The Age of Elegance & Sensibility

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0:00:02 > 0:00:04ORCHESTRA PLAYS "POKER FACE" BY LADY GAGA

0:00:04 > 0:00:07'Music, one of the most dazzling fruits of human civilisation,

0:00:07 > 0:00:10'is today a massive global phenomenon.'

0:00:11 > 0:00:14And so it's hard for us to imagine a time when,

0:00:14 > 0:00:16in centuries gone by, people could go weeks

0:00:16 > 0:00:18without hearing any music at all.

0:00:18 > 0:00:20Even in the 19th Century,

0:00:20 > 0:00:23you might hear your favourite symphony four or five times

0:00:23 > 0:00:27in your whole lifetime in the days before music could be recorded.

0:00:31 > 0:00:32'The story of music,

0:00:32 > 0:00:36'successive waves of discoveries, breakthroughs and inventions,

0:00:36 > 0:00:38'is an ongoing process.'

0:00:39 > 0:00:41The next great leap forward

0:00:41 > 0:00:44may take place in a backstreet of Beijing

0:00:44 > 0:00:46or upstairs in a pub in South Shields.

0:00:56 > 0:00:58# Can't read my Can't read my

0:00:58 > 0:01:02# No, he can't read my poker face

0:01:02 > 0:01:04# She's got me like nobody... #

0:01:04 > 0:01:06Whatever music you're into,

0:01:06 > 0:01:12Monteverdi or Mantovani, Mozart or Motown, Machaut or mashup,

0:01:12 > 0:01:15the techniques it relies on didn't happen by accident.

0:01:15 > 0:01:18Someone somewhere thought of them first.

0:01:26 > 0:01:29'Music can make us weep or make us dance.

0:01:29 > 0:01:32'It's reflected the times in which it was written.

0:01:32 > 0:01:35'It has delighted, challenged, comforted and excited us.

0:01:36 > 0:01:40'In this series, I've been tracing the story of music from scratch,

0:01:40 > 0:01:42'to follow it on its miraculous journey.

0:01:42 > 0:01:47'Misleading jargon and fancy labels are best put to one side.'

0:01:51 > 0:01:54Instead, try to imagine how revolutionary

0:01:54 > 0:01:57and how exhilarating many of the innovations

0:01:57 > 0:02:01we take for granted today were to people at the time.

0:02:01 > 0:02:04There are a million ways of telling the story of music.

0:02:04 > 0:02:05This is mine.

0:02:24 > 0:02:27'The later half of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th

0:02:27 > 0:02:31'saw the lives and careers of some of the giants of European music.

0:02:34 > 0:02:36'Haydn,

0:02:36 > 0:02:38'Mozart,

0:02:38 > 0:02:39'Beethoven,

0:02:39 > 0:02:41'Schubert,

0:02:41 > 0:02:42'Schumann,

0:02:42 > 0:02:45'Mendelssohn and Chopin.

0:02:47 > 0:02:50'They lived through a time of tremendous social upheaval,

0:02:50 > 0:02:52'the American and French Revolutions,

0:02:52 > 0:02:55'the Napoleonic Wars and yet more revolutions.

0:02:59 > 0:03:03'The turmoil of the times eventually saw music transformed.

0:03:03 > 0:03:07'It became bigger, louder and more ferocious.

0:03:07 > 0:03:11'And yet, before around 1800, the remarkable fact is that

0:03:11 > 0:03:14'the music doesn't reflect the mayhem that surrounded it.'

0:03:15 > 0:03:20The period from around 1750 to 1850 brought with it

0:03:20 > 0:03:24seismic social, political and artistic change.

0:03:24 > 0:03:28In music, faith and morality, the watchwords of Bach and Handel,

0:03:28 > 0:03:30gave way to the pleasure principle.

0:03:30 > 0:03:33Rather than trying to improve their listeners,

0:03:33 > 0:03:38composers like Haydn and Mozart starting pampering them instead.

0:03:38 > 0:03:40And the rewards from their pampering

0:03:40 > 0:03:43completely transformed the social status of the composer.

0:03:43 > 0:03:47The process started with the dapper gentleman servant, Haydn,

0:03:47 > 0:03:52soon morphed into the freelance star turn, Mozart,

0:03:52 > 0:03:55and led to the tormented diva, Beethoven.

0:03:55 > 0:04:00In just his lifetime, composers went from below stairs to high table.

0:04:00 > 0:04:02The whole function of music

0:04:02 > 0:04:06and the audience it was aimed at evolved, and evolved dramatically.

0:04:23 > 0:04:26'The music of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert

0:04:26 > 0:04:28'and their contemporaries is many things,

0:04:28 > 0:04:32'but it is very rarely genuinely disturbing or unnerving.

0:04:35 > 0:04:37'In their search for elegance,

0:04:37 > 0:04:40'they produced a ton of music of great beauty.

0:04:40 > 0:04:42'And in their search for sensuality,

0:04:42 > 0:04:44'they made what might have been a grubby existence

0:04:44 > 0:04:48'into something attractive, sensitive and often very touching.'

0:04:54 > 0:04:58And as the pleasure principle took hold amongst Europe's aristocracy,

0:04:58 > 0:05:01music turned from something morally rigorous

0:05:01 > 0:05:04or spiritually haunting, to something sensual

0:05:04 > 0:05:09and intellectually unchallenging, even if it was often jolly stirring.

0:05:24 > 0:05:26But you could say there was a price to pay

0:05:26 > 0:05:28for this abstraction in music.

0:05:28 > 0:05:29A lack of meaning,

0:05:29 > 0:05:33and a lack of direct relevance to the times in which it was produced,

0:05:33 > 0:05:36because Haydn and Mozart's obedient following

0:05:36 > 0:05:39of their favourite symphonic formulas could not have come

0:05:39 > 0:05:42at a more disobedient junction in history.

0:05:43 > 0:05:47'The widespread panic that gripped the European aristocracy

0:05:47 > 0:05:49'at the time of the American and French Revolutions

0:05:49 > 0:05:55'is, with some exceptions, very hard to detect in the bulk of the music.'

0:05:55 > 0:05:59It's as if composers felt their job wasn't to join the revolutionaries

0:05:59 > 0:06:01but keep the aristocracy calm.

0:06:01 > 0:06:05"Don't panic, ladies and gentlemen, we'll create a virtual world

0:06:05 > 0:06:08"of order and harmony in our symphonies and concertos."

0:06:08 > 0:06:10If you don't believe me, listen to this.

