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Vienna 1876. The place was a building site. | 0:00:07 | 0:00:10 | |
The hub of an empire and the symphony. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:14 | |
The Emperor Franz Joseph had decided the city walls should come down | 0:00:16 | 0:00:22 | |
to be replaced by a prestigious urban boulevard - The Ringstrasse. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:27 | |
Another Ring, Wagner's massive music drama | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
with its Ride of the Valkyries, was being created at the same time. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:37 | |
Two ground-breaking moments | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
and both Rings took about 30 years to construct. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
The Austrian writer Karl Kraus said, | 0:00:46 | 0:00:48 | |
"Vienna was being demolished into a great city." | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
With a classical Parliament building, Athena presiding at the front, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
a Gothic style town hall, and a Renaissance-style university. | 0:00:55 | 0:01:01 | |
But constructed before any of these, in 1868, was the Opera House. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:05 | |
Music remained of course an abiding interest for the Viennese public | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
and at the time debate was fierce about whether new music should be | 0:01:09 | 0:01:13 | |
descriptive or abstract - Wagner versus Brahms. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:18 | |
The symphony was at the centre of this controversy. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:21 | |
In this programme we'll see how it emerged triumphant. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
How it became a vehicle for nationalist sentiment and gained genuine popular appeal. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:29 | |
And how it became the means of intense artistic self expression. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:33 | |
We'll also see how composers like Dvorak, Tchaikovsky | 0:01:33 | 0:01:36 | |
and Sibelius came to the expanding city of Vienna | 0:01:36 | 0:01:39 | |
and exported the symphony to new nations and new worlds. | 0:01:39 | 0:01:42 | |
Why does a film about the symphony start with an opera, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
and in particular an opera by Wagner, who once declared | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
emphatically that the symphony was dead? | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
MUSIC: Beethoven's Symphony No 9 | 0:02:10 | 0:02:15 | |
The problem was how to follow a composer like Beethoven, | 0:02:18 | 0:02:22 | |
who in his 9th Symphony in 1824 seemed to have taken the classical four-movement form | 0:02:22 | 0:02:27 | |
as far as it could go with its ground-breaking choral finale. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:31 | |
CHOIR SINGS | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
Despite the attempts of his successors, | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
was Beethoven the final word in symphonic writing? | 0:02:40 | 0:02:45 | |
Richard Wagner certainly thought so, | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
and when he held the first performance of The Ring, his massive music drama | 0:02:51 | 0:02:55 | |
at his specially-built theatre in Bayreuth, he began it with | 0:02:55 | 0:02:59 | |
Beethoven's 9th, as if to say "roll over Beethoven, now it's my turn." | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
Wagner's Ring is a cycle of four operas over four evenings. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:13 | |
15 hours of music telling the story of humanity from dawn to dusk. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:18 | |
The premiere in 1876 wasn't just a musical event, | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
but a political event, attended by crowned heads of Europe. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:27 | |
Everybody who was anybody was there. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:30 | |
But all the drama over The Ring made someone want to stand up for the symphony. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:37 | |
Johannes Brahms, 20 years Wagner's junior, | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
was a classicist who was ready to fight for pure symphonic music. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
The arena for this particular contest was Vienna's new concert hall, the Musikverein. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
The land was donated by the Emperor Franz Joseph. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
It was built by the Gesellshaft der Musik Freunde, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
the Society of Friends of Music, and opened in 1870. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:06 | |
MUSIC: Opening of Brahms' Symphony No 1, 1st Movement. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:11 | |
Brahms was from Hamburg in northern Germany, brought up in | 0:04:35 | 0:04:38 | |
the protestant Lutheran tradition, although he didn't stay a believer. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:43 | |
He'd been working on his first symphony for 14 years, | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
all the time he'd been in Vienna. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:49 | |
Brahms had already made it clear that writing a symphony after Beethoven's 9th was no joke. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:59 | |
You've no idea", he said, "how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:06 | |
Although he was over 40 at this stage and had certainly taken his time, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
the fuss over Wagner's Ring had made him determined to finish | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
the symphony ready for a premiere in 1876. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
After initial performances in Germany, Brahms himself conducted | 0:05:16 | 0:05:19 | |
his 1st symphony here at the Musikverein on 17th December | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
of that year as part of celebrations for Beethoven's birthday. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
The hall was packed, but not with the heads of state, who went | 0:05:30 | 0:05:34 | |
to Wagner's premiere in Bayreuth. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
The decor may be opulent, | 0:05:36 | 0:05:37 | |
but the Musikverein wasn't built for the aristocracy, but for the Viennese middle-class. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:42 | |
When the hall was opened, it was the first concert hall in Vienna, | 0:05:44 | 0:05:48 | |
real, definite great concert hall. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
And every new work was welcomed highly. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:56 | |
The audience was very much interested in hearing contemporary music | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
because at that time the only interesting things were new things. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:03 | |
Brahms' new symphony was written for what is now the modern symphony orchestra. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:12 | |
The music for this programme is played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Elder. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:20 | |
'By the time he started writing his greatest pieces, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
'Brahms had mastered the legacy of Beethoven' | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
