OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  Well, because everyone is doing their own thing. Just as the Spike scene got sillier and sillier, so the period was getting 'romanticer and romanticer' and there are about thirty different recognizable versions of 'romantic' going on at once. It's fast approaching the point at which people, real composers, will start edging forwards, saying, 'What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do now?' They'd call it the 'modern' period for two reasons: (a) it sounded a whole lot better than the 'What are we gonna do now?' period, and (b) Spike hadn't been invented yet. So they plumped for 'modern' instead. For now, though, it's 'very late on romantic', a sort of trad jazz 'last time round', with everyone doing their own thing, but more or less within the same guidelines.

  A quick glance around and there really is a lot to take in. Erik Satie was twenty-eight in 1888, having been born into a composing family in Honfleur. As a composer, he is probably the most apt person to be mentioned in the following breath to Spike Milligan, in that his portfolio of pieces on his death would include works such as Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear and Limp Preludes for a DqЈf. He was a piano player in the smoky cafes of Montmartre, who would go on, via his friendship with Debussy, to become a classic, idiosyncratic French composer, but in 1888, he stumped up his Trois Gymnopedies, three delightful pieces which seem to have a certain Mona Lisa smile about them.

  Equally French, but nowhere near as barking as Satie, was Gabriel Faure, then forty-three. Faure is more or less the complete opposite of Satie - if you can have an opposite to someone - in that his music was refined, finished, not at all light (in the sense of 'pear-shaped pieces') -and had a somewhat 'classical' air about it, although he is definitely a romantic, when all's said and done. He had been taught by the composer Saint-Saens for the last seventeen years and had held a long succession of small organist posts for most of his working life - a pattern that would continue until he got the 'top gig' at La Madeleine in 1896. In 1888, though, he came up with his Requiem. It is not a Requiem in the way Verdi wrote a Requiem, or Berlioz wrote a Requiem - it's more… more a 'Requiem that would suit Betty's Tea Rooms in Harrogate'. It's a Requiem with its little finger raised, politely. Occasionally, it does try and summon up some of the darkness of its subject matter, but always does it very cordially, as if it had been impeccably brought up. Musically, it even tries to apologize afterwards. That said, it is still a small, chocolatey chunk of heaven, and is one of my favourite works. Faure is often referred to as a 'French Elgar', and, while I think that's complete bollocks, I can see why people say it. The Requiem's appearance, in 1888, coincided, sadly, with the death of Faure's mother.

  Turning back to Russia, 1888 also yielded a piece called Scheherazade by the forty-four-year-old Rimsky- 'If you're not going to finish that, can I have it?' Korsakov. An ex-naval officer, he was brought up in the country, basted in folk songs. He wrote his first symphony while still in the navy, before going on to be one-fifth of the Mighty Handful, or Mighty Five, a group of ardendy nationalist Russian composers. His major work of 1888 was his symphonic poem, based on tales from The Arabian Nights. It's a beautiful piece, full of stories and people, with both the Sultan and Scheherazade herself being portrayed as themes in the music.

  So, look at that for a year. 1888 - the ever-colourful Rirnsky-Korsakov, the ever-understated Faure, and the ever-bonkers Satie. Romantics one and all, yet as different as the day is long.

  And if it's differences you want, then no quick glance around the music scene would be «complete without a musical butcherV at fi What a great idea-a musical butcher. I can just picture him -a rotund, ruddy old cove in a stripy apron, singing Tavener's The Lamb' or Mendelssohn's 'Oh for the spicy hot wings of a dove'. another trio of heart-throbs from around the same time: Mascagni, Debussy and Borodin.

  THE NAME'S CLASSICAL. NEO-CLASSICAL

  T

  o put these three into context, we need that musical butcher's at 1890. Yes, it's 1890. THE NINETIES! The Naughty Nineties! Ooh! The 'end of days'. The 'fin-de-siecle'. The 'ooh, it'll soon be the 1900s' days. I wonder if it was anything like the 1990s? Maybe it was eerily similar - nothing but covers in the charts, sleaze in high office, but at least ponytails had died out - who knows? I can only surmise on that issue, but there are some things that I know for certain.

