New Nations and New Worlds Symphony


New Nations and New Worlds

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Vienna 1876. The place was a building site.

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The hub of an empire and the symphony.

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The Emperor Franz Joseph had decided the city walls should come down

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to be replaced by a prestigious urban boulevard - The Ringstrasse.

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Another Ring, Wagner's massive music drama

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with its Ride of the Valkyries, was being created at the same time.

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Two ground-breaking moments

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and both Rings took about 30 years to construct.

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The Austrian writer Karl Kraus said,

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"Vienna was being demolished into a great city."

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With a classical Parliament building, Athena presiding at the front,

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a Gothic style town hall, and a Renaissance-style university.

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But constructed before any of these, in 1868, was the Opera House.

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Music remained of course an abiding interest for the Viennese public

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and at the time debate was fierce about whether new music should be

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descriptive or abstract - Wagner versus Brahms.

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The symphony was at the centre of this controversy.

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In this programme we'll see how it emerged triumphant.

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How it became a vehicle for nationalist sentiment and gained genuine popular appeal.

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And how it became the means of intense artistic self expression.

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We'll also see how composers like Dvorak, Tchaikovsky

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and Sibelius came to the expanding city of Vienna

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and exported the symphony to new nations and new worlds.

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Why does a film about the symphony start with an opera,

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and in particular an opera by Wagner, who once declared

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emphatically that the symphony was dead?

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MUSIC: Beethoven's Symphony No 9

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The problem was how to follow a composer like Beethoven,

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who in his 9th Symphony in 1824 seemed to have taken the classical four-movement form

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as far as it could go with its ground-breaking choral finale.

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CHOIR SINGS

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Despite the attempts of his successors,

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was Beethoven the final word in symphonic writing?

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Richard Wagner certainly thought so,

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and when he held the first performance of The Ring, his massive music drama

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at his specially-built theatre in Bayreuth, he began it with

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Beethoven's 9th, as if to say "roll over Beethoven, now it's my turn."

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Wagner's Ring is a cycle of four operas over four evenings.

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15 hours of music telling the story of humanity from dawn to dusk.

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The premiere in 1876 wasn't just a musical event,

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but a political event, attended by crowned heads of Europe.

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Everybody who was anybody was there.

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But all the drama over The Ring made someone want to stand up for the symphony.

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Johannes Brahms, 20 years Wagner's junior,

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was a classicist who was ready to fight for pure symphonic music.

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The arena for this particular contest was Vienna's new concert hall, the Musikverein.

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The land was donated by the Emperor Franz Joseph.

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It was built by the Gesellshaft der Musik Freunde,

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the Society of Friends of Music, and opened in 1870.

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MUSIC: Opening of Brahms' Symphony No 1, 1st Movement.

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Brahms was from Hamburg in northern Germany, brought up in

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the protestant Lutheran tradition, although he didn't stay a believer.

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He'd been working on his first symphony for 14 years,

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all the time he'd been in Vienna.

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Brahms had already made it clear that writing a symphony after Beethoven's 9th was no joke.

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You've no idea", he said, "how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven.

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Although he was over 40 at this stage and had certainly taken his time,

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the fuss over Wagner's Ring had made him determined to finish

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the symphony ready for a premiere in 1876.

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After initial performances in Germany, Brahms himself conducted

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his 1st symphony here at the Musikverein on 17th December

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of that year as part of celebrations for Beethoven's birthday.

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The hall was packed, but not with the heads of state, who went

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to Wagner's premiere in Bayreuth.

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The decor may be opulent,

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but the Musikverein wasn't built for the aristocracy, but for the Viennese middle-class.

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When the hall was opened, it was the first concert hall in Vienna,

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real, definite great concert hall.

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And every new work was welcomed highly.

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The audience was very much interested in hearing contemporary music

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because at that time the only interesting things were new things.

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Brahms' new symphony was written for what is now the modern symphony orchestra.

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The music for this programme is played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Elder.

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'By the time he started writing his greatest pieces,

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'Brahms had mastered the legacy of Beethoven'

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and turned it into something even more muscular than Beethoven's music.

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But he had the vision of how great symphonic masterpieces

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could aim at the highest emotional planes.

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Every great symphonic writer takes an audience on an emotional narrative journey through the piece.

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For me, that's one of the definitions of a great symphony.

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MUSIC: Brahms' Symphony No 1, 4th Movement.

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The French horn - such a symbol of romantic energy - has an heroic feel to it as well.

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And this is something that possibly Brahms could have taken from Beethoven.

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But underneath it, the strings shimmer

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and that's something I think that Beethoven wouldn't have done in that same way.

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That sense of contacting nature - just like the romantic paintings of Caspar David Friedrich -

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is very vivid, memorable, and superbly well done.

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That contact with nature is then surprisingly

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interrupted by a chorale on the trombones and this protestant,

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perhaps Lutheran chorale,

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recalling Brahms' musical past, but also perhaps his own childhood,

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calms the soul.

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And from that sense of stillness

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sings the last movement's main tune.

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Now this tune in C major, the primary key,

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has a whiff of the great tune of the last movement of Beethoven's choral symphony

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that introduces the Ode to Joy.

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And when somebody pointed that out to Brahms he said, "Oh, any silly ass can see that!"

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Brahms' symphony was a great success

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and the enthusiasm was further promoted by music critics.

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The most important was Edward Hanslick,

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who also fanned the flames of the Brahms/Wagner debate.

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The rise of the critic here in Vienna was very important.

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It's inconceivable now, I think,

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to think of a major critic like Hanslick writing a long article

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on the front page of the Neue Freie Presse,

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which is the equivalent of the London Times,

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going on to page two and page three,

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about the first performance in Vienna of Brahms' 1st Symphony.

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Which he did.

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And people would read that at breakfast alongside international news on the front page of the paper.

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In his front page article, which surprisingly hasn't been translated into English before, Hanslick wrote,

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"It must be recognised by friend and foe alike, that no other composer

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"has come as close to the greatest creations of Beethoven as Brahms has in the finale of his symphony."

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Hanslick, of course,

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was very much a friend of Brahms and pure music and a foe of Wagner whom

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he felt was destroying melody and form in favour of philosophising.

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Wagner's argument was that music is not pure.

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One can use music politically as well as aesthetically to raise all

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sorts of questions about society, about people's psychology, what music

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does to them, what music can have an effect on an audience in this space.

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Just imagine the Gotterdammerung music sounding in this space against all these classical things.

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But the idea is to convey ideas with the music

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and Wagner is a composer of ideas.

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In 1875, Wagner himself had conducted

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excerpts from The Ring here in the Musikverein to build up

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an appetite for the premiere at Bayreuth.

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Mark Elder is demonstrating - perhaps controversially -

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that while Wagner was writing mythological music dramas

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for the opera house, he was also composing symphonically.

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In my view, Wagner was one of the greatest symphonic composers,

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by that I mean he invented a number, a large number of little themes,

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motifs associated with the characters, the actions, the events, even places, objects.

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And he wrote the opera, he set his words, accompanied them

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with this enormously elaborate orchestral texture.

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Can you give me an example of a theme he might use?

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Yes, let's look at Siegfried and Brunhilde, the heroine and the hero.

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When we first see them, their music is very, very different

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and it's quite clear which pieces belongs to which character.

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Here's one for Brunhilde... PLAYS THEME

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Tender, loving, affectionate, gentle,

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big intervals expressing big emotions but in a small dynamic.

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Now another one that he needs, of course, is to portray his hero Siegfried.

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Listen to this... PLAYS THEME

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All together grander, heroic, masculine in its strong rhythm

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and its clear cut idea.

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That little tune, short as it is,

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can then later on appear even shorter when she speaks of their love,

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the things that draw them together and he changes it to suit the occasion.

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Now this process of developing the characters of the themes is what I would call the symphonic process

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that he was engaged in.

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And by the time he'd finished the Ring he'd got the full

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flow of it and his attitude towards how he used these little themes

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and musical ideas to suit the drama became really loose, became

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very free and sometime we can't quite understand why that particular

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little musical idea is embedded in the jewellery of the texture.

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-So he released the themes from the story?

-A bit, yes.

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He did in order to draw out gorgeous symphonic music,

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to build up the themes into great architectural masses of sound.

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I mean really beautiful.

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MUSIC: Wagner's Gotterdammerung

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It's hard to appreciate now, just how divided musical opinion

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across Europe was and how polarised it became between two warring camps.

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Wagner didn't just have fans, he had worshippers.

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One of the most important was a young organist and composer called Anton Bruckner.

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Bruckner was a provincial boy, born near Linz.

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He became a choirboy

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and organist in the Augustinian monastery of St Florian.

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He was a very devout Catholic.

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Mahler described him as half simpleton, half God.

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His 3rd Symphony was dedicated to Wagner and premiered here

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in the Musikverein in December 1877, just one year after Brahms' 1st.

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The effect of Wagner is huge,

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not that Bruckner's music sounds like Wagner - it doesn't.

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It's much more bold harmonically,

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but Wagner showed him how you can organise huge spaces of music.

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How you could use harmony

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and expressiveness to fill out large spaces of time in music.

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It hadn't been done before.

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His symphonies were built with huge blocks of stone,

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gradually being built up like a cathedral, not a parish church.

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And of course for many people, that music takes them closer to their God.

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The great spiritual dimension that he as a man had is reflected in these enormous edifices, musically.

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The scale of Bruckner 3 - it lasts for well over an hour -

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is reflected in the urban expansion of Vienna itself.

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Between 1860 and 1900 the city trebled in size

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from half a million to 1.5 million inhabitants.

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The symphonies reflected more the fears of what was going on

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rather than the triumph, which is why, I think, Bruckner symphonies

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took a long time to get a foothold in Vienna.

