OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  But back to good old England, and the Lennon and McCartney of the time. For it was in 1572 that the composer William Byrd was sent to work alongside fellow composer Thomas Tallis, forty years his senior and operating out of the Chapel Royal. Tallis had already been there some thirty years before the two joined forces, and, together, they became one of the biggest things in music since Pope Gregory first started to hum in the bathroom of a morning.

  JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE, RINGO, WILL AND TOM

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  yrd was from Lincoln, Tallis possibly from Waltham Abbey. Apart, they were good musicians in their field - Tallis, particularly, respected as one of the grand old men of English music. But it was Queen Elizabeth who was to make their names still legendary today. She it was who, some three years after they joined forces, gave them the sole right to print music in England. Imagine it. Every note issued across the land belongs to them.

  How could you fail? Their first venture was the 'Cantiones Sacrae' of 1575, a collection of motets^ written by the two composers themselves. Of course, I wouldn't want you to think that they took the opportunity of having cornered the market in the world of music printing to release only their own stuff. No, no, no! I mean, it's true, of course, but I just wouldn't want you to think it. The good thing was that at least it was in the hands of masters. I mean, the 'Cantiones Sacrae' was some of the most exquisite published music of 1575, albeit, to be fair, some of the ONLY published music of 1575.

  What would happen now, then? I mean now that music was going to be printed on a regular basis? Well, despite the fact that it was still expensive and rare, it was, at least, getting out there. People with money could read it and get together and sing it, because, after all, it is fi A motet is a short church choral piece, or mini canal encircling a castle. still almost all vocal, remember. And here's where a lovely, serendipi-tously head-on collision of events and fashions comes together.

  PRESS ON

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  rinting. We take it for granted now. We take it for granted that it's our inalienable right to arrive at work with thumbs covered in rubbed-off black ink, and eyes like Ching Ching the giant panda. But just imagine what it did to music! Music was suddenly… available.

  It was 'in print'. Scores were available. Musicians and singers were available. And, against that backdrop, the next 'chance fashion' that came along would certainly find that the land was lying differently. Everything had changed. Everything was to play for. And what was the next big thing?

  Greek and Roman style and culture was the NEXT BIG THING. And not just the styles, but the forms and features as well. So, some folk got into Greek drama again in a big way - the intellectuals, mainly. Only now, because this time around they had more than rocks and drums for accompaniment, the music became a much more important part. The writing had always been there. But the music? Well, the music relied, as it always did, on the technology of the day - the instruments, which had been somewhat primitive when the Greeks tried it first time around. The new versions of Greek dramas saw much more emphasis on the music - 'drammaper musica plays through music, as they were called, and they would become big hits. Where, first time round, you had dramas, this time round you had something completely different. In fact, it would only take someone, in the right place, at the right time to think… 'Hang on a minute…this could be big' and PING! You've got OPERA!

  Who would be the first? Who would be the one to write the first ever opera? Who would be the one to go down in the annals of music history alongside the man in the iron mask, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo and the man from Delmontehesayyes. Who would be… The Man Who Invented Opera!' Well, whoever it was, was sure to become a household name. The first ever opera. Just think of it. You'd be famous the world over. You'd be feted for years to come. You could write your own cheques. People would name their children after you.

  You'd be guaranteed an upgrade to business class, even if you weren't wearing a suit. You'd be remembered throughout all history. So how come it was…Jacopo Peri?

  THE FIRST EVER OPERA (BUT ONE)

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  mm. I know what you're thinking. Who he? Ed? Quite, quite.

  You see, the world has decided, somewhat dubiously, that the first opera ever written was Monteverdi's UOrfeo, which is only fair in so far as… well, in so far as it wasn't. Monteverdi's L'Orfeo was, in fact, the second opera ever written. Peri's Dafne was the first. So, where did it all go wrong for Peri? Because it's a bit like, well… imagine Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon, the first man ever to do so, and yet the world decides to remember Buzz Aldrin as the hero. So, where did it all go wrong for Peri?

