0:00:03 > 0:00:06This is the story of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies,
0:00:06 > 0:00:09the British composer who, for over 50 years,
0:00:09 > 0:00:10amazed, surprised,
0:00:10 > 0:00:13and sometimes shocked audiences.
0:00:13 > 0:00:16If you have any problems in getting to grips with
0:00:16 > 0:00:18so-called "difficult" modern music,
0:00:18 > 0:00:21the answer, quite often, is to hear it often enough.
0:00:21 > 0:00:24# Ah-ah-ah-ah
0:00:24 > 0:00:25# Am-fa... #
0:00:25 > 0:00:28HE NEIGHS LIKE A HORSE # Eee... #
0:00:28 > 0:00:30Who the hell wrote that?
0:00:30 > 0:00:33With astonishing clips from the BBC television archive,
0:00:33 > 0:00:36we'll trace Max's extraordinary journey
0:00:36 > 0:00:39from the iconoclastic young rebel from Salford...
0:00:39 > 0:00:42I don't want to be pompous about it but
0:00:42 > 0:00:44I am at the beginning of something.
0:00:47 > 0:00:51..to his surprise appointment as Master of the Queen's Music in 2004.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54The Queen has a very positive attitude to this.
0:00:57 > 0:00:59There are mysterious happenings in Italy...
0:00:59 > 0:01:01SCREAMING
0:01:01 > 0:01:03..magic from his adopted home in the Orkney Islands,
0:01:03 > 0:01:07including the most famous bagpipe solo in classical music.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10MUSIC: An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:01:10 > 0:01:11And his music, as we'll hear,
0:01:11 > 0:01:16is as charming and as complex as the man himself.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18Am I this or am I this?
0:01:18 > 0:01:20Or am I this or perhaps that?
0:01:20 > 0:01:24Or perhaps I am not any of those things at all
0:01:24 > 0:01:27and there's nothing behind the mask.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30MUSIC: Farewell To Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:01:40 > 0:01:44Peter Maxwell Davies was a true master and a true maverick -
0:01:44 > 0:01:49serious in intent but playful in approach.
0:01:49 > 0:01:53He was born in 1934 to a working-class family
0:01:53 > 0:01:56in the city of Salford in Greater Manchester.
0:01:56 > 0:02:01There was a piano in the house of my father's parents,
0:02:01 > 0:02:04which I got when I was eight years old,
0:02:04 > 0:02:07and so I was pushed to learn the piano.
0:02:07 > 0:02:09Before that, I loved music anyway.
0:02:09 > 0:02:13I'd been taking to a local performance of Gilbert and Sullivan
0:02:13 > 0:02:16and thought that was absolutely miraculous
0:02:16 > 0:02:21and, even then, I had the idea that I wanted to have to do with that -
0:02:21 > 0:02:24not so much interpreting it but making it -
0:02:24 > 0:02:27and, evidently, I went around the house
0:02:27 > 0:02:30singing operas of my own making at the age of four.
0:02:32 > 0:02:34Precociously gifted, in his late teens,
0:02:34 > 0:02:37he started at the Royal Manchester College of Music,
0:02:37 > 0:02:40where he encountered a group of like-minded misfits.
0:02:40 > 0:02:43We formed this group, which was Sandy Goehr's idea -
0:02:43 > 0:02:44New Music Manchester -
0:02:44 > 0:02:48and we just laughed and enjoyed it and got on with it.
0:02:48 > 0:02:53What I was doing was trying to form a sort of Communist Party cadre
0:02:53 > 0:02:56in the Manchester College
0:02:56 > 0:02:59because, although we were very different personalities,
0:02:59 > 0:03:01we had one thing in common -
0:03:01 > 0:03:04we disliked the same people.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07We thought that the Establishment
0:03:07 > 0:03:09was so stupid
0:03:09 > 0:03:11that there was no point
0:03:11 > 0:03:13in being angry about it.
0:03:13 > 0:03:14You just had to get on
0:03:14 > 0:03:16and do your own thing, which we did.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19We took my Trumpet Sonata down and did it at
0:03:19 > 0:03:23a concert at the Arts Council Great Drawing Room.
0:03:23 > 0:03:27MUSIC: Sonata For Trumpet And Piano by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:03:27 > 0:03:30I remember the place was packed -
0:03:30 > 0:03:33to our utter amazement, you couldn't get in.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49And there was a gentleman standing next to me, and he turned to me,
0:03:49 > 0:03:56quite pale and stressed, and said, "Who the hell wrote that?"
0:03:56 > 0:03:59His next ground-breaking work was his first composition for
0:03:59 > 0:04:02full orchestra, the ambitious Prolation.
0:04:02 > 0:04:04MUSIC: Prolation by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:04:13 > 0:04:15For me, it was ground-breaking
0:04:15 > 0:04:18because I hadn't worked with an orchestra before.