0:06:10 > 0:06:13It's what Haydn was writing, his 99th Symphony,

0:06:13 > 0:06:14while the terror raged in Paris

0:06:14 > 0:06:17and they were cutting off the Queen's head.

0:06:28 > 0:06:31'Whereas composers of previous centuries had, on occasions,

0:06:31 > 0:06:35'produced music that seems to be a cry of lamentation,

0:06:35 > 0:06:38'here the music sauntered blithely on.'

0:06:42 > 0:06:44What happened to musical style, then,

0:06:44 > 0:06:48to reflect this change of attitude and mood?

0:06:48 > 0:06:51The most noticeable difference was a new approach to chords,

0:06:51 > 0:06:53the harmony that lay beneath every melody.

0:06:53 > 0:06:57Complication was replaced with simplicity.

0:06:57 > 0:07:01Unlike their predecessors, composers of the late 18th Century

0:07:01 > 0:07:03decided there were really far too many chords available

0:07:03 > 0:07:06and that they needed far fewer for their purposes.

0:07:06 > 0:07:08They preferred a language that was much simpler.

0:07:08 > 0:07:12They were interested in great blocks of one chord

0:07:12 > 0:07:14followed by great blocks of another.

0:07:14 > 0:07:16Not only did they restrict themselves

0:07:16 > 0:07:18to a menu of half a dozen chords,

0:07:18 > 0:07:21there were three chords they used obsessively.

0:07:21 > 0:07:22I...

0:07:22 > 0:07:23IV...

0:07:23 > 0:07:24V.

0:07:26 > 0:07:29'In the days when red, white and blue flags

0:07:29 > 0:07:31'were being hoisted all over Europe,

0:07:31 > 0:07:34'those colours are as good a metaphor as anything

0:07:34 > 0:07:36'for these three chords.'

0:07:36 > 0:07:39Let's look at an excerpt from an opera of 1762,

0:07:39 > 0:07:42Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Gluck.

0:07:42 > 0:07:44It's a dance interlude that later came to be famous,

0:07:44 > 0:07:47called The Dance of the Blessed Spirits.

0:07:53 > 0:07:57'Chord one, the home chord, usually starts and ends a piece.

0:07:57 > 0:08:03'Here's a score of that dance with all the Chord Ones marked in red.'

0:08:03 > 0:08:06You may be thinking that red is pretty powerful.

0:08:06 > 0:08:08But there are still some areas of the map

0:08:08 > 0:08:10not yet conquered by the red empire.

0:08:10 > 0:08:14OK, so let's show the same map with the blue chords added,

0:08:14 > 0:08:18eating up a bit more of the spaces that are left.

0:08:18 > 0:08:21'The blue sections represent Chord Four.

0:08:21 > 0:08:25'Now you can see there's not very much unoccupied territory left.

0:08:25 > 0:08:28'I'll mark in the Chord Fives in white.'

0:08:30 > 0:08:35So between them, our red, white and blue chords are all-conquering.

0:08:35 > 0:08:39Nearly all of this music is either chord I, IV or V.

0:08:39 > 0:08:42If I colour the final bits left in green,

0:08:42 > 0:08:44that's for all other chords,

0:08:44 > 0:08:47you'll see how tiny the remaining area now is,

0:08:47 > 0:08:49roughly a quarter of the music only.

0:08:51 > 0:08:54So the empires of red, white and blue

0:08:54 > 0:08:56had the world of music at their feet.

0:08:56 > 0:08:59This was still the case nearly 50 years later.

0:08:59 > 0:09:02Here's a piece from 1808 by Beethoven.

0:09:16 > 0:09:17'In this stirring section,

0:09:17 > 0:09:19'Beethoven harmonises the whole thing

0:09:19 > 0:09:22'with just our three main chords.

0:09:24 > 0:09:27'It's as if Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were reading

0:09:27 > 0:09:32'from the same very small book of chords as a no-frills rock group.'

0:09:32 > 0:09:34VIOLINS PLAY "ROCKING ALL OVER THE WORLD"

0:09:39 > 0:09:41# Well, here we are And here we are

0:09:41 > 0:09:43# And here we go

0:09:43 > 0:09:45# All aboard and we're ready to go

0:09:45 > 0:09:48# Here we go

0:09:48 > 0:09:50# Rocking all over the world... #

0:09:52 > 0:09:56'In rock and roll, those three chords are still the Status Quo.'

0:09:56 > 0:10:00# We're going crazy And we're going there today

0:10:00 > 0:10:02# Here we go

0:10:02 > 0:10:04# Rocking all over the world

0:10:07 > 0:10:10# And I like it, I like it I like it, I like it

0:10:10 > 0:10:14# I la-la-la-like it La-la-la-la

0:10:14 > 0:10:16# Here we go

0:10:16 > 0:10:19# Rocking all over the world

0:10:20 > 0:10:23# Over the world. #

0:10:28 > 0:10:31'But having a simplified palette of chords

0:10:31 > 0:10:34'didn't mean composers were unimaginative or bland.

0:10:34 > 0:10:38'It's simply that their concerns were different.

0:10:39 > 0:10:42'Composers of this period, like its architects,

0:10:42 > 0:10:45'were obsessed with clear form and structure.'

0:10:55 > 0:11:00For both Haydn and Mozart, symbolism and symmetry play an important part

0:11:00 > 0:11:03in how they constructed their compositions.

0:11:03 > 0:11:06You couldn't just have random nice tunes with accompaniment,

0:11:06 > 0:11:09you had to have an underlying logic, like a map.

0:11:09 > 0:11:13Whereas in a previous era, Bach's sat nav was calibrated mainly

0:11:13 > 0:11:15to seek out the meaning of the words,

0:11:15 > 0:11:18for Haydn and Mozart who followed him,

0:11:18 > 0:11:22finding the perfectly laid-out route was just as essential.

0:11:23 > 0:11:26'The building of their musical maps had its most sophisticated

0:11:26 > 0:11:30'manifestation in the growth and popularity of the symphony.

0:11:31 > 0:11:34'And to introduce the symphony, we need to acquaint ourselves

0:11:34 > 0:11:37'with a little-known but hugely influential composer,

0:11:37 > 0:11:39'Johann Stamitz.'

0:11:45 > 0:11:49Here he is on a Czech stamp. At least someone remembers him.