and turned it into something even more muscular than Beethoven's music. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:32 | |
But he had the vision of how great symphonic masterpieces | 0:06:32 | 0:06:37 | |
could aim at the highest emotional planes. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:41 | |
Every great symphonic writer takes an audience on an emotional narrative journey through the piece. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:47 | |
For me, that's one of the definitions of a great symphony. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
MUSIC: Brahms' Symphony No 1, 4th Movement. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
The French horn - such a symbol of romantic energy - has an heroic feel to it as well. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:07 | |
And this is something that possibly Brahms could have taken from Beethoven. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:11 | |
But underneath it, the strings shimmer | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
and that's something I think that Beethoven wouldn't have done in that same way. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:18 | |
That sense of contacting nature - just like the romantic paintings of Caspar David Friedrich - | 0:07:23 | 0:07:29 | |
is very vivid, memorable, and superbly well done. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
That contact with nature is then surprisingly | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
interrupted by a chorale on the trombones and this protestant, | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
perhaps Lutheran chorale, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
recalling Brahms' musical past, but also perhaps his own childhood, | 0:07:50 | 0:07:56 | |
calms the soul. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
And from that sense of stillness | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
sings the last movement's main tune. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
Now this tune in C major, the primary key, | 0:08:43 | 0:08:47 | |
has a whiff of the great tune of the last movement of Beethoven's choral symphony | 0:08:47 | 0:08:52 | |
that introduces the Ode to Joy. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
And when somebody pointed that out to Brahms he said, "Oh, any silly ass can see that!" | 0:08:54 | 0:09:00 | |
Brahms' symphony was a great success | 0:09:30 | 0:09:32 | |
and the enthusiasm was further promoted by music critics. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:35 | |
The most important was Edward Hanslick, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
who also fanned the flames of the Brahms/Wagner debate. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
The rise of the critic here in Vienna was very important. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:45 | |
It's inconceivable now, I think, | 0:09:45 | 0:09:48 | |
to think of a major critic like Hanslick writing a long article | 0:09:48 | 0:09:53 | |
on the front page of the Neue Freie Presse, | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
which is the equivalent of the London Times, | 0:09:56 | 0:09:59 | |
going on to page two and page three, | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
about the first performance in Vienna of Brahms' 1st Symphony. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
Which he did. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:07 | |
And people would read that at breakfast alongside international news on the front page of the paper. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:12 | |
In his front page article, which surprisingly hasn't been translated into English before, Hanslick wrote, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:44 | |
"It must be recognised by friend and foe alike, that no other composer | 0:10:44 | 0:10:47 | |
"has come as close to the greatest creations of Beethoven as Brahms has in the finale of his symphony." | 0:10:47 | 0:10:54 | |
Hanslick, of course, | 0:10:56 | 0:10:58 | |
was very much a friend of Brahms and pure music and a foe of Wagner whom | 0:10:58 | 0:11:02 | |
he felt was destroying melody and form in favour of philosophising. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:06 | |
Wagner's argument was that music is not pure. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
One can use music politically as well as aesthetically to raise all | 0:11:13 | 0:11:18 | |
sorts of questions about society, about people's psychology, what music | 0:11:18 | 0:11:23 | |
does to them, what music can have an effect on an audience in this space. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:29 | |
Just imagine the Gotterdammerung music sounding in this space against all these classical things. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:36 | |
But the idea is to convey ideas with the music | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
and Wagner is a composer of ideas. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:41 | |
In 1875, Wagner himself had conducted | 0:11:46 | 0:11:48 | |
excerpts from The Ring here in the Musikverein to build up | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
an appetite for the premiere at Bayreuth. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
Mark Elder is demonstrating - perhaps controversially - | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
that while Wagner was writing mythological music dramas | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
for the opera house, he was also composing symphonically. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
In my view, Wagner was one of the greatest symphonic composers, | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
by that I mean he invented a number, a large number of little themes, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
motifs associated with the characters, the actions, the events, even places, objects. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:35 | |
And he wrote the opera, he set his words, accompanied them | 0:12:35 | 0:12:40 | |
with this enormously elaborate orchestral texture. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
Can you give me an example of a theme he might use? | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
Yes, let's look at Siegfried and Brunhilde, the heroine and the hero. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:53 | |
When we first see them, their music is very, very different | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
and it's quite clear which pieces belongs to which character. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:02 | |
Here's one for Brunhilde... PLAYS THEME | 0:13:02 | 0:13:05 | |
Tender, loving, affectionate, gentle, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
big intervals expressing big emotions but in a small dynamic. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:18 | |
Now another one that he needs, of course, is to portray his hero Siegfried. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:22 | |
Listen to this... PLAYS THEME | 0:13:22 | 0:13:26 | |
All together grander, heroic, masculine in its strong rhythm | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
and its clear cut idea. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
That little tune, short as it is, | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
can then later on appear even shorter when she speaks of their love, | 0:13:42 | 0:13:47 | |
the things that draw them together and he changes it to suit the occasion. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
Now this process of developing the characters of the themes is what I would call the symphonic process | 0:14:09 | 0:14:16 | |
that he was engaged in. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:18 | |
And by the time he'd finished the Ring he'd got the full | 0:14:18 | 0:14:22 | |
