OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

by Stephen Fry

  Across the pond, Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the sixteenth president of the US and, immediately, South Carolina secedes from the union. What a gorgeous phrase, 'secedes from the union', isn't it? A beautiful and almost poetic way of saying 'goes off in a sulk'. I wish I'd tried it when I was young. Imagine it. [Scene - somewhere in Norfolk.] Where's Stephen?' cOh, I told him he couldn't have one of my liquorice allsorts, so he said he was seceding from the union.' 'Not again.' Well, it might have worked. Who knows? Anyway, 1861 now, and it's not only South Carolina, it's Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Texas - the Confederate States, as they were known -and America has itself a civil war. In the UK, Queen Victoria goes into an age-long period of mourning, and begins to contemplate living the next forty years without her consort and companion. And so to 1862, then, and Abraham Lincoln makes his 'Emancipation Proclamation', which win, in just a short while, bring about the freedom of slaves. What else? Of course. Prussia gets a new PM, one Otto Eduard Leopold Bismarck.

  Artistically speaking, it's been a good few years too: George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Dickens's Great Expectations, Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, new stuff from Manet and Degas - all of them since 1859. Also worth mentioning is the debut of Sarah Bernhardt - went down a storm in Racine's Iphigenie. Also in 1862 a forty-nine-year-old Giuseppe Verdi makes the long trip to St Petersburg, to the Imperial Opera, the august body who had commissioned his latest opera, La Forza del Destine: The Force of Destiny. Verdi, like Wagner, was advancing from work to work, although maybe not quite as dramatically as Little Richard. The harmony and orchestration in The Force of Destiny are steps up from his last work, Un Ballo in Maschera - The Masked Ball - and that was a step up, itself, on the previous La Traviata/Il Trovatore. Oddly enough, it's considered by some to be the opera equivalent to Macbeth, in that its name is not meant to be mentioned in the theatre or opera house. Don't know why. It just is. Personally, I think it's gorgeous, even if I can't prevent myself thinking of Stella Artois every time I hear it. And, if you're into connections, then it was written the same year that Bizet offered up his classic opera The Pearl Fishers, with its hit duet, 'Au fond du temple saint'.

  THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE SLEEPING GIANT

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  Ah yes. Curious indeed, this one. The Sleeping Giant. Far off, away with the fairies, way off up the wooden hill to dreamland. To be fair, I should explain. The Sleeping Giant is actually a composer, and, again to be fair - because I like to be fair -_zZzzzZZZ he isn't really sleeping. He's just… not found his „„.zzzzZZZ voice, shall we say. Finding your voice is „„zzzzzzZZ composer-speak „„zzzzzZZZ for finally writing in a style with which you are „,,„*zzzzZZZ comfortable and which is your own. So the Sleeping „„^zzzzZZZ Giant is a composer who hasn't found his voice.,™zzzzzZZZ He's forty already. Forty! And he hasn't published a -zzzzzZZZ note. He's been studying composition for some „zzzzzZZZ twenty-three years, but hasn't felt confident enough ™«zzzZZZ yet to let the great unwashed hear his work. So _„*zzzZZZZ instead, he has just carried on playing the organ - „azzzZZZ which was one of his passions - studying, sketching „„„zzzzzZZZ the odd composition, studying, learning music „.zzzzzZZZ „„zzzzzZZZ theory, studying, learning harmony… did I mention „„„zzzzzzZZ studying? Anyway, some time soon, the giant is due,_*zzzzzZZ to wake up, and you'd do well to be around .„azzzZZZ when he does. In the meantime, let me fill you in „„„«zzzZZZ on the last couple of years.

  1363, was „„jzzzzzZZ quite an important one for the USA. Following the….zzzzZZZ battle for one small town, the Federal forces set.„^zzzZZZ about making a ceme tery to take the war dead. At „.^zzzzzZZ the dedication of the cemetery, Lincoln gives a „.zzzzzZZ speech. The speech goes down in history, named „,-zzzzZZZ a f t e r „«.zzzzZZZ the small town where the cemetery was built - -azzzZZZ Gettysburg. The following year, he is re- „.«zzzZZZ

  „„„zzzzzZZZ elected President. „„„zzzzZZZ What else? Well, Florence is, albeit briefly, „,,„,.zzzzZZZ the capital of Italy in place of (a) Rome, (b) „„.zzzzZZZ Turin or (c) Milan? The answer's Turin acta- „„„??????? ally, with Rome having to wait another six,,„,zzzzzZZZ years before it achieves capital status. „„.zzzzzZZ Elsewhere, on the world's battlefields, the „.zzzzZZZ Geneva Convention is set up to establish the „,„z2zzzZZZ neutrality of medical facilities in war, the ^«zzzZZZ words 'In God we Trust' appears for „«.zzzzZZZ the first time „„azzzZZZ on American coins, and, let's see, Louis „„zzzzzzZZ Pasteur invents 'pasteurization', initially for „,-zzzzZZZ wine, would you believe. I raise a glass to him as -zzzzzZZZ I write. Good old Louis.,„,,zzzzzZZZ ,„2ZzzzzZZ Other than that, nothing much else to report. ,„.,zzzzzZZZ Charles Dickens churns out another one, Our ..??,?????? Mutual Friend, and Tolstoy starts War and Peace. I „„«zzzZZZ say 'starts' because it takes him a good five years. Five „.zzzzzZZ YEARS! Jeepers, you could write War and Peace in ^„.zzzzZZZ that time. Last year was a good year for art, _JZzzzzZZZ though. A couple of biggies saw the light of „zzzzzZZZ day - Manet's Dejeuner sur I'herbe and Dante „-zzzzzZiZZ Gabriel Rossetti's Beata Beatrix. Lovely. Now „.«zzzZZZ back to the 'Z'

  The Sleeping Giant, I „^zzzzZZZ called him, and I think that's fair at forty. He'd „„zzzzzZZZ been training and studying for most of those forty „,„2zzzzZZZ years, but just lacked the confidence to publish. But,„*zzzzzZZ then, this „«^zzzzZZZ year - 18©4 - just as Meyerbeer dies, he wakes up, so „^zzzZZZ to speak, and finishes his first symphony. Well, actually, „„«zzzZZZ to be more accurate, he finishes bis first symphony, then gets another fit of insecurity and decides it's not fit to publish, so renumbers it 'Symphony No. Zero!' Can you believe that? I'm not kidding, honest, he did. Thought it simply wasn't good enough to be called his first symphony. Composers - fimny bxinch. And he was an organist, too, so that might explain it some more. Anyway, the world disagrees with him, eventually, and, I have to say, so do I. It is now a published and recorded symphony, known as Die Nulte - literally, the Nought, the 'Zero'! Astounding. You couldn't make it up. Anyway, let's wake him up, shall we? I want to introduce you. Bruckner… you're on, love. Bruckner, this is the reader: reader, this is Bruckner.

  Someone once said, 'Gothic cathedrals of sound!' And they weren't talking about Frank Zappa. Bruckner, they meant. And if you've ever been to a Bruckner concert, you'll know what they mean. Gorgeous, it is. The symphony he called the Zero is simple and beautiful. And - and this is amazing - there's even a Symphony Double Zero, which is actually a sketch he'd written a year before the Zero. Are you following this?

  All in all, a beautifully simple person, Bruckner. You can hear the organist in him coming out in his symphonies. He composes entire long passages all in a certain register or soundworld - much like an organist choosing a certain setting of stops on the organ for a while. Do you get my drift? If you are unfamiliar with the organ and its workings - and, I've got to be honest, you'd be wise to be! - then imagine it like this: you know those people who eat their food sepa- rately and in order? You know, the ones who eat all their peas first, carrots second, and then they spend some time eating the potatoes, before finally eating the sausage? You know those people? Well, Bruckner was the sort of composer version of that - different registers at different times. In fact, if you listen to Die Nuke, you can just about hear the horns being the carrots towards the end. Or not, as the case may be.

  NIGHT ON A BALD MOUNTAIN

  (WITH BOBBY CHARLTON

  COMB-OVER)

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  've never really got beyond the sniggering schoolboy stage when it comes to the tide of Mussorgsky's work. As impressive as the piece sounds, I found it very hard to take in the tide, Night on a Bald Mountain. Even when it was modernized to 'bare' - in much the same way that you watch the news on TV, one day, and find out that everyone is now pronouncing a particular word a different way, and you feel like a citizen in the 'Emperor's New Clothes' if you don't go alo
ng with it: I'm talking here about words like Nike (which used to rhyme with 'Mike' but apparentiy now is 'Nikey') and Boudicca (which was once 'Boa-da-see-er' and nobody seemed to mind) that seem to change overnight and nobody so much as lets on that it they had ever said them differendy/ Even then, I couldn't seem to get 'bare' witches or, for some reason, bare knights, out of my head. I know, I know, it's probably just me. Still. For now, though, let me join some of die dots and complete the picture from here to the 1867 of Mussorgsky's Nijjht on A Bare Bottom. (Sorry, there it is again. Can't help it, see!)

  The main, big wow, my-word-did-you-hear-the-news was from America, namely the end of the Civil War. Very sad end, too, for Abraham Lincoln. He took the Confederate surrender at J» In fact, I heard a radio announcer say 'DyLAN Thomas', just recently, and thought, 'Oh, here we go again, are we all going to have to change this, now?' P $ If you were to guess the meaning of that word, Appomattox, having come across it for the first time, I'm sure you'd plump for a cosmetic operation over a Confederate surrender venue. Just a thought. Appomattox-"?" on April 9th, only to be assassinated five days later. Sad. It was all over bar the shooting, as it were. The American constitution does get its Thirteenth Amendment, though, the abolition of slavery - and not before time. In England, there are a couple of important debuts: die Salvation Army goes into battle for the first time, and WG Grace goes into bat for die first time, both of them, in their own ways, with a war cry - the Sally Army initially going by the name of the Christian Revival Association. Also in 1865, Edward Whymper scales die majestic chiselled features of the Matterhorn, the first of a select and illustrious line that would eventually include Ronald Lihoreau in the late 1950s. Louis Pasteur, no doubt already the toast of Parisian bacchanalian society from his service to wine, probably becomes the toast of French haute couture, too, when he manages to cure silkworm disease, thereby single-handedly saving French silk. Silk hats off to him.

  A year on, 1888, and Prussia, Italy and Austria are in a right mess. All over the place, to be honest. Too tortuous to explain now, save to say that, after lashings of jiggery-pokery undertaken for reasons best known to themselves, Schleswig-Holstein becomes part of Prussia. I'm sure it won't end there. What else? Well, TJ Barnardo opens his first home for destitute children, in Stepney, and Swedish chemist Alfred Bernhardt Nobel, the man who gave rise to die peace prize, invents dynamite, the tiling tiiat gives rise to all manner of war, death and destruction. It's an irony that is never lost on me, no matter how often I hear it repeated - tbe fortune that came from dynamite goes to fund over a century and a half of die promotion of peace, amongst other tilings.

  A year on, still - 1867 - and Garibaldi marches on Rome, an event that will forever be known in Italy as, wait for it… The March on Rome. Gosh, they were an inventive bunch, weren't they? When he gets to Rome, he is eventually defeated by a combination of French and papal troops. Ah well. No doubt one or other side wasn't quite playing stricdy in accordance with the newly introduced 'Queensberry Rules' of 1867. Anyway. Year out, round 2. (Ding.)

  And indeed die last few years have been pretty good for all tilings arty-farty. Somebody called CL Dodgson used the pseudonym Lewis Carroll to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Cardinal Newman, writing under the cunning pseudonym of 'Cardinal Newman', comes up with the poem 'The Dream of Gerontius', which will eventually be food for thought for one Mr Elgar. At present, though, little Edward is only, let's see… eight. Awwww, look at him, little love. Eight years old… awww. Still. Handlebar moustache coming on nicely! What else for the arts? Well, Degas has started to paint ballet scenes - could do well - Millais has done The Boyhood of Raleigh (cue bicycle jokes), Dostoevsky has done Crime and Punishment and Email Zola, the first writer to get on the net, has written Therese Raquin. Et bienl On the downside, though, we have lost Rousseau and Ingres. Bof! I think that's about it. Now, though, to paraphrase the great Elvis Aaron Presley, 'One night… with you. Er, and Mussorgsky' Yeah, I know - needs work. Leave it with me and I'll write out parts for The Jordanaires.

  So. Mussorgsky. At last, we're here. Always loved the name Mussorgsky. I think it's because, when you are very young, and have no knowledge of repertoire at all, you associate composers with either the sound of their name or the one, maybe two pieces you know by them. With Mussorgsky, it was a bit of both. I loved the brassy sounds of the 'Great Gate of Kiev', and his name seemed to match it perfecdy - a bit brassy, almost as if it were imitating the air as it was blown through as tuba or a horn. MUSSOrgSky! mUSSSSSOfflTrgSky! No? Never mind, then. There was also his first name, which I could never escape - Modest, usually pronounced 'Moe-dest' (as in Five Guys Named Modest), with the accent on the moe. What a groovy, cute name for a composer, I always thought. Modest. Modest! Modest Mussorgsky. Great name.

  He was born into land-owning aristocracy and became an officer in the elite Russian Preobrajensky Regiment. Following the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, his family went bankrupt and he was forced into a succession of civil service jobs that left him in poverty. Added to this, he had a drink problem that left him with an official portrait that looked like 'The Dong witfi the Luminous Nose', and you could have forgiven him had he wanted nothing to do with the current vogue for 'Russian nationalism' in music. But not a bit of it. He wanted you to be able to hear 'the people' in his music, as well as being able to hear their stories, too. And it was against that backdrop that, in 1867, he produced what was to become one of his most memorable small works. It's meant to be the music to the events of a midsummer night, a night during which the witches' sabbath is held on a bald mountain, near Kiev - STOP SNIGGERING, FRY MINOR OR I'LL SEND YOU TO SEE MR RUTHERFORD. Now, as I was saying, it's meant to sound like a witches' sabbath, and is probably better known in the version that was reorchestrated by his friend, the composer Rimsky-Korsakov. Night on a Bare/Bald Mountain is one of those pieces that storms out of the traps and hooks you in from the start, a whirling tumult that seems to paint a near perfect musical picture. If you happen to think of Maxell tapes rather than witches, then I think that's fine too. 'TYPICAL. YOU WAIT AGES FOR A GORGEOUS CONCERTO, THEN…'

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  – iwo come along at once. Isn't it always the way? Anyway,. more of that in a moment. On to 1868 first, the year of the last Shogun. Yes, following the abdication of Shogun Kekei and the abolition of the Shogunate, the Shoguns are no more. 'The abolition of the Shogunate', what a fantastic phrase. In fact, there's something about the word 'Shogun' itself which inspires feelings of awe and, I think, fear. Not surprising, then, to find out that the word is simply the Japanese for military dictator, an abbreviation of'sen tai shoЈfun which means 'great barbarian-conquering general.' Wow. Does that come with baggage, or what. This is also the year that Disraeli became PM, and also the year that Disraeli became NOT PM again, as he was out a few months later. It's the year of the brand-new in sport, devised and named after the Duke of Beaufort's residence in Gloucestershire, Badminton, and the year of the first TUC conference in Manchester. Wow, do they not seem to go together. It's also the year of Darwin's flop follow-up to The Origin of Species, namely The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Ooh, I say, what awful branding, eh? Really needs work, darling. I can just see him bringing in the '80s ponytailed brand consultants to advise him.

  'Charlie, baby, people don't want all this Animal/Plant scene any more, man! It's so last year. You've got to sex it up a little. The boys in the focus groups have come up with another title that retains the key elements of yours but… well, you know, just… cranks it up a gear, yeah? Try this.

  The Animal UNLEASHED or You Can't Keep a Good Plant Down - From the writing team that gave you "Species 1 - the Origin!"

  'What do you think, C? Wicked, huh? That'll be 50K.??. Hey, Neville, get me another latte, yeah…' This was also the year of Marx and Das Kapital, Renoir's The Skaters and Degas's VOrchestre, as weU as the first twitchings of the soon-to-be-named art movement, 'Impressionism'. All this, and two of the greatest concertos
ever written. One was by Grieg, the other by Bruch.

  Edvard Grieg came from quite a musical family - his mother was a good pianist. And if the name 'Grieg' seems a little out of place in Norway, it's because it was actually from the composer's Scottish great-grandfather, who had emigrated after the Battle of Culloden, setting up a small enclave of Griegs in Bergen. The young Edvard had always wanted to pursue music, except a brief time when he considered the priesthood, and was eventually sent to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, where his contemporaries included Arthur Sullivan. After Leipzig, he settled in Denmark for a time, in Copenhagen, where he became friends with the grand old man of Scandinavian music, Niels Gade, under whose influence he set up the Euterpe Society to promote Scandinavian music. Just the year before he wrote his only piano concerto, he'd married his cousin, Nina. Their only child, a daughter, died in the year that the concerto was premiered, 1869. Bruch is a completely different kettle of fish. He was born in Cologne, and, in his day, was considered to be one of the greatest German composers. Then, his highest achievement was thought to be his choral works, many of which he had composed by the time he was in his mid-twenties. They brought him fame and some fortune, and he travelled across Germany, conducting and teaching as well as composing. The year before he wrote the Violin Concerto of 1868, he'd been made Director of the Court Orchestra in Sonderhausen, midway between Dortmund and Leipzig, where he spent three happy years before returning to Berlin. Still to come, at this stage, were the three unhappy years as director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, where his abrasive personality went down like a performance of John Cage's Silence (see page 287) at a Hard of Hearing Conference.