But Is It Music? (1945-1989) In Their Own Words: 20th Century Composers


But Is It Music? (1945-1989)

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MUSIC: "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1" by Sir Edward Elgar

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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

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audiences who knew where they were with classical music.

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But all that was soon to change.

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SHRIEKING AND SCREAMING

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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 to re-awaken

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

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..Dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah!

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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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Sorry, 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 you deliver these messages?

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In this episode, we hear from the generation of composers

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coming of age in Europe and America in the wake of the Second World War.

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Faced with the crisis of creating art in a post-war age,

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these composers took music to its very limits,

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before bringing it back into the mainstream again.

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Using all of these, we can build up any sound we can possibly imagine, almost.

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But not the sort of melody people would perhaps hum in the bath.

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There is a sort of inner humming.

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I don't think I can quite compete with the Beatles. They have a slightly larger public than I do.

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Classical music always means something that happened

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a long time ago, and this music's happening right now.

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Great Britain. 1945.

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With the country in ruins and a population forever changed

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by the horrors of war, a new cultural landscape was emerging.

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A month after VE day, Sadler's Wells Theatre in London

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opened its doors with a very British opera.

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It was a work that matched the desolate mood of the country,

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and it propelled its 31-year-old composer from the bright young thing

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of British music to a major figure on the world stage.

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Benjamin Britten is one of the most important British composers

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to have worked. In particular, his contribution to opera

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is absolutely vital.

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The scene - a fishing town at the end of the 19th century.

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The occasion - an important one for British music.

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London's famous Sadler's Wells Theatre is opening

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for the first time since the Blitz with a new work

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by the young British composer Benjamin Britten, his first opera.

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Peter Grimes is an intense psychological drama

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based on a poem by George Crabbe.

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Grimes is a gruff outsider,

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living in a claustrophobic Suffolk fishing village

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where the provincial locals torment him with false accusations of murder.

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# ..My sorrows dry

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# And the tide will turn

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# ALL: Grimes!

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# Peter Grimes...! #

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Peter Grimes was a watershed. The reception of it by the audience

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was immediate. It hit everyone in the solar plexus.

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There's no question that it turned Britten

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from being the promising young composer that he had been,

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into a world-class superstar.

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Though a relatively challenging work,

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Peter Grimes remained classical music as people understood it

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and offered reassurance that culture could continue in a post-war world.

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# Fond memory bring the light

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# Of other days around me... #

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Britten very rarely discussed his music on television.

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But he made an exception in 1968

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when he revealed that his composing career started precociously

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early, despite there being very little music at his school.

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There was no music at all.

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That's not quite true. At the end of each term, on the last evening,

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we sang some songs.

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-That was nice.

-That was very nice.

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That was the limit of our music.

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How come when you were nine, you wrote an oratorio,

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-and I believe you wrote an aria for God in C Minor.

-Yes, yes.

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I hoped it was a key He'd like!

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The social isolation felt by Peter Grimes

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had many parallels in Britten's own life.

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Britten was gay at a time when homosexual acts were illegal

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and spent the war in America as a conscientious objector.

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He was also culturally isolated, by opting to live

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outside the London scene,

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a choice he explained in a BBC radio interview.

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Why do you choose to live in Aldeburgh rather than in London

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-or some other...?

-I find big cities distracting.

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I find I like, I've always liked,

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the country life since I was a child, particularly the sea,

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and I have very deep roots in Suffolk,

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and I cannot work and live without roots.

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Benjamin Britten's a nice man. He do come on the beach in the wintertime

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if you're fishing and he'll stop and have a word with you.

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Ain't got nothing about Benjamin Britten, he's a very nice man.

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Bringing the mountain to Mohammad,

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Britten founded a music festival in his hometown in 1948.

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The Aldeburgh Festival, which is still going today,

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was thriving when BBC News visited Britten at home

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to hear more about his pet project.

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I think it expresses the tastes of two or three of us

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who have the pleasure and luck to live in Aldeburgh.

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Peter Pears and Imogen Holst and myself have rather strong,

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perhaps individual tastes in music, and the Aldeburgh Festival

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really comprises music and art of all kinds that we like.

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Luckily, after 12 years, we've built up a nice audience

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that likes the same kinds of things as we do.

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And if I may put it this way, everybody mucks in at Aldeburgh, do they?

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I'd like to emphasise that fact. It's not by any means

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just our festival, the few who select the programmes,

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everyone in the whole town -

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everyone is perhaps too great a word -

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but most people are involved with the festival in some way or other.

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The amount of work that is done by the ordinary man and woman

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in the street is incredible.

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I cater for my local trade. I don't even stop to think about

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what visitors might want.

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If I haven't got what they want, that's just too bad.

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In any case, they come in and their attitude is, "Have you got so-and-so?"

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You'd think it was Fortnum & Mason, not the village shop.

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Someone unlikely to pop in for a pint of milk was the Queen,

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who visited in 1967 to open a new building for the burgeoning festival.

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I have much pleasure in declaring open

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the Maltings Concert Hall And Opera House.

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# God Save the Queen. #

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Britten was quite guarded in television interviews,

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but a few months after the Queen's visit,

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the BBC went behind the scenes of the Aldeburgh Festival

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and captured a candid portrait of Britten

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as he rehearsed his new work, The Building Of The House.

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Same place, please.

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Quite a new mood.

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Shh. No, no...

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

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Absolute hush.

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Chorus, your first entry may seem in this very lively acoustic to be rather confusing.

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Keep going at the same speed that we've been going on.

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# Accept the Lord the... #

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You see? At figure five, "What men do build,"

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it's just a natural warmth as you go up. Don't let it

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flower into a sort of Tosca-like sound. Keep it quite hushed.

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If people can't hear what I say, can you complain? I'll try and support

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my voice. Straight in at four, please - "Accept."

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That's good!

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I've heard a lot of composers being rather rude about Britten, actually.

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He's not a composer that every other composer admires,

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in the way that, let's say, everyone admires Stravinsky.

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I think that's partly because his music is almost deliberately non-intellectual,

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and he does some very, very simple things,

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which work when he does them, and I think possibly other composers

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are a little sniffy about it, because it's the kind of simple trick

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that you can't really get away with unless you're Britten.

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I have a particular inclination as a composer to want to write music that is useful.

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And if someone asks me to do something,

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my inclination is to want to please them.

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While the austerity of Britten's music provided a fitting soundtrack

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to post-war Britain, across the Atlantic, it was party time.

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America was triumphant, brash and full of optimism.

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The musical accompaniment to these buoyant times

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was some of the best show tunes ever written,

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courtesy of the most successful American composer

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and conductor of the 20th century, Leonard Bernstein.

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# New York, New York

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# It's a hell of a town...! #

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The son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Bernstein made his name

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in the '40s with the musical On The Town and the ballet Fancy Free.

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But his craving for respect as a concert composer tormented him

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throughout his life.

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Leonard Bernstein's reputation has changed completely since he died.

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Bernstein was then primarily a showbiz composer,

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and people sort of, "Yes, yes, he's also written symphonies

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"but that's not in the same field," but now people are realising

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that his symphonies are in fact also important music,

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and his piano concerto, otherwise known as The Age Of Anxiety,

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these are pieces admired and enjoyed by audiences all round the world.

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Bernstein talked to Humphrey Burton about The Age Of Anxiety

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on the BBC arts programme Workshop.

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Based on a poem by WH Auden,

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the piece is a symphony for piano and orchestra,

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but Bernstein couldn't resist the show tunes that made him

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beloved of Broadway audiences.

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I can't play it, it's very difficult. My God!

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It's terribly difficult and some of our best pianists can't play it, so why should I?

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-Anyway, this is the scherzo, this is the party.

-It has a pop song in it.

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Well, it was a song I'd written originally for my first musical,

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which was called On The Town, and the song was to have been called -

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it was never used - but it was to have been called

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Ain't Got No Tears Left.

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You won't believe that, but that was really the title.

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It went sort of like this.

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Anyway, it did finally appear in the Age Of Anxiety in the scherzo,

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this way.

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My left hand won't work right.

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Anyway, that becomes a rather major part of the scherzo,

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as does this odd section.

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The Age Of Anxiety is one of several symphonies

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Bernstein wrote in a career that spanned nearly 50 years.

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I'm rather fond of that.

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He also wrote operas, choral works, concertos and chamber pieces.

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But what he's most famous for is the score to West Side Story,

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the 1957 Broadway musical that became a multi-Oscar winning film.

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It's just a shame they spelt his name wrong on the poster.

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# I like to be in America

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# OK by me in America

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# Everything free in America

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# For a small fee in America. #

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Bernstein's most remarkable appearance on our screens

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came in 1985, when BBC cameras captured a dark side

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of the genial composer as he conducted a recording

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of West Side Story with superstar singers Jose Carreras

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and Kiri Te Kanawa.

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Bernstein is, probably at some points in that documentary,

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at one of his lowest ebbs that I've ever seen.

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I think a lot's been spoken about why is he so angry with the singers,

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and I think what's being played out is the anguish within himself,

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and perhaps this sense that by hiring the top operatic singers

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to sing West Side Story, he will finally prove to the world

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that it's a serious piece of music.

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# ..With a shock

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# Phone'll jingle... #

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No.

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You're ahead of me. Pepe, watch me, not the music.

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And if you make a mistake, we'll go back.

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You know this. When you look at the music, you sing wrong words.

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Just look at me.

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Jose? Coming. Coming.

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Say it, "Coming."

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John! Please don't do this!

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Don't give elocution lessons over the microphone, OK?

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Maddening.

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32.

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32. Come on. Call it.

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-Something's coming.

-Take 130.

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I don't have numbers, Maestro, I'm sorry about that.

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I'll sing it for you.

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# Comin' to me. #

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131.

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# Comin' to me. #

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# Could it be? Yes, it could

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# Something's coming, something good

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# If I can wait

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# Something coming... #

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You went to G Major instead of F Major.

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Also, "If I can wait", you're not waiting.

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You're ahead.

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Maybe we should break and listen to it?

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Why not? Why not?

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-Take a break.

-Take 10.

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Carreras was very generous and said

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he didn't mind being pilloried for a moment

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because at least the public saw what the sweat and tears was

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that went into making a record like this. What would one give

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to have Richard Wagner rehearsing the Ring back in 1876,

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to have heard what he said, or heard Brahms,

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so we are lucky television has archived, as it were,

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Leonard Bernstein in a way that very few composers have been archived.

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By clinging to conventional sounds and making classical music

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accessible to millions, Bernstein and Britten gave the impression that

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music in the post-war world would be the same as it had ever been.

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But a new generation of artistic rebels had very different plans.

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Determined to find new sounds to match a rapidly changing world,

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they threw out not only the baby with the bath water...

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..but got rid of the bath itself.

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Every convention of music was called into question,

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as contemporary classical music became less at home in concert halls

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and more a form of performance art.

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The godfather of this experimental age worked in the same

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1950s New York as Bernstein, but to very different ends.

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As a student, John Cage was taught composition by the firebrand

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of early 20th century music, Arnold Schoenberg.

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The two ultimately fell out. Cage was convinced

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that music could be more than a system of strict rules.

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He freed himself from pesky constraints like melody,

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instruments and, in one infamous case, sound itself.

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John Cage is, of course, incredibly fascinating as an artist,

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as a thinker and as a composer.

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It is fitting that this radical pioneer was the son of an inventor.

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In his late 20s,

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Cage was asked to write the music for a dance called the Bacchanale.

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When playing by the rules failed to produce the percussive

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African sound he needed, Cage turned to his tool box for a solution

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and created what he called the prepared piano.

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I thought what was wrong was not me but the piano.

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So I went into the kitchen and I got a pie plate and I put it on

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the strings, and I saw I was going in the right direction,

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but the pie plate bounced around, so then I got

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a wood screw, with grooves on it.

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Then I put nuts that were larger than the screws themselves

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so they would rattle.

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For some reason, I knew that it was better

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not to have a collection that was entirely beautiful,

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but that it was nice to have some things in the collection

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that were distinctively not as beautiful as the others.

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That gave a kind of breadth.

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Under the influence of Eastern philosophies,

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Cage increasingly removed human control from classical music,

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resisting the romantic 19th century view of the artist

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as an almost divine vessel of inspiration.

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I came to the intention of making my work non-intentional,

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because I had no desire to express my ideas or my feelings.

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I wanted rather to open my mind

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to what was outside of my mind.

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And so I had to become free of my...

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likes and dislikes.

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Instead, he put his composition in the hands of chance.

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He would decide each note using Zen Buddhism,

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the ancient Chinese book of i-Ching,

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and even the toss of a coin.

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Or, in the case of this piece from 1957 - a wind-up toy.

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PIANO "RESPONDS" TO TOY'S MOVEMENTS

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I found he was lovely.

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Very easy-going, of course. That's the thing.

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You try to find out what he wanted and he'd say,

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"Whatever makes you feel happy." You know!

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And you think, well, no, I really wanted to know,

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but he won't say!

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But the only thing he did want to be really exact about

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were the timings on the stopwatch. Those were important things.

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When the BBC's Omnibus programme conducted an audiology experiment

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on a range of British celebrities in 1972,

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Cage's music produced extreme reactions.

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This is Japanese Macbeth music, I would say.

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Very spooky!

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Yes, well, this music goes with being strapped into a chair

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with things tied to your heart.

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And lights shining in your eyes.

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Ouch.

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In limiting his control as a composer,

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and giving sounds a life of their own,

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Cage produced works that strained the definition of music.

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His most famous piece is also the one he considered

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his most significant.

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But to some, it is an audacious act of musical fraud.

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Four Minutes, Thirty Three Seconds was composed in 1952,

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when Cage was 40 years old.

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It instructs the performers not to play their instrument

0:23:130:23:16

for the entirety of the piece's three movements.

0:23:160:23:19

And it sounds like, literally, nothing on earth.

0:23:210:23:24

The piece sparked a revolution in experimental music,

0:23:310:23:35

but two years before his death in 1992,

0:23:350:23:38

Cage was still being forced to explain his work.

0:23:380:23:41

What's the thinking behind 4'33"?

0:23:410:23:44

It's the making a situation where one generally listens,

0:23:440:23:50

to make it silent,

0:23:500:23:51

so that you can hear that there are sounds all the time.

0:23:510:23:54

Would you describe it as music?

0:23:540:23:57

Yes, because there are sounds to hear.

0:23:570:23:59

And to hear the ambient sounds as music,

0:23:590:24:03

opens the possibility to having music around you all the time.

0:24:030:24:08

Some people say that the music of Cage is less interesting

0:24:080:24:11

than his thoughts and writings about it.

0:24:110:24:15

And, of course, this can be argued.

0:24:150:24:17

But definitely he was a necessary counterpart

0:24:170:24:22

to all these extremely rigid discussions

0:24:220:24:25

of styles and aesthetics of the time.

0:24:250:24:29

He was almost like a clown in a court

0:24:290:24:32

saying things that you're not supposed to say.

0:24:320:24:35

Cage inspired a whole era of experimentation

0:24:370:24:41

in which every element of music was transformed.

0:24:410:24:44

The French leader of this avant-garde age

0:24:470:24:49

was Cage's erstwhile friend, Pierre Boulez.

0:24:490:24:52

However, where Cage sought to free music,

0:24:530:24:56

Boulez wanted to control it.

0:24:560:24:58

It's hard to imagine the world without Pierre Boulez.

0:25:030:25:06

As a composer, his music made an absolutely seismic impact

0:25:060:25:09

in the 1950s and '60s.

0:25:090:25:11

His way of thinking about music has been just unimaginably important.

0:25:110:25:16

In 1942, at the age of 17, Boulez was studying mathematics,

0:25:160:25:21

when he decided to pursue music instead, and moved to Paris.

0:25:210:25:24

Boulez was a purist in search of a new musical language,

0:25:260:25:29

and his early works were fiercely intellectual pieces,

0:25:290:25:32

governed by complex structures.

0:25:320:25:34

His music speaks a different language altogether.

0:25:340:25:36

And, at its best, it is an iridescent, poetic, erm...

0:25:360:25:41

strange and beautiful world that he invents in his works.

0:25:410:25:44

In one of the earliest of Boulez's many appearances on the BBC,

0:25:540:25:58

he visited the Workshop studio to conduct part of his piece

0:25:580:26:01

called Pli Selon Pli.

0:26:010:26:03

As a young firebrand, Boulez was an enigma,

0:26:090:26:12

both musically and personally,

0:26:120:26:14

so his television interviews afforded a valuable insight

0:26:140:26:18

into what made him tick.

0:26:180:26:20

Your music has been described, I think,

0:26:200:26:23

as mathematical, erm, computer music.

0:26:230:26:26

Well, that is very exaggerated. I mean...

0:26:260:26:28

I think it IS exaggerated, but these words have been used.

0:26:280:26:31

Now, the point I really...

0:26:310:26:33

Because people are...are...not aware how complex are the computers,

0:26:330:26:37

-I guess.

-Yes!

0:26:370:26:38

I am against this cliche that emotion and intellectual

0:26:380:26:44

cannot, er, be together.

0:26:440:26:47

When I first heard about Boulez,

0:26:470:26:49

it had a lot of the mystique of the impenetrable about it.

0:26:490:26:53

And he is an arch modernist,

0:26:530:26:56

and there is great complexity

0:26:560:26:58

and great intellectualism in his music,

0:26:580:27:01

but it's also incredibly sensual.

0:27:010:27:03

I am just wondering if there were a couple of hints you can

0:27:140:27:17

give us to understanding the language that you use.

0:27:170:27:20

Is there one final comment that you could make to help us

0:27:200:27:22

understand your musical language here?

0:27:220:27:25

Just forget all about explanation and just hear what you want,

0:27:250:27:29

and maybe you will find your way and when you don't find your way today,

0:27:290:27:33

maybe it will be tomorrow.

0:27:330:27:35

Two years later,

0:27:350:27:38

the BBC profiled Pierre Boulez

0:27:380:27:40

as he rehearsed and performed his eight-minute piece, Eclat.

0:27:400:27:43

May I hear that once?

0:27:440:27:46

PIANO / UPPER REGISTER

0:27:460:27:49

You see, that is too indistinct. Can you...?

0:27:490:27:51

PIANIST PLAYS AGAIN

0:27:510:27:53

Yes... begin, er, not too loud... but equal.

0:27:550:27:59

PLAYS AGAIN

0:27:590:28:01

No, there is no accelerando.

0:28:010:28:03

PLAYS AGAIN

0:28:050:28:07

Yes.

0:28:070:28:08

When I am hearing the combination of tones which sounds good,

0:28:200:28:22

I can just let the sound die.

0:28:220:28:24

I can appreciate the sound until the last moment.

0:28:240:28:27

One is not in a hurry to hear the music,

0:28:270:28:30

but one can just wait its own pleasure.

0:28:300:28:33

The same programme captured a peek into the solitary private life

0:28:330:28:37

Boulez led at his home in Baden Baden.

0:28:370:28:39

Have you been married?

0:28:410:28:42

No. No. No.

0:28:420:28:44

-Engaged?

-No. Also not.

0:28:440:28:47

Are you interested in the family life?

0:28:470:28:49

No, not at all. I must say, no, I am really, er...one person.

0:28:490:28:55

I cannot live, really, with family.

0:28:550:28:57

I cannot... I could not consider it.

0:28:570:29:00

While Boulez was using traditional instruments

0:29:080:29:10

for his musical experiments,

0:29:100:29:12

his German counterpart started afresh

0:29:120:29:15

with a very different raw material - electricity.

0:29:150:29:18

HUMS OF DIFFERENT TONES

0:29:200:29:22

I find it just a marvellous that nowadays

0:29:250:29:27

we can make sounds that we have no names for.

0:29:270:29:30

It means that all the magic that had been lost comes back.

0:29:300:29:34

LOW TONE

0:29:340:29:38

Like Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen studied with French composer

0:29:400:29:45

Olivier Messiaen.

0:29:450:29:47

Stockhausen was a musical visionary

0:29:470:29:50

and pioneer of electronic music

0:29:500:29:52

scarred by a disturbing childhood.

0:29:520:29:55

His mother was murdered by the Nazis because she was mentally ill.

0:29:550:29:58

His father went to the Eastern front

0:29:580:30:00

and never came back.

0:30:000:30:02

He, himself, was a stretcher-bearer behind the lines,

0:30:020:30:05

seeing horrific, terrible things,

0:30:050:30:08

all before his 18th birthday.

0:30:080:30:10

So when he emerged from all of that,

0:30:100:30:14

he was absolutely driven to be an artist,

0:30:140:30:18

to make the world a better place through his art.

0:30:180:30:21

And also not to wipe the slate clean.

0:30:210:30:25

He said that he couldn't write music which was four beats in the bar

0:30:250:30:28

because it made him think of jackboots.

0:30:280:30:31

He couldn't have traditional kinds of harmonies

0:30:310:30:34

because that had all that German history,

0:30:340:30:37

the weight of all that on its back.

0:30:370:30:39

In 1953, the 24-year-old Stockhausen

0:30:440:30:47

moved to the newly-established

0:30:470:30:50

Electronic Music Studio in Cologne.

0:30:500:30:53

He was determined to emancipate music from the prison of tradition.

0:30:530:30:57

The new sounds Stockhausen was creating

0:30:570:31:00

could not be represented by crotchets and quavers,

0:31:000:31:03

and his graphic scores looked more like visual art than music.

0:31:030:31:07

INTERWEAVING ELECTRONIC SOUNDS

0:31:070:31:11

INTERWEAVING VOICES

0:31:110:31:14

In a work like his 1968 piece Stimmung,

0:31:190:31:22

it was the human voice

0:31:220:31:24

that Stockhausen transformed,

0:31:240:31:26

changing the way it was used in Western music.

0:31:260:31:28

SINGER VOCALISES

0:31:280:31:33

The piece, which means Tuning,

0:31:330:31:36

is based on just one note,

0:31:360:31:38

and lasts over an hour.

0:31:380:31:41

Unsurprisingly, there were many who had difficulty embracing

0:31:410:31:45

Stockhausen's radical approach to music.

0:31:450:31:49

But the charismatic composer was not deterred.

0:31:490:31:52

Everything is melody.

0:31:520:31:53

If we try to integrate all the sound material.

0:31:530:31:56

But not the sort of melody people would perhaps hum in the bath.

0:31:560:31:59

There is a sort of inner humming.

0:32:010:32:04

It doesn't...

0:32:040:32:06

It can't be...materialised with the vocal cords.

0:32:060:32:09

But even the vocal cords can do a lot of things.

0:32:090:32:12

Why not? Certainly, I can make...

0:32:120:32:14

VOCALISES "NON-MELODICALLY"

0:32:140:32:16

Et cetera. You're doing it with noises.

0:32:160:32:19

And even if it would escape completely my physical possibilities,

0:32:190:32:24

it creates certain total impressions in our...

0:32:240:32:28

in our...

0:32:280:32:31

electric system...

0:32:310:32:33

and it begins to work.

0:32:330:32:35

I don't think, of an evening,

0:32:350:32:37

I would ever sit down and listen

0:32:370:32:40

to a piece by Stockhausen,

0:32:400:32:41

as opposed to anything else.

0:32:410:32:43

That's not because I don't think his music is great,

0:32:430:32:45

because I think it really is. It's simply because...

0:32:450:32:48

It's music of spectacle.

0:32:480:32:50

And Stockhausen is particularly interesting

0:32:500:32:54

because of what he dares to do.

0:32:540:32:56

He does the un-doable. He sends string quartets up in helicopters,

0:32:560:33:00

and that is just the start of it.

0:33:000:33:02

The old guard of composers was less than impressed

0:33:100:33:13

by the new era of avant-garde music.

0:33:130:33:15

What do you feel about the scene, then?

0:33:150:33:17

Do you feel the receding of the tide has left desert sands behind?

0:33:170:33:21

I think the receding tide will leave a lot of dead fish, myself!

0:33:210:33:26

And not very large fish.

0:33:270:33:29

Name a few fish.

0:33:290:33:31

I have to think people like Stockhausen, probably,

0:33:310:33:34

will be left gasping for breath.

0:33:340:33:36

I hope so, anyhow.

0:33:360:33:38

In spite of sceptics overseas,

0:33:400:33:43

Stockhausen was chosen to represent West Germany

0:33:430:33:46

at the 1970 World Fair in Japan.

0:33:460:33:49

His music was performed for five hours a day

0:33:500:33:53

in a spherical pavilion.

0:33:530:33:55

The Japanese would come in...

0:33:550:33:57

You see? They are very polite! LAUGHTER

0:33:570:34:00

It's true! ..and sit down.

0:34:020:34:05

And then it would start, the lights would go off.

0:34:050:34:07

It would start, and you saw in the hall -

0:34:070:34:11

I could always see it from the control desk...

0:34:110:34:13

LAUGHTER

0:34:130:34:16

LAUGHTER REDOUBLES

0:34:180:34:21

They would go like this!

0:34:230:34:25

Et cetera.

0:34:300:34:32

So even if they had never heard new music, it was exotic stuff.

0:34:320:34:36

As their music is exotic stuff to us.

0:34:360:34:39

Nevertheless, new music, old music - little importance.

0:34:390:34:42

What is important is, when they went out, they went out...

0:34:420:34:45

LAUGHTER

0:34:470:34:50

And I was very happy.

0:34:510:34:53

He did have a kind of guru-type status.

0:34:530:34:55

He became very important for musicians

0:34:550:34:57

across all sorts of disciplines.

0:34:570:34:59

People talk about him from all sides of the artistic spectrum.

0:34:590:35:04

So he really was a kind of a prophet in his own time.

0:35:040:35:09

SPARSE WOODWIND

0:35:090:35:13

Across all the arts,

0:35:180:35:21

Britain was slow to embrace the continental avant-garde.

0:35:210:35:25

But Boulez and Stockhausen's influence did cross the Channel

0:35:250:35:28

to two very different audiences.

0:35:280:35:31

Boulez found admirers among the music students of 1950s Manchester,

0:35:330:35:37

including Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies.

0:35:370:35:41

They shared his rigorous, intellectual approach to new music.

0:35:410:35:45

What Harrison Birtwistle

0:35:450:35:47

and Peter Maxwell Davies were doing in Manchester was they were

0:35:470:35:50

basically the first generation of composers who were

0:35:500:35:53

quite consciously wanting to create an avant-garde in Britain.

0:35:530:35:57

Both Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies are now knights of the realm

0:35:570:36:01

and among Britain's most celebrated composers.

0:36:010:36:05

However, Peter Maxwell Davies started his career

0:36:050:36:08

as something of a musical rebel

0:36:080:36:10

and his early work frequently shocked audiences and critics.

0:36:100:36:15

CACOPHONOUS PERCUSSION

0:36:150:36:18

RESONANT CYMBAL

0:36:230:36:25

When the BBC's Monitor programme

0:36:260:36:28

profiled a 27-year old Maxwell Davies,

0:36:280:36:31

he had an uncompromising attitude towards his style of new music.

0:36:310:36:35

DRIVING TYMPANI

0:36:370:36:39

A lot of people have criticised me

0:36:420:36:45

for writing music in which they find no meaning.

0:36:450:36:48

I take for granted that what I write has got a meaning.

0:36:500:36:54

I think a composer should be able to take that for granted,

0:36:550:36:59

otherwise he should not be in the business at all.

0:36:590:37:02

What does keep me awake at night is the method of expression,

0:37:020:37:07

the technique of composition.

0:37:070:37:10

This I think, is the composer's first concern.

0:37:100:37:13

For the most part, these modern sounds remained

0:37:180:37:21

the preserve of a niche and adventurous audience.

0:37:210:37:24

But that was all to change, as the British musical avant-garde

0:37:240:37:28

broke through into the mainstream from a most unexpected quarter.

0:37:280:37:33

Do you think that sounds like a robot, Dave?

0:37:330:37:35

-Probably a bit less of this.

-Maybe.

0:37:350:37:37

I think we ought to have more top because we're losing intelligibility.

0:37:370:37:41

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was created to supply

0:37:410:37:45

soundtracks for radio and television programmes.

0:37:450:37:48

Orchestral music simply wasn't right for the increasingly popular

0:37:480:37:52

psychological dramas and science fiction.

0:37:520:37:55

So the Radiophonic Workshop turned to technology

0:37:550:37:58

and non-instrumental sounds for their atmospheric scores.

0:37:580:38:02

Their most famous piece has been striking fear

0:38:020:38:05

into the hearts of millions for years.

0:38:050:38:08

MUSIC: Doctor Who Theme

0:38:100:38:13

The genius of the Radiophonic Workshop is that

0:38:250:38:28

in terms of avant-garde sound design

0:38:280:38:31

or thinking about electro-acoustic possibility,

0:38:310:38:34

what they are doing is absolutely as sophisticated as anything else

0:38:340:38:37

that's happening anywhere in the world,

0:38:370:38:39

it's just millions of people are hearing them.

0:38:390:38:41

Anyone who's old enough to have heard

0:38:410:38:43

the roots of the Radiophonic Workshop directly

0:38:430:38:45

were exposed to radical electro-acoustic composition

0:38:450:38:47

as part of our daily lives and nobody thought twice about it.

0:38:470:38:51

ELECTRONIC BEEPING

0:38:530:38:55

In a 1969 programme about modern music, composer Daphne Oram

0:38:550:38:59

explained how her stealthy experiments in electronica

0:38:590:39:03

contributed to the creation of the Radiophonic Workshop.

0:39:030:39:07

In 1957, I was asked to do some incidental music

0:39:070:39:11

for a television play.

0:39:110:39:14

And I did this in Broadcasting House by getting together,

0:39:140:39:18

in the middle of the night,

0:39:180:39:20

all the tape recorders that I could find in the studios,

0:39:200:39:23

collecting them together in one studio and working until they

0:39:230:39:26

had to be put back next morning,

0:39:260:39:28

sleeping a little bit and then coming back in

0:39:280:39:32

to do my normal chamber music work.

0:39:320:39:34

So, then it grew from that.

0:39:340:39:37

In an edition of Tomorrow's World from 1965,

0:39:400:39:43

Delia Derbyshire, a co-creator of the Doctor Who theme,

0:39:430:39:46

explained how the Radiophonic Workshop

0:39:460:39:49

created their radical sounds.

0:39:490:39:51

In doing so, Derbyshire inadvertently revealed

0:39:530:39:57

that British techno music has its roots in the bowels of the BBC.

0:39:570:40:01

Using these, we can build up any sound we can imagine, almost.

0:40:010:40:05

We spend quite a lot of time trying to invent new sounds

0:40:050:40:08

that don't exist already, that can't be produced by musical instruments.

0:40:080:40:11

But we don't always go to electronic sound generators

0:40:110:40:14

for our basic sources of sound.

0:40:140:40:16

If the sound we want exists already in real life, say,

0:40:160:40:20

we can go and record it.

0:40:200:40:22

The sound I want for the rhythm of this piece is a short, dry,

0:40:220:40:25

hollow, wooden sound I can get from this.

0:40:250:40:28

HOLLOW TAP

0:40:280:40:30

And then the sound for the punctuating chords,

0:40:300:40:33

I want the sound of a short wire string being plucked.

0:40:330:40:36

HIGH PITCHED TWANG

0:40:360:40:39

That's the speed we record it in the studio.

0:40:420:40:44

So we get the lower sounds from the rhythm by slowing down the tape.

0:40:440:40:48

DEEP BONG

0:40:510:40:53

And the higher sounds by speeding up the tape.

0:40:530:40:55

HIGH PITCHED TAPPING

0:40:550:40:57

These particular pitches we can record on this machine here.

0:40:570:41:01

And then all we have to do is cut the notes the right length.

0:41:010:41:04

We can join them together on a loop and listen to them.

0:41:040:41:07

RHYTHMIC MELODY

0:41:090:41:11

And then with the higher notes as a rhythm.

0:41:110:41:14

Again, we join them together on a loop

0:41:140:41:16

and play it in synchronisation with the first tape.

0:41:160:41:19

RHYTHMIC TAPPING

0:41:220:41:25

And over this we can play the sound of the plucked string,

0:41:250:41:28

which can be either in the form of the loop, like this...

0:41:280:41:32

CONTINUOUS NOTE

0:41:320:41:35

That's in synchronisation.

0:41:370:41:40

Or in the form of a band.

0:41:400:41:43

SERIES OF CHORDS

0:41:430:41:46

What the Radiophonic Workshop is really about is about a way

0:41:490:41:52

of hearing the world.

0:41:520:41:54

It's about a way of viewing all sound as pregnant

0:41:540:41:58

with musical expressive possibility.

0:41:580:42:00

And then having the technology or developing the technology

0:42:000:42:03

- they developed so much of that technology themselves -

0:42:030:42:06

to then realise the things they wanted to do with sound.

0:42:060:42:10

That's exactly what the early studios in Cologne or America

0:42:100:42:13

were doing the same thing.

0:42:130:42:15

# You've got to get me to the world on time

0:42:210:42:25

# You've got to get me to the world on time... #

0:42:270:42:29

The pop culture explosion of the 1960s saw the Beatles and Beach Boys

0:42:290:42:34

replace Brahms and Beethoven on turntables throughout the land.

0:42:340:42:39

One classical composer managed to straddle both worlds

0:42:390:42:43

with a little help from his friends.

0:42:430:42:45

John Tavener was a musical prodigy.

0:42:470:42:50

He was 22 years old when he wrote The Whale,

0:42:500:42:53

the piece that made his name when it debuted in 1968.

0:42:530:42:57

Where John Tavener begins is at a crucial intersection.

0:43:040:43:08

He's at Highgate School at the same time that school choir

0:43:080:43:13

is recorded singing the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten.

0:43:130:43:16

A few years later he signed to the Beatles' Apple Records

0:43:160:43:22

for his very wonderful and crazy work, The Whale,

0:43:220:43:25

and it's a sensation.

0:43:250:43:27

DRAMATIC CHORAL MUSIC

0:43:290:43:31

DISCORDANT BRASS

0:43:360:43:39

And you realise that he is that bridge in those few years

0:43:400:43:46

from the old world of British music to the new.

0:43:460:43:50

And it's a time where the boundaries are much looser

0:43:500:43:54

between concert and pop music.

0:43:540:43:58

JANGLING PERCUSSION

0:43:580:44:00

He became a sort of trendy figure before, you know,

0:44:000:44:03

composers were used to doing that sort of thing. They just didn't.

0:44:030:44:06

So he was someone rather unusual.

0:44:060:44:08

At the age of 27, Tavener allowed cameras to follow him

0:44:100:44:13

for an episode of the BBC's One Man's Week.

0:44:130:44:17

The programme reveals being a classical pop star is a tough life,

0:44:170:44:21

involving lounging in the garden

0:44:210:44:23

and cruising around in a luxury car for inspiration.

0:44:230:44:26

A great deal of my summer is spent lying on my back in the garden.

0:44:280:44:32

I find that I need a great deal of time to sit,

0:44:350:44:41

not necessarily to think,

0:44:410:44:43

but things tend to grow at the subconscious

0:44:430:44:48

and I work only in very short spurts for very short periods of time,

0:44:480:44:55

very intense periods of time but a great deal of the year is spent

0:44:550:45:01

- in the summer months, anyway - lying on my back in this garden.

0:45:010:45:06

I insist that I must leave time for me to be able to live well,

0:45:060:45:13

which perhaps my puritanical forefathers

0:45:130:45:16

might have disapproved of.

0:45:160:45:18

I doubt whether they would have approved of my taste in cars.

0:45:230:45:27

I've driven this one for nine months

0:45:270:45:29

and I use it often as a place to think about my work,

0:45:290:45:33

driving up and down the motorway.

0:45:330:45:35

There's something about the largesse of the car which allows

0:45:350:45:39

my mind to expand more freely than it would in a Mini.

0:45:390:45:42

I've no time for the romantic attitude that the artist

0:45:420:45:45

has to go out and starve.

0:45:450:45:47

That, for me, is worse than a castration threat.

0:45:470:45:50

I would like to see performances of music in country homes,

0:45:520:45:57

in churches, in caves.

0:45:570:46:01

In fact, anywhere but concert halls.

0:46:010:46:06

Pop festivals, for instance, they have a certain atmosphere

0:46:060:46:10

which one doesn't get in these rather dreary concert halls.

0:46:100:46:14

Tavener even allowed cameras into his social life,

0:46:140:46:19

which was a heady cocktail of dinner parties,

0:46:190:46:21

falsetto singing and drunken badminton.

0:46:210:46:24

I've known everybody seated at this table

0:46:270:46:30

since I was a student at the academy and although we all know

0:46:300:46:33

a considerable amount about music, we never talk about it.

0:46:330:46:37

I think we're usually far too drunk to discuss anything sensibly anyway.

0:46:370:46:41

HE SINGS IN FALSETTO

0:46:420:46:44

HE LAUGHS

0:46:560:46:59

-Try again!

-THEY LAUGH

0:47:020:47:04

At the same time as Tavener was hob-nobbing with rock royalty,

0:47:140:47:18

the minimalism movement of 1970s America was doing its own bit

0:47:180:47:22

to bring modern music back from the outer reaches of experimentation

0:47:220:47:26

and alienation, attracting larger, more populist audiences.

0:47:260:47:31

Minimalism symbolises so much about why 20th century composition doesn't

0:47:340:47:38

really exist within the categories of classical pop or whatever.

0:47:380:47:42

Two of the masterminds of minimalism were Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

0:47:420:47:48

Theirs was a simple, repetitive musical language.

0:47:480:47:51

The opposite of the complexity of Boulez and Stockhausen.

0:47:510:47:55

Unlike most composers,

0:47:590:48:01

neither Reich nor Glass wrote music within the world of academia.

0:48:010:48:05

They became two of the most successful composers

0:48:050:48:08

of the late 20th century while funding their composing work

0:48:080:48:12

with a variety of odd jobs around New York.

0:48:120:48:15

Reich worked for the post office and a removals firm

0:48:150:48:18

while Glass spent time as a plumber and taxi driver.

0:48:180:48:22

I think making one's living outside of royalty

0:48:220:48:25

and commissioned income was probably very healthy

0:48:250:48:28

and there's something very important in the jobs they did - taxi driving

0:48:280:48:32

and furniture removals - they are urban jobs.

0:48:320:48:35

He had music that spoke of the city.

0:48:350:48:37

It spoke of the difficulties of the city.

0:48:370:48:39

There were huge discussions all over America about race issues

0:48:390:48:43

and this was a music that spoke to that directly from the streets.

0:48:430:48:48

Steve Reich has won a Pulitzer Prize for his music

0:48:520:48:55

and has been described by the New York Times

0:48:550:48:58

as America's greatest living composer.

0:48:580:49:01

And it all began with a tape loop of just once sentence,

0:49:010:49:05

spoken during the Harlem Riots of 1964.

0:49:050:49:09

# I had to, like, open the bruise up

0:49:090:49:11

# And let some of the bruise blood come out to show them

0:49:110:49:13

# Come out to show them

0:49:130:49:15

SENTENCE REPEATS

0:49:150:49:17

It's a tape piece.

0:49:170:49:19

It uses the voice of a black kid who was arrested for murder.

0:49:190:49:22

# Come out to show them... #

0:49:220:49:25

SENTENCE REPEATS

0:49:250:49:27

I was approached by a man of the name of Truman Nelson,

0:49:300:49:33

who said he understood I did something with tape

0:49:330:49:35

and would I be willing to edit this pile of tapes that he

0:49:350:49:38

had of boys, police, mothers and so on and so forth, for a benefit.

0:49:380:49:42

And out of this stack of audio tape lasting maybe ten hours,

0:49:420:49:45

I heard this one phrase, "come out to show them"

0:49:450:49:47

- dee dum ba-duh dum -

0:49:470:49:49

which sort of grabbed my ear and said, "That's the one."

0:49:490:49:52

# Come out to show them... #

0:49:520:49:53

Following his early experiments with tape loops,

0:49:530:49:56

Reich investigated whether the phasing effect created

0:49:560:49:59

with tapes was possible with live performers.

0:49:590:50:04

In 1967, in desperation, the desperation of, say,

0:50:050:50:09

a mad scientist trapped in a laboratory,

0:50:090:50:12

I felt this tape thing can't be done by people.

0:50:120:50:14

Somebody can't get in unison with another repeating pattern

0:50:140:50:17

and gradually increase his speed until he's one beat ahead of it.

0:50:170:50:20

That's indigenous to tape recorders. People can't do that.

0:50:200:50:24

But on the other hand I felt this was a fantastic process.

0:50:240:50:27

This is a very interesting way to make music.

0:50:270:50:29

THEY CLAP IN UNISON

0:50:290:50:31

One man's minimalism is another man's monotony,

0:50:360:50:39

but Reich explained to the BBC's Saturday Review programme

0:50:390:50:43

why his music is harder to create than you might think.

0:50:430:50:47

If something is repetitious, as my music obviously is,

0:50:470:50:50

if the pattern itself is flat footed - oom pa-pa, oom pa-pa -

0:50:500:50:55

you are going to get bored and all the criticisms

0:50:550:50:58

that are made of this kind of music suddenly become valid.

0:50:580:51:01

To keep it alive, to keep it so that your ear is engaged,

0:51:010:51:04

you've got to make it for the listener and yourself

0:51:040:51:06

that it isn't clear where the beginning of the phrase is

0:51:060:51:09

and where the end of the phrase is and where the downbeat is.

0:51:090:51:12

In rehearsal, the rhythmic problem that we do have is where's one?

0:51:120:51:15

Where's the first beat in the measure?

0:51:150:51:17

And that's a good problem to have.

0:51:170:51:19

CONTINUOUS NOTE

0:51:220:51:24

REPEATED PIANO MELODY

0:51:280:51:30

It's not about writing very complex scores but thinking about

0:51:310:51:35

very complex ways of interacting with one another.

0:51:350:51:38

Rhythmic patterns that shift very subtly.

0:51:380:51:41

And that are incredibly difficult to coordinate

0:51:410:51:43

but whose effect is sensuous and marvellous to listen to.

0:51:430:51:47

I would hate to be involved with any of these groups

0:51:500:51:53

that do nothing but minimalism. It would drive me absolutely nuts.

0:51:530:51:56

I mean, there's no sort of input for creative imagination.

0:51:560:51:59

You're just, sort of, a motor, like a mechanical instrument.

0:51:590:52:03

You might as well be one.

0:52:030:52:05

Not everybody is going to like what I do

0:52:050:52:07

and it isn't one of my ambitions

0:52:070:52:09

that I'm going to satisfy everyone in the world.

0:52:090:52:12

It would be a foolish ambition to have.

0:52:120:52:14

Steve Reich's continuing importance is to show how porous

0:52:180:52:22

the divisions are between different kinds of music.

0:52:220:52:24

The things he's doing with repetitive beat based music

0:52:240:52:27

have had a profound influence on jazz musicians, on pop musicians,

0:52:270:52:31

on electronic artists for the last 30 or 40 years.

0:52:310:52:34

# Crazy, crazy, crazy... #

0:52:360:52:38

PHRASE REPEATS

0:52:380:52:41

Somehow, from Reich's obscure beginnings with tape loops

0:52:410:52:45

came a musical sound that struck a chord with the mainstream.

0:52:450:52:48

Harvard graduate John Adams had no interest in engaging

0:52:520:52:56

with the complicated musical language of the 20th century.

0:52:560:53:00

He wanted to write accessible, popular classical music.

0:53:000:53:03

Minimalism offered him the perfect tool for this enterprise.

0:53:050:53:09

Adams took minimalism to the max.

0:53:090:53:11

What Steve Reich started with small groups of musicians,

0:53:110:53:15

Adams continued on a larger scale, with full orchestras.

0:53:150:53:19

There's vibrancy to his music that I love. I love hearing it.

0:53:190:53:22

I love feeling, when you hear his symphonic works in particular,

0:53:220:53:26

that it's an organism on stage, that it's just absolutely moving

0:53:260:53:29

and sheer physical movement of the players.

0:53:290:53:33

You look at people playing John Adams, they're smiling.

0:53:330:53:35

And there's something exciting about that to me, as a composer.

0:53:350:53:39

Like Copland and Bernstein before him,

0:53:460:53:50

Adams wanted his work to capture the spirit of America

0:53:500:53:54

and appeal to the biggest possible audience.

0:53:540:53:57

I felt there were the tremendously powerful roots of feeling,

0:54:010:54:04

enjoyment and meaning in American music

0:54:040:54:08

and that the problem was that serious composers were simply unable

0:54:080:54:11

to utilise that because it was verboten.

0:54:110:54:14

When his major work, Grand Pianola Music premiered in 1982,

0:54:170:54:22

it was met with boos from those who thought the bombastic piece

0:54:220:54:26

was vulgar and sticking two fingers up at more challenging music.

0:54:260:54:30

I used to apologise for the piece every time I did it,

0:54:300:54:33

saying I really should take this piece behind the barn and shoot it.

0:54:330:54:36

But I no longer apologise for it. I revel in it. I enjoy it.

0:54:360:54:42

I think it expresses me, it expresses my experience as an American...

0:54:420:54:46

as an American musician and I think it's a lot of fun as well.

0:54:460:54:50

But the minimalist who has most successfully straddled

0:55:060:55:09

the worlds of classical music and mainstream pop is Philip Glass.

0:55:090:55:14

He rejects the idea that there is such a thing as contemporary

0:55:140:55:17

classical music at all.

0:55:170:55:20

I never think of it as being any kind of music, this or that, anyway.

0:55:200:55:23

I think it really is concert music.

0:55:230:55:26

I think that's a better way to describe it

0:55:260:55:28

because classical music means something that happened

0:55:280:55:30

a long time ago and this music is happening right now.

0:55:300:55:33

Glass has written operas, symphonies,

0:55:370:55:40

concertos and BAFTA-winning film soundtracks,

0:55:400:55:43

as well as collaborating with artists

0:55:430:55:46

from Doris Lessing to Ravi Shankar.

0:55:460:55:48

A particularly genre-defying collaboration came in 1989,

0:55:510:55:56

and gave an indication of just how far contemporary classical

0:55:560:56:00

composers had come since the days of Britten and Bernstein.

0:56:000:56:06

That was the top ten single, Hey Music Lover

0:56:060:56:09

by Mark Moore and his healthy-looking S'Express.

0:56:090:56:11

If you buy his latest single, you might be as surprised, as I was,

0:56:110:56:14

to find the B-side is a remix of the A-side

0:56:140:56:17

by the contemporary American composer, Philip Glass.

0:56:170:56:19

Philip, were you surprised to find yourself working with S'Express?

0:56:190:56:23

I think I actually said, "What is a remix?" Then I said, "What do I do?

0:56:230:56:26

"What do I get to do? What are the rules?"

0:56:260:56:29

It turned out to be pretty open, pretty freeform in that way.

0:56:290:56:32

We're going to hear what you did to Hey Music Lover.

0:56:320:56:35

# I feel, I feel

0:56:350:56:37

# Yeah

0:56:370:56:39

# I feel, I feel

0:56:460:56:49

# Yeah. #

0:56:490:56:51

My music has never been in a simple song form.

0:56:510:56:54

Like an ABA song with a bridge and all that.

0:56:540:56:56

In the way that when I heard Mark's music I recognised right away

0:56:560:57:00

that this was a kind of non-narrative song music.

0:57:000:57:03

So, it's very much the way I was thinking about music for a long time.

0:57:030:57:07

So, I had... There's an aesthetic sympathy to it I felt right away.

0:57:070:57:12

One of the things that's the most interesting, I think,

0:57:120:57:16

for the composer is this is the way composers pay homage to each other.

0:57:160:57:21

Thank you, Phillip Glass and Mark Moore. I hope it goes on forever.

0:57:210:57:24

While remixing S'Xpress is not the pinnacle of Glass's musical

0:57:240:57:29

achievement, the collaboration remains the logical culmination

0:57:290:57:34

of a century defined by a continual and restless

0:57:340:57:38

questioning of where, if at all, the boundaries of classical music lie.

0:57:380:57:43

The thing that's different in the 20th century is that composers

0:57:430:57:47

seem more fearless to break through these boundaries

0:57:470:57:49

or think what was previously unthinkable.

0:57:490:57:52

Historically that tends to be some of the most extreme music

0:57:520:57:54

but that's not always true.

0:57:540:57:56

There are composers like Britten who are rethinking things

0:57:560:57:59

in a different way that works within the institutions they were set up.

0:57:590:58:02

But the extremes of what the avant-garde in Europe and America

0:58:020:58:05

were doing or the minimalists,

0:58:050:58:07

I mean, they were thinking musical unthinkables.

0:58:070:58:10

And that becomes a defining trait of some of the music we value the most.

0:58:100:58:14

And from where we are now, the beginning of the 21st century,

0:58:140:58:17

everything has changed but everything is still changing.

0:58:170:58:20

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