0:11:49 > 0:11:52Stamitz worked in the court in Mannheim, Germany,

0:11:52 > 0:11:55where they had an orchestra that was famous throughout Europe,

0:11:55 > 0:11:58both for the unusual skill of its players

0:11:58 > 0:12:02and for the fact it was big by the standards of the 1750s.

0:12:02 > 0:12:06This orchestra had 20 violins, four violas, four cellos,

0:12:06 > 0:12:12two basses, two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons and four horns,

0:12:12 > 0:12:15as well as two new-fangled clarinets,

0:12:15 > 0:12:19much to Mozart's envy when he visited in 1777.

0:12:19 > 0:12:23This tally of instruments, occasionally beefed up by timpani

0:12:23 > 0:12:27and trumpets, was the template for the orchestra as used by Haydn,

0:12:27 > 0:12:31Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and all their contemporaries.

0:12:31 > 0:12:34'Importantly, Stamitz addressed the need

0:12:34 > 0:12:37'for a guiding structure in orchestral music.

0:12:37 > 0:12:41'It's all to do with how he handled and shaped his tunes.

0:12:42 > 0:12:44'He has a little phrase like this...'

0:12:44 > 0:12:47ORCHESTRA PLAYS PHRASE

0:12:50 > 0:12:51'..and then repeats it.'

0:12:51 > 0:12:53ORCHESTRA REPEATS PHRASE

0:12:56 > 0:12:57'And then a second phrase...

0:13:01 > 0:13:03'..which he repeats almost unchanged.

0:13:08 > 0:13:11'In fact, virtually every phrase you hear is repeated

0:13:11 > 0:13:13'immediately after it's first heard.'

0:13:30 > 0:13:31All well and good,

0:13:31 > 0:13:35but too much straightforward repetition could be wearing.

0:13:35 > 0:13:38The symphony needed more expert hands than this

0:13:38 > 0:13:40in order to progress. The man who shaped

0:13:40 > 0:13:44and developed the symphony more than any other was Joseph Haydn.

0:13:48 > 0:13:52'Haydn's long career as a successful musician and composer

0:13:52 > 0:13:55'spanned the entire second half of the 18th Century.

0:13:56 > 0:14:00'He was notably generous in his support of younger composers

0:14:00 > 0:14:04'like Mozart, a close friend who predeceased him,

0:14:04 > 0:14:08'and Beethoven, who was for a time his pupil.

0:14:08 > 0:14:10'The torch Haydn passed onto them

0:14:10 > 0:14:14'was his crucial refining of the form of the symphony.'

0:14:17 > 0:14:20Haydn took the idea of proportion and balance

0:14:20 > 0:14:22and went one crucial step further.

0:14:22 > 0:14:25His typical balancing phrase wasn't identical,

0:14:25 > 0:14:27but slightly different in character.

0:14:27 > 0:14:31It created a sense of symmetry without simply repeating itself.

0:14:31 > 0:14:35So in the exquisite slow movement of his 88th symphony,

0:14:35 > 0:14:39Haydn's first little phrase of six notes goes like this.

0:14:42 > 0:14:46It's balancing second half takes the same shape,

0:14:46 > 0:14:47but changes the notes,

0:14:47 > 0:14:50so it feels like it's on a continuing journey.

0:14:53 > 0:14:57Then a final part equalling in length the first two bits together,

0:14:57 > 0:15:01rounds off the phrase in a satisfying and ornamented way.

0:15:34 > 0:15:37This process of taking a little cell of a tune,

0:15:37 > 0:15:39then building on it to create longer units

0:15:39 > 0:15:41with more interesting features to them

0:15:41 > 0:15:46is what Haydn taught the world to do, apparently effortlessly.

0:15:46 > 0:15:48SYMPHONY CONTINUES

0:16:12 > 0:16:16'The symphony would be nowhere without this skilful moulding

0:16:16 > 0:16:19'of little musical ideas into a much larger structure.

0:16:24 > 0:16:26'Haydn was so adept

0:16:26 > 0:16:28'at this sculpting of a tune from small beginnings

0:16:28 > 0:16:31'that the younger Mozart and Beethoven

0:16:31 > 0:16:33'simply copied his technique.'

0:16:40 > 0:16:41This was the point of a symphony.

0:16:41 > 0:16:45It was like an essay, or an exceptionally long doodle.

0:16:45 > 0:16:48A song could be just a nice tune, plain and simple.

0:16:48 > 0:16:52An opera was a series of songs, linked with a plot,

0:16:52 > 0:16:55but symphonies were supposed to be explorations,

0:16:55 > 0:16:57a journey to find out what would happen

0:16:57 > 0:17:00if you took a few tunes and mucked about with them.

0:17:00 > 0:17:03For sure, a symphony is a peculiar thing -

0:17:03 > 0:17:0660 musicians simultaneously interpreting instructions

0:17:06 > 0:17:09given them by one person with no narrative,

0:17:09 > 0:17:12no plot and no literal meaning.

0:17:12 > 0:17:14Nor is it generally a description of anything.

0:17:14 > 0:17:18Just four loosely-related, seven- or eight-minute sections

0:17:18 > 0:17:21of meandering music at slightly different speeds,

0:17:21 > 0:17:24strung together for the thought-provoking fun of it.

0:17:26 > 0:17:29'The odd thing about the symphony at this point in history

0:17:29 > 0:17:32'is that it doesn't have any direct parallels

0:17:32 > 0:17:34'in any other artistic field.

0:17:34 > 0:17:37'It's abstract, more than 120 years

0:17:37 > 0:17:40'before the concept became fashionable in visual art.'

0:17:48 > 0:17:50'Mozart, then, when he came to write his own symphonies,

0:17:50 > 0:17:56'beginning at the age of eight, simply adopted Haydn's model.

0:17:56 > 0:17:58'But there was one crucial difference

0:17:58 > 0:17:59'between the two composers -

0:17:59 > 0:18:03'Mozart was a born, unstoppable tune writer.'

0:18:08 > 0:18:11No-one who's ever lived has bettered Mozart in this respect.

0:18:11 > 0:18:13It's like he couldn't help it.

0:18:13 > 0:18:16Tunes flooded out of him, seemingly at will.

0:18:17 > 0:18:20'And that was important, because Mozart,

0:18:20 > 0:18:22'unlike, say, Bach 50 years earlier,

0:18:22 > 0:18:26'was mostly writing for a paying public.

0:18:26 > 0:18:29'If they didn't like his music, he'd starve.

0:18:29 > 0:18:33'Ravishing melodies weren't a bad way to gain the public's heart,

0:18:33 > 0:18:35'then as now.'

