OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  But despite all, despite the deafness, trie lack of money, the various personal hardships brought on by deafness, despite all this he had not yet reached a bad patch musically speaking, and the great works just kept on coming. 1809, the l Emperor' Concerto - the name didn't come from Beethoven, though. He was very disenchanted with Napolean by this point - definitely wouldn't be sending him a Christmas card this year. 1810. The Egmont Overture. Wow. Each one of them I would be proud to call my life's work. Today, they remain absolute giants of their respective fields. It's unlikely a concert season goes by somewhere in the world without the 'Emperor' in there, somewhere. And although most of the rest of Egmont is not performed much, these days - it was a play by Goethe, for which Beethoven supplied the incidental music - the overture itself is still a stalwart of the repertoire. And, let's not forget, a great pick-me-up drink for coping with hangovers.

  1812, now. Yes, 1812 1812. THE 1812. 1812 of'De de de de de de de den dut derrrr' fame. Of course, that - De de de de de de de den dut derr, that is - is not from 1812, it's just about 1812. Obviously. Good. I'm glad I'm making myself perfectly clear.

  Anyway, as I'm trying to say in my own little way, it's 1812 and Napoleon has finally got too big even for his boots and done the whole invade Russia thing. I don't know, so 'week one'! Sad time, to be honest. He then had to follow this up with the whole retreat from Moscow thing. He finally got back to Paris with a surviving army of 20,000. That's out of the 550,000 he started the campaign with! Quite. Let's see, what else? Well, the big writers of 1812 included Lord Byron and the Brothers Grimm. To be fair, Jane Austen is also one of the big writers of 1812, it's just that nobody knows she is, as she puts out all her stuff anonymously. Last year, it was Anon's Sense and Sensibility - big hit - and she's already working on Anon's Pride and Prejudice for next year. In other stuff, Lord Elgin has just brought some trifling Utile marble bits and bobs back to England, Goya has painted the Duke of Wellington and, up north, only last year, a group named after Ned Ludd had destroyed a series of industrial machines that spelt the end of their jobs. Odd times. As for Herr Beethoven, well, it's finally here. His bad time, that is, as far as music is concerned. He's about to go into a five-year down period. Maybe the deafness was finally getting to him? Maybe he just lost the muse? I don't know. He just finished the amazing Seventh Symphony and the somewhat lighter Eighth Symphony, and, well, more or less shut up shop. Apart from yet another rewrite of Fidelia, he would produce very little, and what he did wasn't masses to write home about.

  So, if Beethoven is having some well-earned down time, who is around and writing what it would be worth our while covering? Well, there is, of course, the chef. The man who put honey back into symphony - OK, OK, needs work - and who added an extra pinch into the Thieving Magpie. Yes it's Gioachino 'Does this need more pepper?' Rossini. And not only is it going to be Rossini who saves the decade, it's going to be, would you believe it, our old friend opera. And not just any old opera: but only your 100 per cent genuine kosher comic opera, no less. As true as I'm holding this carrot.

  1816 is the year. And what can you say about 1816 that hasn't already been said? Quite. But let me try, anyway. It's one year on from both Waterloo and the Battle of New Orleans, interesting if only because they both were not only big-hitting battles, but also big-hitting songs. Indeed, the Battle of New Orleans kept Lonnie Donegan very happy in retirement for many years. What else? Canova has sculpted his 'Three Graces', Jane 'You ain't seen me' Austen has written Mansfield Park and Emma, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor has finally completed Kubla Khan, which he'd started back in 1797. That was back in the classical period. Huh! How primitive. At home in Britain, things are not looking great. Money is tight, some would say non-existent, and the generally gloomy economic oudook is causing a huge migration of people to Canada and the US.

  Beethoven, incidentally - well, he's still scribbling a little, screwing up the manuscript paper… scribbling a little, then screwing up the manuscript paper. In fact, he's doing this over and over again. It's not going well, the poor lhtle sausage. So let's see what Rossini can do to fill the gap.