0:04:18 > 0:04:20I'd never had that palette.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23I learnt a lot from the mistakes I made in that piece.
0:04:23 > 0:04:24I think one must always
0:04:24 > 0:04:26learn from one's mistakes.
0:04:27 > 0:04:29I worked out, in that piece,
0:04:29 > 0:04:34structural principles which have been very helpful
0:04:34 > 0:04:36throughout my whole lifetime,
0:04:36 > 0:04:39and I felt that this was very important,
0:04:39 > 0:04:42then in the late '50s particularly,
0:04:42 > 0:04:47because the whole question of the composition techniques
0:04:47 > 0:04:52that a composer employs had gone into some kind of melting pot.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56It all had to be pulled together and fashioned into something
0:04:56 > 0:05:00that would stand me in good stead for the next 100 years.
0:05:00 > 0:05:02There was no better time to be a rebel,
0:05:02 > 0:05:04a revolutionary, an iconoclast,
0:05:04 > 0:05:06than the early 1960s,
0:05:06 > 0:05:11and Max's radicalism was about finding a new musical language -
0:05:11 > 0:05:14bringing the avant-garde to Britain.
0:05:14 > 0:05:17But what made him so distinctive was that
0:05:17 > 0:05:21he found his materials in the deep musical and spiritual past -
0:05:21 > 0:05:24in medieval plainchant, in techniques of rhythm
0:05:24 > 0:05:28and melody and harmony, and in a heightened sense of mysticism,
0:05:28 > 0:05:32as well as the experimentation of the 20th century.
0:05:32 > 0:05:36And from the start, Max was no ivory-tower ascetic.
0:05:36 > 0:05:40He wanted his music to connect with the audiences who heard it
0:05:40 > 0:05:41and the performers who played it.
0:05:41 > 0:05:43He believed that he could unleash
0:05:43 > 0:05:46a social as well as imaginative power through his pieces,
0:05:46 > 0:05:49whether they were written for his brilliant musical friends
0:05:49 > 0:05:53in Manchester, or for professional ensembles, or for schoolchildren.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57And all of that is captured in Max's first TV appearance,
0:05:57 > 0:05:58Humphrey Burton's luminous film,
0:05:58 > 0:06:01made for the BBC arts programme Monitor.
0:06:01 > 0:06:05Peter Maxwell Davies is 26 and he lives in the country.
0:06:05 > 0:06:07As a composer, he's a revolutionary.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11His music is advanced, difficult and highly individual.
0:06:11 > 0:06:13Everything he writes is seized upon by the critics
0:06:13 > 0:06:15and his music is already played,
0:06:15 > 0:06:17not only in England, but all over the world.
0:06:17 > 0:06:19This sort of thing.
0:06:19 > 0:06:21HE PLAYS DISSONANT NOTES IN A STACCATO RHYTHM
0:06:23 > 0:06:28I don't want to be pompous about it but I have got enough confidence
0:06:28 > 0:06:34to know that I am at the beginning of something.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37It's difficult to make a living as a composer
0:06:37 > 0:06:40and Peter Maxwell Davies, when he stopped being a student,
0:06:40 > 0:06:44became a teacher - a music master at Cirencester Grammar School.
0:06:44 > 0:06:45He's no ordinary teacher.
0:06:45 > 0:06:50HE PLAYS: Noel by Olivier Messiaen
0:06:55 > 0:07:00Messiaen's Noel, contrasting absolutely and completely
0:07:00 > 0:07:06the much more sober prelude which we had of Johann Sebastian Bach.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09HE PLAYS: Prelude by Bach
0:07:18 > 0:07:19Peter Maxwell Davies has organised
0:07:19 > 0:07:22- his life with fanatical efficiency. - HE PLAYS HARPSICHORD
0:07:22 > 0:07:27This apple loft is his studio. He converted it himself.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31It's a strictly functional place, stripped for musical action,
0:07:31 > 0:07:33and almost like a monk's cell in its implicitly.
0:07:33 > 0:07:36This is the nerve centre of his small universe,
0:07:36 > 0:07:39and he's got twice the nervous energy of most people.
0:07:39 > 0:07:42As a composer, Maxwell Davies makes no compromises
0:07:42 > 0:07:45and no concessions to popular taste.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48Even at festivals of contemporary music, audiences are baffled,
0:07:48 > 0:07:51and one British Symphony Orchestra laughed at a score of his,
0:07:51 > 0:07:52saying it was unplayable.
0:07:52 > 0:07:58HE PLAYS DISSONANT PIANO
0:07:58 > 0:08:01A lot of people have criticised me
0:08:01 > 0:08:04for writing music in which they find no meaning.
0:08:06 > 0:08:11What does keep me awake at nights is the method of expression,
0:08:11 > 0:08:13the technique of composition.
