OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  If that was France, then what of good old Blighty? Who was raising the standard for rising standards in the world of music? Well, for that we have to look to Dunstable, both the place and the man.

  THE FIRST RHYTHM METHOD

  ohn Dunstable was almost certainly born in Dunstable, and his name is probably a derivation of John of Dunstable. He produced some of the most beautiful music of the period, albeit not all of it in England. Lots of his work was eventually found in places like Trent, Modena and Bologna, suggesting that the English presence in Italian music of the time was a very real one. Dunstable eventually died in London, though, but not before having dedicated much of

  J» This was thought to have been lost until it resurfaced some 720years later as The Lady in Red'. fi Although many think it dates from much later. his life to gaining approval for one of his lifelong causes euchres -natural rhythms.

  Up until now, it was very much the done thing that you set words to tunes, and not the other way round. What I mean is, the words were not as important, therefore you found yourself a great tune and simply fitted the words in. As a result, the natural way of saying the words was often completely lost, along with a lot of their meaning. To get what I'm on about, imagine the way a song sounds when a gramophone is running down. All the words get contorted and pulled about, eventually becoming so slow and tortuous that their original meaning is somewhat lost. Well, Dunstable hated that. Couldn't stand it. So he devoted a lot of his time to fighting the fight for 'natural rhythms', music with words that are sung with the everyday metres as you would say them.

  Yes, there is a case for saying he needed to get out more. But, to be fair, it's people like him who, as we'll see, were the crucial cogs you needed if the wheels of music were ever going to turn.

  Dunstable was also big in the world of counterpoint. Mmm, dodgy one, this. Counterpoint may not mean much to you now but, back then, it was one of the most contentious subjects in music. And, remember, if it was contentious in music, then it was, at this point anyway, contentious in the Church, and that could spell trouble for anyone who decided to rock the boat. Way back in 1309, one Marchettus of Padua pleaded with the powers-that-be to allow counterpoint into music, but, in a response matched only by Directory Enquiries in its speed, Pope John XXII forbade its use in 1322. Well, no one could say he hadn't had time to think about it. But what was so wrong with counterpoint? Why did the Church hate it so much? And, more to the point, what the hell is counterpoint? OK. Here we go.

  WHAT'S THE COUNTERPOINT?

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  ast things first. Counterpoint is the bits in music where composers get bored with writing just one tune and write a few, instead. Of course, that's fine for them - they probably write them all at different limes, one in the morning, one after lunch, polish another off before the tea interval, that sort of thing. Fine and dandy. Problem starts when they put them all together, because we then have to listen to them all at once. Lots of different parts of the music playing different tunes ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It's a bit like jazz, but without the farty trombone. So this might explain why Pope John XXII thundered at composers in his Docta Sanctorum: 'they cut up melodies with hoquets/ smoothe them with descants, sometimes force upon them vulgar tripla and moteti…' Well, if he had any point at all, he's probably ruined it by spelling smooth wrong. Damn - must have been cursing himself for that. Incidentally, the 'tripla' and 'moteti' in this case would translate as soprano and alto, respectively, with the full four parts at the time going 'triplum, motetus, tenor, contratenor' downwards. Don't say I never tell you anything.

  John XXII and his 'docta? didn't appear to bother John of Dunstable, though. Up until his death in 1453, counterpoint was, it's fair to say, his bag. He continued to write his Masses and his isorhyth-mic motets - ones where he repeated the same rhythms even though the music was changing - and was probably even the first to write instrumental accompaniments to church Masses.

  Dunstable's period was that of Donatello in Italy, as well as Fra Angelico and the Medicis. In Portugal, they had Gonzalo Cabral and Joao Diaz, the great explorers. And in England? Well, in England, they had the plague again, and a rather unpleasant period of countrywide quarantine. As for Dunstable, his influence was still being recognized some two or three centuries later. And it's said that the person he influenced most was another Guillaume.

  Guillaume Dufay was originally from Hainaut in what was then the Low Countries, now the Netherlands (Londoners, try and put the Central Line out of your head), but spent a lot of his time in service with the papal choir. This was quite a cute job around this time, mainly because the papal court was constantiy shifting, and hence Dufay got to see a lot more of the world than just Rome, He spent flHoquets - rather like musical hiccups, this is when a composer leaves gaps in one voice, which he fills with another voice. The resulting effect is of a Ho and fro', a tennis rally, in the music. some time in Cambrai, near the French town of Lille, too, where it is said the Pope himself was very taken with the choir and also the Netherlands. So much so, that when the court shifted back to Rome, he embarked on a programme of importing Netherlands talent. Indeed, at one point, almost the entire papal choir was made up of singers from the Low Countries (did they ever call them Lowlifes?) with just one native Italian singer.

  In his day, Dufay was considered the finest composer in the Netherlands, and one of his lasting achievements was in precursing the standard choral setting of today, that of soprano, alto, tenor and bass, with his use of a bass below the tenor and counter-tenor. Try a quick listen to something like 'Ecce ancilla domini', one of his last Masses, and you get the whole glorious idea.

  Dufay was effectively both the end of a period known as 'medieval' and the early stirrings of the brand-new - well, almost - all singing, all dancing Renaissance. Born the same year that Chaucer died, 1400, his generation would play host to the Battle of Agincourt, the emergence of the first ever printed books, and the burning of Joan of Arc at the stake in Rouen. Dufay would eventually settle in Cambrai, which he helped make into one of the most talked-about things since the Rouen executioner uttered the unforgettable words, 'Zut! J'ai perdu mes alumettesV But by the time Guillaume returned to the small town of Cambrai, Dunstable was dead, and the Byzantine Empire was gone, with the death of Constantine XL Interestingly enough, though, and perhaps more important for caffeine addicts the world over, the south-west Arabian port of Mocha had become the centre of the coffee-exporting universe.

  For now, close your eyes and imagine: cue the noise of small children playing, the sound of water splashing, and the fuzzy barking of a megaphone. 'OK, everybody, it's 1450. New era please. All those with a red, medieval wristband on, please leave the genepool. I repeat, it is now 1450, can anyone with a red, medieval wristband please leave the genepool. It is now the Renaissance era. Thank you.' Aside to his assistant: 'OK, let the Renaissance lot in.' OK it didn't happen quite like that - but at least we're off the starting blocks.

  REBIRTH

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  round ten years before the medievalists got thrown out of the pool in 1450, the local paper in Conde, in Hainaut may have announced the birth of one Josquin des Pres. JDP was possibly the biggest talent of his age, and, in an era when very few were actually feted while they were still alive, he was hailed as a bit of a genius, with even Martin Luther being moved to comment: 'He is master of the notes: others… are mastered by them.' Bit dramatic, Martin, but still, I get your point. In his day, he was often known not by his full name, but simply by the one word Josse, or even Joseph. No doubt had he been around today, he may have gone one step further and done away with the name altogether in favour of a strange squiggle. Something like:

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  – the artist formally known as Josquin There. Quite preposterous, isn't it? And no doubt, as a result, it would catch on. In Josquin's day, though, it would, hopefully, have been frowned upon. And when was Josquin's day? Well, to put him into context, he was born some twelve years after Leonardo da Vinci, and was pro
bably much more famous than the Mono, Lisa. Certainly, he died ten times as happy, by all accounts, having made himself quite well off and become the Canon of Conde. He died a couple of years after Magellan left his house in Seville with the words, 'I'm just popping down the shops.' In Josquin's lifetime, Michelangelo started work on the Sistine Chapel, while in England the Tudors came to power, and the finishing touches were put to the palace at Hampton Court.

  There's one thing that's always bothered me about Josquin. Or should I say Josquin des Pres? Or should I say, Mr Pres? Or Mr Des Pres? And that is… well, those last two lines. Where does he come in a music dictionary? Nobody can seem to agree. I know, I know, it may seem a tiny point, but it really annoys me to look him up in one book under Pres, only to be told in rather curt fashion 'See Josquin'. Well, why, for goodness' sake? You don't look under Beethoven and find the words 'Bugger off and look under Ludwig.' Then you check a different book under J and you're told 'See Des Pres.' And then 'See Pres.' Ooh, it really gets my goat. Tiny point, I know, but, well, the devil is in the detail, as they said when Beelzebub went to do his National Service.

  JDP, Mr des Pres, Josquin, «L - whatever you want to call him -strikes me as quite a sorted individual. While he was young, he travelled a lot, eventually entering the Pope's service for about thirteen years till about 1499. During that time, and even over the next twenty or so years, till his death in 1521, he was a big influence on music generally. His Masses are important because they began to break free from an absolute strict adherence to rules. In his settings, Masses began to express the spirit of the words. This might seem like nothing at all, now, but music then was as much a discipline as a pleasure. JDP freed himself from an almost pedantic obedience to the rules and, well, let his hair down a little. And, as a big influence, he was lucky enough to be at the beating heart of music at the time. This wasn't the court of Louis XII in France, although he was there. It wasn't the court of Emperor Maximillian I, either, although he was there for a time, too. And it wasn't really the diocese of Conde where he spent his final years as Canon. No. The beating heart of music at this time was, quite simply, the Church.

  JOS YOU, JOS ME…

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  et me skip on a few years from Josquin's death in 1521. Rather like a submarine, I'll submerge for a few years and come up in 1551. Let me try and briefly fill you in on what was going on at sea level. Henry VIII has been through all six wives, and finally shuffled off himself. If you believe his PR man, he also left us the song 'Greensleeves', although this is open to doubt. Edward VI is now the boss. Over in France, Nostradamus has issued his first set of predictions. In his lifetime, he was said to have predicted that Hitler would come to power, that Ronald Reagan was the devil, and - one that I found myself only the other day when I was leafing through - the fact that David Beckham would break his second metatarsal just before the 2002 World Cup/

  What else? Well, court jesters - the sixteenth-century version of stand-up-^ - are the new rock and roll across Europe. Titian is the favoured artist of those in the know, and, perhaps most importantly, the pocket handkerchief has come into common use in a big way. So far, I have been unable to determine whether deckchairs and rolled-up trouser legs came into vogue at the same time.

  But to 1551, and there is big news. A man called Palestrina has been made the director of music at St Peter's in Rome. It was a quite fortuitous turn of events for the twenty-five-year-old composer. Palestrina had been organist and choirmaster of his local cathedral for the last seven years. Then, in 1551, the bishop whom he had been supplying with cute little Masses every week suddenly wasn't a bishop any more. He was a Pope. Totally different. Within days, Palestrina was installed as choirmaster of the Julian Chapel at the Vatican, under the new pope, Julius III, and Palestrina was busy telling eveyone 'we go way back.' Now, today this may not seem particularly important in the scheme of things, you might say. On paper, after all, it's only 'man gets Church job'. But in 1551, music was the Church, and virtually everyone wrote not just for it but also by order of it. A lot of them considered it their duty - thoughtful, well-educated men (because it almost always was men) who often decided that God had given them this gift of music, therefore they had to repay him, by dedicating their work and often their life to him. Add to this the fact that the Church's motto at fi Pretty sure that's what he meant by 'a prince with a clubfoot3. P PMost popular joke of the???: 'I wouldn't say my wife was fat… but when they put her on the ducking stool, there was a tidal wave in Shrewsbury… nay, verily, but seriously, good people…' this time appeared to be something like 'Scium Quo Habitas' - 'We Know Where You Live' - and, well, it's not surprising to find that lad majorem deigloriam' appeared on many a front page.

  And here's another thing: not only does MUSIC = CHURCH at this point, but also, MUSIC = SINGING. Now why is that? Why was more or less all music composed by these Church-loving composers at this time vocal?

  I'm glad you asked me that, as politicians are prone to saying, because I'm not going to answer it. I will in a moment, but first back to Palestrina.

  FILL THE SPACE

  ,3 adly for Palestrina, within a few years of being given the top job in Rome, he was out on his ear, kicked out by the incoming new top doge, Pope Paul??, who clearly didn't like the cut of his cassock. Happily for Palestrina, though, his time would come again, a few years later, reinstated by yet another different Pope. I don't know. How did they cope with all this coming and going? Maybe this was the model for Italy's political system. Anyway, regardless, Palestrina enjoys his new period of favour, and immediately starts doing what everyone around him was doing too. Lassus^ was doing it, Byrd was doing it in England - everybody was doing it - and that was writing music for the amazing spaces that were these huge cathedrals. Yes, I know, this might sound obvious, but it needs saying. These cathedrals, in their own way, changed the face of music for a time, because everyone wrote in order to sound good in them. And just the smallest knowledge of acoustics will tell you that writing music for, say, a concert in your local village hall and writing music to fill the enormous caverns of St Peter's in Rome are two very different exercises.

  The cathedrals had gone up as huge, unmissable symbols of how great it was to be a Christian, and the Church went around throwing fi Orlande de Lassus, a well-travelled and much favoured composer. Worked all over - Naples, Sicily, Antwerp, Bavaria, Munich - the boy done well. Wrote some 1,200 works in all, including some of the most important Masses of his day. money at the sweet problem of getting the best people possible to fill them with beautiful sounds. Palestrina no doubt felt like the cat who'd got the cream, the cream being St Peter's. And this is important, because Palestrina (whose real name, by the way, wasn't Palestrina at all - Palestrina was the small Italian town he came from; all we know of his name is that he was called Giovanni Pierluigi) was NOT an innovator. He was NOT a pioneer. Admittedly, throughout this book, we will celebrate many people who were innovators and pioneers, but Palestrina was not one of them. He was more concerned with writing sheer, beautiful noises that would sound fantastic in the Pope's local church. Music like his glorious Missa Papae Marcelli - the Mass for Pope Marcellus, a gorgeous piece of polyphony written specifically not to advance music into the next century, not to shock people into the next era, but simply to sound unutterably gorgeous as it bounced off the walls of the Vatican, taking, no doubt, minutes to fade as it did so. Divine.

  Onward, now, to the Lennon and McCartney of the sixteenth century. Who were they? How did they manage to run the biggest musical monopoly since the last dodo learnt to whistle? Well, get your Renaissance head on, I'm going in. Cover me.

  RENAISSANCE MAN

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  magine, if you will, it is 1572 - just over twenty years since Palestrina landed the top job in Rome. In Inghilterra, Elizabeth I has been on the throne for some thirteen years. In fact, speaking of the two in more or less the same breath, only a couple of years earlier, Pope Pius V had issued a jolly little excommunication 'bull', as
they're called, which went by the cute little name of'Regnans in Excelsis'. It's quite a lengthy document, but if I might summarize it for you, it would be to say, 'We're not going to talk to you any more.' The Pope, that is, isn't going to talk to Elizabeth. Sad, really. I imagine Elizabeth would miss their little chats.

  However, it was a good year for other forms of communication. In literature, we'd witnessed the births of John Donne and Ben Jonson, and in pigeonry - well, it was pretty high tech, back then - we had witnessed the first use of Nelson's favourite birds to send messages. It was from the Dutch town of Haarlem, which was under siege from the Spanish.

  So: are you there yet? In the sixteenth century, I mean. Because it was against that background that things were really starting to bubble. In the Italy we've just left behind, the Gabrieli family were quite big noises now. Andrea Gabrieli, composer and organist at St Mark's Venice for the last six years, was busy adding all sorts of brass parts to his vocal music. More importantly, perhaps, was his nephew Giovanni, who took over from him at St Mark's, and who could be said to have preceded Dolby by some 400 years.

  Giovanni Gabrieli was another organist/composer (I suppose you would say 'singer/songwriter' these days) who started to do the first experiments in stereo, effectively, writing music that had choirs and voices pitted against each other at either side of the huge St Mark's, making for some glorious antiphonal effects which must have really surprised his audience at the time. It must have been less like being at a concert and more like being at a tennis match. Stiff necks all round at St Mark's, maybe.