0:18:36 > 0:18:38MUSIC: "21st Piano Concerto"

0:18:48 > 0:18:50MUSIC: "The Marriage Of Figaro"

0:18:54 > 0:18:58MUSIC: "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik"

0:18:58 > 0:19:01'It pains me to say it, but if you can remember a tune,

0:19:01 > 0:19:03'it's probably by Mozart.

0:19:03 > 0:19:07'If you can't, it's probably by Haydn.'

0:19:07 > 0:19:10To get a feel for the satisfyingly perfect proportions

0:19:10 > 0:19:12of a Mozart tune, let's look at just one,

0:19:12 > 0:19:16the song Dove Sono from his opera, the Marriage of Figaro.

0:19:16 > 0:19:19This song, or aria, is about a woman's distress

0:19:19 > 0:19:22that the happiness and romance of the early days of her marriage

0:19:22 > 0:19:25seemed to have faded, if not entirely disappeared.

0:19:51 > 0:19:55It starts with a disarmingly simple five notes.

0:19:58 > 0:20:01Really this mini-phrase is just a decorative version of one note,

0:20:01 > 0:20:03- this note, C. - HE PLAYS A C

0:20:03 > 0:20:06To complement this opening statement around the note C,

0:20:06 > 0:20:09it's followed by another, a little higher, on the note E.

0:20:12 > 0:20:14So we have two well-balanced phrases,

0:20:14 > 0:20:17which now feel like they need an answer of some kind.

0:20:17 > 0:20:20The next phrase is the same length as the first three put together

0:20:20 > 0:20:22and though it starts with the same rhythm,

0:20:22 > 0:20:26it goes off on its own little voyage before coming to a sort of rest.

0:20:34 > 0:20:36Then the first part of the tune is repeated.

0:20:39 > 0:20:42You wouldn't expect a composer as skilled as Mozart

0:20:42 > 0:20:45to repeat the second part exactly as it was before though,

0:20:45 > 0:20:49and sure enough his second section, having established itself...

0:20:51 > 0:20:54..begins a gradual ascent up the musical ladder,

0:20:54 > 0:20:57as the lyrics describe her husband's lying lips.

0:21:03 > 0:21:05Then it subsides again and rounds off.

0:22:10 > 0:22:12This is just the first 40 seconds of the aria,

0:22:12 > 0:22:17which has been famous for 200 years, so it must be extremely memorable.

0:22:17 > 0:22:20And I don't believe that's just random success.

0:22:20 > 0:22:22Genius though Mozart undoubtedly was,

0:22:22 > 0:22:26nevertheless he also relied on the established tricks of the trade.

0:22:26 > 0:22:30There are some formulas at work in classic tunes, and one of them

0:22:30 > 0:22:33is to construct your melody around an important chord.

0:22:33 > 0:22:35In Mozart's time, as now,

0:22:35 > 0:22:39one chord was more powerful than all others, the one that belongs

0:22:39 > 0:22:42to the home key family at any given point in the music.

0:22:42 > 0:22:46So in the key family of C, it's the major chord of C,

0:22:46 > 0:22:51and the constituent notes in that chord are C...E...and G.

0:22:52 > 0:22:56Remember I said that the opening phrase of Dove Sono

0:22:56 > 0:22:59was basically an embellishment of one note, C...

0:23:01 > 0:23:05..and that the second bit of the phrase did the same for E.

0:23:07 > 0:23:08Well, blow me down with a feather,

0:23:08 > 0:23:11if the third phrase doesn't begin on G.

0:23:14 > 0:23:17Dove Sono, like countless famous and memorable tunes

0:23:17 > 0:23:21is shaped from the notes of the king chord, C-E-G.

0:23:25 > 0:23:30'But something else emerges in Mozart beyond the sublime melodies,

0:23:30 > 0:23:32'something that's more surprising.

0:23:44 > 0:23:48'Mozart lived in the decorously polite aristocratic world

0:23:48 > 0:23:53'of imperial Vienna, a world he never wholeheartedly embraced.

0:23:53 > 0:23:56'Which makes his operatic visions of heaven and hell,

0:23:56 > 0:24:00'the spiritual and the carnal, weirdly unexpected.'

0:24:02 > 0:24:05When, in Mozart's music, we glimpse life's darker side,

0:24:05 > 0:24:08or sense loneliness or insecurity,

0:24:08 > 0:24:11it's as if a veil has momentarily slipped.

0:24:11 > 0:24:14Later composers, especially Beethoven and Berlioz,

0:24:14 > 0:24:17do little else than expose their internal turmoil

0:24:17 > 0:24:21all over the music, like they're in a modern-day self-help group

0:24:21 > 0:24:24of composers with personality disorders.

0:24:24 > 0:24:26Mozart's emotional honesty, on the other hand,

0:24:26 > 0:24:29is disguised beneath the decorum and poise

0:24:29 > 0:24:31required of an 18th-century artisan.

0:25:07 > 0:25:13We know that the 1770s and '80s were dirty, unhealthy, dangerous

0:25:13 > 0:25:16and grim, for anyone but the most privileged.

0:25:17 > 0:25:21But it wouldn't occur to Mozart to reproduce that misery.

0:25:22 > 0:25:25Like the portraits Gainsborough and Reynolds painted

0:25:25 > 0:25:27during Mozart's lifetime,

0:25:27 > 0:25:31his music says, "I'll do my best to make this beautiful

0:25:31 > 0:25:34"because that's what life can be at its best."

0:25:34 > 0:25:39Painter and composer alike would have wanted to ennoble humanity.

0:25:39 > 0:25:40They succeeded.

0:25:53 > 0:25:58Mozart's dignified compassion in the face of life's challenge

0:25:58 > 0:26:01makes his music compelling, even when it's tranquil.

0:26:01 > 0:26:04We've responded to this distant Austrian's voice

0:26:04 > 0:26:07across the years and the continents so spontaneously

0:26:07 > 0:26:09because his music seems so uncluttered,

0:26:09 > 0:26:13without cynicism or intellectual pretension.

0:26:13 > 0:26:21ALL: # Soave sia il vento

0:26:21 > 0:26:29# Tranquilla sia l'onda

0:26:29 > 0:26:37# Ed ogni elemento

0:26:37 > 0:26:45# Benigno risponda

0:26:45 > 0:26:51# Ai nostri desir

0:26:53 > 0:27:01# Soave sia il vento

0:27:01 > 0:27:09# Tranquilla sia l'onda... #

0:27:09 > 0:27:11'Though he spent several bad-tempered years

0:27:11 > 0:27:13'as an employee of an archbishop,

0:27:13 > 0:27:15'for the last ten years of his career,

0:27:15 > 0:27:19'Mozart became what we'd call self-employed.