  Well, it seems that giddy fortune's furious fickle wheel is really the culprit, here. True, Monteverdi, it seems, was probably by far the more skilful of the two composers, with an oeuvre richer in harmonic invention and melody. Peri was more or less his contemporary, born in Rome and one of the great musicians of his day, as well as friend of the Medicis. He was also one of the in-crowd, as it were, and, as such, probably there at the sharp end when dmmma per musica came back in. Indeed, he almost certainly had a hand in reviving it, alongside some of his fellow writers. Where fortune seems to have favoured Monteverdi, though, is in the simple but crucial matter of survival. The score of Monteverdi's UOrfeo survived; the score of Peri's Dafne didn't. To add further insult to injury, Peri's second opera, Eurydice, was written some seven years before the first performance of Monteverdi's UOrfeo, and is, technically speaking - with full surviving score, etc - the first opera in existence. And yet, despite all that, the ground-breaking nature of Monteverdi's opera still leads many to describe it today as the first 'real' opera ever written. I don't know, what is a man to do? It reminds me of the story of Edison and his telephone and the dodgy dealings which led to the failure of rival designs. Still. What's done is done: Monteverdi is remembered some 450 years after his birth, while Peri is no more than a piece of trivia in the classical music section of a pub quiz. Isn't life a bastard?

  IF IT'S NOT BAROQUE…

  ow, sorry to make this book nigh on interactive, but would you just help me a moment. Close your eyes, again, and imagine if you will a huge 1950s post-war British factory. Are you there?

  Bugger. Actually you can't read this if you close your eyes, can you? OK, open them again, and I'll do the imagining.

  I'm seeing a aircraft hangar-sized factory in the fifties. Lots of people are working - only not on anything vaguely mechanical. They are writing… with quill pens and parchment manuscript. Suddenly, a huge, almost air-raid-siren-like hooter goes off, and, immediately, many of them down quills. Then a voice booms over the loudspeaker: 'Ladies and gentlemen, it is now 1600. It is now 1600. The Renaissance shift is now at an end. Will composers please remember to take all their belongings with them when leaving, so that the baroque shift can get to work immediately, and we won't have any complaints. I repeat, the Renaissance shift is now finished. Anyone who's working a double shift and staying on for baroque is entitled to five minutes to stretch their legs. Thank you.' BING BONG.

  OK, OK, so it never happened like that, I know. Why do you think I did it? It just shows, in a way, how useless these labels are… Renaissance, baroque, etc. People just… composed. True, music evolved over time, but not in one year. So maybe that's why many scholars have even had difficulty in agreeing where one period ends and another one begins. Most plump for baroque as starting around 1600, but then this becomes meaningless when you see that composers such as Dowland, Gibbons and Monteverdi - all of them hardly contenders for the tide 'Mr Baroque of Morecambe Bay, 2004' - were working long into the seventeenth century. Still, as politicians are wont to say, where do you draw the line? Well, here, as it happens, so I guess we've got to lump it.

  Now, let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of the early seventeenth century - I'll show you something that'll make you change your pants.

  1607. Good year? Bad year? Well, bad year if you were Guy Fawkes, I suppose. Ba
d in that you were dead, I mean, your head satayed with peanut sauce just a year earlier, after you'd been caught in the House of Lords, walking backwards with a carelessly leaking keg of gunpowder. 1607 means the new play from everybody's favourite bard, William Shakespeare, namely Antony and Cleopatra. It means the new gadget from Galileo, a compass, so now you could see your way through the stench and fog of south London to go and see Mr Shakespeare's play. And what else have we got? Let's see… Oh yes, we've got opera, as I said earlier. Opera. What more could you want?

  Well, opera singers, I suppose: we haven't got them yet. Well, that's not fair, actually. We have got opera singers, we just haven't got women opera singers. Not yet, anyway. It's still all blokes. Ever since St Paul, no less, said that women should stay silent in church, they've become as rare as a witch at a diocesan coffee morning. So, if we don't have women, who is going to sing the high bits? Who is going to hit the top Cs? Well, looks like someone will be going to the ball, after all. If you get my drift. Well, OK, someone is going to the ball, but it turns out it's going to be your personal surgeon - now remove your trousers, please! Yes, along with opera came the meanest men in all Italy - and you can't deny they've got good reason to be - THE CASTRATOS. Mmm, could be a great series on Channel 4, produced by HBO.

  I would seriously have loved to hear a good castrato, just to see how different they were from today's counter tenors. The idea, most common in Italy, it's got to be said, was to castrate a boy soprano, thus preserving the boy's voice, and combining it with the chest, lungs and therefore range of an adult. One of the most famous castrati who ever lived was a man called Farinelli (1705-82) who, it is said, was employed by Philip V of Spain to sing him the same four songs every evening. Check out the film about him - very good.

  GOODBYE, LOVE. HELLO, LUVVIES!

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  es, OK, I know. It's not my fault. Don't blame me. Yes, we have opera. It's a big fat hit with virtually everyone who goes to see it. And you can see why - it was so starkly different to anything that had come before it. As beautiful as a four-part Mass is, especially when delivered in the glorious settings of a visually stunning cathedral, just think how ALIVE an opera must have seemed in comparison. It must have been a bit like when Special FX first started to take off in films. Audiences had, literally, seen nothing like it before. Well, opera must have been like that - different from anything they'd ever seen before.

  But how did I know they'd go and invent opera long before they had proper sopranos? Amazing, really, when you think. But nevertheless, opera was here to stay, and, with opera, came egomaniac primadonnas. But, as we've said, not female ones. In fact, arguably, much worse: egomaniac primadonnas with a grudge. In fact, with a grudge and no balls. What an awful combination.

  What's the most amazing thing about the revolution that was opera, though, is that, despite being the biggest thing in vocal music in years, centuries even, it, more than any other innovation, led to a dramatic improvement in another, seemingly completely different, area, namely instrumental music. Why? Well, because the accompanying orchestra in the pit was called on to play more and more dramatic music. Very often, this dramatic music would mean playing new things, new sounds which had never been tried before when instruments were simply for accompaniment. Now that ever new sounds and textures and effect were called for, composers needed ever better players who could pull off the more technically demanding music they were writing for their operas. This would eventually lead to the orchestra leaving the pit altogether, and going up on to the stage, on their own, much to the outrage of the Church.

  The Church, you see, HATED instrumental music. And why? Well, because of the very fact that it was instrumental, and therefore NOT VOCAL. If there were no voices, there could be no words, and if there were no words, there could be no praising God. But, well, it's post-Reformation, now, and the Church's influence is very much on the wane. Even it could not stop something as fundamental as instrumental music from taking root. And so it would grow and grow. And we'll follow it as it does, but for now, let's to^ the court of Louis XIV.

  I say, witch? Could you hold up both hands and tell me the time? What's that you say, 1656? Thank you!

  Well, I've checked and the hands on my witch tell me it's 1656. Time for an update. 1656. Where are we? Well, it's thirty-six years since Miles Standish and the Pilgrim Fathers landed at New Plymouth, which is an astonishing coincidence, when you think - all that way round the globe in a souped-up junk boat and they land somewhere with almost the same name as the place they left. Also, the English Less-Than-Civil War had been and gone, and Charles I had had his headache cured in rather dramatic fashion by the men with the Beatles haircuts, Cromwell and Co.

  BATON CHARGE

  ? ver in Paris, however, the French King is having an altogether nicer time of it. In fact, if you had dropped in any time around 1656, you might have come across a rather remarkable piece of entertainment. Remarkable not only for the fact that the reigning monarch of France is about to dress up in a golden solar costume and prance around like a wazzock, but also because, by the time he's finished, the development of the orchestra would be on a different planet. The P Did you like the way I left the verb out, there? Very post-Ref, don't you think? (lecasion was a lhtle ballet, cooked up by the King's composer in resi-ili-nce, Lully.