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Brahms had described the typical Bruckner symphonies like a massive boa constrictor

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and the concert, here at the Musikverein,

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was a disaster with much of the audience walking out before the end.

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Bruckner's eccentric, monumental symphonies were eventually accepted in Vienna, of course,

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but both Bruckner and Mahler didn't really enter the international repertoire until the 1960s and '70s.

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Their symphonies are long, ground-breaking works - full of ambition, but also anxiety.

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Like the city in which the composers lived.

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This is Franz Joseph, depicted as Caesar on the front of the Parliament building in Vienna.

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Franz Joseph ruled over 17 distinct nationalities within the Hapsburg Empire.

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But many of these weren't that happy about being included in such a vast conglomerate

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and rose up in revolt in 1848.

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It was after this difficult time that Franz Joseph, then only 18,

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was placed on the throne and began his long reign of 68 years.

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But nationalist pressure wouldn't go away - many demands went un-met

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and nationalist resentment intensified, particularly in Bohemia.

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"A year ago", wrote a Leipzig newspaper in 1880,

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"news flashed across the German music world

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"of a miraculous talent residing in Prague."

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"What heightens the charm of Dvorak's compositions

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"is the sharply etched nationality that accompanies them."

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In the symphonic world, as in the political arena,

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nationalism was becoming a potent force.

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Dvorak's father was a butcher, but he also ran the local inn.

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So the boy must have grown up with the sounds

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of celebratory singing and dancing.

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His Sixth Symphony was written for the Vienna Philharmonic,

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but in fact it was premiered here in Prague in 1881.

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The Vienna Philharmonic didn't get around to playing it until 1942.

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Dvorak used Brahms' symphonies as his model,

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but instead of the typical scherzo or intermezzo movement, he wrote

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a furiant, a Bohemian folkdance that became his distinctive calling card.

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FOLK MUSIC

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What gives the furiant its bounce is the way it shifts

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between two-beat and three-beat rhythms,

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which stems from the nature of the dance.

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The man here is performing his masculinity

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and he takes advantage of this 2/4 measure

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to show how he is strong,

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how he is proud, how he is clever.

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And it's always during this 3/4 measure that it's the dancing

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in the couple and about the dancing of the woman also.

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Dvorak understood very well the nature of the dance,

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what was the spirit of the dance,

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so I think, in this way, he was very accurate.

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I notice that the dance was a bit slower.

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Dvorak speeded it up quite a lot, didn't he?

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Yes, because it was virtuosity that he wanted to show.

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But it was not written for a dance.

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So when you need to dance the music has to be slower.

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Why did he include this dance in this symphony?

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Because it had the meaning of the national feeling,

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so I think this was important for them to show

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the national identity in the music.

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What Dvorak is trying to do is to take the symphony away

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from the elite audience to a much wider audience.

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And, in this, he is a very modern composer

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although he's not regarded as that today.

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This is Vysoka, 60km south-west of Prague,

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where Dvorak had a summerhouse.

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He came here during the summer months to compose,

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to escape the pressures of a busy life in the city.

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The house remains in the Dvorak family

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and has been left very much as it was when Dvorak died in 1904.

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This is my grandmother, Dvorak's wife.

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when she married.

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She was 18 years old in this time.

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She was three months pregnant.

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It was unusual in this time but it was the reality.

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This desk, is this where he wrote?

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Sitting at this little table, Dvorak wrote many great opuses.

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-It's tiny, it's very small.

-Yes.

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The Eighth Symphony was written here in Vysoka.

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Very interesting is this picture of Dvorak's family

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on the steps on the 17th East Street in New York.

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Here is my grandfather and here are two boys.

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One of these boys is my father.

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You didn't know your grandfather?

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I was born 25 years after his death.

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That's a wonderful picture.

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This picture is Dvorak sitting on a bench

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and feeding his pigeons here.

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-Is that here?

-Here.

-It's down there.

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Yes. Yes, this is here.

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This has various scores on it.

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Manuscripts and other, yes.

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Dvorak came to popularity through his Slavonic Dances,

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following the success of Brahms with his Hungarian Dances.

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Brahms, of course, was imitating Hungarian Gypsies

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he'd heard in Vienna, but Dvorak penned his furiants

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and other Slavic dances with national pride.

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This room was the dining room of the family.

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Very special is this picture.

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Dvorak and his two friends -

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Tchaikovsky and Johannes Brahms.

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Especially Johannes Brahms was a very good friend of my grandfather

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and Brahms don't believe in God

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and Dvorak said once about him "How it is possible that Brahms

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"composed such nice music when he don't believe?!"

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Brahms admired Dvorak's music

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and did a great deal to help the composer.

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But, in general, the attitude of the Viennese musical establishment

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was condescending if not downright dismissive.

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For the Austrians, nationalist composers like Tchaikovsky

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and Dvorak were colourful, but not serious.

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Once, when someone expressed his admiration for Dvorak's skilful

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and brilliant orchestration, Bruckner said, "You can paint a pair

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"of sausages blue and green, but they're still a pair of sausages."