0:27:19 > 0:27:22'A bit of public performing, some teaching,

0:27:22 > 0:27:25'writing on commission to rich patrons,

0:27:25 > 0:27:29'composing for the theatre and producing dance music.'

0:27:29 > 0:27:33After Mozart, the freelance, portfolio career became the norm.

0:27:33 > 0:27:37Instead of rich employers, composers had to court popularity

0:27:37 > 0:27:40wherever they could with a range of potential clients

0:27:40 > 0:27:42and had to deal, for better or worse,

0:27:42 > 0:27:45with a new, bourgeois audience.

0:27:45 > 0:27:49'Mozart and Haydn are the composers in history who represent

0:27:49 > 0:27:53'the moment of change from paid servant to freelance composer.'

0:27:55 > 0:28:00The next star composer based in Vienna pushed this relationship

0:28:00 > 0:28:03between public and artist to dramatic new heights.

0:28:03 > 0:28:07He was Beethoven. His mission was not so much to charm

0:28:07 > 0:28:10or seduce his audience as to confront it.

0:28:15 > 0:28:18'To many people, Beethoven is the very model

0:28:18 > 0:28:21'of the tormented, misunderstood genius,

0:28:21 > 0:28:23'a caricature of the classical composer,

0:28:23 > 0:28:27'complete with demonic stare and perpetual bad hair day.

0:28:29 > 0:28:33'A moody, mixed-up chap, he found himself in possession

0:28:33 > 0:28:37'of musical talents even he couldn't quite come to terms with.

0:28:38 > 0:28:42'The reputation and the man, though, don't always tally up.'

0:28:43 > 0:28:47For a start, Beethoven wasn't one composer, but three.

0:28:47 > 0:28:51He starts off as a Mozart clone with a flair for playing the piano,

0:28:51 > 0:28:53turns into "Haydn: The Sequel"

0:28:53 > 0:28:56and ends up isolated from the world by deafness,

0:28:56 > 0:29:00composing music that was to baffle, bewitch and amaze

0:29:00 > 0:29:03every European musician of the next 100 years.

0:29:03 > 0:29:06'While Beethoven devotees like to see him

0:29:06 > 0:29:10'as a man who reinvented music from a standing start,

0:29:10 > 0:29:12'the reality is that, like most composers,

0:29:12 > 0:29:16'his early career finds him tuning him to the musical currents

0:29:16 > 0:29:18'of the day and adapting them.

0:29:18 > 0:29:20'Listen to this piece.

0:29:28 > 0:29:32'This piano sonata is by a little-known Czech composer

0:29:32 > 0:29:34'called Jan Dussek.

0:29:34 > 0:29:36'Though he was based in London,

0:29:36 > 0:29:38'Dussek's music was known to Beethoven.

0:29:40 > 0:29:42'Now listen to this, a piano sonata

0:29:42 > 0:29:46'written by Beethoven a year later, in 1798.

0:30:05 > 0:30:09'Beethoven's 8th Piano Sonata, his Pathetique,

0:30:09 > 0:30:10'was written when he was just 28

0:30:10 > 0:30:13'and still making a name for himself in Vienna.

0:30:13 > 0:30:15'It's not difficult to hear

0:30:15 > 0:30:18'the distinctive traces of Dussek's piano style.'

0:30:22 > 0:30:25Seven years after composing his Pathetique Sonata,

0:30:25 > 0:30:29Beethoven has stopped sounding like Mozart or Dussek or Haydn

0:30:29 > 0:30:33and started creating music beyond anything they'd imagined.

0:30:33 > 0:30:37The first major sign he was breaking away from established formulas

0:30:37 > 0:30:39was his Eroica Symphony of 1804.

0:30:50 > 0:30:54'This was a considerable challenge for Viennese audiences of the time.

0:30:54 > 0:30:59'If you were used to the regular, predictable patterns of Haydn,

0:30:59 > 0:31:03'the Eroica's many noisy surprises and unexpected changes of key

0:31:03 > 0:31:07'were an uncomfortable mix of titillating and alarming.

0:31:11 > 0:31:14'Most of all, the Eroica was long.

0:31:14 > 0:31:17'Its opening movement alone is the same length

0:31:17 > 0:31:19'as an average symphony by Haydn or Mozart.

0:31:25 > 0:31:29'Beethoven's ambition was growing, along with his music.'

0:31:29 > 0:31:32Traditional histories like to equate Beethoven,

0:31:32 > 0:31:35the colossus of music in the early 1800s,

0:31:35 > 0:31:37with his contemporary, Napoleon Bonaparte,

0:31:37 > 0:31:41revolutionary-turned-emperor and serial military adventurer.

0:31:43 > 0:31:48'The Eroica Symphony was originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte.

0:31:48 > 0:31:52'Legend has it that Beethoven angrily scratched Bonaparte's name

0:31:52 > 0:31:58'from the score when Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804.

0:31:58 > 0:32:01'It's a good yarn but recent research suggests

0:32:01 > 0:32:03'it might instead be, alas, a myth.'

0:32:05 > 0:32:08Perhaps what Beethoven was really appalled by

0:32:08 > 0:32:11wasn't so much Napoleon's imperial pretensions

0:32:11 > 0:32:14but the unravelling of the high-minded aspirations

0:32:14 > 0:32:16of the French Revolution itself,

0:32:16 > 0:32:18the descent into cruelty and unfairness,

0:32:18 > 0:32:20merely dressed in new colours.

0:32:22 > 0:32:25'This despair is reflected in the music,

0:32:25 > 0:32:28'but it's not to be found in the opening movement.'

0:32:29 > 0:32:33Musicologists love to wax on about the ambitious first movement

0:32:33 > 0:32:37of the Eroica Symphony, mainly because it's unusually long,

0:32:37 > 0:32:40complex and unpredictable and provides fuel

0:32:40 > 0:32:43for seemingly endless analysis and scholarly scrutiny.

0:32:43 > 0:32:46Beethoven takes a relatively simple tune

0:32:46 > 0:32:50and builds from it a giant tapestry of ideas and musical meanderings.

0:32:50 > 0:32:53But, to me, it's not the clever-clogs first movement

0:32:53 > 0:32:57that carries the killer punch but the funeral march that follows it.

0:33:26 > 0:33:30What's different and new about this movement is not its structure,

0:33:30 > 0:33:35orchestration or technical bravado but its attitude.

0:33:35 > 0:33:39Whereas both Haydn and Mozart aimed to reveal human emotions

0:33:39 > 0:33:43through the filter of a gentlemanly, well-bred composure,

0:33:43 > 0:33:48the Funeral March in Eroica is remarkable for its unflinching seriousness.

0:33:48 > 0:33:52Grief is grief, pain is pain and music,

0:33:52 > 0:33:54Beethoven seemed to be proclaiming,

0:33:54 > 0:33:58was the art best placed to confront such darkness.

0:33:58 > 0:34:01Within the next two decades or so, most of his educated

0:34:01 > 0:34:04contemporaries gradually came to the same conclusion.

0:34:10 > 0:34:12'For the first time since the death of Bach,

0:34:12 > 0:34:15'the music of the moment seemed more accurately

0:34:15 > 0:34:18'to be attempting to portray the sadness and fear

0:34:18 > 0:34:21'that people might actually be experiencing.'

0:34:25 > 0:34:28And there were horrors aplenty to keep a sensitive person

0:34:28 > 0:34:31awake at night at the start of the 19th Century.

0:34:38 > 0:34:40'From the Eroica Symphony onwards,

0:34:40 > 0:34:43'Beethoven's music became serious-minded and earnest,

0:34:43 > 0:34:47'since it was his unabashed aim to change the world through this art.

0:34:49 > 0:34:52'It's debatable whether he did change the world

0:34:52 > 0:34:55'but he certainly changed the whole perception of music.'

0:34:57 > 0:35:00This was Beethoven's real significance,

0:35:00 > 0:35:04not how he changed musical form or language,

0:35:04 > 0:35:07but how he recalibrated what music was for.

0:35:07 > 0:35:11Single-handedly, he turned it from genteel after-dinner entertainment

0:35:11 > 0:35:15into a state of mind that no civilised person could be without.

0:35:17 > 0:35:21'Beethoven subsumed his own personality into his music.

0:35:21 > 0:35:25'Whereas once music was driven by faith, beauty or elegance,

0:35:25 > 0:35:29'now it was fuelled by a composer's own psychology.

0:35:31 > 0:35:34'By making the music about him and his feelings,

0:35:34 > 0:35:37'Beethoven was taking music in a new direction.

0:35:38 > 0:35:42'Not only was music co-opted into the personality of the composer,

0:35:42 > 0:35:45'so was the nature all around him.

0:35:48 > 0:35:51'Nature was ascribed human emotions,

0:35:51 > 0:35:55'it became a metaphor for the feelings of the artist.

0:35:55 > 0:35:59'In music, once again this movement starts with Beethoven

0:35:59 > 0:36:03'and his 6th Symphony, the Pastoral, written in 1808.

0:36:25 > 0:36:29'For the next 100 years, this Symphony would act as a template

0:36:29 > 0:36:32'for how one might portray a state of mind

0:36:32 > 0:36:34'in musical pictures of nature.

0:36:35 > 0:36:38'This idea of using nature as a metaphor

0:36:38 > 0:36:42'for a composer's deepest emotions was also the hallmark

0:36:42 > 0:36:44'of Beethoven's near contemporary,

0:36:44 > 0:36:47'also based in Vienna, Franz Schubert.

0:36:48 > 0:36:51'For Schubert, the birds, the bees, the woods

0:36:51 > 0:36:55'and the trees stand for human feelings, above all in song writing,

0:36:55 > 0:36:59'at which he was simply unmatched before the 20th Century.'

0:37:40 > 0:37:42'Schubert wrote over 600 songs

0:37:42 > 0:37:46'before his death in 1828, aged only 31.

0:37:48 > 0:37:52'Amongst them are three outstanding song cycles.

0:37:52 > 0:37:54'Had they been written in the 1960s,

0:37:54 > 0:37:58'these song cycles would have been released as concept albums.'

0:38:00 > 0:38:02If these songs for solo voice and piano

0:38:02 > 0:38:05and the thousands of others that gushed out of composers

0:38:05 > 0:38:07in the first half of the 19th Century

0:38:07 > 0:38:10seemed to us to be rather immature or naive

0:38:10 > 0:38:12in their treatment of love,

0:38:12 > 0:38:14it's because these song writers were young.

0:38:14 > 0:38:17Their emotional development, aged 25,

0:38:17 > 0:38:20was probably equivalent to a modern-day school leaver.

0:38:20 > 0:38:23These men lived at the same time as Jane Austen

0:38:23 > 0:38:27but, compared to her sophistication and emotional intelligence,

0:38:27 > 0:38:28they're like teenagers.

0:38:29 > 0:38:33'You can't escape the fact that the study of the first half

0:38:33 > 0:38:36'of the 19th Century in music is the study of young men

0:38:36 > 0:38:39'with little or no idea how to relate to women.

0:38:41 > 0:38:45'A poignant example is Abendstern, or Evening Star,

0:38:45 > 0:38:48'composed when Schubert was pining

0:38:48 > 0:38:50'for an 18-year-old piano pupil of his.

0:38:50 > 0:38:56'Class, wealth, social norms and her indifference divided them.

0:38:58 > 0:39:01'The song treats with great sensitivity

0:39:01 > 0:39:03'the pain and loneliness of unfulfilled love.'

0:40:49 > 0:40:53Schubert's songs were meant to sound like upmarket folk songs,

0:40:53 > 0:40:56immediately memorable, lyrically easily-understandable

0:40:56 > 0:40:58and relatively predictable in shape.

0:40:58 > 0:41:00In a sense, Schubert is the inventor

0:41:00 > 0:41:04of the three-minute voice and piano song,

0:41:04 > 0:41:06a form that is thoroughly alive today.

0:41:06 > 0:41:10# I heard

0:41:10 > 0:41:15# That you settled down

0:41:15 > 0:41:19# That you found a girl

0:41:19 > 0:41:24# And you're married now

0:41:24 > 0:41:30# I heard that your dreams came true

0:41:30 > 0:41:34# Guess she gave you things

0:41:34 > 0:41:38# I didn't give to you... #

0:41:38 > 0:41:42'The distance in form, intention, mood and expression

0:41:42 > 0:41:46'between Schubert's songs for voice and piano

0:41:46 > 0:41:50'and those of say, Adele, is remarkably small.'

