0:00:16 > 0:00:18It is Christmas Eve, 1906.
0:00:18 > 0:00:21And from Brant Rock, a wind-lashed signalling station
0:00:21 > 0:00:25in Massachusetts, a momentous sound is heard.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29It is the first ever wireless broadcast of a piece of recorded music.
0:00:29 > 0:00:34Handel's Largo, transmitted by an intrepid radio pioneer,
0:00:34 > 0:00:35Reginald Fessenden.
0:00:36 > 0:00:41From these small crackly beginnings, a global industry would soon grow.
0:00:42 > 0:00:47This historic broadcast ushered in a new age for music.
0:00:47 > 0:00:50An age where music would belong to everyone, everywhere,
0:00:50 > 0:00:54often, as it was in this case, enjoyed completely free.
0:00:55 > 0:00:59Radio and its close relation, the gramophone record,
0:00:59 > 0:01:01had a completely unexpected effect.
0:01:02 > 0:01:06While many hours of classical music were recorded and broadcast,
0:01:06 > 0:01:10most of all, radio and records helped local forms of folk music
0:01:10 > 0:01:14find a global audience for the first time in history.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18Especially American folk music based around the blues.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24The invention of new recording techniques and the rise
0:01:24 > 0:01:27and rise of the popular music that benefited from them
0:01:27 > 0:01:30is the big story of the last hundred years of music.
0:01:31 > 0:01:34Thanks to radio play, gramophone records
0:01:34 > 0:01:38and now the internet, popular music has swept the planet.
0:01:38 > 0:01:42The advent of free to air music for the world's grateful millions
0:01:42 > 0:01:46would change the value, purpose and style of music more
0:01:46 > 0:01:49dramatically than any other development in history.
0:02:05 > 0:02:12The popular age, as it rapidly became, brought undreamed of musical rewards to humankind.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15But it is also thought by some to have brought about the near
0:02:15 > 0:02:20extinction of what came to be known generically as classical music.
0:02:20 > 0:02:24But is it true that classical music has been suffocated in its sleep?
0:02:24 > 0:02:28I would say not. I think what has happened is more interesting.
0:02:28 > 0:02:32Classical music has changed and morphed into other forms.
0:02:32 > 0:02:36Its DNA is everywhere to you care to look in the popular mainstream.
0:02:37 > 0:02:42Not that the classical music world always welcomed this development.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52This was the highbrow critics assessment of the musical
0:02:52 > 0:02:56climax of a concept that took place in New York City in February 1924
0:02:56 > 0:03:02and Aeolian Hall, a premier venue for serious symphonic music.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07What happened, though, was that the event was hijacked.
0:03:07 > 0:03:12A genius premiered a work he had composed in five weeks
0:03:12 > 0:03:17and by the end of its 14 minutes, music's goalposts had been irrevocably shifted.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43The point of the concert was educational, to demystify
0:03:43 > 0:03:48the classical shrine of Aeolian Hall for people who liked jazz.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53And to show connoisseurs of classical music that the upstart genre of jazz
0:03:53 > 0:03:56could work in a proper concert hall setting.
0:03:56 > 0:03:59As if to say, one day jazz will grow up
0:03:59 > 0:04:01and will be respected like Beethoven.
0:04:14 > 0:04:17The reception given to Rhapsody In Blue encapsulated
0:04:17 > 0:04:21the polarised attitudes of the next 50 years.
0:04:21 > 0:04:24High art critics panned it, the audience loved it.
0:04:29 > 0:04:34Great music has a way of finding its voice whatever snobbery throws at it,
0:04:34 > 0:04:37and what happened next is that Gershwin's first
0:04:37 > 0:04:42recording of Rhapsody In Blue sold one million copies a year.
0:04:42 > 0:04:45Rhapsody In Blue is now one of the standard pieces in every
0:04:45 > 0:04:48orchestra's repetoire. An out and out modern classic.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51What the 20th century teaches us is that if you give music
0:04:51 > 0:04:56a nationality, a frontier, a class, a racial bade or a stylistic label,
0:04:56 > 0:04:58it will break out of it.
0:04:58 > 0:05:00Spectacularly.
0:05:18 > 0:05:21Even Rhapsody In Blue itself is difficult to pin down -
0:05:21 > 0:05:24is it classical music or jazz or both?
0:05:25 > 0:05:29Just as there is no one thing that can be labeled classical music,
0:05:29 > 0:05:34the same is true for many popular genres. Jazz, perhaps most of all.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39From the very beginning, jazz as a style eluded definition,
0:05:39 > 0:05:43so various were its manifestations in different places.
0:05:43 > 0:05:47It is hardly surprising that a genre which defied form,
0:05:47 > 0:05:50which chose improvisation over the printed page,
0:05:50 > 0:05:54which allowed maximum freedom and looseness in its harmony,
0:05:54 > 0:05:58its interpretation of melody and its rhythm, should have
0:05:58 > 0:06:02splintered into 100 colourful shards on impact with the world.
0:06:11 > 0:06:14In the '20s and '30s, the records of Louis Armstrong,
0:06:14 > 0:06:18Fats Waller, Duke Ellington and many others were eagerly listened
0:06:18 > 0:06:19and danced to across the world.
0:06:27 > 0:06:30But there was another aspect of jazz that set a tone for popular music
0:06:30 > 0:06:32in the 20th century.
0:06:32 > 0:06:33From its earliest days,
0:06:33 > 0:06:37it appeared to belong equally to musicians of all races.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41Bucking the segregated trend of the '20s and '30s society.
0:06:43 > 0:06:48But while popular music went from strength to strength,
0:06:48 > 0:06:50classical music seemed to be losing its way.
0:06:50 > 0:06:55It began the 20th century with both prestige and popular appeal.
0:06:55 > 0:06:58How fast things had changed.
0:06:58 > 0:07:03As late as 1926, the unveiling of a new piece by the last great composer
0:07:03 > 0:07:08of Italian opera, Giacommo Puccini, was a media event on a global scale.
0:07:08 > 0:07:13Turandot was performed to huge audiences and its standout number -
0:07:13 > 0:07:17you may have heard it - became an instant standard.
0:07:17 > 0:07:22# Nessun dorma
0:07:22 > 0:07:28# Nessun dorma... #
0:07:28 > 0:07:31With the exception of a handful of later works by American composers
0:07:31 > 0:07:35John Adams and Philip Glass, newly written operas
0:07:35 > 0:07:39became more or less invisible to the population at large.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43Even as the audience for revivals of old operas grew and grew.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54A newly composed classical opera in the late 20th century
0:07:54 > 0:07:56was like Beluga caviar.
0:07:56 > 0:08:01A shockingly expensive product from an endangered species, accessible
0:08:01 > 0:08:06to a very few privileged people and all but irrelevant to anyone else.
0:08:06 > 0:08:08So how did this come about?
0:08:17 > 0:08:20Avant-garde classical music began to set out on a radical new path
0:08:20 > 0:08:23in the early years of the 20th century.
0:08:23 > 0:08:26All the arts, as a response to the sheer speed
0:08:26 > 0:08:29and intensity of modern life, sought to abandon
0:08:29 > 0:08:34representational forms in favour of abstraction.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37Just as modern life became more and more fragmented,
0:08:37 > 0:08:41bewildering and unsettling, so too, cutting-edge classical music
0:08:41 > 0:08:45became jagged and discordant to reflect the changing world.
0:08:46 > 0:08:51Composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern
0:08:51 > 0:08:54began to abandon the traditional building blocks of Western music.
0:08:56 > 0:09:00They put in place a new system variously called atonalism,
0:09:00 > 0:09:0312 tone or serialism.
0:09:05 > 0:09:10Serialism aimed to do away with the sense of home in any given
0:09:10 > 0:09:13piece of music by treating each of the 12 notes in the Western scale
0:09:13 > 0:09:17as equals, not allowing any of them to be repeated,
0:09:17 > 0:09:22so your ear could not latch onto one of them as the centre of gravity.
0:09:22 > 0:09:24It was as radical a formula for music as it would be
0:09:24 > 0:09:27for a language, if you've ruled that no letter
0:09:27 > 0:09:31of the alphabet could be used more than once in a sentence.
0:09:41 > 0:09:46Schoenberg's complicated theoren was only one possible way forward
0:09:46 > 0:09:51for experimental classical music as the popular age gathered momentum.
0:09:51 > 0:09:55Another option was to become the aural manifestation of the surreal,
0:09:55 > 0:09:58and give up on any definable meaning.
0:10:12 > 0:10:16The term "Surrealists" was first used to describe a 1917 ballet
0:10:16 > 0:10:18staged in Paris.
0:10:18 > 0:10:23"Parade" was a clownish concoction cooked up by composer
0:10:23 > 0:10:28Erik Satie, painter Pablo Picasso and writer Jean Cocteau.
0:10:30 > 0:10:33Parade was not without its innovations.
0:10:33 > 0:10:38These included the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated scenes,
0:10:38 > 0:10:41the disruption of any expectation of a narrative
0:10:41 > 0:10:44and its integration, against the composer's wishes as it happens,
0:10:44 > 0:10:48of nonmusical side-effects into the score.
0:10:48 > 0:10:52The rhythmic qualities of these sounds from type-writers to
0:10:52 > 0:10:54factory sirens were to be exploited
0:10:54 > 0:10:57time and time again as the 20th-century wore on.
0:11:04 > 0:11:08But the timing of a buffoonish circus piece like Parade,
0:11:08 > 0:11:13May 1917, seems now tasteless and incomprehensible.
0:11:16 > 0:11:19At the very same time that this tomfoolery was
0:11:19 > 0:11:20unfolding in Paris,
0:11:20 > 0:11:25just 100 miles away on the Western front, 120,000 French lives
0:11:25 > 0:11:29were being lost in one of the bloodiest battles of the Great War.
0:11:31 > 0:11:37How cut off from reality had high art become that anyone deemed
0:11:37 > 0:11:39the slapstick camp of Parade,
0:11:39 > 0:11:42which has all the hallmarks of a hastily thrown-together student review,
0:11:42 > 0:11:46an appropriate public offering while this was going on?
0:11:49 > 0:11:53But there was another way for classically trained composers to go.
0:11:53 > 0:11:56They could find common cause with the popular, and by so doing,
0:11:56 > 0:12:00cross-fertilise their idiom with the commercial mainstream.
0:12:03 > 0:12:06This alternative route for classical composers can be seen
0:12:06 > 0:12:13emerging in the 1920s in Germany. Here, the hangover from the First World War was felt most acutely
0:12:13 > 0:12:17with hyperinflation, mass unemployment
0:12:17 > 0:12:21and running street battles between communists and fascists.
0:12:21 > 0:12:23To address the political malaise,
0:12:23 > 0:12:27an edgy, politically charged cabaret style was born in Berlin.
0:12:31 > 0:12:36The composer who gave the style its hallmark was the classically-trained Kurt Weill.
0:12:38 > 0:12:43He shot to recognition in 1928 with an opera/musical/play written
0:12:43 > 0:12:46with the communist playwrite Bertolt Brecht.
0:12:47 > 0:12:50It was the Thruppeny Opera.
0:12:51 > 0:12:55Set in the criminal world of 18th-century Soho, complete
0:12:55 > 0:12:58with thieves, beggars, prostitutes and pimps,
0:12:58 > 0:13:02the Thruppeny Opera's message is that the corruption moneygrubbing
0:13:02 > 0:13:06violence and cynicism of the underclass is really
0:13:06 > 0:13:09no different to the wider values of capitalist society.
0:13:10 > 0:13:14It begins with a murder ballad introducing the central character,
0:13:14 > 0:13:19the charismatic murderous gang boss, Mackie Messer,
0:13:19 > 0:13:22whose name in English was Mack The Knife.
0:14:52 > 0:14:55The Thruppeny Opera of Trainspotting for the late '20s,
0:14:55 > 0:14:59presenting to its middle-class audience a grimy, no-frills
0:14:59 > 0:15:02vision of the alienated underclass.
0:15:02 > 0:15:05In Depression-era Europe, it clearly struck a chord,
0:15:05 > 0:15:09since by the time Weill fled Germany for the States in 1933,
0:15:09 > 0:15:12it had been translated into 18 languages
0:15:12 > 0:15:15and performed more than 10,000 times.
0:15:15 > 0:15:19Here was a form of accessible music in the shape of a drama that
0:15:19 > 0:15:20did mean something
0:15:20 > 0:15:25and had plenty to say about the times it was written in.
0:15:25 > 0:15:28What is remarkable is how, during the depression era
0:15:28 > 0:15:32and the rise of fascism, it was popular music rather than
0:15:32 > 0:15:36"serious music" that became the voice of conscience.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40Even in the musical, so often a byword for escapism.
0:15:40 > 0:15:45# I love you, Porgy
0:15:45 > 0:15:50# Don't let him take me... #
0:15:50 > 0:15:55A key example of musical with a message is Porgy And Bess by George Gershwin,
0:15:55 > 0:15:59with lyrics by his brother, Ira, and playwrite DuBose Heyward.
0:16:01 > 0:16:07Set in a poverty and drug-stricken African American fishing community in the South,
0:16:07 > 0:16:10Porgy And Bess was notable for its sympathetic
0:16:10 > 0:16:13but clear-eyed portrayal of underclass life.
0:16:14 > 0:16:19The fact that three white men wrote Porgy And Bess has caused unease ever since it was written.
0:16:19 > 0:16:23It is fair to say though that no such controversy prevented
0:16:23 > 0:16:25some of the greatest African-American artists of
0:16:25 > 0:16:30the century from recording versions of its superbly crafted songs.
0:16:32 > 0:16:38# Summertime
0:16:38 > 0:16:46# And the living is easy... #
0:16:46 > 0:16:54# It ain't neccessarily so
0:16:54 > 0:16:59# It ain't neccessarily so... #
0:16:59 > 0:17:02What Gershwin's songs were doing was redrawing
0:17:02 > 0:17:06the parameters of what subjects popular songs might tackle.
0:17:06 > 0:17:10The challenge was taken up with unforgettable power,
0:17:10 > 0:17:14in Strange Fruit, recorded by Billie Holliday in 1939.
0:17:14 > 0:17:18It wouldn't generally be found on any music degree syllabus,
0:17:18 > 0:17:23but it may be one of the pieces of music with the greatest individual impact of its time.
0:17:23 > 0:17:28# Southern trees
0:17:28 > 0:17:34# Bear strange fruit
0:17:34 > 0:17:40# Blood on the leaves
0:17:40 > 0:17:45# And blood at the root
0:17:45 > 0:17:56# Black bodies swingin' in the southern breeze
0:17:56 > 0:18:06# Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees... #
0:18:06 > 0:18:10Strange fruit, written by a Communist poet,
0:18:10 > 0:18:14Abel Meeropol, is thought to have been prompted by an unbearably
0:18:14 > 0:18:17graphic newspaper photograph of the lynching
0:18:17 > 0:18:22and hanging of two black men in Indiana in 1930.
0:18:22 > 0:18:26A horror that was a disturbingly common occurrence in America
0:18:26 > 0:18:32at the time, but not one that anyone had yet thought to describe in song.
0:18:32 > 0:18:35# Scent of magnolia
0:18:35 > 0:18:42# Sweet and fresh
0:18:42 > 0:18:47# Then the sudden smell
0:18:47 > 0:18:53# Of burning flesh... #
0:18:53 > 0:18:55Holiday's hunting performance
0:18:55 > 0:18:59and the distressing poetic text of Strange Fruit marks the moment
0:18:59 > 0:19:03when popular song could no longer be dismissed as frothy
0:19:03 > 0:19:07commercial fluff, when it began to assume a more mature rule
0:19:07 > 0:19:10in society's examination of itself.
0:19:10 > 0:19:12# For the sun to rot
0:19:15 > 0:19:19# For the tree
0:19:19 > 0:19:27# To drop
0:19:28 > 0:19:44# Here is a strange and bitter crop. #
0:19:44 > 0:19:47APPLAUSE
0:19:54 > 0:19:56Classical music went through a stage in the 1920s
0:19:56 > 0:20:01when composers took to rummaging around in music's back catalogue,
0:20:01 > 0:20:05mischievously writing pastiche in the style of previous eras.
0:20:05 > 0:20:07It was as if experimentation
0:20:07 > 0:20:11and modernism had simply run out of steam,
0:20:11 > 0:20:15to be replaced with the musical equivalent of repro furniture.
0:20:15 > 0:20:18But then a startling, extraordinary new sound was heard and it came
0:20:18 > 0:20:24from a composer who had form when it came to musical revolutions.
0:20:24 > 0:20:27It was Stravinsky, the lord of misrule himself,
0:20:27 > 0:20:31who took a leap in the dark and broke free, both from the zany
0:20:31 > 0:20:35world of the surreal and from ye olde worlde of pastiche.
0:20:35 > 0:20:39He gave a bracing new direction to the classical tradition.
0:20:39 > 0:20:44MUSIC: LES NOCES by Igor Stravisnki
0:20:46 > 0:20:49As is often the case, the most original, daring and influential
0:20:49 > 0:20:53works are ones that keep up on the world, apparently out of nowhere.
0:20:53 > 0:20:58MUSIC: LES NOCES by Igor Stravisnki
0:21:00 > 0:21:06One such is Stravinsky's complicated 1923 ballet, Les Noces.
0:21:06 > 0:21:11Staged in Paris, based around a Russian peasant wedding.
0:21:15 > 0:21:20At times, the role of the voice is like the modern technique of rapping.
0:21:24 > 0:21:28The nature of the rest of the ensemble is more startling, still.
0:21:28 > 0:21:33A large battery of percussion instruments including four pianos.
0:21:39 > 0:21:44The resulting jangling, sparklingly dissonant sound which is brittle,
0:21:44 > 0:21:48full of edgy attack and a kind of out-of-tune resonance, would have
0:21:48 > 0:21:52been literally unimaginable, even terrifying to audiences of the day.
0:21:52 > 0:21:56One contemporary critic described Les Noces, the Wedding Night,
0:21:56 > 0:22:02as "enough to convert intending brides and bridegrooms to celibacy."
0:22:02 > 0:22:07But to other composers, this sound seems startlingly fresh,
0:22:07 > 0:22:09like someone had uninvented the Symphony Orchestra
0:22:09 > 0:22:11and started again from scratch.
0:22:11 > 0:22:15The sound world of Les Noce is quite simply the most
0:22:15 > 0:22:18imitated of all 20th-century combinations,
0:22:18 > 0:22:20outside the fields of jazz and popular music.
0:22:45 > 0:22:49By the time Les Noces was written, Mussolini had taken power in Italy
0:22:49 > 0:22:52and the Nazi Party was beginning its rise to power in Germany.
0:22:55 > 0:22:59When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933,
0:22:59 > 0:23:03musical works written by communists, like Bertolt Brecht, Jews,
0:23:03 > 0:23:07like Kurt Weill and many Broadway composers and African-Americans,
0:23:07 > 0:23:11the creators of blues and jazz, were banned in the Third Reich.
0:23:11 > 0:23:13Labelled as "degenerate music."
0:23:15 > 0:23:20So how did classical composers respond to the Nazis cultural policies?
0:23:20 > 0:23:22Some were lucky enough to escape,
0:23:22 > 0:23:25the few who stayed put challenged the regime.
0:23:42 > 0:23:45The nearest thing classical music had to a true dissident
0:23:45 > 0:23:50in the 1930s was the Hungarian modernist Bela Bartok,
0:23:50 > 0:23:54who forbid all performances or broadcast of his music in the
0:23:54 > 0:23:58Third Reich and fascist Italy, a gesture which impoverished him.
0:23:58 > 0:24:01He actually asked for his name to be added to
0:24:01 > 0:24:05a Nazi list of so-called "degenerate musicians,"
0:24:05 > 0:24:09Intended for public ridicule and ignominy.
0:24:09 > 0:24:11To continue having their music performed,
0:24:11 > 0:24:14composers who remained in Germany had to stay on the right side
0:24:14 > 0:24:19of the regime, even if they didn't always actively support it.
0:24:19 > 0:24:22For the now elderly composer Richard Strauss,
0:24:22 > 0:24:25the most prestigious cultural figure in the Third Reich,
0:24:25 > 0:24:29his struggle seems to be confined to how to handle the Nazi bigwigs
0:24:29 > 0:24:31so that they would leave him alone.
0:24:31 > 0:24:34This was clearly more important to him than tackling them,
0:24:34 > 0:24:38for example, on the disgusting racial policies.
0:24:38 > 0:24:40In his own field alone, Jewish musicians had been
0:24:40 > 0:24:43ejected from orchestras, universities and conservatoires,
0:24:43 > 0:24:48and the musical Jewish composers, alive or dead, had been prohibited.
0:24:48 > 0:24:52One composer who had no qualms about working uncritically with
0:24:52 > 0:24:55the Nazi regime wrote what has become a much loved
0:24:55 > 0:24:57staple of the classical repertoire.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12Carmina Burana had its tumultuously successful
0:25:12 > 0:25:15premiere in the Third Reich in 1937.
0:25:17 > 0:25:21Orff accepted the Nazi government's request to
0:25:21 > 0:25:25replace the Jewish Mendelssohn's incidental music to a Midsummer Night's Dream.
0:25:25 > 0:25:29He appeared powerless to intervene on behalf of a close friend who was
0:25:29 > 0:25:33tortured and executed by the regime, and he lies to the Americans after
0:25:33 > 0:25:37the war about having been involved in the resistance, which he was not.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52The reverse side of totalitarian coin,
0:25:52 > 0:25:56the Soviet Union, was just as eager to control the arts.
0:25:56 > 0:26:01From 1936, Stalin's cultural henchmen recklessly prohibited
0:26:01 > 0:26:04any sign of modernism in music.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21This hardening of official attitudes caused huge
0:26:21 > 0:26:26difficulty for Russia's leading composer, Dmitri Shostakovich.
0:26:26 > 0:26:27A modernist at heart,
0:26:27 > 0:26:31after one of his works was officially labelled "chaos not music,"
0:26:31 > 0:26:35he had little choice but to write in the approved Soviet manner, or
0:26:35 > 0:26:39run the risk that he and his family might end up in a prison camp.
0:26:41 > 0:26:45But then, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the
0:26:45 > 0:26:50agendas of Stalin and his composers were, all of a sudden, newly aligned.
0:26:50 > 0:26:54Composers' purpose and cause became patriotism.
0:27:00 > 0:27:04After several decades of dislocation from the mainstream audience,
0:27:04 > 0:27:08leading composers once again began to write music that engaged with
0:27:08 > 0:27:12the musical tastes and hopes and fears of ordinary people,
0:27:12 > 0:27:14living through the agony of war.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19Perhaps the most dramatic example of a large-scale work of patriotic
0:27:19 > 0:27:25intent was Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony, premiered in March 1942.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28Dedicated to the people of his home city,
0:27:28 > 0:27:32at that time ednuring an apocalyptic siege.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40The siege of Leningrad, modern-day St Petersburg,
0:27:40 > 0:27:43cost more lives than any other battle of the war. So desperate were
0:27:43 > 0:27:47the conditions, that in the winter of 1941, there were outbreaks of cannibalism.
0:27:56 > 0:27:59A score of Shostakovich's seventh Symphony was
0:27:59 > 0:28:03dropped by plane into the city and a scratch orchestra was assembled to
0:28:03 > 0:28:06broadcast its message of patriotic defiance.
0:28:06 > 0:28:09It was played on loudspeakers throughout the devastated city,
0:28:09 > 0:28:13as well as outwards to the enemy lines, and performed
0:28:13 > 0:28:15and broadcast all over the Soviet Union.
0:28:34 > 0:28:38Before retreating from Leningrad in January 1944, German troops
0:28:38 > 0:28:42were ordered to loot and destroy its historic galleries, mansions and
0:28:42 > 0:28:47palaces, and a huge haul of treasure was taken back to Nazi Germany.
0:28:47 > 0:28:53One cultural item they could not pillage was Shostakovich's seventh Symphony, Leningrad.
0:29:38 > 0:29:43In the USA, musical patriotism took a rather different form.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47# I'll be marching to a love call
0:29:47 > 0:29:51# While you're waiting for me... #
0:29:51 > 0:29:54Once America entered the war, at the end of 1941,
0:29:54 > 0:29:58a massive hearts and minds operation was put in place to educate
0:29:58 > 0:30:02and entertain both troops and the public.
0:30:02 > 0:30:06# ..even though we're apart
0:30:06 > 0:30:10# For I'll be marching To a love song
0:30:10 > 0:30:13# The love song in my heart. #
0:30:13 > 0:30:17And it wasn't just popular music that was pressed into service.
0:30:20 > 0:30:24One of America's leading composers, Aaron Copeland,
0:30:24 > 0:30:28captured the public mood in his 1944 ballet, Appalachian Spring.
0:30:31 > 0:30:34Audiences adored Appalachian Spring,
0:30:34 > 0:30:37with its touching innocence and optimism embodied in its
0:30:37 > 0:30:41cleverly integrated 19th-century Shaker hymn tune, Simple Gifts.
0:30:41 > 0:30:45Appalachian Spring stirringly expects American victory in the war,
0:30:45 > 0:30:50and the ushering in of a better age, reflected in the sincere
0:30:50 > 0:30:55and uncynical values of the pioneer rural communities it celebrates.
0:30:56 > 0:30:59Here it is, danced by the choreographer who commissioned it,
0:30:59 > 0:31:00Martha Graham.
0:31:49 > 0:31:51Like Stravinsky's Firebird
0:31:51 > 0:31:56and The Rite Of Spring, Prokofiev's Romeo And Juliet or Ravel's Bolero,
0:31:56 > 0:31:58all riotously successful,
0:31:58 > 0:32:02Appalachian Spring was composed as a ballet score.
0:32:02 > 0:32:03Why is this significant?
0:32:03 > 0:32:07Because it's hard to imagine what 20th-century classical music
0:32:07 > 0:32:10would have done without dance.
0:32:10 > 0:32:12It was as if the distraction of telling a story,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15reaching an audience or submitting to the structure of another
0:32:15 > 0:32:20art form, liberated composers from the necessity to impress academics,
0:32:20 > 0:32:26musicologists, or worse still, each other, with musical naval-gazing.
0:32:35 > 0:32:36Don't get me wrong,
0:32:36 > 0:32:39this sort of avant-garde music did find an audience,
0:32:39 > 0:32:43but in the 1950s, cutting-edge new music began to take a strange
0:32:43 > 0:32:47direction, going even further than the radicals of the 1920s,
0:32:47 > 0:32:51with whole pieces being made up of "found" sounds, and musical
0:32:51 > 0:32:55decisions being made by the toss of a coin or the mood of the musician.
0:32:56 > 0:33:00The high-water mark of this movement has to be John Cage's creating,
0:33:00 > 0:33:05in 1952, a piece called 4'33", consisting of the player or players
0:33:05 > 0:33:10doing nothing for that length of time, treated ever since
0:33:10 > 0:33:14by the classical music high command as a significant musical event.
0:33:18 > 0:33:20The piece was in three movements.
0:33:21 > 0:33:23Here's an excerpt from the second.
0:33:36 > 0:33:40While all this was going on, it was the American musical,
0:33:40 > 0:33:43inspired in part by the lead shown by The Threepenny Opera,
0:33:43 > 0:33:47that began to comment on the social conditions of postwar America.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50# Buying on credit is so nice
0:33:50 > 0:33:52# One look at us And they charge twice
0:33:54 > 0:33:56# I have my own washing machine
0:33:56 > 0:33:58# What will you have though To keep clean?
0:33:59 > 0:34:02# Skyscrapers bloom in America
0:34:02 > 0:34:04# Cadillacs zoom in America
0:34:04 > 0:34:07# Industry boom in America
0:34:07 > 0:34:09# 12 in a room in America. #
0:34:12 > 0:34:13West Side Story,
0:34:13 > 0:34:16composed by the classically-trained Leonard Bernstein,
0:34:16 > 0:34:20with lyrics by a young Stephen Sondheim, had instant impact,
0:34:20 > 0:34:22full as it was of great tunes,
0:34:22 > 0:34:25influenced by jazz and popular styles.
0:34:25 > 0:34:28Its audience, though, 50 years earlier,
0:34:28 > 0:34:31would most likely have been going to the opera instead.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34In the 50 years since West Side Story,
0:34:34 > 0:34:37the musical has gone from strength to strength, finding an audience
0:34:37 > 0:34:41of millions that Gilbert and Sullivan could only have dreamt of.
0:34:44 > 0:34:48The musical filled the vacuum that had been created by opera's
0:34:48 > 0:34:52turning away from the accessible and popular style it had pursued
0:34:52 > 0:34:54since the 1630s.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57So can classical music ever regain its central position
0:34:57 > 0:35:00in people's emotions and affections?
0:35:00 > 0:35:04I think it already has, but it's done so in surprising ways.
0:35:04 > 0:35:07Just when it looked as if classical music might be sleepwalking
0:35:07 > 0:35:13to oblivion, along came a knight in shining, indeed, silver armour.
0:35:13 > 0:35:15The 20th-century's own medium, cinema.
0:35:23 > 0:35:25One of the first examples of a collaboration
0:35:25 > 0:35:29between a major classical composer and a filmmaker of genius
0:35:29 > 0:35:33was Prokofiev's groundbreaking score
0:35:33 > 0:35:36for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky from 1938.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55Although many classical composers had a go at writing for the
0:35:55 > 0:35:59cinema, for the most part, it was specialist film composers who were
0:35:59 > 0:36:02prepared to subordinate their music to the requirements of the film.
0:36:13 > 0:36:17Even a comic strip Gothic thriller like Batman,
0:36:17 > 0:36:20aimed at a mass audience, featured a full-on orchestral score,
0:36:20 > 0:36:24classical in all but name, composed by the brilliantly quirky
0:36:24 > 0:36:29Danny Elfman, which made the action sequences thrilling and dark.
0:36:36 > 0:36:40If anyone tells you classical music is dead in the 21st century,
0:36:40 > 0:36:42all it means is that they don't go to the cinema.
0:36:49 > 0:36:52While classical music and cinema thrived,
0:36:52 > 0:36:55popular music post-war wasn't standing still.
0:36:55 > 0:36:57Better microphones and recording techniques,
0:36:57 > 0:36:59the arrival of the long-playing record,
0:36:59 > 0:37:04and, in particular, a new breed of musical virtuoso were all laying
0:37:04 > 0:37:08the groundwork for the blossoming of electrifying new popular forms.
0:37:13 > 0:37:17One of them was the jazz style known as bebop, the frantic,
0:37:17 > 0:37:19somersaulting groove of the late '40s and '50s,
0:37:19 > 0:37:23where whole tracks were devoted to helter-skeltering instruments,
0:37:23 > 0:37:27sometimes so low, sometimes into ordinator groups,
0:37:27 > 0:37:29tumbling across notes at high speed,
0:37:29 > 0:37:33wilfully oblivious of the harmonies they once belonged to.
0:37:33 > 0:37:37If death-defying off-piste skiing at high altitude down
0:37:37 > 0:37:41near-vertical slopes had a musical equivalent, this would be it.
0:37:41 > 0:37:43# Salt peanuts, salt peanuts
0:37:43 > 0:37:45MUSIC: "Salt Peanuts" by Dizzy Gillespie
0:37:51 > 0:37:52# Salt peanuts, salt peanuts. #
0:37:52 > 0:37:56In the music of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie,
0:37:56 > 0:38:00bebop became the most influential form of jazz in the '50s and beyond.
0:38:06 > 0:38:08# Salt peanuts, salt peanuts. #
0:38:08 > 0:38:13Whilst bebop relied, for its forward momentum, on giddy chaos,
0:38:13 > 0:38:16other forms of popular music wanted to go in the other direction,
0:38:16 > 0:38:19towards a raucous, thumping regularity.
0:38:23 > 0:38:26Rocket "88" was released in 1951.
0:38:26 > 0:38:29It's generally reckoned to be the first rock 'n' roll record.
0:38:31 > 0:38:34Unlike the unpredictability of bebop, rock 'n' roll's appeal
0:38:34 > 0:38:38lay in the clockwork rigidity of four beats to a bar.
0:38:43 > 0:38:45Jazz was for cool dudes to listen to,
0:38:45 > 0:38:49rock 'n' roll was for teenagers to dance and date to.
0:38:49 > 0:38:53And teenagers suddenly existed, apparently, after 1950.
0:38:53 > 0:38:55MUSIC: Rocket "88" by Jackie Brenston
0:38:58 > 0:39:01# V8 motor in this modern design
0:39:01 > 0:39:04# Black convertible top And the gals don't mind. #
0:39:06 > 0:39:08Not only did teenagers now exist,
0:39:08 > 0:39:12the affluent society that was America, and eventually Europe,
0:39:12 > 0:39:14in the post-war period,
0:39:14 > 0:39:17saw teenagers with pocket money to spend.
0:39:17 > 0:39:20Transistor radios and dance-set record players meant that
0:39:20 > 0:39:23music aimed at teenagers was where the money was to be made,
0:39:23 > 0:39:25and the record business acted accordingly.
0:39:29 > 0:39:31Increasingly, albums were for adults,
0:39:31 > 0:39:35singles in the hit parade were squarely aimed at youth.
0:39:40 > 0:39:45As time went by, other elements were added to the recipe of rhythm and blues.
0:39:45 > 0:39:47The simplicity and liveliness of country music,
0:39:47 > 0:39:50and the soaring passion of gospel.
0:39:50 > 0:39:53# Hey mama, don't you treat me wrong
0:39:53 > 0:39:55# Come and love your daddy all night long
0:39:55 > 0:39:56# All right now
0:39:57 > 0:39:58# Hey, hey
0:40:00 > 0:40:02# All right. #
0:40:06 > 0:40:07In the late '50s,
0:40:07 > 0:40:11the best pop songs were well-crafted packages still aimed at a
0:40:11 > 0:40:16teenage market, but often possessed of a sharp emotional intelligence.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20# Tonight, you're mine, completely
0:40:22 > 0:40:26# You give your love so sweetly
0:40:28 > 0:40:35# Tonight, the light of love Is in your eyes
0:40:36 > 0:40:41# But will you love me tomorrow? #
0:40:42 > 0:40:46Not only did popular songs become more sophisticated, in the 1960s,
0:40:46 > 0:40:50it was popular music that became the voice of political opposition.
0:40:50 > 0:40:52It supported the Civil Rights movement.
0:40:52 > 0:40:56# Come, senators, congressmen, please heed the call
0:40:57 > 0:41:02# Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall
0:41:02 > 0:41:06# For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled
0:41:06 > 0:41:10# The battle outside ragin'
0:41:10 > 0:41:15# Will soon shake your windows And rattle your walls
0:41:15 > 0:41:19# For the times, They are a-changin'. #
0:41:19 > 0:41:22It was popular song that spoke out against the Vietnam War.
0:41:24 > 0:41:27# And it's one, two, three, What are we fighting for?
0:41:27 > 0:41:32# Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, Next stop is Vietnam
0:41:32 > 0:41:36# And it's five, six, seven, Open up the pearly gates,
0:41:36 > 0:41:39# Well, there ain't no time to wonder why
0:41:39 > 0:41:42# Whoopee! We're all gonna die. #
0:41:45 > 0:41:49# Picket lines and picket signs
0:41:50 > 0:41:55# Don't punish me with brutality
0:41:55 > 0:41:59# Talk to me, so you can see
0:41:59 > 0:42:01# Oh, what's going on
0:42:01 > 0:42:04# What's going on
0:42:04 > 0:42:05# Yeah, what's going on
0:42:07 > 0:42:08# Ah, what's going on... #
0:42:12 > 0:42:15That America's conscience in the period of the Civil Rights
0:42:15 > 0:42:18movement and the Vietnam War was pricked not by its leading
0:42:18 > 0:42:22classical composers, but by popular music, says something
0:42:22 > 0:42:25about the changing status of the two genres in the 1960s.
0:42:26 > 0:42:29The inescapable reality is that classical music had,
0:42:29 > 0:42:33by this time, lost its ability to voice their hopes and fears
0:42:33 > 0:42:37of the majority of the population, a status it had certainly enjoyed
0:42:37 > 0:42:41when the music of Verdi, for example, expressed the whole hopes
0:42:41 > 0:42:43of the Italian people for independence.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46It does it little credit to have let itself reach
0:42:46 > 0:42:48the precipice of redundancy.
0:42:50 > 0:42:52That's not to say that pop songs were anything like
0:42:52 > 0:42:55as musically complicated as the classical music
0:42:55 > 0:43:00they were fast outstripping in the public's affections.
0:43:00 > 0:43:02The sheer volume of songs composed, albums recorded
0:43:02 > 0:43:06and careers launched in the blossoming of the pop age
0:43:06 > 0:43:09shouldn't blind us to the fact that, in purely musical terms,
0:43:09 > 0:43:13the melodies, harmonies and rhythms of the vast majority of those songs
0:43:13 > 0:43:17were both relatively limited and relatively static.
0:43:17 > 0:43:19Large swathes of the pop, rock
0:43:19 > 0:43:23and soul repertoire are variants on the basic blues template,
0:43:23 > 0:43:27with a straight, four-in-a-bar drum beat, a diet of between three
0:43:27 > 0:43:30and 12 chords, and a smallish smorgasbord of instruments to
0:43:30 > 0:43:36choose from, revolving around guitar, bass, keyboards and drums.
0:43:36 > 0:43:38# She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
0:43:38 > 0:43:41# She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
0:43:41 > 0:43:45# She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
0:43:47 > 0:43:50# You think you've lost your love
0:43:50 > 0:43:53# Well I saw her yesterday. #
0:43:53 > 0:43:57One group who started out as a no-frills guitar and drums outfit
0:43:57 > 0:44:00not only became the most famous musicians on the planet,
0:44:00 > 0:44:03The Beatles revolutionised pop music.
0:44:05 > 0:44:10# She loves you, And you know you should be glad
0:44:12 > 0:44:13# She said you hurt her so
0:44:14 > 0:44:17# She almost lost her mind
0:44:17 > 0:44:20# But now she said she knows. #
0:44:20 > 0:44:23The Beatles' music swiftly moved from catching
0:44:23 > 0:44:26but simple rhythm and blues to a sophisticated musical mix
0:44:26 > 0:44:29that encompassed all the styles they'd grown up with,
0:44:29 > 0:44:32as well as new ones they'd invented.
0:44:32 > 0:44:35# And you know you should be glad. #
0:44:36 > 0:44:38From the beginning of their careers,
0:44:38 > 0:44:41they'd happily plundered musical influences from a plethora
0:44:41 > 0:44:45of earlier genres, like the Anglo-Celtic folk modes,
0:44:45 > 0:44:47or scales, in this song.
0:44:49 > 0:44:50# Eleanor Rigby
0:44:50 > 0:44:54# Picks up the rice in the church Where a wedding has been
0:44:56 > 0:44:57# Lives in a dream
0:44:57 > 0:44:59# Waits at the window
0:44:59 > 0:45:03# Wearing a face that she keeps In a jar by the door
0:45:04 > 0:45:05# Who is it for? #
0:45:06 > 0:45:10Or the tongue-in-cheek novelty song style of music hall
0:45:10 > 0:45:11in songs like this.
0:45:14 > 0:45:21# When I get older, losing my hair, Many years from now
0:45:21 > 0:45:25# Will you still be Sending me a Valentine?
0:45:25 > 0:45:28# Birthday greetings, bottle of wine. #
0:45:30 > 0:45:34The Beatles also introduced into progressive pop music
0:45:34 > 0:45:37such exotic innovations as an improvising classical orchestra...
0:45:40 > 0:45:42..string quartets...
0:45:42 > 0:45:45# Yesterday
0:45:45 > 0:45:49# Love was such An easy game to play... #
0:45:49 > 0:45:53..and instruments long since consigned to the curiosity cabinet.
0:45:53 > 0:45:55Harpsichords...
0:45:55 > 0:45:59# And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong, I'm right
0:45:59 > 0:46:01# Where I belong, I'm right
0:46:01 > 0:46:03# Where I belong... #
0:46:03 > 0:46:04..fairground organs...
0:46:08 > 0:46:11..18th-century piccolo trumpets...
0:46:16 > 0:46:17..and recorders.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28No other group of musicians in history did as much to expand
0:46:28 > 0:46:31the possibilities of recording technology as did The Beatles,
0:46:31 > 0:46:35often coming up with completely new techniques with producer
0:46:35 > 0:46:37George Martin at Abbey Road Studios.
0:46:48 > 0:46:53The studio albums the Beatles assembled between 1965 and 1970 are
0:46:53 > 0:46:58like a joyful, cheeky, kaleidoscopic journey through musical history.
0:46:58 > 0:47:01The message their irrepressible creativity sent out to
0:47:01 > 0:47:05the young at heart of the world, swimming in teenage pop culture,
0:47:05 > 0:47:08was that old stuff still had a role to play.
0:47:08 > 0:47:12The music's past was cool and interesting and fun, too.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15They were the most unlikely saviours of old-fashioned music,
0:47:15 > 0:47:18but that's undoubtedly what they were.
0:47:18 > 0:47:21# Let's all get up and dance to a song
0:47:21 > 0:47:24# That was a hit before your mother was born.
0:47:24 > 0:47:29# Though she was born A long, long time ago
0:47:29 > 0:47:33# Your mother should know
0:47:33 > 0:47:35# Your mother should know. #
0:47:43 > 0:47:47But even the Beatles didn't think to base a whole song
0:47:47 > 0:47:50around a Lutheran hymn, harmonised by JS Bach.
0:47:50 > 0:47:56That idea was Paul Simon's, in his knowingly-titled American Tune.
0:47:56 > 0:48:00In this song, written in the months after an American planted
0:48:00 > 0:48:02the Stars & Stripes on the moon,
0:48:02 > 0:48:07Simon's patriotism is underpinned with one key ingredient - gratitude.
0:48:07 > 0:48:08It's something he shares with
0:48:08 > 0:48:12George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Aaron Copland, Bernard Herrmann,
0:48:12 > 0:48:17Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach and Bob Dylan -
0:48:17 > 0:48:20all the children or grandchildren of Jewish immigrants.
0:48:22 > 0:48:27# We come on the ship They call the Mayflower
0:48:27 > 0:48:31# We come on the ship That's sailed the moon
0:48:32 > 0:48:37# We come in the age's Most uncertain hour
0:48:37 > 0:48:41# And sing an American tune
0:48:41 > 0:48:44# Oh, and it's all right
0:48:44 > 0:48:47# It's all right, it's all right
0:48:47 > 0:48:51# You can't be forever blessed
0:48:52 > 0:48:57# Still, tomorrow's going To be another working day
0:48:57 > 0:49:01# And I'm trying to get some rest
0:49:02 > 0:49:06# That's all I'm trying, To get some rest. #
0:49:09 > 0:49:12At this stage, it looked as if American and British rock
0:49:12 > 0:49:15and pop music was becoming kind of a world standard,
0:49:15 > 0:49:18but then traffic started arriving from the other direction, with
0:49:18 > 0:49:23styles from non-western cultures vastly enriching music's palette.
0:49:23 > 0:49:27Once again, the Beatles had started the trend, with the music of India.
0:49:37 > 0:49:40In the mid-70s, Stevie Wonder brilliantly adapted
0:49:40 > 0:49:44the street rhythms of Cuba in a series of hugely influential albums.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51# You are the sunshine of my life
0:49:55 > 0:49:59# That's why I'll always be around
0:50:02 > 0:50:06# You are the apple of my eye
0:50:10 > 0:50:13# Forever you stay in my heart. #
0:50:13 > 0:50:17Paul Simon then recorded in the culturally-isolated Apartheid-era
0:50:17 > 0:50:19townships of South Africa.
0:50:29 > 0:50:32Graceland was controversial, because technically,
0:50:32 > 0:50:35it broke a United Nations embargo.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38But it helped bring the vibrant music of the continent to
0:50:38 > 0:50:39a global audience.
0:50:41 > 0:50:44Since then, thanks partly to immigration, thanks partly to
0:50:44 > 0:50:49the Internet, world music has become a bustling and flourishing reality.
0:50:55 > 0:50:59In the mid-20th century, it seemed as if the two traditions of music,
0:50:59 > 0:51:04classical and non-classical, were drifting further and further apart,
0:51:04 > 0:51:07as if they were speaking different, untranslatable languages.
0:51:09 > 0:51:11But then a strange thing happened.
0:51:11 > 0:51:14In America, the two zones, contemporary pop and contemporary
0:51:14 > 0:51:19classical, gave birth to a child that was half one, half the other.
0:51:19 > 0:51:23The child's name was minimalism, and the arrival of minimalism
0:51:23 > 0:51:28provoked a seachange in the relationship between musical genres.
0:51:28 > 0:51:31It ushered in an age of musical convergence.
0:51:31 > 0:51:32Our age.
0:51:54 > 0:51:59Minimalism emerged quietly in the 1960s,
0:51:59 > 0:52:02and loudly in the 1970s, spearheaded by American composers
0:52:02 > 0:52:06Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and most of all, Steve Reich.
0:52:07 > 0:52:10Steve Reich has been described as the single most influential
0:52:10 > 0:52:14composer of the late 20th century, bringing fresh ideas
0:52:14 > 0:52:17and impetus to both popular and classical music.
0:52:17 > 0:52:20It's a big claim, but correct.
0:52:22 > 0:52:25Reich derived his inspirations from African drumming
0:52:25 > 0:52:27and Balinese gamelan music.
0:52:27 > 0:52:30He found that the apparently repetitive,
0:52:30 > 0:52:34hypnotic patterns of these drum and mallet-based musics were,
0:52:34 > 0:52:37in fact, subtly changing all the time.
0:52:37 > 0:52:39He applied this approach to Western music.
0:52:45 > 0:52:47Reich is also the godfather of sampling,
0:52:47 > 0:52:50whereby a fragment of recorded sound is chopped up
0:52:50 > 0:52:53and recycled back into a musical pattern.
0:52:53 > 0:52:55# It ain't going to rain!
0:52:55 > 0:52:58# It's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain... #
0:52:58 > 0:53:01Sampling is the bedrock of practically every hip-hop
0:53:01 > 0:53:03track you've ever heard.
0:53:05 > 0:53:09Sampling is even more ubiquitous in dance music
0:53:09 > 0:53:12than the electric guitar was in the rock music of the 1960s.
0:53:12 > 0:53:15Its genesis can be traced to a single
0:53:15 > 0:53:19work by Steve Reich in 1965, It's Gonna Rain.
0:53:19 > 0:53:22In It's Gonna Rain, Reich takes the recorded sermon
0:53:22 > 0:53:26of a Pentecostal street preacher and chops up segments of it
0:53:26 > 0:53:30to make rhythmic cells that are repeated again and again.
0:53:46 > 0:53:49These techniques were then adopted in popular music,
0:53:49 > 0:53:54but now the exchange of ideas was a two-way street, between cutting-edge
0:53:54 > 0:53:59popular musicians and their classical, minimalist counterparts.
0:53:59 > 0:54:02David Bowie integrated minimalist styles from Reich
0:54:02 > 0:54:06and his fellow New Yorker Philip Glass into his 1977 album
0:54:06 > 0:54:10recorded in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, Low.
0:54:10 > 0:54:15Then, 15 years later, Philip Glass composed a Low Symphony,
0:54:15 > 0:54:17based on material from the Bowie album.
0:54:17 > 0:54:20With exchanges like this between what used to be seen as
0:54:20 > 0:54:24polar opposites, classical and pop, becoming more commonplace,
0:54:24 > 0:54:28the split between the two wings of music is,
0:54:28 > 0:54:30after a century, finally beginning to close.
0:54:37 > 0:54:40More than anything, it's advances in music technology
0:54:40 > 0:54:43that have helped draw the two sides closer together.
0:54:45 > 0:54:49Music technology, whether for recording, amplification or editing,
0:54:49 > 0:54:53has developed at an amazingly accelerated pace, right up until our
0:54:53 > 0:54:56own time, and continues to propel music in different directions.
0:54:56 > 0:55:00From synthesisers and drum machines, to sampling, club-style
0:55:00 > 0:55:04mash-ups, and the unstoppable spread of autotune software.
0:55:04 > 0:55:08Or, for that matter, playing the human voice on a keyboard.
0:55:09 > 0:55:15# Drink to me only with thine eyes
0:55:15 > 0:55:21# And I will pledge with mine
0:55:21 > 0:55:26# Or leave a kiss but in the cup
0:55:26 > 0:55:30# And I'll not ask for wine
0:55:30 > 0:55:33# Or leave a kiss... #
0:55:33 > 0:55:38But is the age of the machine beginning to get out of control?
0:55:38 > 0:55:40Is the servant becoming the master?
0:55:45 > 0:55:48The cutting edge of both fields has become unapologetically
0:55:48 > 0:55:51mechanised and electronic in its character,
0:55:51 > 0:55:55which alarms all those who cherish the spontaneity and humanity of
0:55:55 > 0:56:00unplugged music, whether classical, folk or from other cultures.
0:56:00 > 0:56:04The danger of technological overload is articulated even by those
0:56:04 > 0:56:06who are most at ease with it.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09Radiohead's melancholic song Kid A,
0:56:09 > 0:56:12the product of a thoroughly convergent set of electronic
0:56:12 > 0:56:17and minimalist musical ingredients, uses a voice processor
0:56:17 > 0:56:21to evoke what might be the distressed cry of a human clone.
0:56:22 > 0:56:26# We've got heads on sticks
0:56:31 > 0:56:35# You've got ventriloquists... #
0:56:40 > 0:56:42Worrying about becoming slaves to machines is nothing
0:56:42 > 0:56:46new in human progress, but what the musical past tells us
0:56:46 > 0:56:51is that it doesn't do to worry too much about what happens next.
0:56:51 > 0:56:53For every movement, there is a counter movement.
0:56:53 > 0:56:56For every fear, a reassuring hand on the shoulder.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07Music in our civilisation started out as a free-flowing,
0:57:07 > 0:57:10unwritten, spontaneous oral tradition,
0:57:10 > 0:57:14based entirely on the lives, loves and expectations of ordinary people.
0:57:18 > 0:57:22In truth, its fundamental purpose hasn't changed in all these
0:57:22 > 0:57:25centuries, despite the many layers of sophistication
0:57:25 > 0:57:26it has acquired along the way.
0:57:29 > 0:57:33JS Bach was probably the cleverest composer who ever lived,
0:57:33 > 0:57:38but he gave his performance almost no instructions as to how
0:57:38 > 0:57:41they might interpret his sublime music.
0:57:41 > 0:57:44He hastily scribbled down the notes and left them to it.
0:57:47 > 0:57:50It is as if he is saying, "Trust me, and play."
0:57:55 > 0:57:57We, more than any previous generation,
0:57:57 > 0:58:00can identify with Bach's request.
0:58:00 > 0:58:04We press play, and one million styles, sounds, oral colours
0:58:04 > 0:58:09and voices breeze in towards us, as if through an open window.
0:58:09 > 0:58:13We're like children, with 1,000 games at our fingertips.
0:58:13 > 0:58:15We have, at last, reached a point
0:58:15 > 0:58:19where there are no wrong or right decisions about what music
0:58:19 > 0:58:24we may or may not enjoy, just one gratifyingly simple instruction -
0:58:24 > 0:58:25play.
0:58:53 > 0:58:56Subtitles by Red Bee Media