  Rossini, of course, was far happier. He was, by now, already becoming known as 'the swan of Pesaro', for reasons perhaps best known to himself. OK, so he was from the Italian coastal town of Pesaro, in Italy? Fair enough, but the 'swan' bit - well, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it's because it's said that when he went swimming in the Pesaro lido, although he appeared graceful above the water, beneath the surface his chubby little legs were paddling like billy-o.© Whatever. By 1816, he was just twenty-four to Beethoven's forty-six, and had already been 'bubbling under' for a few years now. His first operas were utterly unremarkable, but nevertheless led to more commissions. Suddenly, though, things started to happen. The opera Tancredi was a huge hit - the aria 'Di tanti palpiti' was massive at the time. It got a nickname 'The Rice Aria' because Rossini was said to have written it in four minutes flat, while his rice was cooking. Then came The Italian Girl in Algiers when he was twenty-one and, in an instant, he was famous throughout all Italy. His next opera was very, very eagerly awaited. Could the young man with die ear for some of the most hummable tunes of die day do it again?

  Well, the signs looked good when he plumped for a Beaumarchais play as his source. Good start. But then, well, tiien things went seriously downhill. He had thirteen days to write it. Fair enough. He could do that. And he did - had it finished just the day before the first night. The Barber of Seville.

  Problem was it was massively under-rehearsed. So, on the night, at the Teatro Valle in Rome, singers missed their cues, tripped over on the set, a cat even wandered on stage at one point. Then, nightmare scenario - the audience started booing and shouting the name 'PAI-SI-ELL-O, PAI-SI-ELL-O'. Now this was bad news. Giovanni Paisiello was a big Italian composer at the time and he had already set the same play riiat now found itself being booed in the version by Rossini. Not the best start ever for an opera. But then, guess what? No, go on, guess!

  Oh, bad luck. No, actually, that's not it. What happened was, come the second night, they loved it. Yes. LOVED IT. Honest. Don't know why, but they did. They just turned it all around, and couldn't stop applauding it. And it's been one of the most popular Italian operas ever since. As well as the overture, which is rightly famous, it also contains the beautiful 'Una voce poco fa', which translates as 'One vodka too far', and the tenor test 'Largo al factotum', or 'Big Al makes breakfast'.© When it comes to the latter, I can't hear it without being transported back to my youth. Not to an opera house, not to my father standing pipe in hand by the gramophone, and not to the influence of my knowledgeable music teacher in school. No, it takes me back to that rare time, staying up late on a school night, when the Fiat ad would come on the telly, complete with Rossini soundtrack -you know, the one with the factory full of robots doing all the work. Never forget it. Never.

  And let me compare The Barber of Seville, if I can, to the last great milestone in opera, namely Gluck's Orfeo and Euridice. What would you notice if you went to hear the two performed side by side? Well, obviously, it would be a bloody awful mess, with one set of singers and players singing and playing over the other set, thus leading to discords, false related harmonies and a general cacophonous din. But, otherwise, well, we're light years on. Gluck had started to use all those musical effects - you know, musical descriptions, sound effects, if you like - but it was quite tame stuff. Then Mozart had come along with his 'Fantastic Four' - The Marriage of Figaro, Cost fan Tutte, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. Now this was the highpoint of 'classical' opera - the full monty. It really didn't get more classical opera than this. So, along comes Rossini and his penchant for steak/

  Now, remember, he's writing only twenty years or so after Mozart, but already Rossini wants to mirror 'life' more than ever. He could write an opera about anything. His famous quote, 'Give me a laundry list and I could set it to music!' is absolutely true. He doesn't want the polite, form-bound world of the classical per
iod - he wants to wow people in the opera house. And he did. He did with things like his trademark 'Rossini Rocket'. These are the bits in his music where he repeats small phrases over and over again, getting louder and very fi Rossini was a bis cook, and left us, among other things, a recipe named, after himself, called Tournedos Rossini. If anyone's interested, it goes like this. Ingredients: butter, olive oil, beef tournedos, foie gras, white bread, demi-glace sauce, truffles and Madeira wine. Mix the butter and oil in a hot fan. Seal the tournedos. Fry the foie gras in another pan. Braise the truffles in butter with Madeira wine. Add a brown demi-glace sauce (to taste) and simmer. Toast the bread, then place the tournedos on top, then the foie gras, then the truffles at the summit. Cover in the demi-glace sauce and serve. Et voila.' *fmoul«f^ and I, often faster, until they seem to explode - a sort of race to the end. There's one in the overture to The Barber of Seville, and probably the most famous one is in the overture to William Tell - the end of the 'Lone Ranger' bit. They're pure showmanship, and very - open inverted commas - early romantic - close inverted commas. So. If you were to have to write the essay 'Rossini's Barber of Seville versus Gluck's Orfeo and Euridice - how are they related? Discuss' and it said 'in not more than 4,000 words', only someone had scrubbed off the three noughts so it read 'in not more than 4 words' (OK, OK, big set of ifs but go with me on this). Well, if you did ever find yourself in that predicament, I'm sure you wouldn't be marked down if you wrote the following: 'They're completely different animals!'

  But what of the last year in our little nonet, let's call it 1817? What gives?

  Well, to try and answer your questions, let me start in the Americas. James Monroe has just been made the fifth president of the young USA, and, a little further south, Simon Bolivar has set up a groovy new place called Venezuela, and is busy having everyone back to his. Back home, Jane Austen has died, although this in no way seems to diminish her power to release books - both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are published, posthumously, a year later. Waterloo Bridge has opened - a bridge that affords the best views of •any in London, if you ask me, or even if you don't, and that's even if they have gone and dumped a giant ferris wheel smack bang in the middle of it. In Edinburgh, the newest addition to the rapidly burgeoning portfolio of daily papers is launched, namely The Scotsman, with the slogan, 'Och Aye, the news!'*1 % On usic wise, ikougk, in 181J, wko '$ in, wko s out r ^Pj/ko s alive who s [leal? (Who % ike?????1 Stipes, who s ike?????1?1? QJPeU, as you may nave guessed, we are now lefinilelu romantic wkick is wky tkis paragrapk is written in a flowery, script. (Oarly romantic, it s true, but romantic nevertheless. ^(fjou only kave to listen to last year s biggie, Ue QjOarber of QJeville ' to realize tkal. Hi simply sounds early romantic,??, ij it s easier, it doesn i sound classical. Cyl was cJjeelkoven wko broke ike P Stephen Fry would like to publicly dissociate himself from this line. Id, ike classical mould, and from tk en on people needed anolker word, an alike word was ^romantic '. t/inolner leading light of ike romantic world was ike man we first caugkt a glimpse of some seventeen pages ago now, as an eleven-year-old boy, fiddling kis wau round (Ourope.?,? s ike man in league wilk ike iJJevil, one ^-llicolo???????.

  Thank you. Paganini is touring heavily, at the moment, much like he ever did, although all of it still within his native Italy. He would be well into his forties before he stepped into unfamiliar foreign territories. Much like Mozart had done before him, Paganini takes his own music with him - music that he has specially written himself, to show himself off. Showmanship is the big thing with Paganini, as it will be for many composers of the romantic period.

  Actually, at this point, I need to say something stark staringly obvious again - what the marketing types would call a 'no brainer', I believe, and it's this. At any one, given time, there will be three groups of people who are able to make a difference in any art form - the past, present and future types. What I mean, there, is the people whose work is stuck in the past, the people who are very content to work in the fashion of their day, and the people who are always in the future -breaking new ground.

  Like now - 1817. The people who favour the past are still writing what has gone before; the people who favour the present are embracing, fully, the music that is now; and, of course, the people who favour the future - important, restless souls who can only write music that pushes the boundaries - are busy fidgeting and being unable to sit still. If you think about it, at any time, there will always be these three types of people in action, and not just in music, but in anything - art, literature, Wankel rotary engine development, the lot. Eventually, though, one of the groups will get the upper hand, and the influence of the other two diminishes… and so the form will change. And so with music. Music's 'futurists' got the upper hand and so music moved on, as it were. At present, we're seeing off the last tiny vestiges of classical, and romantic is definitely in. Paganini and Rossini are spearheading the 'Romantic for President' campaign and, as it stands, they're doing well in the Primaries, and telling music like it is. In this year, 1817, Paganini came up with his reality-defyingly

  Q

  difficult Violin Concerto No 1 and Rossini brought forth La Gazza Ladra. The violin concerto is typical of the sort of stuff Paganini would have taken on the road to ensure a return booking - it's all 'double-stopping'^ and 'harmonics'^* and generally gives the appearance of the fiddler arching all over the place to find the notes. As for La Gazza Ladra, some say its finest hour came when a High Court judge in the late 1980s mistook it for Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne, the then England footballer, causing a resurgence of feeling that High Court judges were out of touch. Only slightly spooky, too, that Gazza - the footballer - did actually play for a football team whose nickname was 'The Magpies' and 'La Gazza Ladra' means 'The Thieving Magpie'. Something to bring up when there's a lull in conversation. Or maybe a powercut.

  AFTER THE PREVIOUS NINE YEARS

  reat tide don't you think, 'after the previous nine years'? I did toy with 'Beyond…' for a few moments but then plumped for the plainer 'After…' in the end. Paves the way, should I ever need it, for a prequel, 'Before the previous…' etc, etc. Can't see as I will ever need it, but still.

  The reason I go on about the tide is that, to be fair, this isn't really any particular period in history. Yes, it's still 'early romantic', and it's not quite fully fledged 'romantic', but this doesn't earn it its own name: 'the pre-ultra romantic' period, or maybe the 'post pre-roman-tic period'. Yes, actually, that's better. But, still, it hasn't got a name. And I certainly would never stoop so low as to deliberately try to coin a new phrase for some sad nine-year lull, just so that I get quoted in pompous music books. Oh no. Not me.

  The post pre-romantic period, as you might call this time, is quite an interesting little time. Quick update: 1819 was the year that P The bits where they flay more than one note at once on the violin. fi P The bits where they apply afferent pressure on a string so as to sound a afferent note from that gained by applying normal pressure. Singapore was leased to the British East India Company, and a bijou but surprisingly spacious settlement was established. Elsewhere, last year, the Allies, in the shape of Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia, withdrew from France. In another continent, some poor chap is forced to walk the breadth of America with one of those white-line painting machines, as the new border with Canada is established - the 49th parallel. In fact, talking of the US, 1819 sees them going into real estate. A litde place called Florida has just come on to the market, put up for sale by Spain, and America is the first to view. There is a small entry in President James Monroe's diaries which is thought to relate to the viewing. 1819. Met those nice people, the Spaniards and went round to view F.

  It's delightful. Mrs Monroe and I fell in love with it the minute we crossed the border. All its own features - 2,276 miles of tidal shoreline, 663 miles of beaches - lovely for summer. Also has cold running water - St Johns river, etc, which is good because Mrs Monroe like to sleep near a bathroom. Also, 7,700 lakes. Nice fishing. In terms of outbuildings
, it's got 4,500 islands. Spaniards said it's had only one previous owner, if you don't count St Augustine Has only 67 counties - we were looking for 70. And it is overlooked - by Georgia and Alabama. In the end, bought it. Fishing swung it! This year is also the vogue year for the poet John Keats. He's all the rage, having already published Endymion, a year ago, and the Poems the year before that. In 1819, he's writing not only 'The Eve of St Agnes' and 'Hyperion' but also the odes - 'Ode to a Nightingale', 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and the gorgeous 'Ode to Autumn'. Staying in England, Turner is still painting madly - this year it's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and why not? - and also Mary Shelley is still fairly hot on the coffee tables with Frankenstein. In France, the powers-that-etre have declared 'Freedom of the Press', which, I believe, is rather like 'freedom of the city' only you get the right to drive your sheep across the editor's desk. Science is coming on in leaps and bounds, although, having said that, James Watt has just died. On the bright side, though, the Dane, Hans? Oersted, has just discovered electromagnetism, and a brand-new lock - the detector lock -has just been developed by the sumptuously named Jeremiah Chubb. Don't you just love it when that happens? Next tiling you know, they'll try and tell you that someone called Mackintosh invented the mackintosh.

  But anyway, on the music front it's a good year for Schubert. Yes, he's around now. In fact he's already twenty-two by now.

  Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797. His dad was a teacher, his mother a cook. You get the feeling that he would have 'fallen into teaching' as so many people do, were it not for one thing - his innate musical talent. It simply outed itself! No sooner was he in long trousers than he could rattle off tunes on the piano, organ and violin. Oh, and the viola, but let's not hold that against him. He was enrolled at the Imperial Court Chapel Choir, where one of his teachers was the composer Salieri, who's alleged to have told him that he was a genius who could do everything! It was here, too, that he started to compose - his first song is from when he was sixteen - but, when he left the choir, he set out on his dad's chosen career for him, that of teacher. By all accounts, he was a terrible teacher, totally unable to keep discipline and lacking in conviction. But his heart just wasn't in it. He composed at night, in between marking slates, and eventually packed it in when he was just nineteen.