flow of it and his attitude towards how he used these little themes | 0:14:22 | 0:14:26 | |
and musical ideas to suit the drama became really loose, became | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
very free and sometime we can't quite understand why that particular | 0:14:30 | 0:14:34 | |
little musical idea is embedded in the jewellery of the texture. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
-So he released the themes from the story? -A bit, yes. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:41 | |
He did in order to draw out gorgeous symphonic music, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
to build up the themes into great architectural masses of sound. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
I mean really beautiful. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:48 | |
MUSIC: Wagner's Gotterdammerung | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
It's hard to appreciate now, just how divided musical opinion | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
across Europe was and how polarised it became between two warring camps. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:31 | |
Wagner didn't just have fans, he had worshippers. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
One of the most important was a young organist and composer called Anton Bruckner. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:39 | |
Bruckner was a provincial boy, born near Linz. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
He became a choirboy | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
and organist in the Augustinian monastery of St Florian. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
He was a very devout Catholic. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:54 | |
Mahler described him as half simpleton, half God. | 0:15:54 | 0:16:00 | |
His 3rd Symphony was dedicated to Wagner and premiered here | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
in the Musikverein in December 1877, just one year after Brahms' 1st. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:12 | |
The effect of Wagner is huge, | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
not that Bruckner's music sounds like Wagner - it doesn't. | 0:16:43 | 0:16:46 | |
It's much more bold harmonically, | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
but Wagner showed him how you can organise huge spaces of music. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:54 | |
How you could use harmony | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
and expressiveness to fill out large spaces of time in music. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:04 | |
It hadn't been done before. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
His symphonies were built with huge blocks of stone, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:26 | |
gradually being built up like a cathedral, not a parish church. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:31 | |
And of course for many people, that music takes them closer to their God. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:35 | |
The great spiritual dimension that he as a man had is reflected in these enormous edifices, musically. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:40 | |
The scale of Bruckner 3 - it lasts for well over an hour - | 0:18:01 | 0:18:05 | |
is reflected in the urban expansion of Vienna itself. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:08 | |
Between 1860 and 1900 the city trebled in size | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
from half a million to 1.5 million inhabitants. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
The symphonies reflected more the fears of what was going on | 0:18:27 | 0:18:31 | |
rather than the triumph, which is why, I think, Bruckner symphonies | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
took a long time to get a foothold in Vienna. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
Brahms had described the typical Bruckner symphonies like a massive boa constrictor | 0:18:40 | 0:18:45 | |
and the concert, here at the Musikverein, | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
was a disaster with much of the audience walking out before the end. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:52 | |
Bruckner's eccentric, monumental symphonies were eventually accepted in Vienna, of course, | 0:18:55 | 0:19:00 | |
but both Bruckner and Mahler didn't really enter the international repertoire until the 1960s and '70s. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:07 | |
Their symphonies are long, ground-breaking works - full of ambition, but also anxiety. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:12 | |
Like the city in which the composers lived. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
This is Franz Joseph, depicted as Caesar on the front of the Parliament building in Vienna. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:27 | |
Franz Joseph ruled over 17 distinct nationalities within the Hapsburg Empire. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:31 | |
But many of these weren't that happy about being included in such a vast conglomerate | 0:19:31 | 0:19:37 | |
and rose up in revolt in 1848. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
It was after this difficult time that Franz Joseph, then only 18, | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
was placed on the throne and began his long reign of 68 years. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:47 | |
But nationalist pressure wouldn't go away - many demands went un-met | 0:19:47 | 0:19:52 | |
and nationalist resentment intensified, particularly in Bohemia. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:57 | |
"A year ago", wrote a Leipzig newspaper in 1880, | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
"news flashed across the German music world | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
"of a miraculous talent residing in Prague." | 0:20:16 | 0:20:19 | |
"What heightens the charm of Dvorak's compositions | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
"is the sharply etched nationality that accompanies them." | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
In the symphonic world, as in the political arena, | 0:20:31 | 0:20:34 | |
nationalism was becoming a potent force. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:36 | |
Dvorak's father was a butcher, but he also ran the local inn. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
So the boy must have grown up with the sounds | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
of celebratory singing and dancing. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:49 | |
His Sixth Symphony was written for the Vienna Philharmonic, | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
but in fact it was premiered here in Prague in 1881. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
The Vienna Philharmonic didn't get around to playing it until 1942. | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
Dvorak used Brahms' symphonies as his model, | 0:21:00 | 0:21:04 | |
but instead of the typical scherzo or intermezzo movement, he wrote | 0:21:04 | 0:21:08 | |
a furiant, a Bohemian folkdance that became his distinctive calling card. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:13 | |
FOLK MUSIC | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
What gives the furiant its bounce is the way it shifts | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
between two-beat and three-beat rhythms, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
which stems from the nature of the dance. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:28 | |
The man here is performing his masculinity | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
and he takes advantage of this 2/4 measure | 0:21:40 | 0:21:44 | |
to show how he is strong, | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
how he is proud, how he is clever. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
And it's always during this 3/4 measure that it's the dancing | 0:21:54 | 0:21:59 | |
in the couple and about the dancing of the woman also. | 0:21:59 | 0:22:03 | |
Dvorak understood very well the nature of the dance, | 0:22:09 | 0:22:12 | |
what was the spirit of the dance, | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
so I think, in this way, he was very accurate. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
I notice that the dance was a bit slower. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
Dvorak speeded it up quite a lot, didn't he? | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
Yes, because it was virtuosity that he wanted to show. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:33 | |
But it was not written for a dance. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
So when you need to dance the music has to be slower. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:41 | |
Why did he include this dance in this symphony? | 0:22:41 | 0:22:45 | |
Because it had the meaning of the national feeling, | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
so I think this was important for them to show | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
the national identity in the music. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:57 | |
What Dvorak is trying to do is to take the symphony away | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
from the elite audience to a much wider audience. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
And, in this, he is a very modern composer | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
although he's not regarded as that today. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:25 | |
This is Vysoka, 60km south-west of Prague, | 0:23:37 | 0:23:39 | |
where Dvorak had a summerhouse. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:43 | |
He came here during the summer months to compose, | 0:23:43 | 0:23:45 | |
to escape the pressures of a busy life in the city. | 0:23:45 | 0:23:48 | |
The house remains in the Dvorak family | 0:23:48 | 0:23:50 | |
and has been left very much as it was when Dvorak died in 1904. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
This is my grandmother, Dvorak's wife. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:02 | |
when she married. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
She was 18 years old in this time. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
She was three months pregnant. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
It was unusual in this time but it was the reality. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:14 | |
This desk, is this where he wrote? | 0:24:16 | 0:24:18 | |
Sitting at this little table, Dvorak wrote many great opuses. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:24 | |
-It's tiny, it's very small. -Yes. | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
The Eighth Symphony was written here in Vysoka. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:31 | |
Very interesting is this picture of Dvorak's family | 0:24:40 | 0:24:44 | |
on the steps on the 17th East Street in New York. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:49 | |
Here is my grandfather and here are two boys. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
One of these boys is my father. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
You didn't know your grandfather? | 0:24:56 | 0:24:58 | |
I was born 25 years after his death. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:03 | |
That's a wonderful picture. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:06 | |
This picture is Dvorak sitting on a bench | 0:25:09 | 0:25:13 | |
and feeding his pigeons here. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
-Is that here? -Here. -It's down there. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:19 | |
Yes. Yes, this is here. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:21 | |
This has various scores on it. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:28 | |
Manuscripts and other, yes. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
Dvorak came to popularity through his Slavonic Dances, | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
following the success of Brahms with his Hungarian Dances. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
Brahms, of course, was imitating Hungarian Gypsies | 0:25:43 | 0:25:47 | |
he'd heard in Vienna, but Dvorak penned his furiants | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
and other Slavic dances with national pride. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:54 | |
This room was the dining room of the family. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:02 | |
Very special is this picture. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
Dvorak and his two friends - | 0:26:05 | 0:26:08 | |
Tchaikovsky and Johannes Brahms. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:12 | |
Especially Johannes Brahms was a very good friend of my grandfather | 0:26:12 | 0:26:18 | |
and Brahms don't believe in God | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
and Dvorak said once about him "How it is possible that Brahms | 0:26:22 | 0:26:29 | |
"composed such nice music when he don't believe?!" | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
Brahms admired Dvorak's music | 0:26:49 | 0:26:51 | |
and did a great deal to help the composer. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:53 | |
But, in general, the attitude of the Viennese musical establishment | 0:26:53 | 0:26:57 | |
was condescending if not downright dismissive. | 0:26:57 | 0:26:59 | |
For the Austrians, nationalist composers like Tchaikovsky | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
and Dvorak were colourful, but not serious. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
Once, when someone expressed his admiration for Dvorak's skilful | 0:27:05 | 0:27:09 | |
and brilliant orchestration, Bruckner said, "You can paint a pair | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
"of sausages blue and green, but they're still a pair of sausages." | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
In 1890 a young composer came from much farther afield | 0:27:52 | 0:27:55 | |
to continue his studies in Vienna. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:58 | |
Jean Sibelius came from Finland - | 0:27:58 | 0:28:00 | |
way beyond the reach of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
but Vienna was the place properly to study the symphonic tradition. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
He was a huge fan of Wagner, but also admired Beethoven's Ninth | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
and Bruckner's Third and here, in this symphonic hothouse, | 0:28:09 | 0:28:13 | |
it was inevitable that he should set about to write a symphony. | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
And, as with Dvorak, it took on national overtones. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:19 | |
Sibelius looked for inspiration to the Finnish national epic, | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
the Kalevala. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:24 | |
Elias Lonnrot, who compiled the Kalevala, | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
published his final version in 1849. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:46 | |
He'd travelled extensively into remote parts of Karelia - | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
an area that covers parts of eastern Finland and Russia | 0:28:49 | 0:28:52 | |
- where he collected folk songs and poetry from peasant bards | 0:28:52 | 0:28:56 | |
and reworked these into a long rambling tale of over 22,000 verses. | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
With the figure of the bard Vainamoinen, | 0:29:00 | 0:29:03 | |
a sort of Finnish Orpheus, at its heart, | 0:29:03 | 0:29:05 | |
the Kalevala became a major inspiration | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
for artists, musicians and advocates of a Finnish national identity. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:13 | |
This is the autograph score of Kullervo by Jean Sibelius. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:22 | |
From the mass of different stories and mythological characters | 0:29:22 | 0:29:26 | |
in the Kalevala, Sibelius focused on the tragic, anti-hero Kullervo | 0:29:26 | 0:29:29 | |
in his choral symphony. | 0:29:29 | 0:29:31 | |
Here you can see the programme text, the Kalevala, in the score. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:38 | |
Here we go. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:39 | |
Here we go, here is the first. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
It's always so exciting. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:43 | |
Music page. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:45 | |
Now, why was the Kalevala so important | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
to Finnish national aspirations? | 0:29:48 | 0:29:53 | |
First of all because it was in Finnish | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
and it was Finnish folk poetry. | 0:29:56 | 0:29:59 | |
It has been said that Kalevala showed to us Finns | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
that Finland had its own history | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
already before the Christian era, or the Swedish or the Russian era. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:13 | |
After six centuries of Swedish domination, the Grand Duchy | 0:30:19 | 0:30:23 | |
of Finland became part of the Russian Empire in 1809 and Helsinki | 0:30:23 | 0:30:27 | |
became something of a showcase for the Russian emperor Alexander I. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
The central Senate Square of the city | 0:30:31 | 0:30:34 | |
is very much in the St Petersburg style. | 0:30:34 | 0:30:36 | |
This statue of Alexander II was built in 1894. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:41 | |
He was remembered as "the good tsar", a reformer. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:44 | |
Unlike most nationalities within the Russian Empire, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
the Finns enjoyed a degree of autonomy, but during the 1890s, | 0:30:47 | 0:30:50 | |
the Russians began to limit this and this inevitably fuelled | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
the Finnish nationalist movement. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
With Kullervo written in 1892 and, of course, Finlandia, | 0:30:56 | 0:31:00 | |
his patriotic piece par excellence, which was composed in 1899, | 0:31:00 | 0:31:04 | |
Sibelius found himself a national, even nationalist figure. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:08 | |
This painting, called Symposium, depicts a gathering of artists | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
and musicians of the time. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:16 | |
It shows Sibelius on the right, Robert Kajanus, | 0:31:16 | 0:31:19 | |
who conducted the premiere of the Kullervo Symphony, next to him. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
The figure worse for wear is a music critic, | 0:31:22 | 0:31:25 | |
oblivious to everything and the fourth character | 0:31:25 | 0:31:27 | |
is the artist himself, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, | 0:31:27 | 0:31:30 | |
a good friend of Sibelius. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:33 | |
He is famous for his Kalevala paintings | 0:31:33 | 0:31:36 | |
and I went to the Ateneum Gallery to find out more. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:38 | |
There are statistics about the popularity of Kalevala stories | 0:31:42 | 0:31:47 | |
in Finnish art, visual art and culture in general | 0:31:47 | 0:31:53 | |
and through all times, Kullervo, his very tragic story, | 0:31:53 | 0:31:58 | |
has been the most popular story and motif from Kalevala. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:02 | |
And thinking about the times when Kullervo has been most popular | 0:32:02 | 0:32:07 | |
was exactly the time of young Sibelius, young Gallen-Kallela, | 0:32:07 | 0:32:12 | |
the turn of the 19th century, 1890s. | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
So there is a strong link to the times | 0:32:15 | 0:32:19 | |
when Finnish national identity was being threatened. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
Sibelius' Kullervo Symphony tells the tragic story | 0:32:34 | 0:32:38 | |
of Kullervo seducing a woman he meets, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
who he finds out later is his sister. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:42 | |
But Sibelius' depiction of this, with its aggressive brass, | 0:32:42 | 0:32:45 | |
is remarkable in 19th century music | 0:32:45 | 0:32:47 | |
and makes it sound more like rape than seduction. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:50 | |
Here we arrive at the climax of the third movement, | 0:32:55 | 0:32:58 | |
the very powerful culmination of the movement. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:02 | |
-Ah, yes, all the brass here playing very, very loudly indeed. -Yes. | 0:33:02 | 0:33:06 | |
Sibelius arrived just at the right time | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
as the Finns were really dying to get out from underneath | 0:33:29 | 0:33:33 | |
the yoke of being dominated and run by Russia. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:37 | |
And there was this extraordinary rough, wild, undisciplined, | 0:33:37 | 0:33:43 | |
unreliable individual. | 0:33:43 | 0:33:46 | |
And he found, through his long life, a way to express | 0:33:46 | 0:33:52 | |
the feeling in his people and in his love for his country. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:57 | |
But he never wanted to be thought of as a nationalist composer, | 0:33:57 | 0:34:01 | |
he never wanted to have a political message. | 0:34:01 | 0:34:04 | |
His music came from his own rigour inside himself | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
that he eventually worked at and found, | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
and through his own natural gifts of drama in music. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
Sibelius wanted his music to express a nationalism, | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
but also be internationally | 0:35:07 | 0:35:10 | |
well-known as well. | 0:35:10 | 0:35:12 | |
And he was so popular in England and America | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
because, unlike Germany, these two countries also did not have | 0:35:15 | 0:35:20 | |
a great institutional musical culture behind them. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:24 | |
When you think about Germany, an opera house in every city, | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
a symphony orchestra and so forth, it's not the case in England | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
and it's certainly not the case in America. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:33 | |
So you have someone with Beethovenian ambitions | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
trying to establish something meaningful in the symphony | 0:35:35 | 0:35:39 | |
that is an alternative to the German tradition. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
MUSIC: Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
In 1907, Gustav Mahler came to Helsinki | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
to conduct a concert | 0:36:37 | 0:36:38 | |
and he met the painter Gallen-Kallela, | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
whom he knew from an exhibition in Vienna, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:43 | |
and he met Sibelius. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:45 | |
Taking a walk one day, the two composers discussed symphonic form. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
Sibelius said that he admired the severity and logic of the form | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
that created inner connections between the motifs. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:57 | |
Mahler replied that his opinion was very different. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:00 | |
"A symphony should be like the world," he said. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:03 | |
"It should embrace everything." | 0:37:03 | 0:37:06 | |
MUSIC: Mahler's Symphony No.2, 1st Movement | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
This is the Secession building in Vienna, | 0:37:40 | 0:37:43 | |
one of the finest examples of an artistic movement | 0:37:43 | 0:37:46 | |
known as jugendstil, the Young Style. | 0:37:46 | 0:37:48 | |
And here is Gustav Mahler as a heroic knight in shining armour, | 0:37:48 | 0:37:53 | |
painted by his friend Gustav Klimt. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:56 | |
This frieze, which pictures Beethoven's 9th Symphony | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
as seen through Wagner's eyes, was painted | 0:37:59 | 0:38:02 | |
for a great Beethoven exhibition in 1902 | 0:38:02 | 0:38:04 | |
at which Mahler conducted an arrangement of the 9th Symphony. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:08 | |
Mahler's 3rd symphony picks up on the idea | 0:38:08 | 0:38:11 | |
of Beethoven's Ode to Joy. But as well as harking back to that, | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
it looks out with ferocious energy onto a new world. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
Klimt's vision, like Mahler's, is a very personal one. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
The first wall represents heroic ambition. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
Featuring Mahler, of course. | 0:38:34 | 0:38:36 | |
The second wall represents the obstacles that mankind | 0:38:36 | 0:38:41 | |
has to overcome, including animal instincts. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:43 | |
And the final section, taking its cue from Schiller's lyrics | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
in the Ode to Joy, | 0:38:47 | 0:38:48 | |
shows the kiss to the whole world | 0:38:48 | 0:38:50 | |
that comes at the end of Beethoven's 9th. | 0:38:50 | 0:38:52 | |
Mahler's 3rd is a symphony that pushed the form to its limits. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
It has six movements and at nearly 100 minutes in length, | 0:39:10 | 0:39:13 | |
it's one of the longest symphonies in the repertoire. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:16 | |
The first movement represents the unstoppable forces of nature. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:20 | |
Summer is the victor amidst all that is blooming and growing. | 0:39:20 | 0:39:24 | |
It's about the whole of creation. Mahler moves on to flowers, animals, | 0:39:24 | 0:39:28 | |
mankind and the angels. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:29 | |
But, of course, it's really about Mahler himself. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:32 | |
This, after all, is the Vienna of Freud | 0:39:32 | 0:39:35 | |
and the symphony has become a vehicle for self expression | 0:39:35 | 0:39:38 | |
and a picture of the artist's vision of the world around him. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:41 | |
Music: Mahler's Symphony No.3, 1st Movement | 0:39:41 | 0:39:44 | |
Mahler was fascinated at the opportunity | 0:40:00 | 0:40:02 | |
of stretching the orchestra, | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
making it do things that no one else had dared go to. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:09 | |
And his interest in these very, very extreme sound worlds | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
came from everything that he was, a very complex personality. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:18 | |
A man who gave up his Jewish faith to become a Christian, | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
to help himself do better in Vienna and run the opera. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:25 | |
A man who was brought up in a tiny village, way out in the countryside | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
that had a very substantial barracks in it. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:30 | |
And so his childhood was full of military marching music | 0:40:30 | 0:40:34 | |
and strange, out of tune fanfares. | 0:40:34 | 0:40:37 | |
Now this is pretty rare, isn't it, everybody? | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
This little word - roh! | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
It does not stand for Royal Opera House. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
It stands for the word which means unrefined. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:48 | |
Raw, yeah? | 0:40:48 | 0:40:50 | |
Strident. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:51 | |
It's not so much that it needs to be very loud, | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
it just needs to have a particular bite or edge to it, doesn't it? | 0:40:53 | 0:40:57 | |
Tuk! Tuk! Tuk! Yeah? | 0:40:57 | 0:40:59 | |
Not wholly musical. Can I hear it? Two, three, four... | 0:40:59 | 0:41:03 | |
ORCHESTRA PLAYS | 0:41:03 | 0:41:05 | |
ORCHESTRA STOPS PLAYING | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
OK, good. That's better. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
If the horns are a bit softer and a little bit edgier, | 0:41:11 | 0:41:15 | |
I think it would be better. And also earlier. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
It's late. Two, three, four... | 0:41:18 | 0:41:20 | |
ORCHESTRA PLAYS | 0:41:20 | 0:41:22 | |
Let me just address what the oboes are going to do. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:30 | |
Could I just hear it, the three Fs? | 0:41:30 | 0:41:32 | |
OBOES PLAY | 0:41:32 | 0:41:34 | |
Yeah, yeah. | 0:41:34 | 0:41:36 | |
It says "grell." Well, that just means shrill. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
This sounds like loud oboe playing. Sounds great, sounds quality. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:43 | |
It shouldn't sound quality, it should sound strident | 0:41:43 | 0:41:46 | |
and exaggerated. It's been suggested that the best way | 0:41:46 | 0:41:49 | |
to do it is to actually put the reed further in the mouth. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
Just put it all further in. Would you try that? | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
Don't worry if it sounds distorted, that's what he wants. | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
One, two, three... | 0:41:58 | 0:41:59 | |
OBOES PLAY SHRILLY | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
That's it, that's better. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:06 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:42:06 | 0:42:07 | |
One, two, three... | 0:42:07 | 0:42:09 | |
ORCHESTRA PLAYS | 0:42:09 | 0:42:11 | |
'What he was trying to do was experiment' | 0:42:29 | 0:42:32 | |
with how far the orchestra could be taken | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
and in this way, of course, he was a great successor to Berlioz | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
who wanted to do the same thing in his time. | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
And in a way, that makes Mahler the first | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
of the great 20th century composers. | 0:42:43 | 0:42:46 | |
Mahler composed during his holidays. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:31 | |
His day job was here, | 0:43:31 | 0:43:33 | |
as conductor and director of the Court Opera. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:37 | |
Born in Bohemia and raised as a Jew, Mahler was always the outsider. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
Being a Jew, he said, was like being born with a short arm | 0:43:40 | 0:43:43 | |
and having to swim twice as hard. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
Indeed, despite his obvious talents, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
he came up against anti-Semitism. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
But salvation was at hand. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:51 | |
Symphonic culture had become all the rage a thousand miles away | 0:43:51 | 0:43:55 | |
and Mahler, along with nationalist composers Dvorak, Tchaikovsky | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
and Sibelius, was imported to plant the seed of a new musical culture. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:03 | |
MUSIC: Dvorak's Symphony No.9, 'New World' | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
America, and particularly New York, provided a new | 0:44:19 | 0:44:22 | |
and highly lucrative market for European musical culture. | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
Tchaikovsky was invited to attend | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
the opening of the Carnegie Hall in 1891, | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
Mahler came to conduct the New York Symphony Orchestra | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
and The Metropolitan Opera, and Dvorak was asked to head The National Conservatory | 0:44:32 | 0:44:37 | |
where his annual salary of 15,000 was nearly 30 times more | 0:44:37 | 0:44:40 | |
than he was earning at the conservatoire in Prague. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:43 | |
Most significantly however, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
it was here in New York that Dvorak composed his symphony No 9, | 0:44:46 | 0:44:50 | |
from the New World which was premiered in 1893. | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
Clive, on Dec 16, 1893, | 0:45:40 | 0:45:45 | |
the New World Symphony was premiered here at Carnegie Hall. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
First of all, can you tell me something about Mr Carnegie? | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
He was possibly the most successful industrialist of his age. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
At one time, he was reckoned to be the richest man in the world. | 0:45:55 | 0:45:57 | |
He was a steelmaker, but also an unbelievable philanthropist | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
and, of course, he created Carnegie Hall. | 0:46:01 | 0:46:03 | |
But that came about because his wife sang in a chorus | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
and there was no concert hall. So, as you do, | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
she asked him to build a concert hall for her. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:11 | |
Instead of going to the greatest architect of the day, | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
he went to the guy who was treasurer of the choral society. | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
He was a cellist, he was a musician, he wasn't well known. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
He asked him to build a concert hall. He'd never built one | 0:46:20 | 0:46:23 | |
in his life before. He sent him to Europe to look at all the concert halls | 0:46:23 | 0:46:27 | |
and he came back and built something unlike anything he'd seen. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
Now the concert itself, it was conducted by Anton Seidl | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
-who was a big international figure. -Absolutely. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
He was assistant to Hans Richter, | 0:46:36 | 0:46:38 | |
assisted with conducting the Ring Cycle in Bayreuth. | 0:46:38 | 0:46:41 | |
He came here, in fact he was a great Wagnerian, so he conducted | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
a lot of Wagner here as well. So he made a huge impact here. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:48 | |
He was the most important musician in New York. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:50 | |
Despite being built by a novice, | 0:46:50 | 0:46:53 | |
Carnegie Hall was praised for its acoustics and it soon became | 0:46:53 | 0:46:56 | |
the landmark in American cultural life that it remains today. | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
All across America, | 0:47:01 | 0:47:02 | |
in Boston and Chicago, for instance, symphony halls were built | 0:47:02 | 0:47:06 | |
and a new entrepreneurial and middle class | 0:47:06 | 0:47:08 | |
went to the symphony to hear symphonies. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:11 | |
And Dvorak was there to help them | 0:47:11 | 0:47:13 | |
Americanise a European musical culture. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
Dvorak was important | 0:47:37 | 0:47:39 | |
because, as a Czech, he had created Czech culture, | 0:47:39 | 0:47:43 | |
by, in a sense, taking international culture, which was really German, | 0:47:43 | 0:47:48 | |
taking out the Germanisms and putting in Czechisms. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
It was hoped that he would come to the United States, take out the Czechisms, put in Americanisms | 0:47:51 | 0:47:56 | |
and be a kind of object lesson for American composers | 0:47:56 | 0:47:59 | |
about how one makes national music that belongs to them, | 0:47:59 | 0:48:03 | |
rather than to some other distant culture. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
Dvorak stayed in America for two and a half years. | 0:48:07 | 0:48:10 | |
He was taken to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, | 0:48:10 | 0:48:13 | |
which also included Native American musicians. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
And amongst his pupils at the conservatory | 0:48:17 | 0:48:19 | |
were several African Americans, notably the singer Henry T Burleigh | 0:48:19 | 0:48:23 | |
and composer Will Marion Cook, who went on to teach Duke Ellington. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:27 | |
"In the negro melodies of America," Dvorak said, | 0:48:28 | 0:48:32 | |
"I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music." | 0:48:32 | 0:48:36 | |
When he arrived in America, | 0:48:37 | 0:48:39 | |
Dvorak was given articles and musical material | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
that he might use in his compositions. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
One of the most famous was a journal called Negro Music, | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
with an article by somebody with the improbable name | 0:48:50 | 0:48:53 | |
of Johann Tonsor, that had six examples of black music. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:59 | |
And it seems that Dvorak certainly drew on these | 0:48:59 | 0:49:03 | |
for the composition of the New World Symphony. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
Here's one fragment of Swing Low Sweet Chariot... | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
PLAYS MAIN MELODY | 0:49:10 | 0:49:13 | |
..which is very much like the New World Symphony. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:18 | |
PLAYS SIMILAR SEQUENCE | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
And do we know anything about the author, this Johann Tonsor? | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
Johann Tonsor doesn't exist. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:28 | |
Johann Tonsor was a name made up by a wonderful woman, | 0:49:28 | 0:49:33 | |
who was an ethnographer of Afro-American music from Kentucky | 0:49:33 | 0:49:37 | |
named Mildred Hill, who was, I think, the only person | 0:49:37 | 0:49:39 | |
Dvorak came into contact with whose music was more famous than Dvorak's | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
-because she wrote Happy Birthday. -Ah-ha! | 0:49:43 | 0:49:47 | |
The other American culture | 0:50:10 | 0:50:12 | |
that attracted Dvorak's interest was that of the Native Americans. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:15 | |
He didn't hear much of their music, | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
but was captivated by the Hiawatha story. | 0:50:17 | 0:50:20 | |
Dvorak became deeply involved with Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:31 | |
He'd known it as a young man - | 0:50:31 | 0:50:33 | |
the Czech translator was a friend of his. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
Dvorak told the critic Henry Krehbiel | 0:50:36 | 0:50:40 | |
that the Largo was based on a chapter called Hiawatha's Wooing, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:45 | |
and I believe it represents Hiawatha and Minnehaha's journey | 0:50:45 | 0:50:50 | |
through primeval American spaces. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:52 | |
It was originally faster, | 0:50:53 | 0:50:55 | |
but under the influence of the Wagnerian conductor Anton Seidl, | 0:50:55 | 0:51:01 | |
it turned from probably an andante to a larghetto. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:06 | |
Then we see it crossed out on the manuscript. | 0:51:06 | 0:51:08 | |
Larghetto crossed out, | 0:51:08 | 0:51:10 | |
largo finally appearing there as the speed, | 0:51:10 | 0:51:15 | |
with some equation between the slowness | 0:51:15 | 0:51:19 | |
and the deep expressivity of the passage. | 0:51:19 | 0:51:22 | |
We've arrived up here, in fact where Dvorak sat. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:42 | |
-In Box 10. -Absolutely. | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
-So how was it received? -It was received incredibly. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:47 | |
Everybody loved the music. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:48 | |
I think what was important was it related to them as well. | 0:51:48 | 0:51:52 | |
There were American themes. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:54 | |
It was a piece for America, and of America, in America. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:58 | |
MUSIC: "Symphony No 9 New World" by Dvorak | 0:51:58 | 0:52:01 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:53:00 | 0:53:02 | |
Writing about the premier, James Gibbons Huneker, | 0:53:02 | 0:53:05 | |
the journalist who'd given Dvorak the article with Negro Tunes, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
acknowledged the new hybrid soil | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
in which this musical culture was taking root. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
"Dvorak's symphony is American, is it? | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
"Themes from negro melodies composed by a Bohemian, | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
"conducted by a Hungarian | 0:53:19 | 0:53:21 | |
"and played by Germans in a hall built by a Scotchman. | 0:53:21 | 0:53:25 | |
"It will probably be many years | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
"before a concert will be talked and written about as was this one." | 0:53:28 | 0:53:32 | |
The New York Conservatory folded during the depression in the 1930s. | 0:53:36 | 0:53:40 | |
The house where Dvorak lived and composed the New World Symphony | 0:53:40 | 0:53:44 | |
was demolished in 1991. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:45 | |
But his influence on American music was lasting. | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
His famous largo sounds so much like a negro spiritual | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
that it was given words by one of his pupils, William Arms Fisher, | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
and famously recorded by African American singer Paul Robeson. | 0:53:56 | 0:54:00 | |
# ..I'm just going home... # | 0:54:00 | 0:54:03 | |
It's become a piece of American popular music. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:06 | |
# ..I'm just going home. # | 0:54:06 | 0:54:17 | |
MUSIC: Symphony No 6, 3rd Movement by Tchaikovsky | 0:54:17 | 0:54:20 | |
At this time, having a symphonic tradition | 0:54:32 | 0:54:34 | |
proved you were a proper nation. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:36 | |
That's why America wanted Dvorak to create one. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
Just as the powerful Russian Empire had done a generation earlier | 0:54:39 | 0:54:43 | |
using elements of their folk music. | 0:54:43 | 0:54:45 | |
Here in St Petersburg, most successful at combining | 0:54:48 | 0:54:51 | |
the national soul with Germanic tradition was Tchaikovsky | 0:54:51 | 0:54:54 | |
writing symphonic music that was passionate and emotional. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
In October 1893, Tchaikovsky's latest symphony, his 6th, | 0:55:11 | 0:55:15 | |
had its premiere here at the Philharmonic Hall, | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
conducted by the composer himself. | 0:55:18 | 0:55:21 | |
Partly because of its immense popularity, | 0:55:21 | 0:55:23 | |
Tchaikovsky's music is often dismissed. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:26 | |
But this symphony, known as the Pathetique, | 0:55:26 | 0:55:29 | |
is one of the most original and deeply personal ever written. | 0:55:29 | 0:55:32 | |
Tchaikovsky may have been using a public form, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:45 | |
but it's a work that's full of private emotion. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
What Tchaikovsky did in the Pathetique that was so unusual | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
was to replace an uplifting finale with a searing slow movement, | 0:56:57 | 0:57:02 | |
descending into despair. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:05 | |
The last movement seems to be an epitaph or a farewell. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:14 | |
Full of the most glorious melodic material | 0:57:14 | 0:57:18 | |
that rises to a desperate climax, | 0:57:18 | 0:57:20 | |
as if he was ridding himself of some deep, deep hidden pain, | 0:57:20 | 0:57:25 | |
before allowing itself to come to rest in the final bars, so movingly. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:29 | |
No symphony before had ever ended like this. | 0:57:36 | 0:57:39 | |
And, of course, it has since acquired an even greater power | 0:57:39 | 0:57:41 | |
because Tchaikovsky died just nine days after the premiere. | 0:57:41 | 0:57:46 | |
There was something very personal that Tchaikovsky wanted to say in this piece, | 0:57:46 | 0:57:50 | |
but, in retrospect, it also seems like a requiem for the old Europe, | 0:57:50 | 0:57:54 | |
which couldn't last much longer, | 0:57:54 | 0:57:57 | |
with big destructive changes to come - | 0:57:57 | 0:57:59 | |
which is what we'll be looking at next time. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:02 | |
To go deeper into the music and unravel the secrets of the symphony, | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
follow the links to the Open University at... | 0:58:19 | 0:58:25 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:47 | 0:58:49 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:49 | 0:58:51 |