OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  It's no longer the age of Wren - Sir Christopher is now a two-year-old tourist attraction in his beloved St Paul's. It is, though, still the age of one of the greatest double acts in science - Isaac ('gravity') Newton and Edmond ('comet') Halley. It is also, arguably, the time of Congreve, the man who put the 'oration' into 'Restoration comedy', with his deft prose and elegant construction.

  It was, too, the age of the Grand Tour. Now I could have coped with this. Ever since the delightfully named French painter, Hyacinth Rigaud, had written a sort of eighteenth-century version of the 'rough guide' to the Grand Tour, everyone had been at it. Composers, artists, even Tsars - Peter the Great had tried it before he croaked, under a pseudonym/ Anyhow, with the Grand Tour came the grand tacky souvenir, naturally. In fact, a whole school of artists grew up, the ' volutin? or panoramists, who fulfilled the demand for memories of Italy by positioning themselves in the major tour resorts and coming up with huge, horizontal horizons of Venice and other places. No doubt each one bore the legend lMia Mamma e andata a Veneziana, e tutto questo que mia apportato e questa bruta maglutta?pf Canaletto is the man remembered now for this sort of stuff, although at the time Francesco Guardi was perhaps more popular.

  So, if it was the age of the Grand Tour, what music might have beguiled you had you ventured to Italy? Well, one man you might have come across if you'd got the right room with the right view was Albinoni.

  SO THE OLD ADAGIO GOES

  JL

  he Venetian Tomaso Albinoni, despite his many good works, was destined to become not even a one-hit wonder. Like many composers, he would often be working on several pieces at once -whether operas with Metastasio, the Tim Rice of his day, or symphonies, a form in which he was reputed to have been quite a pioneer. Sometimes, he would simply write down an idea, or part of an idea, with maybe only the odd part sketched in, the intention being that he would leave it aside to return to another day. It was one such 'sketch', a mere fragment of manuscript, which the Italian scholar Remo Giazotto found in 1945, lining his wastepaper basket. It had fi That is, 'before he croaked', and 'under a pseudonym'. Not 'before he croaked under a pseudonym', if you understand me? Just wanted to make that clear. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, Tsar Peter never, to the best of my knowledge, croaked under a pseudonym. Good. Glad to clear that up. fi fi Translation: 'My mum went to Venice and all I got was this lousy painting.' only a handful of notes scribbled in on the violin part, and some but not all of the bass part. With a little bit of guesswork and a prevailing wind, he came up with what is now known as 'the Albinoni Adagio' -despite the fact that Albinoni hadn't actually written it.

  Being an 'adagio' - the Italian word meaning 'at a slow pace' - it is an unhurried and simple string tune, punctuated by a soft, often reedy organ sound. As a result of its hybrid composition, it is more romantic than most baroque pieces of its type. So when you listen to it next time, think of Albinoni and his sketches; think of Remo Giazotto, going largely unremembered; but most of all, think of Canaletto, painting the sun setting over Venice, the lap, lap, lapping of the weedy canals, the cumbersome clunk of paint-peeling gondolas. Beautiful. Deliquescent. And, before we go any further, let me answer the question I posed earlier, on page 61. Simple. Just like me, they long to be… close to you. There. I think that's covered everything.

  DON'T FORGET NATHAN THE PROPHET!

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  ight. Where are Bach and Handel? Well, they're still dominant, to be fair. Bach was coming up with stuff like the St John Passion and the St Matthew Passion - more of which later - whereas Handel, well, he managed the opera Rodelinda (from which we get the gorgeous aria 'Dove sei') and even Zadok the Priest (not forgetting Nathan the Prophet - more on this later too). Each a sort of separate leg of the… compositional Colossus, bestriding the… harbour that is… well, that is music. As it were. OK, needs work. But where is music at, as they would have said in the '70s? Where is it all at? Where is it all jjoingi Well, it's more or less doing what everyone else is doing - it's going on a Grand Tour. Let me try and explain, before you send someone to sit with me.

  Here's what I mean. Imagine you are music in general, right? Well, behind you… is home - that is, Church music. Like home, it will always be there, but for now, well… we're off exploring. The journey has already taken in opera, which has reached its first peak and is already on the wane. Its time will come again, but not for years. For now, instrumental music is King, and its kingdom is Italy.

  In terms of instrumental music, overtures came first - a band playing as one. Then the band split - two separate sections of the same band, almost like teams, playing against each other. This 'two-team' formation was called the concerto. Then, one of the groups became smaller. So now it's a small bunch of soloists versus the rest of the band - or the concerto grosso - the great concerto.

  Try and look at it like this. Imagine each j is a player in the orchestra. In an overture, the orchestra was like this: ffifTiliTtfiittflT tmmwmtm! ififfifflfffTftm All together, see? Then the orchestra split: ttttfttft tftfffttf ttttttttt ttttttttt ttttttttt ttttttttt

  … to play a concerto. Then, one side became smaller than the other: ft ttffffffftffffffft i* ttWttftfWWMM TftttftffftftTffff

  … to play the concerto grosso.

  The Italian Corelli was big on these 'concern grossi', as were lesser-known names like Geminiani and Torelli, as well as Handel himself. From here, it's not a huge leap to the 'solo concerto': t ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt ttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

  …just one player versus all the rest, and by far the most popular version. The one we're most familiar with now, to be honest. Vivaldi did virtually all he could with this format - one or 400, depending whether you agree with Stravinsky or not.

  With the concerto, came - rather obvious, really, but it has to be said - The Soloist. And, presumably, with the soloist came, what… luwie fits and outrageous dressing room demands. Good. Just what we need. 'I want a bowl of M amp;Ms with all the blue ones taken out… oh, and a music stand.'

  Technology-wise, the organ is the big thing, but other new instruments are coming online all the time - not just the piano I mentioned earlier, but the piccolo (the funny sort of dwarf castrato flute, as it were), the clarinet too, and, oddly enough, the tuning fork.-"

  TOCCATA AND FEUD

  ? ? what's bubbling in 1729? Who is damned? Who is faintly praised? The South Sea Bubble is well and truly burst, Catherine the Great has succeeded Peter the Great - nice to see she took his name - and Moll Flanders is still one of the public's favourite books, some seven years after its release. You can possibly see why. Handel, himself, has relinquished his right to be first to the deckchairs by becoming a British citizen. Bach, of course, still hasn't left Germany, although he has now moved pretty far afield for him: down the road fl The tuning fork, incidentally, was invented by a brass player. If anyone was going to feel the need for an implement to keep you in tune, it's not surprising that it was a brass player. to Leipzig.

  Johann Sebastian is in a bit of a feud situation with the Church authorities, not helped, no doubt, by the fact that he was the last choice for the Leipzig job. He was less preferred than the exceedingly dull Telemann, and even less preferred to the exceedingly unknown Graupner. Who he? Ed. (In fact, who Ed?) Bach found himself in trouble with his employers on more than one occasion, and I think, to look at it fairly, there was right and wrong on both sides. Bach's jobs were ridiculously labour-intensive, with music to write and arrange for so many different places and events. But, equally, he could, by all accounts, be a bit tough to get on with. On one occasion, he applied for a new job and got it, neglecting to tell his new employer only one vital fact - he already had a job, and they didn't want to let him go. He ended up being placed under house arrest to prevent him skipping to his next gig.

  The good thing, though, is that all Bach's wrangling with the powers-that-be does not appear to have affected his writing. A stream of great works just seem to pour forth from him
like sweat from a mere mortal. One of them is the marvellous St Matthew Passion, in which Bach used not only the St Matthew version of the Passion but also the odd extra verse written by a man writing under the name of Picander, who was in fact a postman from Leipzig. As you can imagine, a man as committed to the Church as Bach would have put all his resources into a dramatic setting of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. The 'oratorio Passion' was a particularly German affair, having grown out of the liturgical Lutheran Passion music, pioneered by early musical setders such as Schiitz/

  Bach, though, tailored the Passion to his own needs. He increased the amount of non-biblical texts, putting increasing demands on poets such as Picander - Postman Pic, to his friends - to provide him with original but no less fitting words. In the St Matthew Passion, or, to give it the name Bach gave it, the Passio Domini nostriJ.C. secundum Evangelistam Mattaeum, the great man had increased the new fl German composer, born in Saxony, who worked mainly out of Dresden. He loved his Passions as well as his opera. His 'The Seven Words of Christ' - not to he confused with a Haydn piece of a similar name -sets words from all four gospels beautifully. bits from twelve to twenty-seven biblical verses. It was to be the last of his great Passions, and was performed at St Thomas's Church, I,cipzig, on Good Friday, 1729. That was its first performance. Sadly, it had to wait another hundred years for its second performance, conducted by one Felix Mendelssohn in Berlin, but that's another story. It's a big piece, if you ever come to take it in, but more or less every bit is gorgeous, particularly if you are a Bach junkie, and none more so than the glorious 'O sacred head, sore wounded'.

  As for Georg Frideric, he'd had a minor opera out the year before - Tolomeo, which contains the yummy 'Silent Worship' - but he was more likely than not basking in the glow afforded to the four anthems he'd written just two years earlier for the coronation of George II. In fact, basking in the glow afforded one of them in particular, the first, which went by the now almost household name of Zadok the Priest (but don't forget Nathan the Prophet!^). In fact, they're so popular, they've been performed at more or less every coronation since. If only he could collect the royalties-^ on it.

  WAR AND PEACE MORE WAR

  s fi The opening line of Zadok the Priest continues 'Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet annointed Solomon King.31 always feel sorry for good, reliable Nathan the Prophet. He got equal billing in the original story but it is only Zadok who gets remembered. fifi No pun intended. ? that was 1729. More or less, give or take a couple of years. To get to the next major landmark, you have to traverse the opening of the Covent Garden Opera House, the birth of Haydn, and the founding of the Academie of Ancient Music. That's just in music. Elsewhere you also had the building of 10 Downing Street; the rise of the game Ninepins; the advice of Dr John Arbuthnot to watch what you ate; the founding of the Seventh Day Baptists by Conrad Beissel; the coronation of Christian VI of Denmark; the succession of Tsar Ivan V's daughter, Anne - who apparently gets expenses and a company cart; the beginning of the four-course system of husbandry by Viscount 'Turnip' Townsend - no, don't ask me, either; the death of three of the great English literati - Daniel Defoe, Elijah Fenton and John Gay; the birth of Stanislaus II, the last independent King of Poland; and the first ever subscription library started by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia. My word, glad that's over.

  In addition to that, there's a war on. Well, to be fair, there usually is, somewhere or other. I mean, I don't want to belittle these things in die slightest, but I do often think it was a case of 'Look, whose turn is it?' A bit like planning the office holiday rota: 'Erm, right, well, the Spanish Succession boys would rather take the last two weeks in August. Apparently that allows them July to violate the Partition Treaty. Fiona, pass me my coffee, can you, love? Now, that means the Thirty Tears will have to go in June, the Hundred Tears in the front half of July, and… now who are you?' 'The Seven Tears!'

  'Damn, forgot about you. Erm… right, Seven Tears… Seven Tears… oh, look!??? guys can have the back half of July… when the schools break up. Everybody happy? Right, let's have a look at that stationery order…' Well… possibly. Possibly not. In actual fact, the war that's just started is die Polish Succession. Nice name. Good branding. Next year there'll be one with Turkey and Persia, but it'll only last twelve months or so. Huh! ONLY! The year after that, it's Russia and Turkey, then Prussia meet Austria in the quarter-finals in 1740, before Turkey and Persia come back to battle it out in the play-offs. Result: Turkey win on the away dead rule. I don't know. Millions of lives, millions of pounds and all for a handful of disputed borders and dodgy marriages. These days, government central office would simply rearrange the boundaries without anyone noticing. Which reminds me: BACH!

  How does that remind me? Well, you see in 1733, Bach was having a minor war himself. Not quite on die same scale, it's true, but still, a war no less. JSB's war is with die church authorities - again! -this time the ones at St Thomas's in Leipzig, and, of course, the problem is over money. Or, according to Bach, die lack of it. His job of t amor means he plays the organ, writes new music - every week, mind! - for two churches and all dieir services. He rehearses, directs,IIHI trains people at a. further two churches, and also, in his - wait for this - spare time, he has to teach Latin and music at die local school. Added to this is die fact that the living quarters that go witii die job.?? a tad squalid, and the salary mere peanuts. So, you can imagine,? s a virtual running battle. And what does it do to his 'muse', as it were? Does the music dry up? Is he writer's-blocked, and unable to pen a note? Well, no, actually. Quite die opposite, oddly enough. The I,cipzig years will turn out to be one of his most prolific times.

  Great pieces were to come from this period. The Art of Fugue, albeit unfinished, was a huge undertaking, using almost every feature of the current music thinking at the time. It is one HUGE piece of showing off, really. In it, Bach wrote himself one single tune. He then set about showing you how many times and in how many different ways he could change and vary and re-present this tune. It's a bit like a jazz musician being given a small tune and then improvising on it for hours, just to show how clever he is. Then there's The Musical Offering, the Goldberg Variations and, of course, started in tins very year, 1733, the mere trifle that is…The Mass in? Minor.

  CRITICAL MASS

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  he? Minor Mass - or to give it its German title Die Messe in H Moll - is considered by many to be the greatest achievement of a great composer. It's massive. A full Latin Mass in twenty-four sections, with monumental versions of the Gloria, the Crucifixus and the Credo. What's even more interesting is that it's a Catholic Mass, which is odd for Bach, the foremost Protestant composer of his day. It seems he was probably touting for business, and would send the Kyrie and Gloria to the Catholic King of Saxony, to see if he could get the job of court composer. Again, and I know I've said this before, but go and see a live performance. It's a BIG piece, and even die best recording on CD can't do it justice. By 1736, die muse Euterpe is still putting all his eggs in just two baskets, namely? and H. With both now at their absolute peak, though, just how does it feel? I mean, how does it smell, to be in 1736? What does 1736 taste like? Well, let me see if I can't take your index finger and rub it across the grain of the year.

  Well, baroque is well and truly, incompletely and utterly king. If you're a baroque star, it doesn't get any better than this, so enjoy it while you can. The Classical period is only just around the corner. Opera, though, is past its first peak. It is still being written - in fact it's being written like mad. And as they only finished the Covent Garden Opera House in 1732 - four years ago - then someone obviously believes in it enough to throw pots of money at it. But in the form that the crowds of the time knew it, opera had had its first day. Oratorio was gaining on it, and would give it a good run for its money in the pop stakes, before it was finished.

  To be fair, despite it being at its most popular, the writing is nevertheless on the wall for the fiddly, florid-sounding music th
at is baroque. But not yet. Not quite yet. For now, Bach and Handel continue to dominate. Others do get a look in, though.

  BAROQUE STARS

  ean-Philippe Rameau, for example, the man from Dijon. He was incredibly popular in his day, which was around now, to be fair. He knocked out some thirty or so operas and ballets, and generally helped to move things on a bit, particularly opera-wise. He'd had a big hit only last year - 1735 - with Les Indes Galantes, the hit ballet of the season. It wasn't just a crowd pleaser, either. It was pushing back the boundaries of what was then considered the done thing. He it was who was very big on putting musical descriptions into his works. Up to now, music was largely just… well, music - either for its own sake, or for the glory of God. Rameau decided that there should be the odd description of worldly things in there, too. So, in something like Les Indes Galantes, there are musical earthquakes, storms, volcanic eruptions, clay-pigeon shooting©, all depicted by Rameau in his music. Then there was Pergolesi. Again, forgive me this moment while I wax on about his name. Beautiful name, I've always thought -Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. From Jesi. Mmm. Lovely. Anyway, as I say, he was from Jesi, in Italy. He led a tragically short fife, dying at the age of twenty-six - but he filled those years with some fifteen operas and twelve cantatas. One of his operas, La Servo- Padrona - 'The Servant as Mistress' - was so important in its day, particularly around the time of its Paris performances, that it was said to have influenced the path of French music significantly. He also found time to come up with a bunch of pieces of sacred music, one of which has stayed in the repertoire for one simple reason - it's gorgeous. It's a setting of the Stabat Mater, the words from Passion Week which describe the mother of Jesus standing at the foot of the cross.