0:08:13 > 0:08:17My mode of thought is often very complex.
0:08:17 > 0:08:22This piano piece, which I wrote in 1955 is,
0:08:22 > 0:08:25in the first place, very simple,
0:08:25 > 0:08:26but the later development
0:08:26 > 0:08:28is more complex.
0:08:28 > 0:08:30MUSIC: Five Pieces For Piano by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:08:40 > 0:08:44It's the next section of the piece which might cause trouble.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47I have often been criticised for this sort of music.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11I know that a lot of people find that disagreeable but
0:09:11 > 0:09:15I'm very encouraged by the reception this music gets
0:09:15 > 0:09:18with the children at the school, who enjoy it.
0:09:18 > 0:09:22# Pro virgine Maria
0:09:22 > 0:09:26# Hallelujah Hallelujah
0:09:26 > 0:09:29# Pro virgine Maria... #
0:09:29 > 0:09:31My own music, I think,
0:09:31 > 0:09:36communicates something to those children who take the trouble
0:09:36 > 0:09:39to listen to it, and certainly to those
0:09:39 > 0:09:41who have performed in it.
0:09:41 > 0:09:45I'm quite confident that they have enjoyed doing
0:09:45 > 0:09:47O Magnum Mysterium, for instance.
0:09:47 > 0:09:51THEY PLAY: O Magnum Mysterium by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:10:19 > 0:10:20His horizon is wide.
0:10:20 > 0:10:24His music is performed in Venice and Berlin and London,
0:10:24 > 0:10:28and also in Cirencester which saw the first public performance
0:10:28 > 0:10:29of O Magnum Mysterium.
0:10:29 > 0:10:33MUSIC: O Magnum Mysterium by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:10:33 > 0:10:35REVERENT CHORAL MUSIC
0:11:23 > 0:11:24ORCHESTRA PLAYS
0:11:42 > 0:11:46Education was right at the core of Max's ideas.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49And in 1968, the BBC Schools Department approached him to present
0:11:49 > 0:11:53a series on modern classical music for sixth-formers.
0:11:53 > 0:11:57DISSONANT PIANO CHORDS
0:11:57 > 0:12:01HE PLAYS DISSONANT PIANO
0:12:01 > 0:12:04If you have any problems in getting to grips
0:12:04 > 0:12:07with so-called "difficult" modern music,
0:12:07 > 0:12:11the answer, quite often, is to hear it often enough
0:12:11 > 0:12:14and to forget your preconceived prejudices.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17THEY PLAY DISSONANT PIECE
0:12:19 > 0:12:22# Wie ein blasser Tropfen Bluts
0:12:22 > 0:12:25# Farbt die Lippen einer Kranken
0:12:25 > 0:12:28# Also ruht auf diesen Tonen
0:12:28 > 0:12:32# Ein vernichtungssuchtger Reiz. #
0:12:34 > 0:12:37Don't always imagine that you should be able
0:12:37 > 0:12:40to whistle melodies immediately.
0:12:40 > 0:12:41There is a good deal of Beethoven
0:12:41 > 0:12:44that doesn't lend itself to whistling.
0:12:44 > 0:12:47And there are even tunes by The Beatles or The Beach Boys
0:12:47 > 0:12:49that nobody whistles correctly.
0:12:50 > 0:12:54But you can always carry the sounds in your head.
0:12:59 > 0:13:03The performing group featured in the Modern Music programmes
0:13:03 > 0:13:06had been founded by Max and his friend Harrison Birtwistle
0:13:06 > 0:13:08under the name the Pierrot Players.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12With a shrewd eye for the spirit of the time,
0:13:12 > 0:13:14Max soon relaunched the group
0:13:14 > 0:13:17under the hipper label of the Fires Of London.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20That name sounds like a pop group and it was intended to.
0:13:29 > 0:13:31Birtwistle and I were very conscious
0:13:31 > 0:13:34that we had to create a music theatre
0:13:34 > 0:13:37of a particular kind which we could transport around,
0:13:37 > 0:13:39conduct ourselves with our own group
0:13:39 > 0:13:42and it wouldn't cost a great deal of money
0:13:42 > 0:13:44because there was no money available.
0:13:44 > 0:13:47So, we had to make something which was easy portable,
0:13:47 > 0:13:49used a small number of players,
0:13:49 > 0:13:52and we hoped would have some kind of impact.
0:13:54 > 0:13:58Their next project together, would shock the music world -
0:13:58 > 0:14:01Peter Maxwell Davies's anarchic music-theatre masterpiece,
0:14:01 > 0:14:03Eight Songs For A Mad King.
0:14:03 > 0:14:06And it still shocks now.
0:14:06 > 0:14:09I remember there were posters all over the Underground
0:14:09 > 0:14:10for the Eight Songs For A Mad King.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13Even if you didn't know who Maxwell Davies was,
0:14:13 > 0:14:15you knew, if you used the Underground,
0:14:15 > 0:14:18that there was going to be a piece based on George III off his trolley.