0:41:50 > 0:41:55# Or hide from the light... #

0:41:55 > 0:41:58'The only thing that would shock Schubert about this song

0:41:58 > 0:42:02'is the fact a young woman is the song's creator, not its object.

0:42:02 > 0:42:06# I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded... #

0:42:06 > 0:42:09'Schubert's songs and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony had set

0:42:09 > 0:42:13'the template for using nature as a metaphor for human emotion.

0:42:15 > 0:42:18'But they also sowed the seeds of another movement,

0:42:18 > 0:42:22'that of painting a picture in sound.

0:42:22 > 0:42:24'This became enormously fashionable

0:42:24 > 0:42:27'and produced a whole wave of composer-painters.

0:42:27 > 0:42:30'And no-one evoked a picture in sound

0:42:30 > 0:42:32'better than Felix Mendelssohn.'

0:42:49 > 0:42:52'In this irresistibly enjoyable overture,

0:42:52 > 0:42:55#a Midsummer Night's Dream, still popular 200 years later,

0:42:55 > 0:42:59'it isn't difficult to imagine the dancing fairies,

0:42:59 > 0:43:01'the mischief of Puck and the playful confusion

0:43:01 > 0:43:03'of lovers lost in the forest.'

0:43:12 > 0:43:17'Mendelssohn could whip up a musical miniature of a play, a poem,

0:43:17 > 0:43:19'a painting, a person or a place.

0:43:21 > 0:43:24'A famous example is the Overture to Fingal's Cave,

0:43:24 > 0:43:26'written after a trip Mendelssohn took

0:43:26 > 0:43:30'to the craggy shores of the Hebrides in 1829.

0:43:55 > 0:43:58'But while this appealing music was being written,

0:43:58 > 0:44:03'another, very different, sort of music was also being produced.

0:44:03 > 0:44:08'It was loud, long, grandiose and argumentative.

0:44:08 > 0:44:12'Once again, this tendency can be traced back to Beethoven.

0:44:14 > 0:44:16'Just as the age of steam

0:44:16 > 0:44:20'was producing ever-greater industrial forces,

0:44:20 > 0:44:24'so, too, Beethoven, in his 7th Symphony of 1812,

0:44:24 > 0:44:28'was unleashing music on a newly forceful scale.

0:44:41 > 0:44:45'Here, Beethoven creates a heavier, more imposing sound

0:44:45 > 0:44:47'from an ever-larger orchestra.

0:44:47 > 0:44:51'The symphony orchestra is now a powerful, awe-inspiring organism.

0:45:03 > 0:45:06'Like the colossal industries that were roaring into life around them,

0:45:06 > 0:45:09'these mighty walls of orchestral muscle

0:45:09 > 0:45:12'provided a soundtrack for a daunting new age.

0:45:14 > 0:45:17'But if audiences reacted with amazement

0:45:17 > 0:45:19'to the magnitude of his 7th Symphony,

0:45:19 > 0:45:24'it was as nothing to what Beethoven let rip 12 years later.

0:45:24 > 0:45:27'His 9th Symphony single-handedly announced

0:45:27 > 0:45:32'that the form of the symphony was henceforth to be on an epic scale.

0:45:32 > 0:45:35'It concluded with a now-iconic anthem.'

0:45:35 > 0:45:39MUSIC: "Ode To Joy"

0:46:06 > 0:46:07'The Ode to Joy is based on a poem

0:46:07 > 0:46:10'by the German writer, Friedrich Schiller.'

0:46:10 > 0:46:13'It's nothing less than a call for universal brotherhood.

0:46:21 > 0:46:24'It was revealed to the world in two subscription concerts

0:46:24 > 0:46:28'a fortnight apart, one full of admirers and close friends,

0:46:28 > 0:46:31'the other almost empty as the public came to grips

0:46:31 > 0:46:32'with Beethoven's modernity.

0:46:34 > 0:46:36'Beethoven was saying that the symphony,

0:46:36 > 0:46:39'instead of being about music, should now be about the world.

0:46:47 > 0:46:49'Never has an invitation to young composers

0:46:49 > 0:46:52'been more enthusiastically embraced.

0:46:54 > 0:46:57'The coming decades were to be about music

0:46:57 > 0:46:59'taking on the task of reforming humanity,

0:46:59 > 0:47:04'dreaming a new utopia and leading the arts to unite mankind.'

0:47:08 > 0:47:11APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

0:47:11 > 0:47:14'The irony of what happened after Beethoven's 9th

0:47:14 > 0:47:19'is that what Beethoven himself did next was the exact opposite.

0:47:19 > 0:47:23'He turned his back on the vast scale of the 9th Symphony

0:47:23 > 0:47:26'to something smaller and more intimate.'

0:47:41 > 0:47:44In the last two years of his life, now profoundly deaf

0:47:44 > 0:47:47and mostly bedridden from severe illness,

0:47:47 > 0:47:50Beethoven withdrew into a private sound world,

0:47:50 > 0:47:55composing six string quartets of astonishing intensity and modernity.

0:47:55 > 0:47:58By modern, I don't mean by the standards of 1826,

0:47:58 > 0:48:01I mean by the standards of a century later.

0:48:01 > 0:48:05These late quartets are almost embarrassingly private.

0:48:05 > 0:48:08It's as if he was working out some tortured mind game on the page

0:48:08 > 0:48:12or distracting himself from an unbearable sadness.

0:48:57 > 0:48:59Most of his contemporaries

0:48:59 > 0:49:02didn't know what to make of these late quartets.

0:49:02 > 0:49:05Could Beethoven hear the music of the future?

0:49:05 > 0:49:08If this was it, his vision was a bleak, uneasy one.

0:49:39 > 0:49:41'The small scale and intensity of feeling

0:49:41 > 0:49:44'that bleeds through these late quartets

0:49:44 > 0:49:47'was echoed by some of the composers who followed Beethoven

0:49:47 > 0:49:50'after his death in 1827.

0:49:50 > 0:49:54'One such was to become a very different kind of piano virtuoso

0:49:54 > 0:49:57'to the crowd-pulling pyrotechnical maestro

0:49:57 > 0:50:01'that Beethoven had been at the start of his career.

0:50:01 > 0:50:04'The Polish composer, Frederic Chopin.'

0:50:04 > 0:50:07Of the generation that followed immediately after Beethoven,

0:50:07 > 0:50:11Chopin is the one whose influence was slowest to make its impact.

