0:00:02 > 0:00:05MUSIC: "Holberg Suite" by Grieg
0:00:05 > 0:00:08Music, one of the most dazzling fruits of human civilisation,
0:00:08 > 0:00:11can make us weep, or make us dance.
0:00:11 > 0:00:13It's reflected the times in which it was written,
0:00:13 > 0:00:17it has delighted, challenged, comforted and excited us.
0:00:18 > 0:00:22In this series I've been tracing the story of music from scratch.
0:00:22 > 0:00:24To follow it on its miraculous journey,
0:00:24 > 0:00:28misleading jargon and fancy labels are best put to one side.
0:00:32 > 0:00:37Instead, try to imagine how revolutionary and how exhilarating
0:00:37 > 0:00:40many of the innovations we take for granted today were
0:00:40 > 0:00:42to people at the time.
0:00:42 > 0:00:46There are a million ways of telling the story of music, this is mine.
0:01:02 > 0:01:04MUSIC: "The Rite Of Spring" by Stravinsky
0:01:05 > 0:01:10In the 31 years between the death of Richard Wagner in 1883
0:01:10 > 0:01:12and the outbreak of the First World War
0:01:12 > 0:01:15music was shaken by a series of rebellions.
0:01:15 > 0:01:17"Pictures At An Exhibition" by Mussorgsky
0:01:17 > 0:01:19MUSIC: "The Firebird" by Stravinsky
0:01:19 > 0:01:22Russian music swept westwards exuberantly,
0:01:22 > 0:01:25as did the exotic sounds of distant continents.
0:01:25 > 0:01:28"Voiles" by Debussy
0:01:28 > 0:01:31And symphonies and operas of astonishing intensity
0:01:31 > 0:01:34amazed and startled audiences.
0:01:36 > 0:01:38Modernism in music was born.
0:01:40 > 0:01:42The world was becoming a smaller place,
0:01:42 > 0:01:46with millions of poor European immigrants seeking refuge
0:01:46 > 0:01:47in the New World,
0:01:47 > 0:01:53to join the white settlers, African Americans and Chinese workers already there.
0:01:53 > 0:01:55From this rich mix of musical cultures,
0:01:55 > 0:01:59soon to be heard on newfangled record players and radios,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02would spring the blues, ragtime and jazz.
0:02:02 > 0:02:04"Maple Leaf Rag" by Scott Joplin
0:02:04 > 0:02:11In just over three decades music underwent a series of gigantic convulsions.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15Change came in many different forms, some exciting, some bewildering.
0:02:15 > 0:02:17Revolution was in the air
0:02:17 > 0:02:22and all of music's laws and traditions were about to be shaken to their roots.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25What happened was a series of musical rebellions.
0:02:25 > 0:02:28MUSIC: "The Rite Of Spring" by Stravinsky
0:02:32 > 0:02:38The first was aimed at displacing the musical giant of the late 19th century, Richard Wagner.
0:02:39 > 0:02:42His ideas, his style and his musical philosophy
0:02:42 > 0:02:46had been such a pervasive presence in classical music
0:02:46 > 0:02:50that what might have followed him was a plague of pseudo-Wagners.
0:02:51 > 0:02:55In fact what followed in his wake was an explosion of musical activity
0:02:55 > 0:02:58that sought to do things very differently indeed.
0:02:58 > 0:03:00It may not always have been deliberate
0:03:00 > 0:03:03but there was a kind of not-Wagner renaissance.
0:03:03 > 0:03:08All the things he hated most came to life. The French, for a start.
0:03:08 > 0:03:12MUSIC: "Carnival Of The Animals" by Saint-Saens
0:03:12 > 0:03:15In France a new wave of composers made it their business
0:03:15 > 0:03:19to write music of deliberate simplicity and clarity
0:03:19 > 0:03:23and to banish pretention and earnestness of all kinds.
0:03:24 > 0:03:27The French were about to enjoy a musical golden age
0:03:27 > 0:03:31thanks to their reaction against Wagner.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35Their best 50 years ever in music blossomed
0:03:35 > 0:03:37after he went off to his personal Valhalla,
0:03:37 > 0:03:41with Faure, Debussy and Ravel leading a glorious riposte
0:03:41 > 0:03:43to German musical dominance.
0:03:43 > 0:03:47MUSIC: "Gymnopedie Number 1" by Satie
0:03:48 > 0:03:53The movement was set in train by one of the most remarkable figures in music, Erik Satie.
0:04:07 > 0:04:11Erik Satie's first Gymnopedie of 1888,
0:04:11 > 0:04:15as well as sounding like a long, hot afternoon after a boozy lunch,
0:04:15 > 0:04:18can be seen as the first shot in a war
0:04:18 > 0:04:22to debunk pomposity and declutter French music.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25Satie, described by his tutors at the Paris conservatoire
0:04:25 > 0:04:30as "the laziest student ever", was an eccentric intellectual
0:04:30 > 0:04:33who hung out with other arty dreamers in Montmartre.
0:04:56 > 0:04:59Satie's music could hardly sound less like Wagner
0:04:59 > 0:05:01and what the Germans were up to.
0:05:01 > 0:05:04The irony is that there was a German influence
0:05:04 > 0:05:07on the work of Satie's Parisian contemporaries.
0:05:07 > 0:05:12Here's a clue. Composers like Cesar Franck, Charles-Marie Widor,
0:05:12 > 0:05:17Camille Saint-Saens and Gabriel Faure were all trained organists,
0:05:17 > 0:05:20and playing the organ means above all
0:05:20 > 0:05:25knowing one particular composer's work inside out - JS Bach.
0:05:25 > 0:05:28MUSIC: "Toccata" by Widor
0:05:29 > 0:05:32More than a hundred years after his death,
0:05:32 > 0:05:34these organist-composers in France
0:05:34 > 0:05:38were invigorated and inspired by Bach's clarity and economy.
0:05:40 > 0:05:43Even the master himself might have admired
0:05:43 > 0:05:46Charles-Marie Widor's famous Toccata.
0:05:46 > 0:05:48It was first performed by Widor himself
0:05:48 > 0:05:51at the Trocadero Palace in Paris in 1889
0:05:51 > 0:05:53and it's given a rousing send-off
0:05:53 > 0:05:57to many a newly hitched bride and groom ever since.
0:06:15 > 0:06:19The dignity and dexterity of Bach can also be heard
0:06:19 > 0:06:21in the music of Gabriel Faure,
0:06:21 > 0:06:25perhaps the most talented of these French organist-composers.
0:06:39 > 0:06:44Listening to Faure after Brahms, Liszt, Wagner or Tchaikovsky,
0:06:44 > 0:06:47it's as if someone has spring-cleaned and redecorated
0:06:47 > 0:06:49a teenage boy's bedroom.
0:06:49 > 0:06:52Gone are the posters of death, psychological torment,
0:06:52 > 0:06:54superheroes and tragedy.
0:06:54 > 0:06:57The augmented piles of clothes have been put away
0:06:57 > 0:06:59and the windows have been opened
0:06:59 > 0:07:02to dispel the diminished sneaker-smelling air.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05Faure's exquisite music simply says, "Chill,"
0:07:05 > 0:07:07or, perhaps, refrigerez-vous.
0:07:19 > 0:07:23The exquisite pieces of Satie, Saint-Saens, Faure
0:07:23 > 0:07:27and the new wave of French composers were mostly small in scale.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32The next important step in the non-Wagner rebellion took place
0:07:32 > 0:07:35in the realm of symphonic music.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38And the composer who carried the torch
0:07:38 > 0:07:42for large-scale orchestral and vocal music after Wagner
0:07:42 > 0:07:46was about as different from him as a human being could be.
0:07:46 > 0:07:48Though he championed Wagner's operas
0:07:48 > 0:07:50as music director of the Vienna State Opera House,
0:07:50 > 0:07:53Wagner would have despised him because he was Jewish.
0:07:53 > 0:07:55He was Gustav Mahler.
0:08:02 > 0:08:05The hallmark of Mahler's music is that of openness.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08Unlike Wagner, Mahler invited into his music
0:08:08 > 0:08:12all the sounds and rhythms and the noisy diversity
0:08:12 > 0:08:16of the bustling East European communities at Vienna's doorstep,
0:08:16 > 0:08:19capital of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian empire.
0:08:24 > 0:08:28As an outsider in Vienna - a Jew, a Czech,
0:08:28 > 0:08:31a poor country boy in a profession full of toffs -
0:08:31 > 0:08:33it's not surprising that Mahler should identify
0:08:33 > 0:08:37with the folklore and music of his small-town childhood.
0:08:38 > 0:08:42In his symphonies it's possible to identify, for example,
0:08:42 > 0:08:45the Klezmer style of strolling Jewish folk musicians.
0:08:48 > 0:08:52His music encompasses passing military bands.
0:09:02 > 0:09:06And he's not afraid to include boisterous children's choruses.
0:09:12 > 0:09:16Mahler's symphonies are music's gateway to the 20th century,
0:09:16 > 0:09:19a musical equivalent of New York's Ellis Island,
0:09:19 > 0:09:22where Europe's exhausted and oppressed peoples
0:09:22 > 0:09:24sought refuge and a new start.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27The musical cultures they left behind in Europe
0:09:27 > 0:09:31found a home in Mahler's generous symphonic embrace.
0:09:34 > 0:09:37One way we can see a modern perspective emerging in his music is
0:09:37 > 0:09:41its sense of reality, of truthfulness, warts and all.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44The frankness of his approach is a major break with the past
0:09:44 > 0:09:48and is much more characteristic of the 20th than the 19th centuries.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51How can music be honest?
0:09:51 > 0:09:53Well, before Mahler if you were composer
0:09:53 > 0:09:57and you wanted to write a piece about loneliness or despair or depression,
0:09:57 > 0:10:03you'd call it something generic like a nocturne, or a sonata pathetique.
0:10:03 > 0:10:08In an opera you could have singers act out emotional or political issues
0:10:08 > 0:10:11pretending to be someone from another era, in a fancy costume.
0:10:12 > 0:10:15But Mahler stopped all this role-playing.
0:10:15 > 0:10:17He wanted to evoke the real, contemporary world
0:10:17 > 0:10:21with all its actual suffering and joy, without pretence.
0:10:21 > 0:10:23He told it how it was.
0:10:23 > 0:10:26Mahler took our worst fears and set them to music.
0:10:26 > 0:10:29This may seem an unremarkable concept to us
0:10:29 > 0:10:33but in 1900 it was shockingly, distressingly new.
0:10:33 > 0:10:38The unflinching honesty of Mahler's approach is at times unbearable.
0:10:38 > 0:10:40From 1901, for example,
0:10:40 > 0:10:44he set to music five German poems called Kindertotenlieder -
0:10:44 > 0:10:46Songs On The Death Of Children.
0:10:46 > 0:10:51The sentiments of the songs are those of a parent's most unspeakable nightmares.
0:10:51 > 0:10:53MEZZO SINGING IN GERMAN
0:11:30 > 0:11:32In Mahler's unflinching settings,
0:11:32 > 0:11:37these distant people of another century suddenly become like us.
0:11:37 > 0:11:38He's made them real.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42In a horrible irony, four years after he wrote the songs
0:11:42 > 0:11:46Mahler's own five-year-old daughter, Anna-Maria, died of scarlet fever,
0:11:46 > 0:11:50and Mahler himself was diagnosed with a terminal heart condition.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54When he died in 1911 he was laid to rest in her grave.
0:12:01 > 0:12:05But despite the understandable sadness and alienation we hear in his music
0:12:05 > 0:12:08there is, incredibly, hope of something better,
0:12:08 > 0:12:11usually associated with childhood and youth,
0:12:11 > 0:12:13as in his Song Of The Earth.
0:12:14 > 0:12:18The final chord of The Song Of The Earth was described
0:12:18 > 0:12:21by the mid-20th century English composer Benjamin Britten
0:12:21 > 0:12:24as being "imprinted on the atmosphere."
0:12:24 > 0:12:28STRINGS, HARP AND OBOE CREATE A WASH OF SOUND
0:12:35 > 0:12:40- MEZZO:- # Ewig... #
0:12:45 > 0:12:49MUSIC FADES
0:12:56 > 0:12:59But there's something else going on in Mahler's music
0:12:59 > 0:13:01that wasn't perhaps obvious at the time.
0:13:01 > 0:13:03It's deceptive.
0:13:03 > 0:13:05Because of its all-inclusive style
0:13:05 > 0:13:07with its borrowings from ethnic folk music
0:13:07 > 0:13:11and because of the intensity of feeling he wanted to convey,
0:13:11 > 0:13:13Mahler's music began to destabilise
0:13:13 > 0:13:17the centuries-old Western musical system he'd inherited.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21His pupils in Vienna, led by Arnold Schoenberg,
0:13:21 > 0:13:24actively wanted to dismantle completely
0:13:24 > 0:13:27the familiar systems that had underpinned all music
0:13:27 > 0:13:28for hundreds of years
0:13:28 > 0:13:31and replace them with a brand new system.
0:13:42 > 0:13:47This academic rebellion was later labelled serialism, or atonality,
0:13:47 > 0:13:52and it produced decades of scholarly hot air, books, debates and seminars.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56And, in its purest, strictest form, not one piece of music
0:13:56 > 0:14:01that a normal person could understand or enjoy in 100 years.
0:14:04 > 0:14:08That's not to say that serialism hasn't always had a cultish following
0:14:08 > 0:14:12but for sure these composers weren't courting a mainstream audience.
0:14:20 > 0:14:23Had serialism had any chance of appealing to a paying public,
0:14:23 > 0:14:27one composer who would surely have opted into it
0:14:27 > 0:14:29was the musical magpie Richard Strauss,
0:14:29 > 0:14:33Germany's leading composer after Mahler's death.
0:14:33 > 0:14:37But he had other, far more mischievous plans up his sleeve.
0:14:37 > 0:14:40He began his career conventionally enough
0:14:40 > 0:14:43in a musical style that owed much to Liszt
0:14:43 > 0:14:44and a little to Wagner.
0:14:45 > 0:14:47Thus Spake Zarathustra is pretty typical,
0:14:47 > 0:14:52with its now legendary opening, Sunrise, made even more famous
0:14:52 > 0:14:56by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
0:14:58 > 0:14:59Kubrick uses the power of the piece
0:14:59 > 0:15:03to underscore a momentous leap forward in the evolution of Man.
0:15:38 > 0:15:40The power of the idea the film wants to convey,
0:15:40 > 0:15:45man's discovery of weapons, needs equally portentous music.
0:15:45 > 0:15:47No one did it better than Strauss.
0:15:57 > 0:16:00And yet, the ever-versatile Strauss
0:16:00 > 0:16:04could also write songs of heart-breaking, Mahlerish delicacy,
0:16:04 > 0:16:08like the song Tomorrow, composed as a wedding present for his wife.
0:16:27 > 0:16:31On the surface of it the words of Morgen! seem
0:16:31 > 0:16:33to be optimistic about the future.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35"And tomorrow the sun will shine again."
0:16:35 > 0:16:37But it's also strangely melancholy.
0:16:37 > 0:16:42It seems to suggest, in fact, that there will be no tomorrow.
0:16:46 > 0:16:49It seemed at this point as if Strauss would continue to compose
0:16:49 > 0:16:52in this wistful but fairly traditional manner.
0:16:52 > 0:16:57But then he suddenly catapulted himself into musical notoriety
0:16:57 > 0:17:00with an opera of savage, erotic power
0:17:00 > 0:17:03that shocked bourgeois society and created a sensation.
0:17:03 > 0:17:05In one fell swoop,
0:17:05 > 0:17:09from being the genteel Kapellmeister of the Austrian Belle Epoch,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13Strauss had transformed himself into the Che Guevara
0:17:13 > 0:17:14of the musical rebels.
0:17:16 > 0:17:20The opera in question was Salome, staged in 1905.
0:17:27 > 0:17:30It was immediately banned in several countries
0:17:30 > 0:17:33and it gave new meaning to the term discord...
0:17:40 > 0:17:43..even before Salome herself had stripped off
0:17:43 > 0:17:45for the Dance Of The Seven Veils
0:17:45 > 0:17:48and scandalised the first night audience.
0:17:54 > 0:17:56Salome's final, passionate solo,
0:17:56 > 0:17:59addressed to the severed head of John the Baptist,
0:17:59 > 0:18:03which she then kisses, was the Quentin Tarantino moment.
0:18:10 > 0:18:13You can either read Salome as a strong, independent young woman
0:18:13 > 0:18:16who gets what she wants by exploiting her sexuality,
0:18:16 > 0:18:20cleverly outwitting her stepfather the king in the process,
0:18:20 > 0:18:22or as a kind of demented junkie
0:18:22 > 0:18:25who lowers humanity's moral standards to rock bottom.
0:18:25 > 0:18:27Take your pick.
0:18:27 > 0:18:29Strauss apparently hedges his bets,
0:18:29 > 0:18:32giving the first mention of the necrophiliac kiss
0:18:32 > 0:18:36possibly the most dissonant chord ever used in music at that point.
0:18:36 > 0:18:40It's like the final howl of a busted civilisation.
0:18:40 > 0:18:42HIGH DISCORD
0:18:42 > 0:18:44CLUSTER OF NOTES
0:18:47 > 0:18:49But we're not finished with her yet.
0:18:49 > 0:18:52After asking whether the taste of blood on his lips is
0:18:52 > 0:18:54actually the taste of love,
0:18:54 > 0:18:57Salome revisits the kiss in supreme triumph.
0:18:57 > 0:19:02"I have now kissed your mouth, Jochanaan," she screams
0:19:02 > 0:19:05and Strauss unleashes a musical earthquake
0:19:05 > 0:19:08which might be construed as a sexual consummation.
0:19:08 > 0:19:11Again, make up your own mind.
0:19:11 > 0:19:13GRAND, ECSTATIC MUSIC
0:19:32 > 0:19:37King Herod, who had encouraged his stepdaughter to dance in the first place,
0:19:37 > 0:19:40now ordered his soldiers to kill her.
0:19:46 > 0:19:50For this climax Strauss reserved his most discordant and angry music yet.
0:19:50 > 0:19:52VIOLENT, DISCORDANT MUSIC
0:19:56 > 0:19:57REPEATED BRASS CHORDS
0:20:02 > 0:20:04At this point in musical history
0:20:04 > 0:20:07it looked as though the dominance of Austro-German music
0:20:07 > 0:20:12that began with Bach in 1700 might continue indefinitely.
0:20:12 > 0:20:15Instead, a new force had emerged
0:20:15 > 0:20:17and was by the early 20th century
0:20:17 > 0:20:20the most exhilarating sound in Europe.
0:20:20 > 0:20:22In the closing decades of the 19th century
0:20:22 > 0:20:26the sleeping giant of Russia had awoken.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29Music was never going to be the same again.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34And when it comes to rebellions, Russia is in a class of its own.
0:20:46 > 0:20:49For all of the 18th and most of the 19th centuries
0:20:49 > 0:20:53Russia doggedly copied the culture of Western Europe,
0:20:53 > 0:20:56which the Russian court deemed more sophisticated and interesting
0:20:56 > 0:20:58than anything home-grown.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03Even Russia's most famous composer of them all, Tchaikovsky,
0:21:03 > 0:21:06who became a worldwide star in the 1880s and '90s,
0:21:06 > 0:21:11was still composing in a style that owed more to Beethoven or Brahms
0:21:11 > 0:21:14than to anything he'd picked up on the banks of the Volga.
0:21:14 > 0:21:17But there was something Tchaikovsky excelled at
0:21:17 > 0:21:18that was distinctly Russian
0:21:18 > 0:21:21and that contained within it the seeds of a coming revolution -
0:21:21 > 0:21:23dance.
0:21:34 > 0:21:38If for Italians the supreme expression of their love of music
0:21:38 > 0:21:41was the emotionally charged operatic aria,
0:21:41 > 0:21:43for Russians it was dance,
0:21:43 > 0:21:46and Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most celebrated and memorable
0:21:46 > 0:21:48dance music of all time.
0:22:15 > 0:22:17The result of this flowering of dance is
0:22:17 > 0:22:20that the need for a driving rhythm
0:22:20 > 0:22:23began to change the character of the music itself,
0:22:23 > 0:22:27making it more robust, muscular and exciting.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30Russian music was about to explode into life
0:22:30 > 0:22:33in a manner that was unprecedented,
0:22:33 > 0:22:36and subsequently unmatched in history.
0:22:41 > 0:22:45In Russia the invigorating, regulated beat of dance is everywhere,
0:22:45 > 0:22:47at the ballet, in operas, on the concert stage,
0:22:47 > 0:22:51lilting, driving, whirling, tiptoeing, leaping, gliding,
0:22:51 > 0:22:53jumping, gyrating and twirling -
0:22:53 > 0:22:55Russian music can't get enough of it.
0:22:55 > 0:22:57Presumably, it's the cold -
0:22:57 > 0:23:00you have to keep moving or your circulation will pack in.
0:23:10 > 0:23:14The rhythms of dance first powered this Russian awakening.
0:23:14 > 0:23:17The second vital element which changed the melody and harmony
0:23:17 > 0:23:22came from a renewed interest in Russia's own religious heritage.
0:23:22 > 0:23:24PRIEST CHANTING
0:23:26 > 0:23:29A new breed of composers, starting in the 1880s,
0:23:29 > 0:23:33turned their attention, not to the musical traditions of Western Europe,
0:23:33 > 0:23:35but to those of their own,
0:23:35 > 0:23:39especially the centuries-old Russian Orthodox chants,
0:23:39 > 0:23:43with their deep basses and thick eight or 16-voice block chords.
0:23:50 > 0:23:53In the decades to follow, this ancient sound,
0:23:53 > 0:23:56known as Znamenny Chant, was to flow like a river
0:23:56 > 0:24:00into the choral texture of all Russian composers.
0:24:00 > 0:24:03No longer did they look west for inspiration.
0:24:06 > 0:24:10The fuse-lighter of the Russian firework display about to unfold,
0:24:10 > 0:24:13the truly original, creative path-finder,
0:24:13 > 0:24:18wasn't cosmopolitan, well-travelled friend of the Romanovs Tchaikovsky,
0:24:18 > 0:24:21but a former military cadet who worked in the civil service
0:24:21 > 0:24:25and had a fatal vodka habit - Modest Mussorgsky.
0:24:25 > 0:24:28MUSIC: "Promenade Pictures At An Exhibition"
0:24:32 > 0:24:37Mussorgsky is quite simply the most original composer of the late 19th century,
0:24:37 > 0:24:40a one-off whose ideas were new,
0:24:40 > 0:24:43not derived from other composers of his time.
0:24:44 > 0:24:46There's a reason for this.
0:24:46 > 0:24:49Mussorgsky wasn't musically trained at a conservatoire
0:24:49 > 0:24:51and he wasn't a professional composer.
0:24:51 > 0:24:52He was self-taught
0:24:52 > 0:24:56and therefore blissfully unaware of the rules he was breaking.
0:24:56 > 0:25:00It was like he'd wandered onto Tsarist Russia's Got Talent,
0:25:00 > 0:25:04slightly drunk, and started improvising at the piano,
0:25:04 > 0:25:06to everyone's amazement.
0:25:06 > 0:25:09"Promenade - Pictures At An Exhibition"
0:25:22 > 0:25:24But despite the naivety of his style,
0:25:24 > 0:25:26which earned him more than a little ridicule at the time,
0:25:26 > 0:25:30Mussorgsky showed that Russian music could carve its own identity.
0:25:40 > 0:25:43To see how radically the music of Russia had changed
0:25:43 > 0:25:45in fewer than 40 years,
0:25:45 > 0:25:48listen to this coronation scene from A Life For The Tsar,
0:25:48 > 0:25:54an opera written by the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka in 1836.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57BIG, FOURSQUARE CHORDS
0:26:03 > 0:26:07Glinka had his musical training in Italy, Austria and Germany,
0:26:07 > 0:26:09and it shows.
0:26:09 > 0:26:11BRAHMSLIKE WRITING
0:26:16 > 0:26:19Now listen to another Kremlin coronation scene
0:26:19 > 0:26:23from the thoroughly Russian opera by Mussorgsky, Boris Godunov.
0:26:23 > 0:26:25VIVID, ENERGETIC MUSIC
0:26:41 > 0:26:45This time, complete with colours, voices and glittering effects,
0:26:45 > 0:26:48tolling bells and echoing orchestra chimes,
0:26:48 > 0:26:50it's been thoroughly Russianised.
0:26:54 > 0:26:59Mussorgsky died in 1881, his music virtually unknown outside of Russia.
0:26:59 > 0:27:01But that was about to change.
0:27:01 > 0:27:04"Carnival Of The Animals" by Saint-Saens.
0:27:09 > 0:27:13So many of the seeds of the rebellions of late 19th century music
0:27:13 > 0:27:16can be traced to one extraordinarily fertile event.
0:27:16 > 0:27:22It took place in Paris in 1889, the centenary of the French Revolution.
0:27:22 > 0:27:24It was the World's Fair.
0:27:30 > 0:27:34Here in the Trocadero, which overlooked the newly-built Eiffel Tower,
0:27:34 > 0:27:37Widor first played his famous organ Toccata
0:27:37 > 0:27:41and here also non-Russian composers heard
0:27:41 > 0:27:44the music of Mussorgsky for the first time.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48One such composer, then aged 27, was Claude Debussy.
0:27:48 > 0:27:53His visit to the World's Fair was a life- and music-changing experience.
0:27:55 > 0:27:57What Debussy learnt from Mussorgsky
0:27:57 > 0:28:00was that there was a way of building up the architecture of a piece of music
0:28:00 > 0:28:03that was an alternative to the developmental method
0:28:03 > 0:28:06that was bread and butter to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
0:28:06 > 0:28:10The development approach was to take small cells of melody or rhythm,
0:28:10 > 0:28:14or both, and make up a whole discourse from them
0:28:14 > 0:28:16over a 15 or 20 minute period.
0:28:16 > 0:28:21So Beethoven is able to construct a whole symphony movement from this tiny idea.
0:28:21 > 0:28:23MOTIF FROM BEETHOVEN'S FIFTH
0:28:23 > 0:28:26Count how many times he uses it in just the first 40 bars of the symphony.
0:28:28 > 0:28:29HE MOUTHS
0:28:42 > 0:28:44That's 13.
0:29:00 > 0:29:03That's already 33, and counting.
0:29:06 > 0:29:08Debussy, inspired by Mussorgsky,
0:29:08 > 0:29:12ditched 100 years of studious development technique
0:29:12 > 0:29:13and started over -
0:29:13 > 0:29:15Mussorgsky, because he knew no better,
0:29:15 > 0:29:19and Debussy, because it suited his taste for experiment.
0:29:20 > 0:29:22GAMELAN PLAYS
0:29:26 > 0:29:30What revolutionised Debussy's music more than anything, though, was
0:29:30 > 0:29:34a wind of change blowing to the Paris World's Fair from very far afield.
0:29:38 > 0:29:42The World's Fair showcased exhibits and cultural tableaux
0:29:42 > 0:29:44from all over the planet.
0:29:45 > 0:29:47Thanks to increased communications,
0:29:47 > 0:29:50the global village was starting to become a reality.
0:29:52 > 0:29:56What especially mesmerised Debussy was a Javanese village,
0:29:56 > 0:29:58complete with a gamelan orchestra,
0:29:58 > 0:30:03with its gongs, bells, bowls and xylophone-like chimes.
0:30:04 > 0:30:07The particular sonorities and scales of the Gamelan orchestra
0:30:07 > 0:30:10intrigued Debussy so much he was inspired to attempt
0:30:10 > 0:30:14an evocation of its Eastern sounds on a Western piano.
0:30:14 > 0:30:18Although he couldn't replicate the unfamiliar tuning of the bells,
0:30:18 > 0:30:21gongs, and other metal bars of the gamelan,
0:30:21 > 0:30:24or the exact division of the Asian musical scale,
0:30:24 > 0:30:27he could approximate it in two ways.
0:30:27 > 0:30:30One was to make use of the so-called pentatonic scale,
0:30:30 > 0:30:34the five notes that are common to all the world's musical systems
0:30:34 > 0:30:36and which are especially prevalent in Eastern music.
0:30:36 > 0:30:41On a piano the pentatonic notes can be found by playing just the black notes.
0:30:46 > 0:30:50There's a whole section of his prelude Voiles, sails,
0:30:50 > 0:30:51which is all pentatonic.
0:31:22 > 0:31:26The other trick Debussy deployed was to allow his chords to hang over each other,
0:31:26 > 0:31:30overlapping and ricocheting from one to the next.
0:31:30 > 0:31:32This technique, on a piano at any rate,
0:31:32 > 0:31:34has the effect of eking out
0:31:34 > 0:31:37the sympathetic resonances, or harmonics,
0:31:37 > 0:31:40latent in the reverberating strings.
0:31:43 > 0:31:48Natural harmonics are hidden extra notes, usually quite high in pitch,
0:31:48 > 0:31:50that are found within any given sound,
0:31:50 > 0:31:52like the additional colours of the spectrum
0:31:52 > 0:31:54contained within white light.
0:31:54 > 0:31:58Every time you allow the felt dampers on a piano to clamp down on the strings
0:31:58 > 0:32:02you shut off the natural harmonics from resonating.
0:32:03 > 0:32:04CHORD STOPS
0:32:07 > 0:32:09But Debussy wanted to do the opposite,
0:32:09 > 0:32:13to allow the strings to ring like they would on a harp.
0:32:13 > 0:32:17His hanging chords with the dampers kept away from the strings
0:32:17 > 0:32:19were a kind of return to nature.
0:32:20 > 0:32:22"Claire de Lune" by Debussy
0:32:33 > 0:32:35Putting these ideas into action,
0:32:35 > 0:32:38Debussy created a new soundscape for the piano.
0:32:38 > 0:32:42The reformation of scales and harmonies that he introduced
0:32:42 > 0:32:45offered a whole new palette of aural possibilities.
0:32:45 > 0:32:48The piano had never sounded so exotic and so rich.
0:33:18 > 0:33:23By recalibrating the traditional Western scale on Eastern lines,
0:33:23 > 0:33:26Debussy's music was a radical departure
0:33:26 > 0:33:28from the classical style he'd grown up with,
0:33:28 > 0:33:33and his harmonic experiments based on Asian sound combinations
0:33:33 > 0:33:38were still influencing musicians, especially in jazz, half a century later.
0:33:57 > 0:33:59As well as kicking off a highly fruitful interest
0:33:59 > 0:34:01in what we'd call world music,
0:34:01 > 0:34:06the World's Fair in Paris had also put the new music of Russia on the map.
0:34:07 > 0:34:12Another of St Petersburg's musical dynamos, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,
0:34:12 > 0:34:16took over the torch and mined the golden seam of Slavic folklore
0:34:16 > 0:34:20in a series of operatic pageants put on around the turn of the century.
0:34:20 > 0:34:25Rimsky didn't just use folk stories in his plots.
0:34:25 > 0:34:30Crucially he also started to borrow the melodic building blocks of Russian folk music.
0:34:52 > 0:34:55These sparkling entertainments laid down a challenge
0:34:55 > 0:35:00to Rimsky-Korsakov's most talented pupil, then a complete unknown.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03That challenge was to blaze a path for Russian music
0:35:03 > 0:35:07and put Russia onto the cultural map once and for all,
0:35:07 > 0:35:10and boy, was the challenge accepted.
0:35:10 > 0:35:13Rimsky-Korsakov's pupil was Igor Stravinsky.
0:35:17 > 0:35:20Stravinsky's combustible arrival on the world music scene
0:35:20 > 0:35:21was stage-managed
0:35:21 > 0:35:27by an entrepreneurial art, dance and music impresario, Sergei Diaghilev.
0:35:27 > 0:35:31In 1909 he created a dance company in Paris, the Ballets Russes,
0:35:31 > 0:35:36in order to produce annual festivals of modernist Russian ballets.
0:35:36 > 0:35:39He approached Stravinsky to compose the music for one
0:35:39 > 0:35:42based on an ancient Russian fairytale, The Firebird.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49When he was commissioned Stravinsky was unknown
0:35:49 > 0:35:51and third choice for the job.
0:35:51 > 0:35:54Three years later he was both the most notorious
0:35:54 > 0:35:57and the most eagerly championed composer in all Europe.
0:35:58 > 0:36:00The Firebird's scenario,
0:36:00 > 0:36:04an amalgam of several versions of folk tales about a magical bird,
0:36:04 > 0:36:08combines supernatural characters and beasts with the natural,
0:36:08 > 0:36:11the fantastical world with the human world.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17Stravinsky gives these two worlds different styles of music.
0:36:17 > 0:36:20Human characters, like the 12 princesses in the story, are given
0:36:20 > 0:36:24folk song derived melodies based on the common Western musical scale.
0:36:25 > 0:36:26C MAJOR SCALE
0:37:16 > 0:37:20The fantastical creatures and characters on the other hand are allotted
0:37:20 > 0:37:23a much more exotic and complex musical palette,
0:37:23 > 0:37:26often based on the so-called octotonic scale.
0:37:27 > 0:37:29SEQUENCE OF TONES AND SEMITONES
0:37:31 > 0:37:35This non-Western sounding octotonic scale had been the feature
0:37:35 > 0:37:38of the music of Stravinsky's teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov,
0:37:38 > 0:37:41especially when depicting the magical, malevolent
0:37:41 > 0:37:43or the mysterious.
0:37:59 > 0:38:03When Stravinsky borrows from Russian ethnic folk music like this
0:38:03 > 0:38:05he doesn't lift it straight
0:38:05 > 0:38:07but distorts it through a mischievous prism.
0:38:07 > 0:38:10In field recordings of peasant folk music,
0:38:10 > 0:38:14the educated, bourgeois Stravinsky had discovered
0:38:14 > 0:38:16a raw, ritualistic world
0:38:16 > 0:38:19from way beyond the frontiers of industrial civilisation.
0:38:19 > 0:38:23His instinct to repackage it for a Parisian audience
0:38:23 > 0:38:25was brilliantly provocative.
0:38:33 > 0:38:37Stravinsky's rebellion against established musical conventions
0:38:37 > 0:38:42wasn't just about exotic scales and weird jingly-jangly sounds
0:38:42 > 0:38:45he injected into the orchestra.
0:38:45 > 0:38:48Stravinsky, like Mussorgsky and Debussy before him,
0:38:48 > 0:38:51wanted to find a way of assembling a musical structure
0:38:51 > 0:38:55without using constantly developing nuggets of tune.
0:38:57 > 0:39:00Stravinsky in particular wanted to tell his ballet stories
0:39:00 > 0:39:01a different way.
0:39:01 > 0:39:05He created a montage, an aural jigsaw,
0:39:05 > 0:39:08one tune followed by a different tune, followed by a different tune
0:39:08 > 0:39:10in tumbling succession.
0:39:10 > 0:39:15For this reason, ballet, with its short, restless kaleidoscopic episodes,
0:39:15 > 0:39:19was the form for which Stravinsky was born to compose.
0:39:38 > 0:39:41We find the idea of musical collage, the mix,
0:39:41 > 0:39:45the remix, the iPod shuffle and the mash-up, completely normal,
0:39:45 > 0:39:47but we shouldn't forget
0:39:47 > 0:39:50how bewilderingly unfamiliar an idea this was
0:39:50 > 0:39:54to the musical establishment of the early 1900s.
0:39:54 > 0:40:01When the Ballets Russes took Stravinsky's second ballet, Petrushka, to Vienna in 1913
0:40:01 > 0:40:04the scandalised musicians refused to play it,
0:40:04 > 0:40:07describing it as "dirty music".
0:40:07 > 0:40:10All of the radicals, Mahler, Debussy and Stravinsky,
0:40:10 > 0:40:11were dismantling the old system
0:40:11 > 0:40:17whereby musical ideas carefully unfolded, one thing after another.
0:40:17 > 0:40:19They wanted everything at once.
0:40:20 > 0:40:23Stravinsky, like all Russian composers, was turned on
0:40:23 > 0:40:26by the rhythmic urgency of dance
0:40:26 > 0:40:29but he did something very unusual with that rhythm.
0:40:29 > 0:40:32Whilst Mahler had layered melody on melody,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35tangled together like a twisted knot,
0:40:35 > 0:40:40and Debussy had manipulated blocks of adjacent sound overlapping one another,
0:40:40 > 0:40:42Stravinsky went one step further,
0:40:42 > 0:40:46superimposing simultaneous rhythms on top of each other.
0:40:49 > 0:40:51Polyrhythm, as it has since been dubbed,
0:40:51 > 0:40:54had long existed in African tribal drumming,
0:40:54 > 0:40:58improvised on the spot by highly intuitive, skilful players.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05But polyrhythm, conceived from scratch by a composer,
0:41:05 > 0:41:07written down on the page,
0:41:07 > 0:41:10imposed on the Western symphony orchestra player by player,
0:41:10 > 0:41:15this was utterly, breathtakingly novel a concept.
0:41:15 > 0:41:18It was as if Stravinsky wanted the past and the present to coexist
0:41:18 > 0:41:20in one dimension,
0:41:20 > 0:41:22the prehistoric ritual of his dancers
0:41:22 > 0:41:25and the modern cacophony of the industrial world
0:41:25 > 0:41:28and the only way he could conceive it
0:41:28 > 0:41:31was to make parallel, competing rhythmic patterns fight
0:41:31 > 0:41:33for the same space.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36It's complicated but it's magnificent.
0:41:56 > 0:41:57But here's the thing.
0:41:57 > 0:42:01The Rite of Spring, which premiered a hundred years ago,
0:42:01 > 0:42:03was the high-water mark of musical modernism.
0:42:03 > 0:42:07It therefore presented progressive music with a dilemma.
0:42:07 > 0:42:09Where the hell to go from here?
0:42:09 > 0:42:13Neither Stravinsky nor Debussy in 1913 would've guessed
0:42:13 > 0:42:16where the answer to that question would come from,
0:42:16 > 0:42:20never mind just how massive the forces of change were going to be.
0:42:20 > 0:42:24After all, revolutions don't always start with a bang.
0:42:25 > 0:42:28'Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow,
0:42:28 > 0:42:32'and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.'
0:42:32 > 0:42:36Thomas Edison is credited with the invention of recorded sound in 1877
0:42:36 > 0:42:41but in fact the first ever recording was made nearly 20 years earlier,
0:42:41 > 0:42:43in France.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48This is the earliest-known surviving recording of a person singing,
0:42:48 > 0:42:52making the man who made it, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville,
0:42:52 > 0:42:55the true inventor of recording, not Edison.
0:42:55 > 0:42:57BUZZING NOISE
0:42:57 > 0:43:01The recording was made on a machine now virtually forgotten,
0:43:01 > 0:43:03the phonautograph.
0:43:03 > 0:43:04Here's the amazing bit.
0:43:04 > 0:43:09The inventor's aim was to be able to study sound in graph-like form.
0:43:09 > 0:43:12What he couldn't do was play the sound back.
0:43:12 > 0:43:15Then, in 2008,
0:43:15 > 0:43:19American engineers using sophisticated digital technology
0:43:19 > 0:43:23were able to convert the markings on the paper back into sound.
0:43:23 > 0:43:28The French folk singer of 1860 miraculously sang again.
0:43:28 > 0:43:31- BUZZING NOISE - Sort of.
0:43:34 > 0:43:36The phonautograph had begun a process
0:43:36 > 0:43:39that was totally to transform music.
0:43:39 > 0:43:41Very soon after Edison invented a machine
0:43:41 > 0:43:43that could play recordings back,
0:43:43 > 0:43:47a new breed of musician researcher popped up
0:43:47 > 0:43:48in virtually every country,
0:43:48 > 0:43:51travelling around remote, rural areas,
0:43:51 > 0:43:53recording and preserving the folk songs
0:43:53 > 0:43:58they persuaded doubtless bemused locals to perform for them.
0:43:58 > 0:44:02These field recordists captured the oral and musical culture
0:44:02 > 0:44:05of communities now long disappeared.
0:44:05 > 0:44:07SINGING AND DRUMMING
0:44:07 > 0:44:10But the real future for recorded sound was in
0:44:10 > 0:44:13the reproduction of music that was already popular.
0:44:13 > 0:44:18- TENOR:- # Vesti la giubba
0:44:18 > 0:44:21# E la faccia infarina... #
0:44:21 > 0:44:26The first million-selling record was Caruso's Vesti La Giubba in 1907,
0:44:26 > 0:44:30just before radio broadcasts began.
0:44:30 > 0:44:32As well as live music, radio also played records,
0:44:32 > 0:44:34thus boosting their sales.
0:44:34 > 0:44:41# ..t'invola Colombina... #
0:44:41 > 0:44:43The advent of recording made
0:44:43 > 0:44:47the huge wealth of music already written by 1900
0:44:47 > 0:44:50increasingly available to millions of people across the world,
0:44:50 > 0:44:53vastly expanding their musical horizons
0:44:53 > 0:44:56and turning something hitherto expensive and elitist
0:44:56 > 0:44:58into an ordinary commodity.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01This was a very good thing.
0:45:01 > 0:45:04Recording also began to put in front of a mass audience
0:45:04 > 0:45:08forms of folk and ethnic music that were up to then unknown
0:45:08 > 0:45:10outside their local communities.
0:45:10 > 0:45:14The music that was boosted most of all by recording, as it turned out,
0:45:14 > 0:45:17was that produced by African Americans,
0:45:17 > 0:45:19beginning with spiritual songs.
0:45:19 > 0:45:25# When Israel was in Egypt's land
0:45:25 > 0:45:28# Let my people go
0:45:28 > 0:45:33# Oppressed so hard they could not stand
0:45:33 > 0:45:37# Let my people go
0:45:37 > 0:45:40- # Go down, Moses - # Go down, Moses
0:45:42 > 0:45:46# Way down in Egypt's land
0:45:46 > 0:45:50# Tell old pharaoh
0:45:54 > 0:45:59- # You got to let my people go - # Let them go
0:45:59 > 0:46:02# You got to let my people go
0:46:02 > 0:46:03# Let them go
0:46:03 > 0:46:06# You got to let my people go
0:46:06 > 0:46:08# Let them go
0:46:08 > 0:46:11# You got to let my people go
0:46:11 > 0:46:15# Let them go, let them go
0:46:15 > 0:46:19# Let them go. #
0:46:19 > 0:46:20Huh!
0:46:20 > 0:46:23African American slaves and their descendants
0:46:23 > 0:46:26living in conditions of oppressive poverty developed
0:46:26 > 0:46:28a form of religious song, the spiritual,
0:46:28 > 0:46:30which seems to have been an amalgam
0:46:30 > 0:46:34of half-remembered African call and response chants
0:46:34 > 0:46:36and missionary hymns.
0:46:36 > 0:46:43# Swing low, sweet chariot
0:46:43 > 0:46:49# Comin' for to carry me home
0:46:49 > 0:46:52# Swing low, sweet chariot... #
0:46:52 > 0:46:54These spirituals of the Deep South were rich
0:46:54 > 0:46:58with Old Testament references to the slavery of the Israelites,
0:46:58 > 0:47:02visions of redemption and heavenly justice.
0:47:02 > 0:47:07# I looked over Jordan What did I see?
0:47:07 > 0:47:10# Comin' for to carry me home?
0:47:10 > 0:47:15# A band of angels Coming after me... #
0:47:15 > 0:47:19The existence of the spiritual was for a long time mostly unknown
0:47:19 > 0:47:21to the white population of the United States,
0:47:21 > 0:47:26let alone the rest of the world but a long fuse had been lit.
0:47:26 > 0:47:32# People, they are faithful And like to say a good prayer, too
0:47:32 > 0:47:38# If you ask them about their religion
0:47:38 > 0:47:40# They'll say they're just as good as you... #
0:47:40 > 0:47:45The Fisk Jubilee Singers, who were themselves the children of slaves,
0:47:45 > 0:47:47began to make fundraising tours
0:47:47 > 0:47:50singing what were called at the time negro spirituals.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53But strangely, one of the first musicians
0:47:53 > 0:47:56to put this music in front of a middle-class American audience
0:47:56 > 0:47:58was an Englishman.
0:48:08 > 0:48:12The Edwardian Samuel Coleridge-Taylor caused a sensation
0:48:12 > 0:48:17on three trips to the USA, conducting his own compositions.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20In one of them we can hear early and tantalising evidence
0:48:20 > 0:48:23of the melodic style of what came to be known as the blues,
0:48:23 > 0:48:25which, albeit in different disguises,
0:48:25 > 0:48:28went on to dominate the music of the 20th century and beyond.
0:48:28 > 0:48:29The clues we're looking for
0:48:29 > 0:48:33are so-called flattened degrees of the musical ladder, or scale,
0:48:33 > 0:48:35at the third and seventh position,
0:48:35 > 0:48:38especially when the phrase is heading in a downward direction.
0:48:38 > 0:48:42And here they both are, one after another, in this melody.
0:48:44 > 0:48:45Third.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48Seventh.
0:48:48 > 0:48:50The blues, as it developed slowly and piecemeal
0:48:50 > 0:48:53amongst former slave communities in the USA
0:48:53 > 0:48:55in the final decades of the 19th century,
0:48:55 > 0:48:58clung resolutely to the flattened thirds and sevenths,
0:48:58 > 0:49:00and does so to the present day.
0:49:00 > 0:49:03Indeed, they became known as blue notes.
0:49:17 > 0:49:19MAN: Play that thing, boy.
0:49:26 > 0:49:29Blue notes, revivalist spirituals,
0:49:29 > 0:49:32the call and response or holler songs of the Deep South,
0:49:32 > 0:49:34all derived from their African origins,
0:49:34 > 0:49:36went into the mixing pot of the early blues.
0:49:36 > 0:49:40But also mixed in were chords borrowed
0:49:40 > 0:49:42from hymns and parlour and vaudeville songs,
0:49:42 > 0:49:47and the folk songs of other members of the American underclass.
0:49:47 > 0:49:50MAN SINGS BLUES
0:49:58 > 0:50:00There's been considerable research
0:50:00 > 0:50:03into song forms of the poorest Americans of all ethnic groups
0:50:03 > 0:50:05in the 19th century.
0:50:05 > 0:50:08It reveals the influence of Anglo-Celtic folk music
0:50:08 > 0:50:10on the growth of the blues.
0:50:10 > 0:50:14This folk music was learnt from the African Americans' co-workers
0:50:14 > 0:50:15in the cotton fields and on the railroads,
0:50:15 > 0:50:18many of whom were from the British Isles.
0:50:21 > 0:50:22Amongst these song types are hundreds
0:50:22 > 0:50:26which lament the burden and misery of the labourer's life.
0:50:29 > 0:50:31Typical is the iconic American work song,
0:50:31 > 0:50:34The Ballad of John Henry, The Steel Driving Man,
0:50:34 > 0:50:37which eventually became a blues standard.
0:50:37 > 0:50:39It celebrates the futile battle
0:50:39 > 0:50:41between an African American railroad worker
0:50:41 > 0:50:43and a new machine designed to replace him.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46Music historians have traced the shape
0:50:46 > 0:50:50back to the much earlier British ballad, The Birmingham Boys.
0:50:50 > 0:50:52Listen out for the overall storytelling shape
0:50:52 > 0:50:54and the repeated line at the end.
0:50:55 > 0:50:58# In Birmingham town there lived a man
0:50:58 > 0:51:02# And he had such a lovely wife
0:51:02 > 0:51:05# And so dearly she loved company
0:51:05 > 0:51:10# As dearly as she loved life, boys, life,
0:51:10 > 0:51:13# As dearly as she loved life. #
0:51:13 > 0:51:17Now here's one of the many later versions of John Henry.
0:51:17 > 0:51:24# John Henry was a little baby, sitting on his mother's knee
0:51:24 > 0:51:28# He picked up a hammer in his little right hand
0:51:28 > 0:51:32# Says, "A hammer's gonna be the death of me, O Lord
0:51:32 > 0:51:35# "A hammer's gonna be the death of me." #
0:51:36 > 0:51:40One of the changes that's happened to the tune crossing the Atlantic
0:51:40 > 0:51:42is that it's become entirely pentatonic.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46Remember those five basic notes prevalent in Eastern music
0:51:46 > 0:51:47that Debussy imitated?
0:51:52 > 0:51:54And who were the other railroad workers
0:51:54 > 0:51:59toiling alongside the British, Irish and African American labourers?
0:52:05 > 0:52:09Now, even to suggest any European influence
0:52:09 > 0:52:10on the blues is controversial,
0:52:10 > 0:52:12and it's entirely understandable
0:52:12 > 0:52:16that there should be sensitivity about any non-African elements
0:52:16 > 0:52:18in the origin of the blues.
0:52:18 > 0:52:21Since the music of the slaves, from which it sprang, was
0:52:21 > 0:52:22so often a lament,
0:52:22 > 0:52:26or a coded protest against the harsh treatment they received,
0:52:26 > 0:52:29some African Americans quite naturally resent the idea
0:52:29 > 0:52:32that the blues could in any way have been influenced
0:52:32 > 0:52:35by the very people who enslaved their ancestors.
0:52:35 > 0:52:40But the fact is that music does not observe racial or national boundaries.
0:52:40 > 0:52:44It's a free-flowing river, open and available to all cultures,
0:52:44 > 0:52:47owned by none.
0:52:47 > 0:52:50Whatever elements went into its kit of parts,
0:52:50 > 0:52:52the early blues musicians made something
0:52:52 > 0:52:54unique and lasting of their own.
0:52:55 > 0:52:58This same intermingling of styles and traditions can be seen
0:52:58 > 0:53:02in the arrival at around the same time of ragtime,
0:53:02 > 0:53:04which became a kind of craze.
0:53:12 > 0:53:15Rag or ragtime music originated
0:53:15 > 0:53:17in St Louis and Chicago bars and brothels,
0:53:17 > 0:53:21from house pianists copying the popular marching band style
0:53:21 > 0:53:23of the 1880s and '90s,
0:53:23 > 0:53:27a fashion that reached its peak with the band leader John Philip Sousa.
0:53:27 > 0:53:32In order to emulate the whole band - bass, accompanying chords and tune -
0:53:32 > 0:53:35the pianist had to leap about the keys frantically,
0:53:35 > 0:53:37resulting in a quite virtuoso left-hand motion
0:53:37 > 0:53:40from bass to chord and back.
0:53:47 > 0:53:51On top of this accompanying oom-pa the rag pianists wove a catchy tune
0:53:51 > 0:53:55that pulled the rhythm around - a technique called syncopation.
0:54:08 > 0:54:13Syncopation is LIKE talk-ING with THE emph-A-sis ON the wrong words
0:54:13 > 0:54:16TO cre-ATE a jer-KY sound.
0:54:16 > 0:54:21Listen to this bit of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag without syncopation.
0:54:22 > 0:54:24HE PLAYS A SIMPLIFIED VERSION OF RAG
0:54:36 > 0:54:39And now with Joplin's syncopations,
0:54:39 > 0:54:42which feel like they're tripping ahead of where you'd expect them to fall.
0:54:42 > 0:54:44MUSIC: "Maple Leaf Rag" by Joplin
0:54:51 > 0:54:55Ragtime picked up syncopation, a playful jumping ahead of a tune,
0:54:55 > 0:54:59from the banjo or piano accompaniments for cake walks,
0:54:59 > 0:55:02a jokey form of dancing that plantation workers had invented
0:55:02 > 0:55:04for their own amusement,
0:55:04 > 0:55:09in lampooning imitation of white folks' la-di-da ballroom dancing.
0:55:09 > 0:55:12The white folks in question used to enjoy
0:55:12 > 0:55:15watching their staff's cake walk parties,
0:55:15 > 0:55:20not realising that what they thought was a comic and ludicrous African American dance step
0:55:20 > 0:55:23was actually a caricature of them.
0:55:26 > 0:55:30Along with the cake walk another offspring of ragtime was
0:55:30 > 0:55:33a hyper-syncopated form of piano and band-playing
0:55:33 > 0:55:37that flickered into life in the Storyville district of New Orleans.
0:55:37 > 0:55:41Charismatic performers like Jelly Roll Morton took it on tour
0:55:41 > 0:55:44around the southern states in travelling vaudeville shows.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47Though Jelly Roll called a lot of his numbers blues,
0:55:47 > 0:55:52we now know this is the beginning of a distinct genre of its own, jazz.
0:56:01 > 0:56:04From now on this music took on a life of its own.
0:56:08 > 0:56:11As up-to-the-minute blues and its many offspring began
0:56:11 > 0:56:14to revolutionise popular music,
0:56:14 > 0:56:17classically-trained composers found themselves outflanked
0:56:17 > 0:56:19and increasingly unloved.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24Given the choice the general public voted with their feet in their millions
0:56:24 > 0:56:27and took the populist path.
0:56:27 > 0:56:29The coming century would see popular music,
0:56:29 > 0:56:32especially American popular music, sweeping the planet.
0:56:32 > 0:56:36And yet, faced with the twin rebellions
0:56:36 > 0:56:39of dissonant modernism and the mass market,
0:56:39 > 0:56:42the classical tradition found an ace up its sleeve
0:56:42 > 0:56:45and played it with impeccable timing.
0:56:45 > 0:56:49In a world of turmoil and change its response was nostalgia.
0:56:49 > 0:56:52Edward Elgar's most famous piece, Enigma Variations,
0:56:52 > 0:56:54embodies this response.
0:56:54 > 0:56:56As the world began to slide
0:56:56 > 0:56:59towards a final showdown of the European empires,
0:56:59 > 0:57:03this music reminded people what they were about to lose.
0:57:22 > 0:57:24From Elgar and Vaughan Williams in Britain,
0:57:24 > 0:57:27Grieg in Norway, Sibelius in Finland,
0:57:27 > 0:57:28Respighi in Italy,
0:57:28 > 0:57:32Rachmaninov in Russia and Richard Strauss in Germany,
0:57:32 > 0:57:36a musical style of tender, old-fashioned melancholy
0:57:36 > 0:57:41seemed to want to hold back the relentless passage of time and progress.
0:57:43 > 0:57:46That this music is so popular in our own time
0:57:46 > 0:57:48testifies to its enduring appeal,
0:57:48 > 0:57:53and perhaps our own continuing need for its soothing balm.
0:57:53 > 0:57:56It may also indicate that in a crowded market
0:57:56 > 0:58:00classical music's unique selling point is, like it or not,
0:58:00 > 0:58:04its ability to wrap up the past like a beautiful gift.
0:58:15 > 0:58:17MUSIC: "Rhapsody In Blue" by Gershwin
0:58:21 > 0:58:25In the next programme we trace how all the developments of this 30-year period
0:58:25 > 0:58:29found affirmation in a golden age of popular music.
0:58:30 > 0:58:32Classical music went undercover,
0:58:32 > 0:58:36morphing gloriously into a variety of new musical forms,
0:58:36 > 0:58:40made possible by the onwards march of technology.
0:58:43 > 0:58:45Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd