Laura Leon - Morning Music: Piano Works By Peter Schickele

Morning Music is a unique collection of never before recorded piano works by the remarkable American composer Peter Schickele and the one and only P.D.Q. Bach. It includes Schickele's tender settings of American folk songs and hymns, 'Hollers, Hymns and Dirges'--including the beloved 'Amazing Grace'; a 'snap-shot' of a classical-style Sonatina, 'Epitaphs,' his homage to great 16-20th century composers from Orlando di Lasso to Stravinsky, and tangos, blues and a cool riff. The one and only P.D.Q. Bach (1807-1742)?, discovered by Professor Peter Schickele, is represented by his very early work 'Three Teeny Preludes' S. .001 and 'Goldbrick' Variations, his attempt to cash in on 'his father's' (J.S. Bach) fame and renowned 'Goldberg Variations.' Hoping to keep players' and listeners' attention, P.D.Q. Bach reverses theme and variations-including a variation titled 'Presto changio!' Morning Music includes two works for one-piano, four hands: Morning Music, described by the composer as as 'raga-like exotic sunrise-inspired string of musical beads'' and Civilian Barber Overture, a delightful, humorous preview of the P.D.Q. Bach discovery-to-come. Both are recorded by Laura Leon with Blair McMillen, pianist of the acclaimed NY Contemporary ensemble, Da Capo Chamber Players. A master of refined, streamlined composition for the piano, Peter Schickele contours simple musical lines brilliantly and refreshes traditional melodies, transforming them anew. The works on this recording range from serious to humorous to poignant, harking back to-and influenced by-the composer's deep love of folk tunes and popular music, which he brings to the contemporary classical ream with finesse and sensitivity. Peter Schickele-and P.D.Q. Bach-have changed the world's musical landscape, and they continue to enlighten it for musicians and music lovers alike. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PETER SCHICKELE ALBUM NOTES--BY PETER SCHICKELE TRACK 1: MORNING MUSIC is a string of beads; each bead is a concentrated, somewhat static musical section. ONe of these sections is fast and driving, another is languid, others flow in a songlike manner, but they all have a rather hypnotic quality. Although there is no direct referencer to the music of India, this work has, to me, the feeling of a piece to be played at sunrise, in the manner of a morning raga. This piece was not commissioned; it simply wanted to be written. It was first performed by Jack Behrens and the composer on February 6, 1983 at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. TRACKS 2-9: HOLLERS, HYMNS AND DIRGES was written over a period of many years, and for a long time resisted only in my head and fingers; it was finally, definitively written down on September 1, 1988. Some time in the late '70s or early '80s I played the work on radio station WQXR in New York City, but since I had not yet written it down, and don't have a tape of that program, I'm not sure how much revision took place between the first performance and the final notation; I do know that I changed the order of the individual pieces during that period. The first time I heard GUIDE ME, O THOU GREAT JEHOVAH was one of the high points of my musical life Swarthmore COllege was one of the first colleges to have a regular folk festival in the early '50s and one of them (perhaps even the very first) featured a concert by a young woman from Kentucky named Jean Ritchie whose unaccompanied singing of this hymn was a revelation to me; having been brought up on smooth folk singers such as Burl Ives, I never realized how ornamental, how almost Moorish or Far Eastern, American folk singing could be. This hymn remains one of my very favorite pieces of music. OH, DEATH is a wonderfully grim song I learned from a record made by a 66 year old Southern ex0-miner named Dock Boggs, who sings it with a robustness that belies it's grisly lyrics. Ralph Rinzler, an old friend and college roommate of mine who is also a noted folk song and craft collector, asked me to assist him in analyzing Dock Boggs's unique banjo and singing style, and I got hooked on the record. I do not try to imitate either that major style or singing style; the pianos eating is still stark, but bolder and more definite. The first version of GO TELL AUNT RHODEY that I heard was the famous Burl Ives rendition in the album of 10' 78's that must have been one of the most popular albums of the 1940s; at least all my friends' parents seemed to have had it too. ALthough it is basically a sad song, it makes a good lullaby-I know I'm not the only parent who has used it as such. My setting uses a kind of bitonality to create a sweet sadness. AMAZING GRACE has become one of the most popular folk hymns in the country, and deservedly so. Not only has it been sung by singers of every kind, but it has even been recorded by a bagpipe band accompanied by a symphony orchestra. My setting contrasts simple declarations of the melody with a quasi-canonic, three-part section. When she was 8 years old, my daughter read the entire series of 'LITTLE HOUSE' books by Laura Ingalls Wilder; a year later she started reading them all again. On one of my tours I ran across a book in which were collected the words and music to the various songs mentioned in 'Little House on the Prairie' and it's companion columns. It was from this collection that I became acquainted with THERE IS A HAPPY LAND, as well as the hymn which ends this suite, WHEN I CAN READ MY TITLE CLEAR. I have retained the old melodies, but I've made the harmonizations more modal. DARLIN' COREY was, as I recall, in the same Burl IVes album as GO TELL AUNT RHODY. I have heard many and widely varied versions of these two songs since, but I retain a fond nostalgic memory of the Burl Ives performances, although his singing of DARLIN' COREY is more gentle and less like a holler than my very pianistic setting. RUBY is a bluegrass standard. One of the things I find so appealing about bluegrass hollers is that fast and busy instrumental accompaniment supporting expansive melodic lines featuring long (slow-feeling) notes-some of them held as long as the singers feeds like holding them. LITTLE SUITE FOR SUSAN (tracks 10-16): I had just splayed a concert in Enid, Oklahoma,-this was in March, 1980-and the couple driving me to the reception afterwards mentioned that it was the conductor's birthday. I'm afraid I wasn't much of a conversationalist for the remainder of the ride, for I knew that the conductor was a clarinetist and his wife a violinist, and I started thinking about a way of combining the slow movement theme from the Mozart clarinet concerto with 'Happy Birthday.' As soon as I got to the party I asked the hostess if she might be able to dig up a sheet of music paper anywhere. She must have talked to more than one person about it, because during the next half-hour two different people came up to me, one with a single sheet of manuscript paper (which I used to write down my little birthday present), and the second, too late, with a little manuscript book. But when I looked at it, I saw that Fate was at work: it was called PETER'S MUSIC BOOK, and it seemed obvious that, even though the apostrophe was a little out of place, the sixteen-page booklet was meant for me. My wife had a birthday coming up, and since she periodically talks about resuming the piano lessons she quit when she was a kid, I decided to fill the book with little piano pieces that she might be able to play. That limitation ended up being stretched considerably, but about a week later LITTLE SUITE FOR SUSAN was completed. It was composed in Enid, Los Angeles, Ft. Worth and Tempe, Arizona (as well as in various vehicles between those points). It's first performance was in the living room of a friend in Jerome, Arizona, and it's first public performance, also by the composer, was at a concert that was part of the