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In 1890 a young composer came from much farther afield

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to continue his studies in Vienna.

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Jean Sibelius came from Finland -

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way beyond the reach of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

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but Vienna was the place properly to study the symphonic tradition.

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He was a huge fan of Wagner, but also admired Beethoven's Ninth

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and Bruckner's Third and here, in this symphonic hothouse,

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it was inevitable that he should set about to write a symphony.

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And, as with Dvorak, it took on national overtones.

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Sibelius looked for inspiration to the Finnish national epic,

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the Kalevala.

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Elias Lonnrot, who compiled the Kalevala,

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published his final version in 1849.

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He'd travelled extensively into remote parts of Karelia -

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an area that covers parts of eastern Finland and Russia

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- where he collected folk songs and poetry from peasant bards

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and reworked these into a long rambling tale of over 22,000 verses.

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With the figure of the bard Vainamoinen,

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a sort of Finnish Orpheus, at its heart,

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the Kalevala became a major inspiration

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for artists, musicians and advocates of a Finnish national identity.

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This is the autograph score of Kullervo by Jean Sibelius.

0:29:180:29:22

From the mass of different stories and mythological characters

0:29:220:29:26

in the Kalevala, Sibelius focused on the tragic, anti-hero Kullervo

0:29:260:29:29

in his choral symphony.

0:29:290:29:31

Here you can see the programme text, the Kalevala, in the score.

0:29:310:29:38

Here we go.

0:29:380:29:39

Here we go, here is the first.

0:29:390:29:42

It's always so exciting.

0:29:420:29:43

Music page.

0:29:430:29:45

Now, why was the Kalevala so important

0:29:450:29:48

to Finnish national aspirations?

0:29:480:29:53

First of all because it was in Finnish

0:29:530:29:56

and it was Finnish folk poetry.

0:29:560:29:59

It has been said that Kalevala showed to us Finns

0:29:590:30:03

that Finland had its own history

0:30:030:30:06

already before the Christian era, or the Swedish or the Russian era.

0:30:060:30:13

After six centuries of Swedish domination, the Grand Duchy

0:30:190:30:23

of Finland became part of the Russian Empire in 1809 and Helsinki

0:30:230:30:27

became something of a showcase for the Russian emperor Alexander I.

0:30:270:30:31

The central Senate Square of the city

0:30:310:30:34

is very much in the St Petersburg style.

0:30:340:30:36

This statue of Alexander II was built in 1894.

0:30:360:30:41

He was remembered as "the good tsar", a reformer.

0:30:410:30:44

Unlike most nationalities within the Russian Empire,

0:30:440:30:47

the Finns enjoyed a degree of autonomy, but during the 1890s,

0:30:470:30:50

the Russians began to limit this and this inevitably fuelled

0:30:500:30:54

the Finnish nationalist movement.

0:30:540:30:56

With Kullervo written in 1892 and, of course, Finlandia,

0:30:560:31:00

his patriotic piece par excellence, which was composed in 1899,

0:31:000:31:04

Sibelius found himself a national, even nationalist figure.

0:31:040:31:08

This painting, called Symposium, depicts a gathering of artists

0:31:110:31:14

and musicians of the time.

0:31:140:31:16

It shows Sibelius on the right, Robert Kajanus,

0:31:160:31:19

who conducted the premiere of the Kullervo Symphony, next to him.

0:31:190:31:22

The figure worse for wear is a music critic,

0:31:220:31:25

oblivious to everything and the fourth character

0:31:250:31:27

is the artist himself, Akseli Gallen-Kallela,

0:31:270:31:30

a good friend of Sibelius.

0:31:300:31:33

He is famous for his Kalevala paintings

0:31:330:31:36

and I went to the Ateneum Gallery to find out more.

0:31:360:31:38

There are statistics about the popularity of Kalevala stories

0:31:420:31:47

in Finnish art, visual art and culture in general

0:31:470:31:53

and through all times, Kullervo, his very tragic story,

0:31:530:31:58

has been the most popular story and motif from Kalevala.

0:31:580:32:02

And thinking about the times when Kullervo has been most popular

0:32:020:32:07

was exactly the time of young Sibelius, young Gallen-Kallela,

0:32:070:32:12

the turn of the 19th century, 1890s.

0:32:120:32:15

So there is a strong link to the times

0:32:150:32:19

when Finnish national identity was being threatened.

0:32:190:32:23

Sibelius' Kullervo Symphony tells the tragic story

0:32:340:32:38

of Kullervo seducing a woman he meets,

0:32:380:32:41

who he finds out later is his sister.

0:32:410:32:42

But Sibelius' depiction of this, with its aggressive brass,

0:32:420:32:45

is remarkable in 19th century music

0:32:450:32:47

and makes it sound more like rape than seduction.

0:32:470:32:50

Here we arrive at the climax of the third movement,

0:32:550:32:58

the very powerful culmination of the movement.

