly the traditional rule against parallel fifths. The thing about 17th and 18th century composers is that they avoided parallel fifths, I think, because the interval of the fifth is the most consonant interval next to the octave. So parallel fifths are very close in feeling to parallel octaves.
And also, because those guys didn't want to emphasize the interval of the fifth too much, except in certain limited circumstances, which we'll touch on later, they didn't much care for the sound of an open fifth.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
That's a fifth. Now, if I add the third in the middle,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
That's a triad, the basic building block of Baroque and classical music. But you rarely hear just the open fifth.
Here's a bit of traditional Bach-like four-part harmony that I wrote. At one point, instead of triads, there's an open fifth, and I think you'll agree that it sticks out. It sounds unstylistic for the period.
[music: keyboard demonstration, Bach-style four-part harmony by Schickele]
Right in the middle there, stuck out like a sore thumb. The rarity of open fifths in pre-20th century classical composition was brought home to me a few years ago when I heard a small city orchestra play the Brahms' Second Symphony, whose ending includes a huge D major triad blared out by the trombones.
[music excerpt: Brahms, Symphony No. 2, Opus 73, 4th Mvt.; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Barenboim]
But at this performance, the second trombonist, the one with the middle note, either didn't play or accidentally played the same note as one of the other trombonists, so instead of a full triad, we only heard an open fifth. It sounded like this.
[music: keyboard demonstration, the end of Brahms' Second with an open fifth]
It just doesn't sound like Brahms with that open fifth, aside from the fact that it's being played on the authentic instrument. But there are several important exceptions to this avoidance of open fifths. One is when you want to use what was thought of as a rustic sound, the countryside association of open fifths stemming from the bagpipes, which were a peasant instrument.
[music excerpt: Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto in D, Opus 35, 3rd Mvt.; Heifetz/Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Reiner]
From Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, that was Heifetz playing the solo part. Another common use of open fifths also had rustic origins. Hunting horns couldn't play all the notes of the scale, so instead of writing this,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
which the lower horn couldn't play, composers did this.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
That's the open fifth.
This became a very popular pattern.
[music excerpt: Beethoven, Symphony No. 8 in F, Opus 93, 3rd Mvt.; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Karajan]
Part of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. Now composers liked that figure so much that they used it even when writing for instruments that could play all the notes.
[music excerpt: Mozart, Divertimento for Violin, Viola & Cello in E-flat (K 563), 5th Mvt.; Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Leonard Rose]
Mozart's Divertimento for String Trio. And finally, there was one place in which open parallel fifths were often heard even though they weren't written, and that was in churches. Organs have a variety of stops, or different tonal colors, each emphasizing a different combination of overtones, which are naturally produced tones that are heard in addition to the note played on the keyboard.
And some of these stops accentuate, to a quite striking degree, the fifth step of the scale of the note. Bach wrote only one line at the beginning of the D minor toccata,
[music: keyboard demonstration]
but what you hear with certain stops is closer to this.
[music: keyboard demonstration]
The top note isn't that strong, but it's very strong. It's actually pretty amazing that composers who would bend over backwards to avoid parallel fifths in their writing would happily use organ stops that turned everything into parallel fifths.
[music excerpt: J. S. Bach, "Toccata & Fugue in D minor (BWV 565)"; Andre Isoir]
The beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, played by André Isoir. Now, with this organ registration, it's constant parallel fifths, but it's not like parallel fifths in part writing. That high overtone is not thought of as a separate voice, it's thought of as a color, just like the consistently parallel octaves in the violins at the beginning of Mozart's 40th Symphony that we heard earlier. And again, as with octaves, things were very different before the High Renaissance.
There was a time when composers considered the triad too impure to use at the end of a piece. They would end only with octaves and or open fifths. And works with parallel fifths within the piece were perfectly respectable, nothing that had to be ordered in a plain brown wrapper.
[music: Anon., "La mesnie fauveline" (A History of Western Music); Das Studio der frühen Musik, München/Binkley]
An anonymous and delightful 14th century motet called La mesnie fauveline, performed by the Early Music Consort of London. Well, what goes around comes around. By the end of the 19th century, the European aversion to parallel fifths and open fifths was history, except among the most conservative composers. You know, it's just like clothes. Hey, don't throw away those open fifths.
A dollar to a donut, you'll be wearing them again sooner or later. But it's interesting that the sound of open fifths in 20th century music has often, particularly in popular contexts, been used to connote old or primitive or exotic, in any case, other.
The exotic part comes from associations with Asian music. Listen in this example of traditional Buddhist music to the reed organ, sort of a harmonica, sustaining notes continuously in the background. They're often open fifths, and they're never western-style triads.
