OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  A LITTLE CHAT

  Y

  ou see, I've got a friend who has got themselves into a spot of bother. Yes. I know. But, you see… this friend is called… music. Mm. I know, I know… no, I know it's not the first time, but… look, just hear me out, will you?

  Thank you. You see, the way I see it, it's something like this. You remember when I expressed my feelings about Mozart and, well, I said that dog years are ment to be like human years, only times seven. Something like that. So, you give a small child a puppy, and what happens? Of course, in seven years' time the small child has progressed by, yes, well done, seven years, but the dog? Well, officially, the dog is now about fifty. And, well, a fifty-year-old and a seven-year-old sometimes don't have a lot in common, do they?

  Yes, yes, I'm coming to the point, right now. My point is… my point is… well, forget Mozart, now. I think MODERN MUSIC is the puppy. The small child? Well, the small child is the AUDIENCE. The two don't proceed at the same pace. Not at all. That's why, in 1925, composers like Alban Berg (a follower of S g) can put out pieces like Wozzeck - don't know if you've ever heard it? It's a tough if hugely rewarding piece - when probably what the mass audience could take was no more than, say, Lehar's operetta Paganini or at best, maybe, the more verdant shifting sounds of something from the sixty-year-old Great Dane, Carl Nielsen - maybe a symphony, like the Sinfonia Semplice, from the same year, 1925. But, that's the problem, really. Music was never going to go backwards. Not since S g left the transfigured night behind and found the moonlight. The moonlight from the puppet, I mean. By golly, that sounds clever, doesn't it? All I'm saying - in this poncy, roundabout way - is that when S g ditched any attempt at hummability, which he still had in buckets in his piece for string orchestra, Transfigured Night (1899), in favour of the 'It's music, Jim, but not as we know it' atonality of his song cycle, Pierrot Lunaire ('the moonlight from the puppet') - in which he tipped over the edge, musically, into what to a layman would seem like total cacophony - then, well, music was never going to be the same again.

  Composers had, since the death of Wagner, been looking for the next place to go, the next not so much 'style' of music, but 'music' itself. They'd been looking for the next 'music', the new music that would be the next homeland, the next '-ism' if you like, that would come after Classicism and Romanticism. But, well, it never came. Not as far as the audience was concerned, at any rate. And this is the child and the puppy, back again, growing at different rates. The composers were becoming more and more intellectually stimulated by new methods - new methods that sounded, to the untrained audience's ear, like… well, like they were wrong. Music that wasn't right. I mean, when Berg's opera Wozzeck was premiered, it was greeted with utter disbelief by the German critics. As the Deutsche Zeitung put it:

  I HAD THE SENSATION OF NOT BEING

  IN A PUBLIC THEATRE AT ALL, BUT IN

  AN INSANE ASYLUM. ON THE STAGE,

  IN THE ORCHESTRA AND IN THE

  STALLS - PLAIN MADMEN!

  See? They don't like it up 'em, Mr Mainwaring. And they would go on not liking it up 'em for quite some time, in fact. Even now, although Wozzeck gets a public airing quite a lot - for modern music, at least - it is still an no-go area for a huge majority of people calling themselves music fans. Personally, I can only recommend, till I'm blue in the face, that you go to see a great production of it - it really can leave you breathless, just so long as it's done right. Give it a try. As Mrs Doyle would say: 'Go en, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on…' 'Ah, you Will, you Will, you Will, you Will, you Will, you Will…' Oh, look - I'm blue in the face.

  While I recover, let me break this to you gently. I'm skipping on a year. Sorry. Maybe if I point to something behind you and shout, 'Ooh, look at that!' youwon't notice. 'Oooh, look at that!'

  TWENTIETH CENTURY ROCKS

  T

  he sun has risen on a slightly damp, overcast morning in 1926. The last four years? Forget them. They were just a dream and they're gone. It is 1926 and let me take a quick cross-section of the musical year. Three pieces from the twelve-month period that brought us Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Fritz Lang's Metropolis and, of course, not forgetting the ever popular hit song, 'I found a millionaire baby in the 5 and 10 cent store.' (Ahhh, they're playing our somewhat unmemorable song again.) From the new Hungary came the forty-four-year-old Zoltan 'Best first name in all music' Kodaly and his Hdryjdnos Suite -1 wouldn't like to tell you what we used to call it at school. I have a certain soft spot for this piece, it being all about one of the biggest liars on the earth, and me having written a book called The Liar. The suite that was formed from Kodaly's opera is a real corker, packed with great tunes as well as some beautiful soundworlds - the sound of the cembalo and the musical portrayal of a ginormous sneeze. In England, the twenty-three- year-old William Walton is premiering his suite, Fa fade, complete with the grand and slightly intimidating Edith Sitwell projecting her poems from behind a curtain. The score comes complete with musical quotes from some diverse sources - there's a bit of Rossini's William Tell in there, and even a bit of'Oh I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside!'-13 Finally, from Poland, 1926 gives birth to the often neglected, yet often staggeringly beautiful, music of Szymanowski, and his setting of the Stabat Mater. Szymanowski came from the disappearing background of Poland's landed gentry, although, when his family estate was ransacked in 1917, he devoted himself to finding the voice of contemporary Polish music. Take a listen to his Stabat Mater, one day, because he succeeded. Three cheers for twentieth-century music. 'Hip hip'… I said'Hip hip'…? Grumpy sods. same stunning piece of music. So! Get real. It's allowed. You CAN think of Torvill and Dean when you hear it, this is a musical snob-free zone, here. Don't you worry. You can even think of lovely Dudley and his rather tall, blonde leading lady, with the… beads. Makes no difference. The music still sounds the same. And again, yes, it is one of those pieces that is played a heck of a lot, these days, now that it has become so popular. But, well, you can't ruin it. It's the sign of a great piece, maybe. Can't sit here hypothesizing, though. Got to get on. Got nearly forty years to cover in the next few paragraphs. Good job I brought a packed lunch.

  RAVEL'S DENOUEMENT

  Tt's 1928 - look, it's my book, if I say it's 1928, it's 1928 - other-JLwise I'm taking my ball back - and Ravel is puzzling over a piece of music. He's just received a commission from a dancer for a piece of orchestral music, and it has made him reach for the scraps of manuscript he started some time back. They were all about one simple short tune, repeated over and over again. In the same key. He got them out and looked over them again. Could you really sustain an entire fifteen -minute-long piece with absolutely no 'development' of the tune, and staying in just one key? The answer? No, 'course you couldn't - OR THEN AGAIN, COULD YOU?

  It would be the supreme test of a supreme orchestrator, because, to be fair, few other composers knew what sounds an orchestra could and couldn't make the way Ravel did. And furthermore, he proved it in 1928, with his Bolero.

  OK, so it does go into another key, just a little way from the end, but to brilliant effect, it's got to be said. Nowadays, of course, some say it is tarnished, somehow, by associations with Torvill and Dean. Well, to that 'some', I say 'TOSH and POPPYCOCK!' It's still the

  FROM BEGGARS' OPERA TO COMMON MAN

  Y

  es, the year that produced the Bolero also produced a new style of opera in Berlin. The words were by Bertolt Brecht, after the eighteenth-century John Gay (yes I know John Gay didn't get into this book in his own right, so to speak, but I'm afraid his century was full. I mean it was standing room only and he fell out the back.) And the music was from Kurt Weill, who, despite coming next to Anton Webernja in many of the music books, thought that music should be readily appreciable by the people. None of the boffin-type, system music for him - he thought that his audience should be humming his tunes before they left the theatre. Of course, he couldn't resist giving it a boffin name, could he - 'Zeitkunst' or 'co
ntemporary art', really. I don't know, they just can't help themselves, can they? What's wrong with MUSIC, for goodness' sake? Anyway, if he was the people end of things, and S g, Webern and Berg were the other end, then skipping backwards and forwards in the middle was the wonderful, slightly dotty character of the forty-six-year-old Stravinsky. He was virtually a portfolio of ALL the different schools of modern music in one. Never stuck to one thing for too long. Much as in life, he was a series of not-so-much contradictions, as, well, fl I know Vve said this before, but, on this occasion, it's true. Honest. 1» Another follower of Schoenberj}. U-turns, I suppose. He went from block to block, in a sense, as if he was on stepping stones. One minute, he's just MODERN - although Stravinsky himself once famously said that he didn't write modern music, he just wrote good music - anyway, one minute he's modern, then he's using the S g rules of harmony, and then the next minute he's almost 'classical' - or neo-classical, as the boffins like to say. From the Greek 'neo' meaning new, so not the original classical music, but the twentieth century's revisited version of it. So in 1930, he came up with one of my most favourite pieces, ever - the Symphony of Psalms. It's extraordinary stuff- a spooky-sounding cantata for chorus and orchestra, which can leave you in tears one minute then have you thinking of horror movies the next. It was just every bit as good as that other great hit from 1930, Hoagy Carmichael's 'Georgia on My Mind'. Ah, a belter. And, who knows, maybe playing in the background when CW Tombaugh discovered Pluto. 1930, you see. A good year. But roll on 1934.

  RACH-ING IT IN

  A

  t the beginning of 1934, Rachmaninov was, like Hoist, Elgar and Delius, still going strong. However, unlike Elgar, Hoist and Delius, Rach was still going very strong when 1934 came to an end. By this point, he had already toured America a few times - as a pianist, that is - before eventually making it his permanent home. If you compare his 1934 effort with Stravinsky's of 1930 - both Russian, both settled in America - then you get two very different pieces. Totally different. And why? Well, probably because of the audience thing, again. Stravinsky was, more or less, writing for the history books. Rachmaninov was writing for the audience. And I don't mean that as a put-down. I mean, well, he just was. He was by now in America with a place in Switzerland, and touring to make money. And, of course, being a pianist-composer, when he needed a new piece, he simply wrote one. As in 1934. Just think. The German president, Hindenburg, has just died, and Hider has proclaimed himself Fuhrer: the democrats are forced out in Austria, following the revolu- tion; and the thirty-year-old Salvador Dali paints the surrealist William Tell. Now, listen to the lush, gush and dangerous to hush tunes of Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Does it really seem to match? I'll leave that to you.

  Just one year later now, and the Nazis repudiate the Treaty of Versailles, Mussolini invades Abyssinia, and Hider establishes the Luftwaffe. In a speech to Parliament, Churchill warns of the German menace in the air. Now, imagine a Prokofiev ballet of the same year, Romeo and Juliet. In one scene, his music is set alongside some stunning choreography, which pits the Montagues against the Capulets. If you haven't seen a production, do go.??? now, though, can you bring up the sound of the Montagues and Capulets in your head? Have you got it? Keep it going as you read. The Kenneth Macmillan version has the two opposing sides lined across the stage. They strut, arms alternately outstretched, left, right, left, right - they're strutting so arrogandy, left, right. And then you realize. They're goose-stepping. Left, right. Rachmaninov may not have captured 1934, but Prokofiev has certainly captured 1935.

  And then there's the small question of Shostakovich. It's scandalous I've let myself get this far, without really mentioning Dmitri Shostakovich. One year after Prokofiev unleashes Romeo and Juliet, Shostakovich is meant to be coming up with a new symphony. By now, he's only twenty-nine, and he is constrained by the Soviet authorities, who monitor and vet his every note.

  Many composers in Russia suffered at the hands of the strict Soviet regime. The Communist Party had a very clear idea of exactly which type of music was good for the people and if they didn't hear it in your music, you were in trouble. Shostakovich had had problems with an opera of his, Lady Macbeth ofMtzensk, which the official state newspaper, Pravda, had labelled 'chaos instead of music' His Fourth Symphony had, more or less, been stopped at the rehearsal stage, and had not even premiered. He was under massive pressure to come up with music that fitted in with the order of the day - 'socialist realism', as they called it. So, in 1937, he unveils his Fifth Symphony, bearing the now infamous subtitle 'A Soviet Artist's Response to Just Criticism'. It was a massive hit - thank goodness for that. It is, regardless of what anybody might say about its inception, a wondrous piece, with a slow movement to end all slow movements. If, after listening to it, it doesn't make you want to just pack it all in, give up your job and take up composition, then I…? No?… It doesn't? Well… flower pressing, then? No? OK, try this.

  If, after listening to it, it doesn't make you want just to pack it all in, give up your job and… and… and run your own grouting and repointing business, from home, then I don't know what will? Hmm? Eh? I've hit the nail on the head, haven't I? Hah! Thought so.

  That was from 1937. Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of 1938. I'll show you something that'll make you change your dentist.

  Nearly forgot, though. Carl Orff, our man in Munich. He's 1937, actually. Now where does he fit in the scheme of modern music? I mean, think of the music from the Old Spice ad. The same one that is used in the Omen films. Have you got it? Well, I mean… quite. Eh? QUITE! It doesn't sound like 1937 at all, does it?

  It turns out Orff, who was by then aged forty-two, had set some rather bawdy words written by some rather bawdy monks in thirteenth-century Bavaria - the more astute among you might have jotted down a little note, perhaps on a post-it or something, to remind yourself that I mentioned this on page 25. Orff set them to some distinctly bawdy sounding music and immediately found himself with a hit on his hands. His one hit, too, to be fair. In fact he lived until 1982, which, by my reckoning, means he almost certainly saw his music on TV, advertising Old Spice. Weird. Wonder if he used it himself. Sad thing was, upon the success of Carmina Burana - for it is he - he ordered his publisher to pulp all his previous works! AAAAGGGHHHHHHH! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Anyway, I digress.

  1938. By now, we've had a quick game of royal chess - E7 to G5… check… G5 to E8… check… E8 to G6… check: and now G6 can mate. Er, as it were. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that George VI has been crowned. Also, Chamberlain is now PM, and Hitler is being 'appeased', but to no avail. In 1938, he makes himself 'war minister' and marches into Austria as the pogroms sweep through Germany itself. It's also the year Orson Welles created a bit of a panic with his radio production of HG Wells's War of the Worlds. There were some people ringing the station in panic, others ringing to say they were being invaded and even more ringing to say they didn't get the answer to last week's mystery voice. The power of sound, eh? Also, The Lady Vanishes is Hitchcock's big film, Len Hutton scores 364 at the Oval against Australia, Christopher Isherwood says Goodbye to Berlin and, over in America, the twenty-eight-year-old Samuel Barber has come up with a little String Quartet.

  By chance, it's heard by the great conductor Arturo Toscanini, who suggests that the slow movement might benefit from being re-scored for full string orchestra. Barber obliges and Toscanini premieres the piece in the November of '38. Again, a bit Uke Carl Orff and his Carmina B, while it could only have been written in the twentieth century, its language is that of another time, with just a sheen of the 1930s. In Barber's case, it sounds like late Mahler more than anything else. Of course, the public loved it. Still do, in fact. It's known simply as Barber's Adagio.

  1939. Taken on its own, Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez -particularly the slow movement - seems to be simply evoking memories of a small Spanish town, and, indeed, it was meant to do precisely that. But when you take into accoun
t not only the fact that the thirty-eight-year-old Joaquin Rodrigo had been blind since the age of three, but also the year in which it was written, the melancholia of the slow movement seems to blend in well with events. Rodrigo's Concierto WAS written at the onset of war, but was a personal tribute to the Spain to which he had just returned, from Paris. Delightful. But now, as the saying has it… 'Time and Tide are a jolly good read and a now outdated form of soap powder'. So let's kick on.

  Of course, to be fair, the first thing that people bring to mind when you say 1939 is not Rodrigo and his concerto. Hitler's determined efforts to unite much of the world in war have finally come to fruition. There is, indeed, a war on. Musically speaking, the war will play its part, takes its toll, as it were. This will particularly be the case when composers come to reckon up the emotional effects of six years of battle. But also I'm thinking in particular, here, first of the French composer, Olivier Messiaen, who had enlisted in the French Army when war broke out. Born in Avignon in 1908, and tutored early on by Paul Dukas, he was then thirty-one and was soon captured and sent to a German prison camp at Gorlitz, in Silesia. It was here diat he wrote what is often referred to as the greatest quartet of the twentieth century. He called it, not surprisingly, considering the view he must have had from his writing desk, the Quatuor pour In fin du temps-the 'quartet for the end of time'.

  Luckily for Messiaen, he was repatriated in 1942 and went back to his job as organist of Trinity Church, Paris, a post he held until his death in 1992. Also writing through the war was Shostakovich. He was in the fire brigade at first, in Leningrad. Bad eyesight had kept him from active service, but he was soon moved to the then Soviet capital, Kuibishev, where he put some of his experiences into a new work, his Seventh Symphony. To quote the composer himself, 'Neither savage raids, German planes nor the grim atmosphere of the beleaguered city could hinder the flow of ideas'. It's known as the 'Leningrad? Symphony and, once again, Marquess of Fry rules apply - go hear it live to get a better idea of how impressive it is.