0:14:20 > 0:14:29# If you tell me, I lie
0:14:30 > 0:14:35# Let it be a black lie! #
0:14:37 > 0:14:40And the central core of it is this classic moment
0:14:40 > 0:14:42of pure Maxwell Davies parody.
0:14:42 > 0:14:44That was his way of
0:14:44 > 0:14:46punching the Establishment.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50He took one of the most iconic arias from Messiah,
0:14:50 > 0:14:54written by Britain's greatest ADOPTED composer, Handel,
0:14:54 > 0:14:56Comfort Ye My People...
0:14:56 > 0:15:03# Comfort ye! #
0:15:03 > 0:15:07..and he has this poor mad king kind of howling it...
0:15:07 > 0:15:13# ..Comfort ye
0:15:15 > 0:15:23# ..Comfort ye... #
0:15:23 > 0:15:25..and the accompaniment underneath,
0:15:25 > 0:15:28based on Handel's harmony, is a foxtrot!
0:15:28 > 0:15:32# ..With singing and with dancing
0:15:32 > 0:15:35# With milk and with apples
0:15:45 > 0:15:47# Sin!
0:15:47 > 0:15:49# Sin!
0:15:51 > 0:15:53# Sin! #
0:15:53 > 0:15:56TUMBLING DISSONANT CHORDS
0:16:02 > 0:16:05A tremendous ovation
0:16:05 > 0:16:08from a packed and enthusiastic Roundhouse audience for composer
0:16:08 > 0:16:11Peter Maxwell Davies with the Fires Of London
0:16:11 > 0:16:14of Eight Songs For A Mad King.
0:16:15 > 0:16:19The 1970s saw Max's international reputation steadily growing.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22This report is from Hans Werner Henze's workshop festival
0:16:22 > 0:16:25in Montepulciano in Italy.
0:16:25 > 0:16:28THEY PLAY DISSONANT NOTES AND RHYTHMS
0:16:31 > 0:16:35Tradimenti, the most audacious show, was staged in the local school
0:16:35 > 0:16:38by the avant-garde director Meme Perlini.
0:16:40 > 0:16:42To music by Peter Maxwell Davies -
0:16:42 > 0:16:44Scottish Dances and Antechrist -
0:16:44 > 0:16:46he organised a happening.
0:16:48 > 0:16:53Various unconnected scenes ran simultaneously in the classrooms.
0:16:53 > 0:16:56Perlini used a mixture of music, poetry,
0:16:56 > 0:17:00mime and drama to evoke surrealist images.
0:17:00 > 0:17:02I had a dream. There's food all around me
0:17:02 > 0:17:05and I'm starving hungry. I can't touch it.
0:17:05 > 0:17:07- PERLINI:- People were embroiled very much there.
0:17:07 > 0:17:11People acted in it - local people, I mean, young and old.
0:17:11 > 0:17:15And those who had been in it, liked what they did,
0:17:15 > 0:17:19whereas many people who just came to see the show
0:17:19 > 0:17:22were shocked and provoked and even angry.
0:17:36 > 0:17:38SHE SCREAMS
0:17:49 > 0:17:52The modernity of this work alienated many people
0:17:52 > 0:17:56who were not properly prepared for its inscrutability.
0:17:56 > 0:17:58DISSONANT PIANO NOTE
0:17:58 > 0:18:01MUSIC: St Thomas Wake by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:18:06 > 0:18:09Good evening and welcome to the Royal Albert Hall,
0:18:09 > 0:18:12where we'll have echoes of dance music from the 1920s
0:18:12 > 0:18:13in tonight's Sunday Prom.
0:18:13 > 0:18:16MUSIC: St Thomas Wake by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:18:20 > 0:18:23These days, a composer like Peter Maxwell Davies
0:18:23 > 0:18:25takes us by surprise when he writes for the orchestra
0:18:25 > 0:18:28in a way that departs from tradition.
0:18:28 > 0:18:31Well, earlier, I listened, with Max, to the orchestra rehearsing.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34And afterwards, I asked him what it was about the foxtrot
0:18:34 > 0:18:35that had specially attracted him.
0:18:35 > 0:18:40It was the first music that I ever really heard when I was a small boy.
0:18:40 > 0:18:44And you heard it under difficult circumstances, if I remember?
0:18:44 > 0:18:49Yes, well, I was in Manchester, and Manchester was regularly bombed.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52And I remember, I used to have this wind-up gramophone,
0:18:52 > 0:18:57and it was one way of getting rid of the din of the exploding bombs...
0:18:57 > 0:19:00Was to play foxtrots on the gramophone.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40Sir Charles Groves conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra
0:20:40 > 0:20:42at the BBC Proms.