[music excerpt: Trad., "Lan Hua Mei"; Tianjin Buddhist Music Ensemble]
The beginning of Lan Hua Mei, Blue-Blossomed Plum, performed by the Tianjin Buddhist Music Ensemble. I love that music. Fifths are often used in movie scores and other program music to summon up or accompany oriental images. But, as I said earlier, fifths are also used to signify exotically old, as in cavemen, or, in this instance, ancient Rome.
[music excerpt: Rózsa, “Ben-Hur,” “Parade of the Charioteers” (Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa)]
From Miklós Rózsa's score for the 1959 movie of Ben-Hur, The Parade of the Charioteers. Now, I was listening to some other movie scores, and I've got a CD of music from the serials. I'm old enough to remember those one-chapter-a-week movies that came on before the feature. And I'm looking on the back of the CD at the listing for Adventures of Red Ryder, and cut number five is called Little Beaver.
So who's in that scene? Theodore Cleaver? Or a furry animal chewing on a tree? Well, about 13 seconds into the cue, the music tells you exactly who Little Beaver is.
[music: Lava, "Little Beaver (Part 1)" (Music from the Serials); The CinemaSound Orchestra/King]
Little Beaver, as William Lava's score makes clear by using repeated open fifths, is a kid from an Indian tribe. He's probably Red Ryder's sidekick. Now, you know, I'm no expert on traditional Native North American music, but I've heard a fair amount of it, and I love it, and I have never, ever heard any open fifths in it. I mean, nothing even close.
Close. But to the movie composer, open fifths used to mean, in this case, primitive. People often describe the opening of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as primordial, as if it's starting out at the beginning of the creation itself. And that feeling is undoubtedly partly due to the bare, stark, open fifth with which the symphony starts.
As a matter of fact, this seems to me to be an extremely rare instance in the classical period of a prominent open fifth that doesn't seem to have any rustic connotation. No bagpipes or hunting horns here, just the beginning of time.
[music excerpt: Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125; London Classical Players/Norrington]
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony premiered in 1824. Seventy-two years later, Puccini's La Bohème was premiered, freely and prominently employing parallel fifths, perhaps helping to suggest the beginning of the day, and a freezingly cold day at that.
[music excerpt: Puccini, “La Bohème,” “Ohè, là, le guardie... Aprite!”; Callas/Di Stefano/Panerai/Moffo/Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano/Votto]
The beginning of the third act of Puccini's La Bohème. He was criticized, by the way, for those parallel fifths. Here are some very open fifths. It's an octave and a fifth, actually, that perhaps helped to paint a picture of the vast expanses of the American West.
[music excerpt: Copland, "Billy the Kid"; London Symphony Orchestra/Dorati]
The opening of Billy the Kid by Aaron Copland. One of my favorite pieces I have a personal connection to that piece, actually See, it's music for a ballet about Billy the Kid And Billy the Kid was born in Brooklyn And I used to live in Brooklyn Small world, huh? Well, be that as it may The traditional classical rule against parallel fifths is now as out of date as spittoons, powdered wigs, and shopping in stores.
Here's a 20th century classic, and the four notes leading into the tune have to be the most famous parallel fifths in the world.
[music: Mancini, Theme from “The Pink Panther”; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/Kunzel]
Henry Mancini's Theme for the Pink Panther, played by Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. Remember, the Pink Panther was a movie about a thief, and I think the hollowness of the fifths in those famous three pickup notes, or four if you want to count the downbeat, adds to the sneakiness of the music.
Parallelism of any kind is anti-contrapuntal, that is, parallelism diminishes the individuality of the component voices. By the 20th century, composers felt free to use any chord in parallel fashion, which contributed to, or was the result of, depending on your view of history, the dissolution of traditional harmonic practice. In traditional harmonic practice, each chord has a harmonic function within the key.
With parallelism, the chords are simply part of the color of the melodic line. It's a sensuous technique, and it led to some colorful music. We'll go out with Debussy, the Dances for Harp and String Orchestra from 1904. Bernard Haitink conducts the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Vera Badings on harp.
The harp's very first entrance consists of parallel triads, and similar passages occur throughout the first of the two dances, the sacred dance. Hey, if you like the chord, why not give it the same freedom a melody has?
[music excerpt: Debussy, "Danses pour harpe et orchestre à cordes, Danse sacrée"; Vera Badings/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Haitink]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by this radio station and its members. The 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, and this is program number 169. 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.
[music excerpt: Debussy, "Danses pour harpe et orchestre à cordes, Danse sacrée"; Vera Badings/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra/Haitink]
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.