  Jean-Baptiste Lully was an Italian working in Paris, who was born not only with a musical ear but also with dancing feet. He and the King were about to dance a duet, with Louis Quatorze dressed as the Sun - hence the tide The Sun King, which stuck. I guess as titles given to you for prancing around like an idiot go, the Sun King isn't bad. I imagine Uranus King would have been much harder to explain to the vicar.

  Such a success was the ballet that Lully was promoted from a lowly 'violon' player to Director of the King's Music, eventually going on to set up a revolutionary orchestra of twenty-five violins as well as flutes, oboes, bassoons, trumpets and timpani. In fact, if you ever get the chance to listen to anything by Lully performed live, try to remember that half of the instruments you are hearing were, at that time, brand, spanking NEW. They were gadgets, gizmos, the new toys, only just developed. You see, Lully was experimenting with music and the sounds of the orchestra. More importantly, he was experimenting with the sounds of the orchestra and getting it right. He was changing the face and sound of the orchestra for good.

  LULLY. FALSY SENSY SECURITY

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  adly, nowadays, not much Lully is ever really played or heard. He is, to be fair, best remembered these days for the manner of his end which, despite being well chronicled, deserves to be recounted. It's said he was in the middle of a performance of his?? Deum, a piece which, irony of ironies, he had written to mark his beloved King's recovery from some illness or other. No doubt one of those particularly unpleasant seventeenth-century ones. Er, probably involving pox. Whatever.

  Anyway, back then, when you conducted an orchestra, you didn't just wave a baton in front of them. Oh no, back then, they made you earn your money. You had a big stick, roughly the size of a broom handle, sometimes with bells on, sometimes not, and what you did was you held this stick vertically and banged it on the floor, every first beat of the bar, or howsoever took your fancy. In this tragic performance of the?? Deutn, though, there was Lully, banging the floor with gay abandon, when he suddenly whacked himself in the foot -1 don't know, maybe some particularly attractive 'bit-of-wig'-" walked past. Whatever happened, a few days later an abscess is said to have developed, whereupon he contracted gangrene and died some time after. Dead at the age of fifty-five, and forever consigned, alongside Alkan/ '* to that section of music books entitled 'Composers who met sticky ends' Poor sod.

  PASS THE PURCELL

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  ^ngland. 1689. (Cue that sort of stirring yet scene-setting music.Jthat you get in a classic black-and-white, Sunday afternoon movie. The music dies.) There's been a bit of a reshuffle, as it were.

  Cromwell, the Lord Protector, as he ended up, is l
ong buried. Let's hope he was dead. All in all, though, thank goodness - I mean, ghastly haircuts.

  Charles II also came and went. A bit like when we went from the 1960s to the 1970s: out went the roundheads, and in came the long, flowing locks. (Wonder if they wore flares?) The capital has more or less fully recovered from both the Great Plague - which killed off some 70,000 people, give or take a stiff- and the Great Fire. And so to music, where there is now a bunch of great composers, carrying on the good work in the current big thing, opera, and none more so than England's finest, Henry Purcell.

  Much like Lully in France, Purcell was composer to the King's private band, as well as being organist at Westminster Abbey. In historical terms, Purcell is a bit of a mystery man. Very little is known Ј This genuine Louis XIVpiece of original slang has been authenticated from the only surviving manuscript»/Thesee et ses gateaux de fer -'Tbesie and his buns of steel' ©. fi fi Charles-Valentin Alkan, a couple of centuries later, allegedly reached up to retrieve a book from a top shelf and was killed by his falling bookcase. about him. In fact, so little that I've had to make some of the next bit up, see if you can tell which.

  Now some thirty years old, his rise to musical stardom had been more or less meteoric.