0:20:42 > 0:20:45But Max's music was changing.
0:20:45 > 0:20:49From the 1970s onwards, he would use his hard-won compositional craft
0:20:49 > 0:20:53to construct pieces on the biggest possible scale -
0:20:53 > 0:20:58a whole series of symphonies, concertos and string quartets.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02It might have looked like a change from avant-garde iconoclasm
0:21:02 > 0:21:05to paying homage to musical conventions,
0:21:05 > 0:21:07but it was nothing of the sort.
0:21:07 > 0:21:11Max's project was just as ambitious and radical as ever,
0:21:11 > 0:21:14because he wanted to fill these forms with his dynamic
0:21:14 > 0:21:16and elemental musical language.
0:21:16 > 0:21:18His first symphony was premiered
0:21:18 > 0:21:20by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Simon Rattle.
0:21:20 > 0:21:22Bear in mind that in 1978,
0:21:22 > 0:21:26the average price of a house was well under £15,000.
0:21:28 > 0:21:30About 1,500 people saw tonight's premiere
0:21:30 > 0:21:32of the Maxwell Davies Symphony,
0:21:32 > 0:21:35and it's a sobering thought that the cost of presenting
0:21:35 > 0:21:39this single performance is something in excess of £15,000.
0:21:39 > 0:21:43Maxwell Davies himself, talking here to conductor Simon Rattle,
0:21:43 > 0:21:47is regarded as a major talent among the younger generation
0:21:47 > 0:21:49of experimental composers.
0:21:49 > 0:21:51With music that's reputedly difficult to play
0:21:51 > 0:21:55and hard for the more conservative music lover to understand,
0:21:55 > 0:21:58what had urged him to compose an entire symphony?
0:21:58 > 0:22:01It took a bit of courage to call it a symphony, I must say,
0:22:01 > 0:22:04because it's a term which has got such a weight
0:22:04 > 0:22:08of historical authority behind it that you're very daunted by it.
0:22:08 > 0:22:11MUSIC: First Symphony by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:22:37 > 0:22:40The First Symphony had been inspired by the wild landscape
0:22:40 > 0:22:43of the Orkney archipelago,
0:22:43 > 0:22:45that starkly beautiful group of islands
0:22:45 > 0:22:47off the north-east coast of Scotland.
0:23:06 > 0:23:10Max visited the Orkneys in 1971
0:23:10 > 0:23:13and fell in love with the Orcadian land and seascape.
0:23:13 > 0:23:16And it was to be his home and inspire music like the charming
0:23:16 > 0:23:20and popular wedding favourite, Farewell To Stromness.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24MUSIC: Farewell To Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:23:24 > 0:23:27His first home was a broken-down crofter's cottage
0:23:27 > 0:23:29on the Isle of Hoy.
0:23:32 > 0:23:34I had to carry all supplies,
0:23:34 > 0:23:37including crates of wine and sacks of coal,
0:23:37 > 0:23:40a mile up the cliff, a very tall cliff.
0:23:40 > 0:23:42And also, I had a garden,
0:23:42 > 0:23:45and I dug my own onions and peas and beans
0:23:45 > 0:23:48and strawberries and things.
0:23:49 > 0:23:52Welcome to Orkney, to meet one of Britain's
0:23:52 > 0:23:56most distinguished contemporary composers, Peter Maxwell Davies.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59HAUNTING CHORAL SINGING
0:24:23 > 0:24:25Writing music is the one thing I knew,
0:24:25 > 0:24:29when I was a very small boy, that I wanted to do,
0:24:29 > 0:24:34and I think even if I had had to
0:24:34 > 0:24:38do something else in order to eat,
0:24:38 > 0:24:40I would have still spent an awful
0:24:40 > 0:24:44lot of time writing music.
0:24:47 > 0:24:52There is no satisfaction in this world like the moment
0:24:52 > 0:24:56when you finish a piece of music and you think,
0:24:56 > 0:24:59"Well, perhaps that's not too bad."
0:24:59 > 0:25:04I'm not here just to provide decoration
0:25:04 > 0:25:07and something which is going to
0:25:07 > 0:25:10slip into the ear very easily all the time.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14I'm also here to enquire, to provoke, to make people think,
0:25:14 > 0:25:16to examine their own reactions to the music,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19and say, "What is that music about? I don't understand that."
0:25:19 > 0:25:23And perhaps, think a bit further than that
0:25:23 > 0:25:26and enquire into the nature of the music and their reaction,
0:25:26 > 0:25:28and perhaps, by implication,
0:25:28 > 0:25:32enquire into their own attitudes and what they themselves think.
0:26:33 > 0:26:36Max's politics were the opposite of isolationist.
0:26:36 > 0:26:39He was unafraid to protest at the injustices -
0:26:39 > 0:26:43social, environmental, educational - that he saw in Britain,
0:26:43 > 0:26:46and he fearlessly put those ideas into his pieces.
0:26:48 > 0:26:50There should be no compromises,
0:26:50 > 0:26:54no patronising to any lowest cultural common denominators.
0:26:54 > 0:26:57Max's own upbringing was proof of what was possible
0:26:57 > 0:27:00if people's talents were supported, nurtured into life.
0:27:43 > 0:27:44Hello.
0:27:44 > 0:27:50As a composer, my output ranges from film scores to operas.
0:27:50 > 0:27:53I don't often get asked to write television title music,
0:27:53 > 0:27:56but I couldn't resist the challenge of this one.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59I was asked to compose music which moved, stylistically,
0:27:59 > 0:28:02from the 13th century through to the present day,
0:28:02 > 0:28:04and all in 40 seconds.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07It was great fun to do and I hope you like it.
0:28:43 > 0:28:46That clip has been here in the vaults
0:28:46 > 0:28:50of the BBC Television Archives in Perivale unseen since 1987,
0:28:50 > 0:28:54the year that Max received his knighthood.
0:28:54 > 0:28:56By then, he was well on his way on his journey
0:28:56 > 0:28:59from being the composer who loved to shock
0:28:59 > 0:29:03to someone who audiences felt was a national treasure.
0:29:03 > 0:29:05And Max was always a composer who knew
0:29:05 > 0:29:08how to have serious musical fun,
0:29:08 > 0:29:12writing pieces that are designed to be flat-out entertaining.
0:29:12 > 0:29:13And they're brilliantly done.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16They're made with just as much care and craft
0:29:16 > 0:29:18as anything else that he wrote.
0:29:18 > 0:29:22Here's his riotous An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise
0:29:22 > 0:29:25raising the roof at the Royal Albert Hall
0:29:25 > 0:29:27at The Last Night Of The Proms in 1992.
0:29:27 > 0:29:31MUSIC: An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:31:20 > 0:31:23LAUGHTER
0:31:41 > 0:31:45CHEERING, LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
0:31:45 > 0:31:47WHISTLING AND APPLAUSE
0:31:47 > 0:31:51CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:33:43 > 0:33:46CHEERING
0:35:26 > 0:35:30WILD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:35:32 > 0:35:35Now in his late 50s, Max accepted an appointment
0:35:35 > 0:35:36as the associate conductor
0:35:36 > 0:35:39of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester.
0:35:39 > 0:35:42A local news programme, North West Tonight,
0:35:42 > 0:35:44was there at his first rehearsal.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48Sir Peter's first major rehearsal with the Philharmonic
0:35:48 > 0:35:50wasn't quite what he'd expected
0:35:50 > 0:35:53when he walked into the studios at New Broadcasting House.
0:35:53 > 0:35:55Tuning up had to take a back seat
0:35:55 > 0:35:58as the orchestra serenaded their new conductor
0:35:58 > 0:36:00to the surprise tune of Happy Birthday.
0:36:00 > 0:36:02One, two, three, four, five!
0:36:02 > 0:36:05MUSIC: Happy Birthday
0:36:09 > 0:36:12Sir Peter, obviously delighted with the rather offbeat version
0:36:12 > 0:36:15said birthdays were something he would rather not think about,
0:36:15 > 0:36:19especially if you're only a couple of years off from being 60.
0:36:21 > 0:36:25For him, the challenge lies in working with a large orchestra,
0:36:25 > 0:36:28something he wishes he had done a lot sooner.
0:36:28 > 0:36:30Excellent! Good sight-reading!
0:36:30 > 0:36:35I don't pretend that I'm a hotshot conductor or anything like that.
0:36:36 > 0:36:39There is an openness to what I think of
0:36:39 > 0:36:43as really worthwhile serious music
0:36:43 > 0:36:46and there is still, very often,
0:36:46 > 0:36:49a kind of inverted snobbism about this,
0:36:49 > 0:36:51that people who, like myself,
0:36:51 > 0:36:54come from a totally working-class background,
0:36:54 > 0:36:57they feel, "Oh, that music isn't for us."
0:36:57 > 0:37:00DISSONANT CHORDS AND TONES
0:37:03 > 0:37:07Coming back to Greater Manchester and his home town of Salford
0:37:07 > 0:37:09was a strange experience for Max.
0:37:10 > 0:37:13Sometimes, even now, I wake up and I think,
0:37:13 > 0:37:15"Well, that dream, it was Salford,
0:37:15 > 0:37:19"or it was Swinton, or it was the middle of Manchester."
0:37:19 > 0:37:21And I haven't lived here for so many years.
0:37:21 > 0:37:24MUSIC: The Beltane Fire by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:37:27 > 0:37:29It was Orkney that Max now called home,
0:37:29 > 0:37:32and the sound of the traditional music of the Islands
0:37:32 > 0:37:35infused itself more and more into his writing.
0:37:35 > 0:37:39MUSIC: The Beltane Fire by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:38:57 > 0:39:00Max's commitment to Orkney was indefatigable.
0:39:00 > 0:39:04In 1977, he founded the annual St Magnus Festival.
0:39:04 > 0:39:07I wanted, really, to say thank you
0:39:07 > 0:39:11for the inspiration that I'd got from the Islands.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15MUSIC: Orkney Saga No 5 by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:39:36 > 0:39:38Each midsummer,
0:39:38 > 0:39:40Max brought internationally celebrated performers
0:39:40 > 0:39:43to the Islands, he premiered his new pieces, and above all,
0:39:43 > 0:39:47he wrote works with and for the communities of Orkney.
0:39:47 > 0:39:52I think any community really has to bring itself to life
0:39:52 > 0:39:55by having things like a composer in residence
0:39:55 > 0:39:58who is IN residence not just a visitor.
0:39:59 > 0:40:02MUSIC: Orkney Saga No 5 by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:40:16 > 0:40:19At the festival - still going strong -
0:40:19 > 0:40:22place, people and music are all connected.
0:40:32 > 0:40:35- APPLAUSE - Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
0:40:35 > 0:40:36Thank you, chorus.
0:40:48 > 0:40:52As he got older, Max seemed to become more prolific.
0:40:52 > 0:40:55And now, here to conduct the BBC Philharmonic
0:40:55 > 0:40:58in his Seventh Symphony, is Sir Peter Maxwell Davies himself.
0:40:58 > 0:41:00APPLAUSE
0:41:52 > 0:41:53The only reason I conducted
0:41:53 > 0:41:56was that I wasn't getting performances for a start,
0:41:56 > 0:42:00and when I did, they were so damned awful sometimes,
0:42:00 > 0:42:05the kind of performance sometimes where you hear your piece played
0:42:05 > 0:42:08and it sounds miserable and you know it's not like that.
0:42:08 > 0:42:11And it's universally condemned
0:42:11 > 0:42:14and you just want to go, not even to the nearest pub,
0:42:14 > 0:42:16but to the nearest cemetery!
0:42:16 > 0:42:19MUSIC: Symphony No 7 by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:42:58 > 0:43:01This Seventh Symphony of Max's, deliberately echoed
0:43:01 > 0:43:04the great European symphonists, Haydn and Mahler,
0:43:04 > 0:43:06but his next symphony, the Eighth,
0:43:06 > 0:43:09would take its inspiration from Ralph Vaughan Williams
0:43:09 > 0:43:11and a very different continent.
0:43:12 > 0:43:15The flight here was quite extraordinary.
0:43:15 > 0:43:17A perfect, perfect day.
0:43:17 > 0:43:20The mountains, the crags,
0:43:20 > 0:43:23the icebergs, well...
0:43:23 > 0:43:25all such a new experience.
0:43:30 > 0:43:33I'm here in the Antarctic
0:43:33 > 0:43:37as the first stage of writing
0:43:37 > 0:43:42a symphony jointly commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra
0:43:42 > 0:43:45and the British Antarctic Survey.
0:43:45 > 0:43:49And a part of the deal wasn't only that I should write the piece
0:43:49 > 0:43:53but that I should experience the Antarctic first-hand
0:43:53 > 0:43:54and here I am.
0:44:01 > 0:44:08I hoped that the experience of the landscape and the frozen sea
0:44:08 > 0:44:15would be an intensification of the experience of the Orkney landscape.
0:44:19 > 0:44:26Here I shall be working and thinking, walking about,
0:44:26 > 0:44:30and just absorbing the feeling of this magic place.
0:44:40 > 0:44:45My agenda was one of my perpetual interests - which is the environment.
0:44:45 > 0:44:47If the ice cap were to melt,
0:44:47 > 0:44:53once it starts, the oceans will fill very, very rapidly with water,
0:44:53 > 0:44:57places will begin to disappear, that we know and love,
0:44:57 > 0:45:00and the world will be a very different place.
0:45:00 > 0:45:03And at the end of the piece, if you like,
0:45:03 > 0:45:05the catastrophe happens.
0:45:05 > 0:45:08MUSIC: Symphony No 8 (Antarctic Symphony) by Peter Maxwell Davies
0:45:31 > 0:45:34Max never stopped pushing himself as a composer
0:45:34 > 0:45:38and he never underestimated his audiences, either.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42Music like the Antarctic Symphony is challenging in the best sense.
0:45:44 > 0:45:47There will always be more to discover in Max's music,
0:45:47 > 0:45:50and that's just as true of his lighter side, too.
0:51:15 > 0:51:18WILD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:51:18 > 0:51:21Max was openly homosexual,
0:51:21 > 0:51:23fiercely republican
0:51:23 > 0:51:25and always deeply radical in his outlook.
0:51:25 > 0:51:28He spoke out against the possibility of uranium mining
0:51:28 > 0:51:31in the Orkneys in the 1980s
0:51:31 > 0:51:34and in 2003, he marched against the Iraq War.
0:51:34 > 0:51:37So, it came as a surprise when, in 2004,
0:51:37 > 0:51:40he was appointed Master of The Queen's Music,
0:51:40 > 0:51:42the musical equivalent of the Poet Laureate.
0:51:42 > 0:51:44BBC Two's The Culture Show
0:51:44 > 0:51:47took their cameras to the Orkneys to investigate.
0:51:58 > 0:51:59I will walk on Cata Sands
0:51:59 > 0:52:01and along one of the beaches here
0:52:01 > 0:52:04and think about the music that I'm writing.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08You can plan your harmonic progression
0:52:08 > 0:52:11and walk through it, as it were, in three dimensions,
0:52:11 > 0:52:14pushing the notes this way or that way.
0:52:14 > 0:52:17And then, you can go back and walk through it again,
0:52:17 > 0:52:19and it's as if it's actually there,
0:52:19 > 0:52:21and you're INSIDE the music.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27My role as Master of The Queen's Music, a new job for me -
0:52:27 > 0:52:30I've only had it for just under a year...
0:52:30 > 0:52:33I know people have questioned, "How can you do it?"
0:52:33 > 0:52:35Because that is a terrible role,
0:52:35 > 0:52:39it's being some kind of courtier or lackey or whatever.
0:52:39 > 0:52:40Oh, no, it's not.
0:52:40 > 0:52:45The Queen has a very positive attitude to this,
0:52:45 > 0:52:48and I think that we can make something
0:52:48 > 0:52:52which is going to be only good for the future.
0:53:12 > 0:53:14I hope that this piece has got
0:53:14 > 0:53:17something a little bit pompous and regal about it,
0:53:17 > 0:53:19I tried to give it that quality.
0:53:19 > 0:53:23The piece sets a poem by Andrew Motion.
0:53:23 > 0:53:27And the Queen's constancy through troubles, through changes,
0:53:27 > 0:53:29was what we came up with.
0:53:33 > 0:53:35# The stars still shine,
0:53:35 > 0:53:39# The stars still shine although their names... #
0:53:39 > 0:53:42But whatever the Queen might make of Max's music,
0:53:42 > 0:53:45audiences have grown to love it.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48There's often a sheer gorgeousness in his orchestral writing.
0:53:48 > 0:53:52A superabundance of ideas, of textures and of passions.
0:53:52 > 0:53:56As in Ebb Of Winter. He'd started writing it
0:53:56 > 0:54:00as a piece about seasonal change, winter turning into spring.
0:54:00 > 0:54:02Then something happened,
0:54:02 > 0:54:06and the confidence of the opening began to be undermined.
0:54:06 > 0:54:12And it was only much, much later that I thought,
0:54:12 > 0:54:17"Well, that music that I was writing,
0:54:17 > 0:54:20"it knew something that I didn't.
0:54:20 > 0:54:22And I found myself,
0:54:22 > 0:54:28shortly after writing it, in hospital with leukaemia,
0:54:28 > 0:54:32being told, I had, if I didn't go into hospital,
0:54:32 > 0:54:34a maximum of six weeks to live.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07An extract from Ebb Of Winter, played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
0:57:07 > 0:57:13Max's legacy is, of course, his catalogue of around 300 pieces,
0:57:13 > 0:57:16works that I think are going to become more and more important
0:57:16 > 0:57:18for performers and audiences,
0:57:18 > 0:57:22and the whole story of music in the 20th and 21st centuries.
0:57:22 > 0:57:24There's also his musical activism,
0:57:24 > 0:57:26his insistence on the highest possible standards
0:57:26 > 0:57:30of music education, his challenge to orchestras and institutions
0:57:30 > 0:57:34to include the contemporary as part of their repertoires.
0:57:34 > 0:57:36But there's something else.
0:57:36 > 0:57:38Max believed in magic.
0:57:38 > 0:57:42When I met him at his home on Sanday in Orkney,
0:57:42 > 0:57:47he had charms to ward off ghosts above each of the doorways.
0:57:47 > 0:57:51Just like that strange visionary experience of being on Orkney,
0:57:51 > 0:57:56where you're suspended somewhere between sea and sky,
0:57:56 > 0:58:00Peter Maxwell Davies's music sounds out a region of transcendence.
0:58:00 > 0:58:03It's a world of endless mystery.
0:58:03 > 0:58:18# O magnum mysterium
0:58:18 > 0:58:37# Et admirabile sacramentum... #
0:58:37 > 0:58:43OVERLAPPING CHORAL HARMONIES