  Imperialism, colonialism - call it what you will - was a bit of a buzz word. In some ways, it put romanticism in the shade - it played bigger venues, sold more records, everything! Colonialism was HUGE - it was the 'ism' for the 1890s. Everybody who was anybody was into colonialism. To give but one example, and, indeed, to give a feeling of everything that was wrong with it, take Heligoland. Where the Heligoland is that, you might be doubly forgiven for thinking, once for the thought, once for the bloody awful wordplay. Well, wherever it is, in 1890, Britain gave it to Germany. Simply gave it to them. In exchange for something, of course, namely Zanzibar and Pemba. I mean, imagine waking up, today, and having a leaf through the morning paper, and turning to the person at the table next to you, saying, 'I see Yorkshire beat Nottinghamshire, yesterday… oh, and we've been given to Swaziland, in a some sort of swap arrangement. Pass the toast, will you?' Staggering, isn't it? National sovereignty in 1890, then, was a pink form in a civil servant's bottom drawer, a few thousand miles away. I don't know.

  Elsewherenessly, Luxembourg split from die Netherlands, both Eisenhower and de Gaulle were born, and England becomes a bit less of a 'Barnum and Bailey world' as TP Barnum's famous Circus departs town, after a tremendously long run at London's Olympia. Over in France, Alexander Gustave Eiffel's 320-metre-high tower has kept its place on the Paris skyline, despite the fact that the World Exhibition had now gone, and Oscar Wilde has published The Picture of Dorian Gray. There's also a new craze going round. It's called 'coming down with flu'. Indeed, flu is getting as big as Gilbert and Sullivan.

  On a music tip - gosh, how trendy am I? - Rimsky-Korsakov has finished off yet more work by another composer, this time Borodin. R-K and fellow Russian Alexander Glazunov polished up his opera, Prince Igor, which had been left incomplete at his death three years previously. (What's wrong with a work that's Incomplete, that's what I say!) Prince Igor is a wonderfully exotic work, a great spectacle. I can't help thinking, perhaps unfairly, that the blend of Borodin's original vision plus R-K's - and Glazunov's to be fair - extra, colourful orchestration have, in the end, produced a work that is better, dare I say it, than Borodin would have produced had he completed it on his own. I once saw a performance of it, at the Royal Opera House in the late '80s (19, not 1880s) where the central bass role was taken by a man called Paata Burchuladze. I had never heard of him before the performance, and had been tipped off to expect a truly MASSIVE bass voice. All through the first scenes, I was sat there, admittedly enjoying the music, but, equally, thinking, 'Well, I haven't heard any particularly massive bass voice yet. Maybe they were exaggerating?' when suddenly this short, round man entered, stage left, sweeping on as if secretly propeUed, like The Penguin in the Blues Brothers. He got to centre stage, stopped, and, suddenly, out came this STONKING bass voice. The biggest, richest, most sonorous I think I have ever heard. Stunning. It felt like a tube train was passing under the theatre every time he sang a note. I'll never forget it. If you see the name on a Royal Opera House poster any time, then seriously consider remortgaging to afford the entrance fee.

  Also, within Prince Igor are the beautiful and striking 'Polovtsian Dances', which come complete with dancing girls and act as a sort of Surprise Symphony chord for the people in the corporate boxes, who only turned up because someone in the office had tickets. Gravadlax has, on occasion, been known to fly off the ledges, like a fishy projectile vomit. In la belle France, they have le beau Debussy.

  Follow the Seine west out of Paris and you will come to St Germain-en-Laye. Most tourists who venture there now are either going for the two fantastic chateaux, which afford gorgeous views across Paris, or they're heading for 33, Rue au Pain, the Museum of Claude Debussy. Back in 1862, though, the m
useum was a lowly shop, Debussy's dad's shop, to be precise, above which the composer was born on the 22nd of August. After a classic 'prodigy/conservatoire/composition lessons' upbringing, he became a sort of live-in musician for the wealthy Nadezhda von Meek (see Tchaikovsky), before winning the Prix de Rome like many before him, and hot-footing it to Rome, as part of his prize. When he returned he was no longer in the service of Tchaikovsky's patron. Probably a good thing -all that skulking around in wardrobes for fear of being found out was not doing his chords any good. Now twenty-eight, he's also shaken off a temporary fascination with the late Wagner and is trying his hand at a sort of early neo-classicism. He's just finished the Suite Berjjamasque for piano, complete with 'Prelude', 'Menuet', 'Passepied' and the simply heartbreaking 'Clair de Lune'. He was attempting to emulate the stylish reserve of the clavecin (old-style French harpsichord) players from the seventeenth century, and probably found the suite's name in Paul Verlaine's poem, 'Clair de Lune, ''…masques et bergamasques'. If you've never stepped beyond the threshold of 'Clair de Lune', then you still have a treat owing to you.

  Finally, in Italy, there's Pietro Mascagni. Before we look at him properly, can I just say that the one fact I can't get out of my mind is that Mascagni was born in Leghorn. I think I read that somewhere when I was about fourteen, and it's stayed with me ever since. I imagine the minute I found out, no doubt in a school music lesson, I probably broke into a bad Foghorn Leghorn impression, 'Boy, ah say BOY…' etc, and, like most things that make me laugh, it has stuck. Anyway, just wanted to get it off my chest. Mascagni was a year younger than Debussy and, for him, 1890 would prove a bittersweet year. Having discarded the 'over-academic' teaching at the Milan conservatory, he'd spent a fair amount of time on the road, as conductor to a travelling opera company. Having settled down and married, 1890 saw him come up with his hit opera, Cavalleria Rustica.no. - which loosely translates as 'Rustic Chivalry'. It was probably a hit for three reasons. Firstly, it's got some hit tunes embedded in a taut and concise plot. (It's short enough to be staged, almost without exception, alongside the equally well-trimmed I Pajrliacci.) Secondly, it was not another 'Wagner pastiche' from yet another Wagner disciple. But, most importantly, it was probably the first example of'realism' in opera. They called it ''verismo', and a verismo opera would probably not have wild, showpiece, coloratura arias, just for the sake of it. It would, though, have realistic, everyday storylines, or themes from real life, and would have lots more recitative - the bits where singers 'sing the plot', as it were. They're not set pieces, like arias, but, having previously been used as brief links, or introductions to great arias, they became elevated in verismo operas, so that audiences felt that they were in a slighdy less removed world than previously. I mean, to be fair, opera is still, even today, a bizarre, fake world, but post-1890 it became a little less bizarre and fake. For Mascagni, it proved to be a big hit, the only problem being that he spent the next fifty-five years trying to repeat his success, without joy. Fifty-five years trying to write the hit follow-up but never getting further than 'some esteem' or 'enthusiastically received'. How sad.

  Without wishing to disseminate hearsay or gossip, I was once told that Mascagni ended his years at the end of the Second World War, in a hotel room in Rome which had been recently liberated by the Allies. Having been stripped of all his honours due to his following of Mussolini and the Fascists, he was reduced to walking from GI camp to GI camp, begging for money, desperately telling people, 'You know that great tune, that tune that everybody loves - I wrote that. Honest!' If true, the tune he was talking about was the famous Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, which still reels in the money for tissues and triple CDs and what have you, but which left the man from Leghorn penniless. Absolutely pen- ah say, penniless."

  1891. Well, here we are. Out of cigarettes. Holding hands and yawning. See how late it gets. More importantly, haven't we come a long way in just, what, 233 pages. Heck of a long way. In fact, I feel P Sorry. Couldn't resist. we know each other well enough now, so… why not call me Stephen. And I'll call you… you. Good. Feels better already. Now, back to business. The business of 1891, and there's lots going on, as ever. Just as Kaiser Bill visited London, the Triple Alliance, clearly getting on like a scouse on fire, have signed up for another twelve years, with an option to buy. The Prince of Wales is the talk of the town not for talking to plants, but because of a recent libel case. In the course of the case, which involved cheating at cards, it came out that he had been throwing a fair bit of money at the old baccarat. And we're not talking Burt! Also, Rimbaud has died, but at least his legacy lives on in Blackpool (in the form of Les Illuminations). The artist Gaugin has nipped off to Tahiti, while in the literary vein English folk seem to be taken with the new stories from the Strand magazine, by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring my favourite detective, Sherlock Holmes. Just to round off, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec has started designing music hall posters, Seurat has gone to meet his maker - possibly to be told 'It's rude to point' - and the fifty-one-year-old Thomas Hardy writes Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