0:50:11 > 0:50:15The reason being that, like Beethoven's Late Quartet,

0:50:15 > 0:50:18Chopin's music is unusually intimate.

0:50:18 > 0:50:23Because he preferred not to perform in large concert halls, loudly,

0:50:23 > 0:50:27as was the vogue, but in small salons and private homes, quietly,

0:50:27 > 0:50:31his fame spread person by person, fan by fan.

0:50:31 > 0:50:34In this respect, he's more like a novelist than a composer,

0:50:34 > 0:50:37as people fell for his music like they would a secret love.

0:50:52 > 0:50:55'Chopin was an exile from his Polish homeland,

0:50:55 > 0:50:58'at that time swallowed up in the Russian Empire.

0:50:59 > 0:51:03'His longing for his country is expressed with exquisite melancholy

0:51:03 > 0:51:05'in nearly all of his pieces for solo piano.'

0:51:27 > 0:51:30Chopin's music was the flip side of the concert hall,

0:51:30 > 0:51:32symphony orchestra experience,

0:51:32 > 0:51:35music to be shared amongst a few mates

0:51:35 > 0:51:37in the privacy of your front room,

0:51:37 > 0:51:41a pursuit that lasted in many homes till the Second World War.

0:51:41 > 0:51:44This was the beginning of an era of amateur musicianship,

0:51:44 > 0:51:46a mass movement of music making

0:51:46 > 0:51:48which centred indispensably on the piano.

0:51:52 > 0:51:54'From the early 19th Century on,

0:51:54 > 0:51:57'the new middle class proudly installed factory-made pianos

0:51:57 > 0:52:01'in their drawing rooms and needed music to play on them.

0:52:04 > 0:52:08'To meet this new market, a tidal wave of sheet music was published,

0:52:08 > 0:52:10'of both classical and popular music.

0:52:12 > 0:52:14'Before gramophones and radios,

0:52:14 > 0:52:18'the piano was the only source of music in many a middle-class home.

0:52:22 > 0:52:25'Here was a chance to make music for a large body of people

0:52:25 > 0:52:29'who, up to now, had been excluded from playing in orchestras

0:52:29 > 0:52:31'and from composing -

0:52:31 > 0:52:32'women.'

0:52:37 > 0:52:40Whilst it might be possible - with good reading and writing -

0:52:40 > 0:52:42to become the author of a novel,

0:52:42 > 0:52:46as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters or George Eliot proved,

0:52:46 > 0:52:48it's practically impossible to write a symphony or an opera

0:52:48 > 0:52:52without years of instruction and specialist knowledge.

0:52:54 > 0:52:57'Playing the piano became a social accomplishment for middle-class women

0:52:57 > 0:53:00'but, more importantly, it gave them a chance to compose.'

0:53:02 > 0:53:05'Here's a tantalising example, a sparkling vignette

0:53:05 > 0:53:10'composed by Felix Mendelssohn's talented older sister, Fanny.

0:53:10 > 0:53:14'As with her brother's music, it conjures up a picture in sound,

0:53:14 > 0:53:17'a chilly February day.'

0:53:51 > 0:53:54'One of the most famous concert pianists of the 19th Century

0:53:54 > 0:53:59'was a close contemporary and friend of Fanny Mendelssohn's, Clara Wieck,

0:53:59 > 0:54:03'who later married the composer, Robert Schumann.

0:54:03 > 0:54:05'Whereas Schubert's love songs

0:54:05 > 0:54:08'are about women as unattainable objects of desire,

0:54:08 > 0:54:12'Schumann's were written with a real, flesh-and-blood woman in mind,

0:54:12 > 0:54:14'and an equal partner.

0:54:16 > 0:54:17'Clara was the inspiration

0:54:17 > 0:54:21'for some of Schumann's most achingly beautiful love songs.'

0:54:49 > 0:54:51'As one of Europe's leading pianists,

0:54:51 > 0:54:54'Clara Schumann tirelessly promoted her husband's works.

0:54:57 > 0:54:59'She also championed the works of Chopin

0:54:59 > 0:55:05'and travelled the world to perform his subtle, deceptively complex music.

0:55:05 > 0:55:08'Perhaps no other composer ever made the hours of practice

0:55:08 > 0:55:11'necessary to play his music more worth the candle.'

0:55:13 > 0:55:16Chopin's rich and ambiguous harmonies,

0:55:16 > 0:55:20interwoven intricately between the hands,

0:55:20 > 0:55:23look to the future, leaving behind the primary-colour certainties

0:55:23 > 0:55:26of Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven once and for all.

0:55:26 > 0:55:28After a period of simplicity,

0:55:28 > 0:55:32music's pendulum was swinging back towards complexity again.

0:55:32 > 0:55:35There's a delicacy and gentleness to his music, though,

0:55:35 > 0:55:38that represents the final curtain call

0:55:38 > 0:55:41of the Age of Elegance and Gracefulness,

0:55:41 > 0:55:43of Sense and Sensibility.

0:55:43 > 0:55:46His heroes were Mozart and Bach,

0:55:46 > 0:55:49composers for whose music dignity was everything.

0:55:52 > 0:55:55One of Chopin's very last pieces was a barcarolle,

0:55:55 > 0:55:57a lilting gondola song.

0:56:01 > 0:56:04He admitted being terrified of death.

0:56:04 > 0:56:08Perhaps he dreamed up this soothing boat ride to calm his anxiety

0:56:08 > 0:56:11or to remind himself of simpler times.

0:57:02 > 0:57:05After Beethoven's death in 1827,

0:57:05 > 0:57:08a kind of parting of the waves took place between two versions

0:57:08 > 0:57:13of what a composer might do, whether to curry favour with an audience

0:57:13 > 0:57:16or become a misunderstood martyr suffering for your art.

0:57:16 > 0:57:19It's a rift that took nearly 200 years to heal.

0:57:26 > 0:57:30In the next programme, in the hands of Berlioz and Wagner,

0:57:30 > 0:57:36music became louder, angrier, more self-important and more tempestuous.

0:57:38 > 0:57:42The second half of the 19th Century saw a craze for music

0:57:42 > 0:57:46that was obsessed with death, doomed love and destiny.

0:57:46 > 0:57:49Even popular Italian opera succumbed to it

0:57:49 > 0:57:53in the brilliant, passionate musical dramas of Giuseppe Verdi.

0:57:54 > 0:57:58The future belonged to the beautiful and the damned.

0:58:22 > 0:58:25Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd