Radical Movements (1912-1941) In Their Own Words: 20th Century Composers


Radical Movements (1912-1941)

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As the 20th century dawned over Europe,

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concert halls were a haven of tradition and emotional expression.

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The operas of Wagner and Puccini,

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the symphonies of Brahms and Beethoven,

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and both the pomp and circumstance of Elgar were delighting audiences

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who knew where they were with classical music.

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But all that was soon to change.

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In a series of shocking advances,

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classical music was transformed beyond recognition,

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mirroring the violence of world events

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and innovation of the technological age.

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In this series, we will unlock the BBC archives

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to reawaken the voices of some of the century's greatest composers.

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Dee-dee, da-ba, da-da, da-ba.

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It should crackle with sharpness.

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Together, they give a first-hand account of a revolution in sound.

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You're getting louder already. Do keep it quiet, please.

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Absolute hush.

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Four o'clock in the BLEEP morning I was up doing this.

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Why don't they deliver, these messengers?

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In this first episode,

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we encounter some of those musical giants who dared

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to take on centuries of tradition, teaching us to hear in a new way.

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And with the rise of fascism and communism,

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we'll see how music was dragged out of the concert halls

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and onto the streets into a battle ground

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where nobody could refuse to take sides.

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The music is a very extraordinary art

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and at this period it's become, you know, perhaps the art of our time.

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Paris in the early 20th century -

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a city of top hats, parasols and pagodas.

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But a revolution was stirring.

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Picasso and his fellow cubists were shaking up the art world.

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Proust was reinventing the novel.

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And impresario Sergei Diaghilev was modernising ballet

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with his company, the Ballets Russes,

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using the scores of a young Russian composer called Igor Stravinsky.

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What he did with Diaghilev and Nijinsky was to blow it up,

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rather than to gradually develop things.

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It was like throwing everything that had existed up in the air

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and it lands back, not randomly,

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but in a brilliantly new pattern that no-one had ever seen before.

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Stravinsky, seen here in rare early footage,

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may only have been five foot three, but he was a giant of modernism.

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His provocative spirit was stirring in his early works for Diaghilev,

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but it was Stravinsky's third ballet score that set the world alight.

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DRAMATIC STRING MUSIC

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Rooted in Russian folklore,

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The Rite Of Spring depicts the ritual dance to death

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of a sacrificial virgin as the Earth cracks open

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at the end of the harsh winter.

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He changed the approach to music for all composers after him

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by writing The Rite Of Spring.

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It's the rhythm that got people,

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that's the thing that really shocked people, I think.

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The concentration on rhythm above all things.

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Repetitive rhythm, irregular rhythm, harsh rhythms, superimposed rhythms.

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Rhythms which seemed to be in different tempi,

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put on top of each other.

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This sort of glorification of time, physical time,

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because it was a ballet, was absolutely striking

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and overwhelming, I think, for the audience when they first heard it.

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Remarkably, Stravinsky was captured on film in old age,

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reminiscing about those ground-breaking rhythms

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I like very much this chord.

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It was a rather new chord, you know?

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Eight-notes chord.

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The accents were even more new.

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And the accents were really the foundation of the whole thing.

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The young Stravinsky knew he was onto something,

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but Diaghilev was less than impressed.

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And I composed the first part of it,

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Diaghilev invited me to Venice and I started to play him this chord.

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59 times, the same chord. He was a little bit surprised.

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He asked me only one thing, which was very offending.

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He asked me, "Will it last a very long time this way?"

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And I said, "To the end, my dear."

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And he was silent,

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because he understood that the answer was serious.

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The funny thing is actually when you listen to Stravinsky now,

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take something like The Rite Of Spring, still there's something

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about it which has a punch and a bite that grips you

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and he really, really knows how to draw his audience in

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and then slap them round the face.

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The Rite Of Spring premiered at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees

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in Paris in 1913.

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The audience was so shocked by the music and choreography,

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that a riot broke out.

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Stravinsky returned to that very theatre later in life,

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and was caught on film reliving

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one of the most notorious nights in music history.

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It was full.

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A very noisy public.

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I went up, I said, "Go to hell. Excuse me."

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They were very shocked.

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They were very naive and stupid people.

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It's nothing to do with the art.

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He exuded confidence, knew exactly what he was doing,

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and didn't suffer fools gladly.

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If you know his music, that's also the way it is.

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It's brittle and it's precise.

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Stravinsky was completely confident. Slightly naughty twinkle in the eye.

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Wicked, actually, I would say.

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I am never seasick. Never.

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I am sea-drunk. Quite different.

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This helps.

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And I went and saw The Rite Of Spring with Stravinsky conducting.

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The minute I heard that, I thought "This is unbelievable."

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This has gone straight to the core of me.

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It was the piece that made me want to be a composer.

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When Stravinsky wrote The Rite Of Spring,

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it was just a piece of music.

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But by the time he died, it was a movement, it was a statement,

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it was a complete change in the face of music...

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throughout the world.

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While Paris was in the grip of Stravinsky's radical rhythms,

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over in Vienna, another musical breakthrough was taking place.

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Like Paris, Vienna was a hotbed of artistic upheaval -

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the home of Gustav Klimt and Sigmund Freud.

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And it was here that the other giant of musical modernism

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began his career.

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The self-taught son of an emigre shoemaker,

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Arnold Schoenberg started out orchestrating operettas.

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But his own music was far more unconventional.

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Schoenberg saw music as imprisoned by the set of chords

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composers had used for centuries.

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He wanted to change the very sound of music itself.

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The earliest atonal pieces of Schoenberg...

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..created a massive effect on the revolution of music.

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He really investigated the language of music,

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and his Austro-Germanic heritage.

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And he didn't turn it on its head, but he just made it

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evolve in an unpredictable and a very extreme direction.

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One of his early breakthroughs came with the melodramatic

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Pierrot Lunaire which, even today, has the power to shock.

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It's an absolutely unique work and it remains one.

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Pierrot Lunaire, written in 1912,

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you can't believe, because it still sounds so radical, so fresh.

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It's written uniquely for Sprechstimme,

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which is a sort of halfway house between speaking and singing.

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Schoenberg's instructions are rather confusing.

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He reckoned that you should touch the note

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and then glide away from it. That's all very well,

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but when the next note is not very far away at all, where do you go?

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Cos you ruin the contours, you see.

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O alter Duft aus Marchenzeit

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Berauschest wieder meine Sinne.

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You can hear me struggling - trying not to sing.

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As with Stravinsky,

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many of Schoenberg's bold early pieces outraged audiences.

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But, as Schoenberg explained in a lecture on Radio Frankfurt in 1931,

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that reaction was almost a badge of honour.

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To organise his atonal sounds,

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Schoenberg invented a radical new framework in which to compose music,

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called the twelve-tone technique, also known as serialism.

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He wanted to write music which was pure music.

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And in a way he felt bogged down by tonality,

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by the fact that something might be in D major.

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So he decided to get rid of that.

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And he wrote music which instead of being...

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Used all of the 12 tones.

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But not in any preconceived order.

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In other words, for each piece, he created a new system, so it might go...

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Funnily enough, I actually see a beauty in the angularity of that.

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I've just made that up straightaway.

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But I was using notes that were not related in a tonal sense.

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And what you have to do is to forget about tonality.

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You have to let this sort of sound sculpture waft over you.

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The creation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique

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coincided with the birth of radio.

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For the first time, music was plucked from the concert halls

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and relayed to a public hungry for this revolution in broadcasting.

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But the music they wanted was distinctly less challenging

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than what Schoenberg had to offer

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This is Henry Hall speaking.

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BBC Dance Orchestra is going to play to you Piccadilly Rye.

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I think Schoenberg is probably the most important

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composer of the 20th century,

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and that's not to say he was the best,

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or necessarily the most influential in terms of his actual music,

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but simply the invention of serialism,

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and the bravery to explore that was something that has gone on to give

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licence to composers to do something that has never been done before.

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And I think that's what marks the 20th century out in terms of music.

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This hugely-influential figure

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was caught on camera in home-movie footage that shows him

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relaxing with his wife and friends and even playing tennis.

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He liked sports a lot, he liked tennis,

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he was interested both in playing and watching.

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He was interested in almost anything.

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It's surprising for people to hear that it was a normal family,

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that Arnold Schoenberg was also a normal father.

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And we really, at least for my part,

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and I'm sure for Larry's, too, had no idea who our father was...

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until after he died, which...

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I can remember asking him, "How famous are you?"

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"Are you the greatest composer?"

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I think my mother took over and she said,

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"Yes, he is the greatest composer." I think she answered it for him.

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Under the giants of Stravinsky and Schoenberg,

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the fabric of music was transformed.

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But this new music was difficult

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and prone to alienating baffled audiences.

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One man wanted to popularise the new classical music of the 1920s.

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And he came not from old Europe, but the brave new world of America.

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The son of a Brooklyn shopkeeper,

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Aaron Copland was the pioneer who made modern music easier on the ear.

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The New York City of the 1920s danced to the beat

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of jazz and show tunes.

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The young Copland was as fascinated by these popular sounds

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as the work of his hero, Stravinsky.

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He saw no reason why the two shouldn't meet in his music.

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Decades later, he recalled just how controversial

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this approach made his early work.

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Mr Copland, today, the jazz idiom is perfectly acceptable

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in modern music. Has it always been so?

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Oh, heavens, no. I can remember in the early '20s when I first made

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use of jazz in a serious symphonic way that everyone was quite shocked.

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I think it was mostly... The shock came from such a thing being played

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in Carnegie Hall or in our big symphonic halls in America.

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Jazz seemed to have its place and serious music its place.

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But you weren't supposed to combine the two.

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Copland would ultimately become known for works such as

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the ballet Appalachian Spring and Fanfare For The Common Man,

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which captured the American spirit and inspired a nation.

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However, the man who made classical music sound American

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had a European pedigree.

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Mr Copland, as a man who is exactly the same age as the century,

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you were in your 20s in the 1920s, and in Paris at that.

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That must have been a marvellous time. I think it was, yes.

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Having come sort of cold from Brooklyn, New York,

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I didn't really know what I was going to meet up with in Paris.

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I didn't know who I was going to study with,

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but I knew I wanted to go on with my musical studies

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in France for a while.

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Be in touch with the latest thing that was going on in music then.

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And it was a good idea.

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You see, the older generation of American composers

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had all continued their studies in Germany.

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That was Beethoven, Bach's country.

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But this was just after the First World War,

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and Germany was not very popular in our minds.

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And anyhow, I heard that Stravinsky was living in Paris,

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and I thought, "Well, if Stravinsky's there, things are going to happen."

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Flight 810 from Paris.

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On-board is Aaron Copland, America's leading composer,

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arriving to conduct the world premiere of his latest composition -

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Music For A Great City.

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One of the earliest editions of the BBC's arts series Workshop

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featured Copland rehearsing and performing the premiere

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of his Music For A Great City in London in 1964.

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We were opening up new frontiers, as it were, for music lovers.

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One of the things we wanted to do was to get to the question of process -

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how music was made, which wasn't being covered at all by television.

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They had a few concerts. Music was still a bit of a mystique,

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and I wanted to break down that mystique and show musicians

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were fascinating people, but that you could get at them.

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Yes, that's very good.

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You see, that's the part where the audience

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might think we're playing wrong notes,

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so it has to be absolutely right.

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And so we got an outside broadcast camera,

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and we went down to the town hall in Walthamstow.

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Watched Copland teaching his music to the orchestra.

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Can you make those chords just as sharp and short as you possibly can

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when get to the fifth of 94.

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Dee-dee, da-ba, da-da, da-ba.

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It should crackle with sharpness and precision.

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94, please.

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I'm going to make a little accelerando

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from 94 to the five measures later.

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Aaron Copland was a wonderful subject to use,

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because he had been a broadcaster since the 1930s.

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That was part of his equipment as a composer, was to be able to

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talk about music to music lovers who weren't necessary academics.

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What was musical life like in the 1930s in America?

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The thing that I remember best about the '30s was the...

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..sudden need for our music, more than had been true in the '20s.

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It's as if in the '20s we were writing our music,

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though nobody asked us to or expected us to write any.

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But somehow in the '30s,

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music became more democratic in the United States.

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I suppose it was the invention of TV.

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I suppose the recording of serious music for the first time,

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full-length symphonies, helped a great deal.

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The radio helped a great deal

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to make a great mass public aware of serious music in a way that had never

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been true before in the world's history.

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Boy, that's an enthusiastic house.

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God, they played that well.

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What an orchestra!

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While Copland was shaking up the stuffiness

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of American classical music,

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something similar was happening in Britain.

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Lancashire lad William Walton wasn't yet 21 when he wrote

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his first significant work,

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Facade, which he can be seen here conducting, at the age of 75.

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# When Don Pasquito arrived at the seaside

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# Where the donkey's hide tide brayed, he

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# Saw the banditto Jo in a black cape

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# Whose slack shape waved like the sea

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# Thetis wrote a treatise noting wheat is silver like the sea

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# The lovely cheat is sweet as foam Erotis notices that she... #

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Facade was inspired by the dance music Walton was hearing

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in the nightclubs of 1920s London,

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where he lived with the literary Sitwell siblings.

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The Sitwells hoped Walton could create a musical scandal

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that would earn them notoriety.

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When Facade came out, it caused a bit of a stir.

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I think the Sitwells wanted it to be a scandal,

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to set aside the scandal surrounding The Rite Of Spring ten years earlier.

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A lot of press came to mock - gossip columnists came.

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So the Sitwells were celebrities

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and Walton became a celebrity through his connection with them.

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Interviewing Walton was a good excuse for a jolly to his home

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on the Italian island of Ischia.

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But interviewers had to work hard when they got there,

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as this composer was a distinctly reluctant interviewee.

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The year before Walton died, Russell Harty coaxed him into reminiscing

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about the first performance of Facade back in 1922.

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If there is anybody in the world who has never heard of Facade,

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maybe we could just explain to them that it's your music,

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and Dame Edith Sitwell's poetry.

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And she, on the first occasion, shouted through something,

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didn't she? Yes, she had a megaphone.

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So they had this curtain with a big hole for the megaphone.

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And everybody was behind this curtain - the players, everybody.

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Where were you? Also behind.

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Were you conducting? I was conducting.

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And the first performance was in a little...

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It was in a little drawing room in Chelsea in Carlyle Square.

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Now's time to listen to a piece of Facade. It's not...

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The poetry is not delivered in this case by Dame Edith Sitwell,

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who is now behind that great curtain in the sky,

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but by Fenella Fielding, and this is called Popular Song.

0:24:290:24:33

# Lily O'Grady, silly and shady Longing to be a lazy lady

0:24:460:24:49

# Walked by the cupolas gables in the Lake's Georgian stables

0:24:490:24:53

# In a fairy tale like the heat intense

0:24:530:24:55

# And the mist in the woods when across the fence... #

0:24:550:24:57

'Facade, for me, was a...'

0:24:570:25:01

I didn't really think anything about it at all, to be quite honest.

0:25:010:25:06

And I was rather against doing it.

0:25:080:25:11

And of course then one happens to do something very good by mistake...

0:25:130:25:18

..which I think was the best way of doing things, really.

0:25:190:25:22

Part of Facade even became the theme tune of a 1970s TV quiz.

0:25:320:25:37

But Walton was still unimpressed by the work

0:25:370:25:40

that launched his career.

0:25:400:25:42

Do you ever turn to Facade again?

0:25:420:25:44

Not if I can help it, but...

0:25:440:25:46

LAUGHTER

0:25:460:25:48

But you must be pleased that it gives such a lot of pleasure.

0:25:480:25:51

Well, it keeps me.

0:25:510:25:52

LAUGHTER

0:25:520:25:56

You're able to maintain a facade! That's it.

0:25:560:25:59

"Fay-sade", they call it in America.

0:25:590:26:01

I don't think what you see in this screen

0:26:050:26:07

is really the real William Walton.

0:26:070:26:09

He projected an angry old man, and when you ask about Facade

0:26:090:26:14

and he says, "Well, I didn't really think anything of it at the time,"

0:26:140:26:17

I simply don't believe that he thought nothing of it at the time.

0:26:170:26:20

The idea that it was all somehow flowing over him

0:26:200:26:24

and he didn't care one way or the other - quite wrong.

0:26:240:26:28

Walton followed Facade with more conventional pieces

0:26:280:26:31

including his Viola Concerto of 1929, and the huge choral cantata

0:26:310:26:36

Belshazzar's Feast in 1931.

0:26:360:26:39

In the ten years since his outrageous debut,

0:26:560:26:59

Walton had gone from playboy provocateur

0:26:590:27:02

to Britain's number one composer.

0:27:020:27:04

Indeed, following the death of Elgar,

0:27:100:27:12

it was Walton who was commissioned to write the coronation march

0:27:120:27:16

for George VI in 1937.

0:27:160:27:18

That was the first of your coronation marches, Crown Imperial,

0:27:430:27:46

wasn't it? Yes. Wasn't that rather difficult, a composer like yourself,

0:27:460:27:50

associated very much with sardonic, anti-Establishment,

0:27:500:27:54

humour-poking, sticking fingers in people's eyes, to swing round

0:27:540:27:59

with a march like that and to come in on the side of the Establishment.

0:27:590:28:03

It was very difficult to do, I thought.

0:28:030:28:06

It took me a lot of trouble, at least a fortnight.

0:28:060:28:09

By the end of the 1930s, Walton was a household name.

0:28:160:28:20

The same could not be said of his close friend and contemporary,

0:28:250:28:29

Elisabeth Lutyens.

0:28:290:28:31

But, then, she was a woman trying to make it in a man's world.

0:28:310:28:35

Lutyens, the daughter of architect Sir Edwin Lutyens,

0:28:370:28:41

changed the sound of British classical music.

0:28:410:28:44

Her Chamber Concerto of 1939

0:28:510:28:54

is one of the most innovatory works of the period.

0:28:540:28:57

She started to teach me when I was 16,

0:29:000:29:02

and she was frightening.

0:29:020:29:04

I mean, she did something that perhaps we couldn't

0:29:040:29:06

say to our students today -

0:29:060:29:07

she said, "You've got no talent, so we'll have to find some."

0:29:070:29:10

I think it was very difficult for her.

0:29:100:29:11

She always said, and there was some truth in this, that at first

0:29:110:29:14

she was too avant-garde, and then she was old hat.

0:29:140:29:18

She said, "I've never been in step."

0:29:180:29:21

But the great works, and they are great works,

0:29:210:29:23

are very individual and are supreme.

0:29:230:29:27

They're intellectually superb but they're emotionally wonderful.

0:29:270:29:31

I think it's only now being realised

0:29:340:29:36

what an important composer Lutyens was.

0:29:360:29:38

And I think she had a lot of opposition in her time.

0:29:380:29:42

She was radical, she was ahead of her time.

0:29:420:29:44

As the frivolity of the 1920s gave way to the gravely-serious times

0:29:470:29:52

of the 1930s, the magnitude of world events forced

0:29:520:29:56

its way into music and composers had no choice but to politicise.

0:29:560:30:01

In a 1976 edition of Omnibus,

0:30:050:30:08

Lutyens recalled the turning point when music and politics collided.

0:30:080:30:13

The '30s cast a gloom over the whole country.

0:30:130:30:17

This misery.

0:30:170:30:18

And I think then in '33

0:30:190:30:22

there was the rumble of Hitler,

0:30:220:30:26

and what really had an effect on the whole of my generation

0:30:260:30:29

was the Spanish Civil War,

0:30:290:30:31

because it was the clearest-cut issue of my lifetime.

0:30:310:30:35

An elected government overthrown by a military regime

0:30:350:30:38

who calls on other powers to bomb his own innocent fellow citizens.

0:30:380:30:44

And that changed us overnight to a politically aware generation,

0:30:440:30:48

because it's no longer a question of the British Empire,

0:30:480:30:52

this was a question of just...

0:30:520:30:54

right versus wrong.

0:30:540:30:55

MUSIC: "Chamber Concerto - Aria - Adagio" by Elisabeth Lutyens

0:30:580:31:03

In 1938, Lutyens met BBC music programmer Edward Clark,

0:31:040:31:10

who ultimately became her second husband.

0:31:100:31:13

She was in love and about to make her international debut,

0:31:130:31:16

but the Second World War was only months away.

0:31:160:31:20

It was the best of times and the worst of times

0:31:200:31:23

for Elisabeth Lutyens.

0:31:230:31:24

I had my first international performance

0:31:260:31:29

at the Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music

0:31:290:31:33

at Warsaw, Krakow in 1939.

0:31:330:31:36

It was a very poignant time, cos going through Berlin,

0:31:360:31:41

one saw all the flags going up for Hitler's birthday.

0:31:410:31:44

Then we were really waiting for war, hourly, daily, weekly.

0:31:440:31:48

I mean, it was obviously inevitable.

0:31:480:31:51

Therefore, it added something of such anguish, and yet it was, I think,

0:31:510:31:56

about the happiest time of my life because it was sort of my honeymoon.

0:31:560:32:01

Four months later, war was declared.

0:32:030:32:06

All musicians were instantly thrown out of work.

0:32:140:32:16

I have the original cutting from the Daily Express.

0:32:160:32:19

It says, "There is no such thing as culture in wartime."

0:32:190:32:22

Which, of course, in the event proved wrong.

0:32:230:32:26

Lutyens continued writing during the war

0:32:320:32:35

and she experienced her first air raid

0:32:350:32:38

at the premiere of her Three Symphonic Preludes.

0:32:380:32:40

We came down and up to London for a few days,

0:32:420:32:45

especially for the rehearsals and performances.

0:32:450:32:47

When the performance took place, which was on a Saturday night

0:32:470:32:51

and it was sold out, we couldn't understand it -

0:32:510:32:53

we were suddenly pushed off the streets by the Air Raid Wardens.

0:32:530:32:57

We saw these little, tiny silver planes up in the sky,

0:32:570:33:00

looking too beautiful. We didn't know what it was.

0:33:000:33:03

Finally, we went because you can't be late to a concert.

0:33:030:33:07

The orchestra turned up, but only half the audience.

0:33:070:33:11

Then we couldn't go out in the interval.

0:33:110:33:13

The whole sky was blood red.

0:33:130:33:16

But none of us knew what it was.

0:33:180:33:20

Lutyens battled marginalisation as a female composer,

0:33:260:33:30

whilst also having to fulfil her traditional duties

0:33:300:33:33

as wife and mother.

0:33:330:33:34

And it was a period of enormous exhaustion.

0:33:350:33:38

The feeling of total lack of sleep,

0:33:380:33:40

because there's four children under seven.

0:33:400:33:43

I'd been spoiled in my upbringing.

0:33:430:33:45

I'd never peeled a potato or been allowed near a kitchen.

0:33:450:33:49

My mother quickly sent me a cookery book and she wrote,

0:33:490:33:53

"Say if you want to do an Indian curry,

0:33:530:33:55

"it's not necessary to have an Indian living in the house."

0:33:550:33:58

Which is absolutely no help

0:33:580:34:01

for bringing up four children with rationing.

0:34:010:34:05

One of my daughters feels I didn't give her a cultural background.

0:34:050:34:09

Considering that in six years she didn't know what hunger

0:34:090:34:12

and fear was on ?5 a week in a world war, I mean,

0:34:120:34:15

we were just wanting to stay alive one more day.

0:34:150:34:18

MUSIC: "Also Sprach Zarathustra - Opening" by Richard Strauss

0:34:200:34:23

CHANTING

0:34:230:34:27

As the nations of the world squared up for total war,

0:34:320:34:36

music was engulfed by the conflict

0:34:360:34:39

and composers were forced to pick sides.

0:34:390:34:42

This saw some musicians ushered into a problematic place

0:34:420:34:46

in musical history.

0:34:460:34:47

Richard Strauss was the most important German composer

0:34:530:34:56

of the early 20th century,

0:34:560:34:58

with works like Salome, Der Rosenkavalier

0:34:580:35:01

and Also Sprach Zarathustra to his name.

0:35:010:35:04

When Hitler took power in 1933, he harnessed Strauss's reputation,

0:35:100:35:15

making the 69-year-old composer

0:35:150:35:18

the president of the Reich Music Chamber.

0:35:180:35:20

Strauss was captured on film as the face of Nazi music,

0:35:210:35:25

addressing the crowds in 1934.

0:35:250:35:28

Richard Strauss was born into, and always was,

0:35:390:35:43

a high-bourgeois German, in fact.

0:35:430:35:47

He loved German culture and German music.

0:35:470:35:52

I don't think that Richard Strauss particularly had any sympathy

0:35:520:35:55

with the Nazis.

0:35:550:35:56

His obsession was clearly with the perpetuation

0:35:560:35:59

of the German opera house and, particularly,

0:35:590:36:01

his operas being performed.

0:36:010:36:03

At first, Strauss embraced his ambassadorial role

0:36:050:36:09

and even socialised with Hitler.

0:36:090:36:11

However, by the time war broke out,

0:36:160:36:18

he had been removed from his position.

0:36:180:36:20

He had defied anti-Semitic orders

0:36:210:36:23

by continuing to work with Jewish musicians.

0:36:230:36:26

He definitely did help, or try to help, his daughter-in-law,

0:36:270:36:32

who was Jewish.

0:36:320:36:33

He even drove to the gates of Theresienstadt to plead

0:36:330:36:37

with them to release her.

0:36:370:36:39

He didn't actively collaborate, he didn't do anything wrong.

0:36:390:36:42

I think that we see him as someone who was morally weak,

0:36:420:36:46

because he was more concerned about his own status than really

0:36:460:36:52

trying to understand what was going on around him.

0:36:520:36:55

Home movie footage reveals a different side

0:36:570:37:00

to the giant of German music,

0:37:000:37:02

as Strauss enjoys private moments with his grandchildren.

0:37:020:37:06

MUSIC: "Horn Concerto No. 2" by Richard Strauss

0:37:060:37:11

Like his opponent Hitler,

0:39:070:39:09

Stalin used the power of music as part of his wartime arsenal.

0:39:090:39:13

MUSIC: "Symphony No. 7 - IV. Allegro Non Troppo" by Dimitri Shostakovich

0:39:130:39:19

Dmitri Shostakovich was the greatest living Russian composer,

0:39:210:39:26

so was the natural choice for Stalin

0:39:260:39:28

to become the dictator's musical puppet.

0:39:280:39:31

Born a year after the Russian Revolution of 1905,

0:39:360:39:39

Shostakovich spent his early 20s playing piano at a Leningrad cinema,

0:39:390:39:44

before becoming a celebrated composer.

0:39:440:39:46

In the Second World War,

0:39:480:39:50

Shostakovich served as a volunteer firefighter,

0:39:500:39:53

but his most famous wartime contribution

0:39:530:39:56

was his seventh symphony.

0:39:560:39:58

The defiant piece boosted the morale of a nation on its knees

0:40:010:40:04

during the Nazi invasion.

0:40:040:40:06

In this remarkable, though obviously staged, footage,

0:40:060:40:10

Shostakovich is seen apparently composing his seventh symphony

0:40:100:40:14

in blockaded Leningrad.

0:40:140:40:15

It was performed there during this terrible siege by an orchestra

0:40:550:40:59

that was originally only 15 people.

0:40:590:41:01

People were starving, people dying in doorways.

0:41:010:41:04

The orchestra, I believe, were tempted by extra rations to turn up.

0:41:040:41:08

This ragbag orchestra was actually got together.

0:41:080:41:12

The performance was given, and it was broadcast, or blasted,

0:41:120:41:17

through loudspeaker not only to residents of Leningrad

0:41:170:41:19

during this terrifying siege, but also to the German troops.

0:41:190:41:23

So it was used as a political weapon, a propaganda weapon,

0:41:250:41:29

to try and make the Germans demoralised.

0:41:290:41:32

So, I mean, this is an extraordinary use of a piece of music.

0:41:340:41:37

It's probably unique in the history of Western music.

0:41:370:41:40

To write his music, Shostakovich had to contend with

0:41:510:41:54

not only the horrors of war,

0:41:540:41:56

but also the tyranny of the Soviet machine.

0:41:560:41:59

Stalin controlled art with such terror

0:41:590:42:02

that artists lived in fear of death,

0:42:020:42:04

should their work not meet with his approval.

0:42:040:42:07

Shostakovich felt constrained from writing anything that could be

0:42:080:42:13

construed as critical, and yet he definitely wanted to be critical.

0:42:130:42:18

So he developed this way of writing music which was sort of codified.

0:42:180:42:21

He used his own letters - D, S, C, H.

0:42:210:42:24

If you use the way, in music, we use those letters,

0:42:290:42:32

cos obviously there isn't an S, that's what it turns out.

0:42:320:42:35

Variations of that turn up in everything - in the Cello Concerto.

0:42:350:42:38

He uses variations of that as a kind of signature tune,

0:42:420:42:44

as a way of saying, "You will never stop me.

0:42:440:42:47

"I am here in my music."

0:42:470:42:49

MUSIC: "Symphony No. 5" by Dimitri Shostakovich

0:42:490:42:56

In 1974, an edition of Omnibus

0:43:090:43:12

followed the 68-year-old Shostakovich

0:43:120:43:15

as he supervised rehearsals of his fifth symphony,

0:43:150:43:18

conducted by his son Maxim.

0:43:180:43:20

In the film, Shostakovich discussed the impact

0:43:270:43:30

world events had on his work

0:43:300:43:32

and explained why he dedicated his eighth string quartet

0:43:320:43:35

to the victims of Fascism and war.

0:43:350:43:38

While music was being used as a weapon on the battlefields

0:45:200:45:24

by Hitler and Stalin, in one German prisoner of war camp,

0:45:240:45:28

it would prove a lifeline for survival.

0:45:280:45:31

Before the Second World War, Olivier Messiaen was a composer,

0:45:360:45:40

teacher and church organist.

0:45:400:45:42

When the Nazis invaded France in 1940,

0:45:430:45:47

the 31-year-old Messiaen was serving as a medical orderly.

0:45:470:45:51

He was captured and interned in Stalag VIII-A, where he wrote

0:45:510:45:56

Quartet For The End Of Time.

0:45:560:45:58

At the age of 77, Messiaen relived the astonishing circumstances

0:46:060:46:12

that led to the creation of his most iconic work.

0:46:120:46:15

Messiaen was released from the camp

0:48:480:48:50

a few months after the first performance of

0:48:500:48:52

Quartet For The End Of Time,

0:48:520:48:54

when a music-loving guard conspired to forge the necessary documents.

0:48:540:48:59

Messiaen became an influential teacher of many key composers

0:49:010:49:05

of the post-war period, including British composer George Benjamin,

0:49:050:49:10

seen here with Messiaen in 1987.

0:49:100:49:12

I think one has to remember that when he was there

0:49:150:49:17

he didn't know that he was going to be freed,

0:49:170:49:20

and, of course, people in 1940-41 had no idea the war would come to an end.

0:49:200:49:25

And so in these terrible circumstances,

0:49:250:49:28

in great loneliness and suffering, I think,

0:49:280:49:31

he conceived this remarkable, unique chamber piece.

0:49:310:49:35

Quartet For The End Of Time marks the first time Messiaen

0:49:440:49:48

incorporated the sound of birdsong into his music.

0:49:480:49:51

As if returning again and again to the time of his internment,

0:49:540:49:58

Messiaen wrote birdsong into most of his subsequent work.

0:49:580:50:01

The keen ornithologist and his wife were filmed in 1973

0:50:020:50:07

for the BBC's Full House,

0:50:070:50:09

roaming woods near Cardiff in search of rare bird sounds.

0:50:090:50:13

His music rings with a form of generous,

0:50:160:50:22

visionary joy that is completely unique in the 20th century.

0:50:220:50:26

What's strange is that he was a religious composer

0:50:260:50:29

but also a radical composer, so he changed the direction of music.

0:50:290:50:32

By his teaching he influenced generations of composers.

0:50:320:50:35

The Second World War had co-opted music as a tool of ideology

0:50:550:50:59

and used it both as a weapon and a means of resistance.

0:50:590:51:04

But one of the most celebrated pieces of the period was

0:51:040:51:07

a work of protest from a composer who refused to take sides at all.

0:51:070:51:11

Michael Tippett was the son of a suffragette

0:51:160:51:18

who grew up in rural Suffolk.

0:51:180:51:21

He used music as an expression of his deeply-held pacifist beliefs.

0:51:210:51:25

Appalled by Britain's retaliation in response to the rise of Nazism,

0:51:290:51:33

Tippett resisted conscription as a conscientious objector,

0:51:330:51:37

ultimately going to prison for a few months

0:51:370:51:39

for refusing to comply with the conditions.

0:51:390:51:42

Tippet's musical response to the war was A Child Of Our Time.

0:51:470:51:52

He used his major oratorio to explore the theme of

0:51:520:51:55

the individual's fate under the forces of social oppression.

0:51:550:51:58

# The world turns

0:51:580:52:08

# On its dark... #

0:52:080:52:13

Introducing a performance of the work in 1977,

0:52:130:52:16

Tippett revealed how it was inspired by real-life events that led to war.

0:52:160:52:21

The story that forms the centre of A Child Of Our Time

0:52:220:52:27

was based on a real event of 1938.

0:52:270:52:32

A young refugee, hiding in a great city,

0:52:320:52:36

shot and killed a high-ranking diplomat in an embassy

0:52:360:52:40

in protest against what was happening to his mother.

0:52:400:52:43

This act of personal vengeance

0:52:450:52:47

precipitated a public vengeance of such horror

0:52:470:52:52

that the only answer, if that's the right word,

0:52:520:52:55

was a third and total vengeance, the war itself.

0:52:550:53:00

# My home is over Jordan... #

0:53:000:53:08

It asks the question,

0:53:100:53:12

"What happens when individual acts of apparently righteous protest

0:53:120:53:17

"produce ensuing and colossal catastrophes?"

0:53:170:53:20

A Child Of Our Time, I feel, offers no clear answers,

0:53:200:53:25

yet moments of release, perhaps even of comfort.

0:53:250:53:29

These moments are the five spirituals

0:53:300:53:32

that come at special places in the score.

0:53:320:53:35

Moments when the performers and the viewers could,

0:53:350:53:39

metaphorically at least, sing together.

0:53:390:53:42

# Oh, don't you want to go

0:53:420:53:48

# To the Gospel feast

0:53:480:53:53

# That promised land...? #

0:53:530:53:56

A Child Of Our Time premiered in London in March 1944.

0:53:560:54:01

The piece was a sensation, and established Tippett

0:54:030:54:07

as one of the most important composers of his generation.

0:54:070:54:10

'Mankind has perpetrated unimaginable horrors,

0:54:140:54:18

'giving us very little ground for optimism.'

0:54:180:54:20

'Can I, in my music, remake that dream?'

0:54:230:54:27

Deep river, my home is over Jordan.

0:54:320:54:36

I want to cross over into campground, Lord.

0:54:370:54:41

I want to cross over into campground.

0:54:410:54:44

Clearly when he's writing a work like A Child Of Our Time,

0:54:490:54:52

he's making a plea for peace, for compassion,

0:54:520:54:54

for anything other than war.

0:54:540:54:56

A Child Of Our Time in some ways is the most clear-cut piece of

0:54:580:55:01

political music that any British composer has written, I think.

0:55:010:55:04

HE PLAYS PIANO AND VOCALISES

0:55:040:55:08

For the whole of my life, my creative work has been determined

0:55:110:55:16

by what is happening in the world outside,

0:55:160:55:19

and by what is happening in the world inside, that is inside me.

0:55:190:55:25

Michael would have got on very well with Bono.

0:55:260:55:29

They both try to do the same thing with music,

0:55:290:55:31

and use their platform, you know, to make political statements

0:55:310:55:35

and to try and stop appalling hardship around the world.

0:55:350:55:39

So he had a huge social conscience.

0:55:390:55:41

Determined to spread his message as far and wide as possible,

0:55:430:55:47

Tippett embraced broadcasting

0:55:470:55:49

as a way of reaching an audience beyond the concert hall.

0:55:490:55:52

For a 1964 edition of Workshop, Tippett got his hands dirty with

0:55:520:55:57

the business of actually directing a televised performance of his work.

0:55:570:56:01

Good evening, I'm the producer of Workshop, and before we get going

0:56:010:56:04

with this programme, I'd just like to tell you something about it.

0:56:040:56:07

It's based on the music which you can see and hear

0:56:070:56:10

being played behind me,

0:56:100:56:11

the Concerto for Double String Orchestra by Michael Tippett.

0:56:110:56:14

Michael Tippett is upstairs somewhere...

0:56:140:56:17

'That was one of the first Workshop programmes I did,

0:56:170:56:19

'was to show Michael looking at how cameras photograph music

0:56:190:56:25

'and getting the very best for his own work, the Double Concerto.

0:56:250:56:29

My feeling as a composer at that moment is that what is

0:56:290:56:33

happening is that it's been all built up from these cellos -

0:56:330:56:36

# Taw-dee, taw-dee, taw-dee-daw, taw-dee... #

0:56:360:56:39

And it's a feeling of growing from the cello line,

0:56:390:56:43

and not a feeling of anything cross-ways, you see.

0:56:430:56:47

Although that's an exciting shot,

0:56:470:56:49

I think we'll have to let it go. Yes, I think so too...

0:56:490:56:52

'The very fact that he was in a studio allowing us

0:56:520:56:55

'to film him talking about how to film his music showed

0:56:550:56:58

'just how committed he was to the democratic...

0:56:580:57:00

'In a sense, rather like Copland,

0:57:000:57:02

'he saw that television was a medium for good.'

0:57:020:57:05

The cellos lifting the music

0:57:050:57:07

until they're suddenly quite electric by the time they reach there.

0:57:070:57:12

I think his music is, at its best,

0:57:120:57:14

as deeply moving as anything ever written by an Englishman.

0:57:140:57:17

MUSIC: "Concerto for Double String Orchestra"

0:57:170:57:20

And four! 64...

0:57:360:57:38

Well done, chaps.

0:57:410:57:43

And fade.

0:57:430:57:44

# With a click, with a shock

0:57:460:57:48

# Phone'll jingle door will knock... #

0:57:480:57:51

No.

0:57:510:57:52

In the next and final episode

0:57:520:57:54

of 20th Century Composers In Their Own Words,

0:57:540:57:56

we hear from the generation of composers who came of age

0:57:560:58:00

amid the devastation of post-war Europe and America.

0:58:000:58:03

HANDS CLAP

0:58:030:58:06

Theirs was the challenge of reclaiming music

0:58:060:58:09

from the dictators who had hijacked their art,

0:58:090:58:12

and wiping the musical slate clean of any reminders of the past.

0:58:120:58:16

RAPID PIANO AND PERCUSSION

0:58:160:58:19

Amid the popular culture explosion of the post-war world,

0:58:190:58:23

these composers created a groundbreaking new musical language

0:58:230:58:27

which took music to its very limits,

0:58:270:58:30

before being brought back to the mainstream

0:58:300:58:32

to the point where, to many,

0:58:320:58:34

it felt like contemporary classical music ceased to exist at all.

0:58:340:58:38

Using all of these, we can build up any sound

0:58:380:58:40

we can possibly imagine, almost.

0:58:400:58:42

But not the sort of melody

0:58:420:58:43

that people would perhaps hum in the bath.

0:58:430:58:46

There's a sort of inner humming.

0:58:460:58:47

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