  Now to a name that is, just like Wagner, only six letters long but, in the history of music, is colossal. MAHLER. Mm. Lovely. Engaging name! It's one of those names that makes me think… surround sound or… the music of fresh country air, or… a sort of all-enveloping musical bath. It's a very brown name, I've always thought, MAHLER. Yes, definitely brown - just like Mozart's 29th Symphony. Mahler, you see, is more or less The Next Big Thing in 1891. After a rather sad, not to say tragic, early life, with siblings dropping like flies all around him, Mahler managed to get on the musical ladder and put himself through conservatory. He knows he's going to be a great composer and so, being a bit of a Captain Sensible, he makes himself take up conducting. This would allow him to pay the bills, immerse himself in a sea of other scores, and generally get by financially, in a way that composing doesn't always allow. That's why, when he completed his First Symphony, he was Director of the Royal Opera House in Budapest, as I mentioned earlier. By the time of the premiere, he was beginning to get a name for himself as one of the great interpreter-conductors of the day. Indeed, Tchaikovsky called him 'a man of genius'. That was back in 1879, though, and it would be a good fifty years or so before his symphonies were accepted as some of the finest in history. In 1891, he was hard at work on his '?Resurrection' Symphony, something which had been occupying him for the last three years, on and off. It was to be the sequel to The Titan, and, for it, he'd set a poem by the German poet Klopstock^, called 'Auferstehung', or the 'Resurrection' of the tide, and this would eventually form a huge, earth-shattering finale for soprano, chorus and orchestra. As I said, it goes by the mighty name of the 'Resurrection' Symphony. But I prefer to think of it as Keith.

  THE SLEDGEHAMMER AND THE NUT

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  espite the fact that William Ewart Gladstone is elected as Liberal PM, for the fourth time, in 1892, the year is more famous for giving the original spin to the words New Labour. Keir Hardie becomes the first Labour MP ever, timing his arrival in Parliament more or less to coincide with Mr Diesel patenting his internal combustion engine. In the twilight world of the arts, it seems that if you have a woman in the tide, you flourish. Grievous Bodily Shaw follows up Cashel Byron's Profession with this year's Mrs Warren's Profession, while Oscar Wilde comes up with the evergreen Lady Windermere's Fan. Elsewhere, Monet has started a series of pictures of Rouen Cathedral while Toulouse-Lautrec has focused his attention on the Moulin Rouge. The newspaper obit columns record the deaths of Walt 'Don't Call Me Slim' Whitman and Alfred 'Do Call Me Lord' Tennyson, whereas the foreign news pages mention that fifty-one-year-old Antonin Dvorak has been appointed Director of the New York Conservatory of Music - for full story, see arts pages.

  If the same arts pages had featured a brief resume of the life and career of Dvorak, it might have read something like the following. fi He of the two smoking barrels. Dvorak was born in the fairly humble village of Nelahozeves, just north of Prague. His dad was t
he village innkeeper as well as the butcher, and any music that he heard early on must have been fairly simple stuff - folk music, mainly. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to organ college, which, to be fair, is an awful thing to do to anyone. He went on to learn violin, though, as well as viola, and eventually ended up playing in the band of the Czech National Theatre, where his musical director was none other than Smetana. At the age of thirty-two, he married, and, at thirty-three, won an Austrian composing competition. This was the big break, albeit, by great composers' standards, a little late. On the board of the composition prize jury sat Brahms, who was clearly impressed with Dvorak's work. The two became firm friends, and Brahms introduced the younger composer to his publisher, an important step on the road to becoming musically solvent. From here on in, things fell into place for Dvorak. It wasn't long before he had been made Professor of Music at the Prague Conservatoire, and, to bring us up to date, director of the new music school in New York. In the further worldlymode of musibold, as Lord Stanley of Unwin might have said, deep joy.

  Tchaikovsky - a year older than Dvorak - has managed to brush aside his melancholia. He'd been touring America and had been cheered to be regaled as something of a living legend. In the end, though, he would miss Russia too much, and end up going home. The short-lived mood of optimism, though, led to a light, frisky new ballet score. It was based on a little fairy story by Estimated Time of Arrival Hoffman, and was packed to bursting with cute, fluffy tunes that make your teeth 'PING' with brilliance and your Christmas jumper GLOW with fuzziness. Luckily for us, the scenery for this little bundle of joy - The Nutcracker-is pulled out of the stores every year around Christmas and New Year, and its joy seems as if it will never stop. Of course, sadly for Tchaikovsky, its jolJiness was but a brief respite from his tortured and morbid depression, and his friends began to wonder how long he would be able to survive.