0:32:580:33:02

-Ah, yes, all the brass here playing very, very loudly indeed.

-Yes.

0:33:020:33:06

Sibelius arrived just at the right time

0:33:260:33:29

as the Finns were really dying to get out from underneath

0:33:290:33:33

the yoke of being dominated and run by Russia.

0:33:330:33:37

And there was this extraordinary rough, wild, undisciplined,

0:33:370:33:43

unreliable individual.

0:33:430:33:46

And he found, through his long life, a way to express

0:33:460:33:52

the feeling in his people and in his love for his country.

0:33:520:33:57

But he never wanted to be thought of as a nationalist composer,

0:33:570:34:01

he never wanted to have a political message.

0:34:010:34:04

His music came from his own rigour inside himself

0:34:040:34:07

that he eventually worked at and found,

0:34:070:34:10

and through his own natural gifts of drama in music.

0:34:100:34:14

Sibelius wanted his music to express a nationalism,

0:35:030:35:07

but also be internationally

0:35:070:35:10

well-known as well.

0:35:100:35:12

And he was so popular in England and America

0:35:120:35:15

because, unlike Germany, these two countries also did not have

0:35:150:35:20

a great institutional musical culture behind them.

0:35:200:35:24

When you think about Germany, an opera house in every city,

0:35:240:35:27

a symphony orchestra and so forth, it's not the case in England

0:35:270:35:30

and it's certainly not the case in America.

0:35:300:35:33

So you have someone with Beethovenian ambitions

0:35:330:35:35

trying to establish something meaningful in the symphony

0:35:350:35:39

that is an alternative to the German tradition.

0:35:390:35:42

MUSIC: Sibelius' Symphony No. 2

0:35:420:35:44

In 1907, Gustav Mahler came to Helsinki

0:36:340:36:37

to conduct a concert

0:36:370:36:38

and he met the painter Gallen-Kallela,

0:36:380:36:41

whom he knew from an exhibition in Vienna,

0:36:410:36:43

and he met Sibelius.

0:36:430:36:45

Taking a walk one day, the two composers discussed symphonic form.

0:36:450:36:50

Sibelius said that he admired the severity and logic of the form

0:36:500:36:53

that created inner connections between the motifs.

0:36:530:36:57

Mahler replied that his opinion was very different.

0:36:570:37:00

"A symphony should be like the world," he said.

0:37:000:37:03

"It should embrace everything."

0:37:030:37:06

MUSIC: Mahler's Symphony No.2, 1st Movement

0:37:060:37:09

This is the Secession building in Vienna,

0:37:400:37:43

one of the finest examples of an artistic movement

0:37:430:37:46

known as jugendstil, the Young Style.

0:37:460:37:48

And here is Gustav Mahler as a heroic knight in shining armour,

0:37:480:37:53

painted by his friend Gustav Klimt.

0:37:530:37:56

This frieze, which pictures Beethoven's 9th Symphony

0:37:560:37:59

as seen through Wagner's eyes, was painted

0:37:590:38:02

for a great Beethoven exhibition in 1902

0:38:020:38:04

at which Mahler conducted an arrangement of the 9th Symphony.

0:38:040:38:08

Mahler's 3rd symphony picks up on the idea

0:38:080:38:11

of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. But as well as harking back to that,

0:38:110:38:15

it looks out with ferocious energy onto a new world.

0:38:150:38:18

Klimt's vision, like Mahler's, is a very personal one.

0:38:270:38:31

The first wall represents heroic ambition.

0:38:310:38:34

Featuring Mahler, of course.

0:38:340:38:36

The second wall represents the obstacles that mankind

0:38:360:38:41

has to overcome, including animal instincts.

0:38:410:38:43

And the final section, taking its cue from Schiller's lyrics

0:38:430:38:47

in the Ode to Joy,

0:38:470:38:48

shows the kiss to the whole world

0:38:480:38:50

that comes at the end of Beethoven's 9th.

0:38:500:38:52

Mahler's 3rd is a symphony that pushed the form to its limits.

0:39:070:39:10

It has six movements and at nearly 100 minutes in length,

0:39:100:39:13

it's one of the longest symphonies in the repertoire.

0:39:130:39:16

The first movement represents the unstoppable forces of nature.

0:39:160:39:20

Summer is the victor amidst all that is blooming and growing.

0:39:200:39:24

It's about the whole of creation. Mahler moves on to flowers, animals,

0:39:240:39:28

mankind and the angels.

0:39:280:39:29

But, of course, it's really about Mahler himself.

0:39:290:39:32

This, after all, is the Vienna of Freud

0:39:320:39:35

and the symphony has become a vehicle for self expression

0:39:350:39:38

and a picture of the artist's vision of the world around him.

0:39:380:39:41

Music: Mahler's Symphony No.3, 1st Movement

0:39:410:39:44

Mahler was fascinated at the opportunity

0:40:000:40:02

of stretching the orchestra,

0:40:020:40:05

making it do things that no one else had dared go to.

0:40:050:40:09

And his interest in these very, very extreme sound worlds

0:40:090:40:13

came from everything that he was, a very complex personality.

0:40:130:40:18

A man who gave up his Jewish faith to become a Christian,

0:40:180:40:21

to help himself do better in Vienna and run the opera.

0:40:210:40:25

A man who was brought up in a tiny village, way out in the countryside

0:40:250:40:28

that had a very substantial barracks in it.

0:40:280:40:30

And so his childhood was full of military marching music

0:40:300:40:34

and strange, out of tune fanfares.

0:40:340:40:37

Now this is pretty rare, isn't it, everybody?

0:40:370:40:40

This little word - roh!

0:40:400:40:42

It does not stand for Royal Opera House.

0:40:420:40:45

It stands for the word which means unrefined.

0:40:450:40:48

Raw, yeah?

0:40:480:40:50

Strident.

0:40:500:40:51

It's not so much that it needs to be very loud,

0:40:510:40:53

it just needs to have a particular bite or edge to it, doesn't it?

0:40:530:40:57

Tuk! Tuk! Tuk! Yeah?

0:40:570:40:59

Not wholly musical. Can I hear it? Two, three, four...

0:40:590:41:03

ORCHESTRA PLAYS

0:41:030:41:05

ORCHESTRA STOPS PLAYING

0:41:070:41:09

OK, good. That's better.

0:41:090:41:11

If the horns are a bit softer and a little bit edgier,

0:41:110:41:15

I think it would be better. And also earlier.

0:41:150:41:18

It's late. Two, three, four...

0:41:180:41:20

ORCHESTRA PLAYS

0:41:200:41:22

Let me just address what the oboes are going to do.

0:41:270:41:30

Could I just hear it, the three Fs?

0:41:300:41:32

OBOES PLAY

0:41:320:41:34

Yeah, yeah.

0:41:340:41:36

It says "grell." Well, that just means shrill.

0:41:360:41:40

This sounds like loud oboe playing. Sounds great, sounds quality.

0:41:400:41:43

It shouldn't sound quality, it should sound strident

0:41:430:41:46

and exaggerated. It's been suggested that the best way

0:41:460:41:49

to do it is to actually put the reed further in the mouth.

0:41:490:41:52

Just put it all further in. Would you try that?

0:41:520:41:55

Don't worry if it sounds distorted, that's what he wants.

0:41:550:41:58

One, two, three...

0:41:580:41:59

OBOES PLAY SHRILLY

0:41:590:42:02

That's it, that's better.

0:42:030:42:06

LAUGHTER

0:42:060:42:07

One, two, three...

0:42:070:42:09

ORCHESTRA PLAYS

0:42:090:42:11

'What he was trying to do was experiment'

0:42:290:42:32

with how far the orchestra could be taken

0:42:320:42:35

and in this way, of course, he was a great successor to Berlioz

0:42:350:42:38

who wanted to do the same thing in his time.

0:42:380:42:41

And in a way, that makes Mahler the first

0:42:410:42:43

of the great 20th century composers.

0:42:430:42:46

Mahler composed during his holidays.

0:43:290:43:31

His day job was here,

0:43:310:43:33

as conductor and director of the Court Opera.

0:43:330:43:37

Born in Bohemia and raised as a Jew, Mahler was always the outsider.

0:43:370:43:40

Being a Jew, he said, was like being born with a short arm

0:43:400:43:43

and having to swim twice as hard.

0:43:430:43:45

Indeed, despite his obvious talents,

0:43:450:43:47

he came up against anti-Semitism.

0:43:470:43:50

But salvation was at hand.

0:43:500:43:51

Symphonic culture had become all the rage a thousand miles away

0:43:510:43:55

and Mahler, along with nationalist composers Dvorak, Tchaikovsky

0:43:550:43:58

and Sibelius, was imported to plant the seed of a new musical culture.

0:43:580:44:03

MUSIC: Dvorak's Symphony No.9, 'New World'

0:44:030:44:06

America, and particularly New York, provided a new

0:44:190:44:22

and highly lucrative market for European musical culture.

0:44:220:44:25

Tchaikovsky was invited to attend

0:44:250:44:27

the opening of the Carnegie Hall in 1891,

0:44:270:44:29

Mahler came to conduct the New York Symphony Orchestra

0:44:290:44:32

and The Metropolitan Opera, and Dvorak was asked to head The National Conservatory

0:44:320:44:37

where his annual salary of 15,000 was nearly 30 times more

0:44:370:44:40

than he was earning at the conservatoire in Prague.

0:44:400:44:43

Most significantly however,

0:44:430:44:46

it was here in New York that Dvorak composed his symphony No 9,

0:44:460:44:50

from the New World which was premiered in 1893.

0:44:500:44:54

Clive, on Dec 16, 1893,

0:45:400:45:45

the New World Symphony was premiered here at Carnegie Hall.

0:45:450:45:48

First of all, can you tell me something about Mr Carnegie?

0:45:480:45:51

He was possibly the most successful industrialist of his age.

0:45:510:45:55

At one time, he was reckoned to be the richest man in the world.

0:45:550:45:57

He was a steelmaker, but also an unbelievable philanthropist

0:45:570:46:01

and, of course, he created Carnegie Hall.

0:46:010:46:03

But that came about because his wife sang in a chorus

0:46:030:46:06

and there was no concert hall. So, as you do,

0:46:060:46:09

she asked him to build a concert hall for her.

0:46:090:46:11

Instead of going to the greatest architect of the day,

0:46:110:46:14

he went to the guy who was treasurer of the choral society.

0:46:140:46:18

He was a cellist, he was a musician, he wasn't well known.

0:46:180:46:20

He asked him to build a concert hall. He'd never built one

0:46:200:46:23

in his life before. He sent him to Europe to look at all the concert halls

0:46:230:46:27

and he came back and built something unlike anything he'd seen.

0:46:270:46:30

Now the concert itself, it was conducted by Anton Seidl

0:46:300:46:33

-who was a big international figure.

-Absolutely.

0:46:330:46:36

He was assistant to Hans Richter,

0:46:360:46:38

assisted with conducting the Ring Cycle in Bayreuth.

0:46:380:46:41

He came here, in fact he was a great Wagnerian, so he conducted

0:46:410:46:44

a lot of Wagner here as well. So he made a huge impact here.

0:46:440:46:48

He was the most important musician in New York.

0:46:480:46:50

Despite being built by a novice,

0:46:500:46:53

Carnegie Hall was praised for its acoustics and it soon became

0:46:530:46:56

the landmark in American cultural life that it remains today.

0:46:560:47:00

All across America,

0:47:010:47:02

in Boston and Chicago, for instance, symphony halls were built

0:47:020:47:06

and a new entrepreneurial and middle class

0:47:060:47:08

went to the symphony to hear symphonies.

0:47:080:47:11

And Dvorak was there to help them

0:47:110:47:13

Americanise a European musical culture.

0:47:130:47:16

Dvorak was important

0:47:370:47:39

because, as a Czech, he had created Czech culture,

0:47:390:47:43

by, in a sense, taking international culture, which was really German,

0:47:430:47:48

taking out the Germanisms and putting in Czechisms.

0:47:480:47:51

It was hoped that he would come to the United States, take out the Czechisms, put in Americanisms

0:47:510:47:56

and be a kind of object lesson for American composers

0:47:560:47:59

about how one makes national music that belongs to them,

0:47:590:48:03

rather than to some other distant culture.

0:48:030:48:06

Dvorak stayed in America for two and a half years.

0:48:070:48:10

He was taken to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show,

0:48:100:48:13

which also included Native American musicians.

0:48:130:48:16

And amongst his pupils at the conservatory

0:48:170:48:19

were several African Americans, notably the singer Henry T Burleigh

0:48:190:48:23

and composer Will Marion Cook, who went on to teach Duke Ellington.

0:48:230:48:27

"In the negro melodies of America," Dvorak said,

0:48:280:48:32

"I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."

0:48:320:48:36

When he arrived in America,

0:48:370:48:39

Dvorak was given articles and musical material

0:48:390:48:41

that he might use in his compositions.

0:48:410:48:44

One of the most famous was a journal called Negro Music,

0:48:460:48:50

with an article by somebody with the improbable name

0:48:500:48:53

of Johann Tonsor, that had six examples of black music.

0:48:530:48:59

And it seems that Dvorak certainly drew on these

0:48:590:49:03

for the composition of the New World Symphony.

0:49:030:49:06

Here's one fragment of Swing Low Sweet Chariot...

0:49:060:49:10

PLAYS MAIN MELODY

0:49:100:49:13

..which is very much like the New World Symphony.

0:49:150:49:18

PLAYS SIMILAR SEQUENCE

0:49:180:49:20

And do we know anything about the author, this Johann Tonsor?

0:49:220:49:26

Johann Tonsor doesn't exist.

0:49:260:49:28

Johann Tonsor was a name made up by a wonderful woman,

0:49:280:49:33

who was an ethnographer of Afro-American music from Kentucky

0:49:330:49:37

named Mildred Hill, who was, I think, the only person

0:49:370:49:39

Dvorak came into contact with whose music was more famous than Dvorak's

0:49:390:49:43

-because she wrote Happy Birthday.

-Ah-ha!

0:49:430:49:47

The other American culture

0:50:100:50:12

that attracted Dvorak's interest was that of the Native Americans.

0:50:120:50:15

He didn't hear much of their music,

0:50:150:50:17

but was captivated by the Hiawatha story.

0:50:170:50:20

Dvorak became deeply involved with Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha.

0:50:250:50:31

He'd known it as a young man -

0:50:310:50:33

the Czech translator was a friend of his.

0:50:330:50:36

Dvorak told the critic Henry Krehbiel

0:50:360:50:40

that the Largo was based on a chapter called Hiawatha's Wooing,

0:50:400:50:45

and I believe it represents Hiawatha and Minnehaha's journey

0:50:450:50:50

through primeval American spaces.

0:50:500:50:52

It was originally faster,

0:50:530:50:55

but under the influence of the Wagnerian conductor Anton Seidl,

0:50:550:51:01

it turned from probably an andante to a larghetto.

0:51:010:51:06

Then we see it crossed out on the manuscript.

0:51:060:51:08

Larghetto crossed out,

0:51:080:51:10

largo finally appearing there as the speed,

0:51:100:51:15

with some equation between the slowness

0:51:150:51:19

and the deep expressivity of the passage.

0:51:190:51:22

We've arrived up here, in fact where Dvorak sat.

0:51:390:51:42

-In Box 10.

-Absolutely.

0:51:420:51:44

-So how was it received?

-It was received incredibly.

0:51:440:51:47

Everybody loved the music.

0:51:470:51:48

I think what was important was it related to them as well.

0:51:480:51:52

There were American themes.

0:51:520:51:54

It was a piece for America, and of America, in America.

0:51:540:51:58

MUSIC: "Symphony No 9 New World" by Dvorak

0:51:580:52:01

APPLAUSE

0:53:000:53:02

Writing about the premier, James Gibbons Huneker,

0:53:020:53:05

the journalist who'd given Dvorak the article with Negro Tunes,

0:53:050:53:08

acknowledged the new hybrid soil

0:53:080:53:10

in which this musical culture was taking root.

0:53:100:53:13

"Dvorak's symphony is American, is it?

0:53:130:53:16

"Themes from negro melodies composed by a Bohemian,

0:53:160:53:19

"conducted by a Hungarian

0:53:190:53:21

"and played by Germans in a hall built by a Scotchman.

0:53:210:53:25

"It will probably be many years

0:53:260:53:28

"before a concert will be talked and written about as was this one."

0:53:280:53:32

The New York Conservatory folded during the depression in the 1930s.

0:53:360:53:40

The house where Dvorak lived and composed the New World Symphony

0:53:400:53:44

was demolished in 1991.

0:53:440:53:45

But his influence on American music was lasting.

0:53:450:53:48

His famous largo sounds so much like a negro spiritual

0:53:480:53:52

that it was given words by one of his pupils, William Arms Fisher,

0:53:520:53:56

and famously recorded by African American singer Paul Robeson.

0:53:560:54:00

# ..I'm just going home... #

0:54:000:54:03

It's become a piece of American popular music.

0:54:030:54:06

# ..I'm just going home. #

0:54:060:54:17

MUSIC: Symphony No 6, 3rd Movement by Tchaikovsky

0:54:170:54:20

At this time, having a symphonic tradition

0:54:320:54:34

proved you were a proper nation.

0:54:340:54:36

That's why America wanted Dvorak to create one.

0:54:360:54:39

Just as the powerful Russian Empire had done a generation earlier

0:54:390:54:43

using elements of their folk music.

0:54:430:54:45

Here in St Petersburg, most successful at combining

0:54:480:54:51

the national soul with Germanic tradition was Tchaikovsky

0:54:510:54:54

writing symphonic music that was passionate and emotional.

0:54:540:54:58

In October 1893, Tchaikovsky's latest symphony, his 6th,

0:55:110:55:15

had its premiere here at the Philharmonic Hall,

0:55:150:55:18

conducted by the composer himself.

0:55:180:55:21

Partly because of its immense popularity,

0:55:210:55:23

Tchaikovsky's music is often dismissed.

0:55:230:55:26

But this symphony, known as the Pathetique,

0:55:260:55:29

is one of the most original and deeply personal ever written.

0:55:290:55:32

Tchaikovsky may have been using a public form,

0:55:420:55:45

but it's a work that's full of private emotion.

0:55:450:55:48

What Tchaikovsky did in the Pathetique that was so unusual

0:56:540:56:57

was to replace an uplifting finale with a searing slow movement,

0:56:570:57:02

descending into despair.

0:57:020:57:05

The last movement seems to be an epitaph or a farewell.

0:57:110:57:14

Full of the most glorious melodic material

0:57:140:57:18

that rises to a desperate climax,

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as if he was ridding himself of some deep, deep hidden pain,

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before allowing itself to come to rest in the final bars, so movingly.

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No symphony before had ever ended like this.

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And, of course, it has since acquired an even greater power

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because Tchaikovsky died just nine days after the premiere.

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There was something very personal that Tchaikovsky wanted to say in this piece,

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but, in retrospect, it also seems like a requiem for the old Europe,

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which couldn't last much longer,

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with big destructive changes to come -

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which is what we'll be looking at next time.

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To go deeper into the music and unravel the secrets of the symphony,

0:58:160:58:19

follow the links to the Open University at...

0:58:190:58:25

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:470:58:49

E-mail [email protected]

0:58:490:58:51

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