We Can Be Heroes Revolution and Romance: Musical Masters of the 19th Century

Today, musicians are some of the most influential

and celebrated people on the planet.

It wasn't always this way.

For centuries, musicians were much lower down the pecking order

and no-one would have dreamt of asking them for an autograph.

But 200 years ago, all that began to change.

The dawn of the 19th century

saw composers and musicians bursting out...

..beyond the boundaries of the concert hall

and onto a bigger public stage.

They became influential, in politics and revolution,

earned vast sums of money, and were famous across the globe.

The 19th century was Europe's great revolutionary century.

Industry and commerce were reshaping people's lives.

The political shock waves of the French Revolution

reverberated across the continent,

and there was a revolution in thinking and imagination

that became known as Romanticism.

In this volatile world, music reflected and even shaped events.

This was the age of Verdi and Wagner, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt,

Rossini, Chopin, Mahler, Debussy.

No other century produced more great composers.

'In this series, I'll be exploring the extraordinary transformation

'that happened to music in the 19th century.

'Discovering why composers became national heroes,

'revered to this day.'

-Viva Verdi.

-Viva Verdi!

'And being taught how music sparked revolution.'

C'est la revolution. Wwwhhah, rrrah! It goes, "Woof, woof!" Like a dog.

I'll find out how music was at the cutting edge of technology,

creating new industrially manufactured instruments.

SHE SOUNDS OUT A SCALE

And in this first episode,

I'll explore how and why 19th-century musicians

became superstars.

Yeah, it's very Keith Richards, that kind of showing off to the audience.

In this era of extremes,

I believe it was music that truly captured the spirit of the age.

This was the moment in history when music exploded into life

and life exploded into music.

CHATTERING

MUSIC: The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss

I'm in Vienna, which for centuries has prided itself

as the musical capital of Europe.

Every night of the year, around 10,000 fans are treated

to live performances of classical music,

something that's simply unheard of in any other city in the world.

Today, it plays host to 15,000 music events each year.

So, it's unsurprising that it was here in Vienna, two centuries ago,

that music underwent a huge transformation in its fortunes,

a shift encapsulated in one historic event.

At 3pm on the 29th March, 1827,

Vienna was packed with mourners paying their respects

at the passing of a giant.

Vienna was then the capital of one of Europe's mightiest empires,

but this wasn't the funeral of a Habsburg king or queen,

they were here for a composer -

Ludwig van Beethoven.

The streets were gridlocked with tens of thousands

following the coffin.

After the burial, a gravedigger was offered money

to exhume Beethoven's head so it could be kept as a trophy.

Such was the adoration of his fans.

In the 21st century,

we're pretty familiar with the public outpouring of grief

that accompanies the death of a much-loved musical star,

the spectacle, the media scrum, but this was a first.

Beethoven's huge public send-off was remarkable.

And it seems all the more so

when you compare it to the funeral of another Viennese great.

Mozart had passed away in the same city less than 40 years earlier,

without pomp or ceremony, buried in a common grave.

There were no crowds, no swarms of adoring fans for Mozart,

and yet, he was no less a brilliant musician.

So what had changed?

Well, you couldn't come to Vienna, this most musical of cities,

without picking up a couple of bits and pieces to take home.

Nothing more typical than these two.

We have our Mozartkugeln,

little balls of marzipan, nougat and chocolate.

And the classic Beethoven bust.

But here's the rub. These quite literally are a complete confection.

They were created 100 years after Mozart's death.

That famous picture of him there was painted years after he died.

They're chintzy, and they're terribly oversweet.

And then you get this.

Now, the original bust - copies have been made ever since -

was first sold in 1812 and it was sold across Europe.

This guy was a recognisable pin-up in his own lifetime.

And you just look at him, he's got all the classic ingredients.

That square, movie star jaw, and a proud brow,

and those lovely tousled locks.

This is the first musician, really, who was a true superstar.

MUSIC: Piano Sonata No.11 by Mozart

And that's because Beethoven was the man in the right place

at the right time.

Just as Mozart died in 1791,

the centuries-old status quo that had kept people like him

at the bottom of the food chain was suddenly wiped out.

The French Revolution purged the King of France

and his old regime, and it unleashed a spirit of freedom and democracy

that swept through Europe.

Beethoven grew up in this fast-changing world,

where it was now possible for people of any class

to rise up through society on the basis of merit and talent.

Music, he decided, would be his passport to success.

In 1803, Beethoven set out to capture the spirit of the age

with a musical portrait of the great hero of the day -

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon had emerged from the climactic events

of the French Revolution as a heroic leader.

He represented the new world order,

not an aristocrat,

but a common man who'd risen up to become the people's champion.

Beethoven wanted to capture that heroism, equality and decency,

and translate it into music.

It would be his heroic symphony, or Eroica.

With the Eroica, Beethoven set out to create the most powerful,

muscular symphony that had ever been written,

so he opens it with a thunderclap.

Two explosive chords that simply force us to shut up and listen.

And following that clarion call, he gives us a grand,

sweeping, noble theme in the low strings...

..that he then passes around the various sections of the orchestra.

Then Beethoven hits us with the unexpected.

Instead of letting the music continue on its journey,

he hits us with that original theme again.

Only this time, it's bigger and bolder than before,

just to make sure we got the message.

Beethoven initially dedicated his work to Napoleon.

But before he'd even finished it, Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor,

no better than an old-school autocrat.

Beethoven was disgusted, took up a knife

and scratched out Napoleon's name from the score.

I think that tearing up that dedication

was the first decisive musical act of the 19th century.

This was Beethoven saying, music isn't just notes on a page,

it's not entertainment, it contains a powerful message.

The Eroica was the expression of all those ideals,

of truth and justice, honour and heroism.

And he simply wouldn't allow it to be tainted by tyranny.

The Eroica not only marked a turning point for its composer,

but for the whole of music.

With it, Beethoven had created a piece of personal philosophy

and conviction, a musical mission statement.

For his predecessors,

writing music was more a question of keeping the boss happy.

You could be brilliantly creative,

but you were still in many ways a servant,

and success depended on whether your aristocratic patron

liked what he heard.

Beethoven had other options.

He still courted the aristocracy,

but he also had a powerful new audience to pay his bills.

The middle classes, who'd grown confident

in the aftermath of the French Revolution,

and rich off the back of the industrial one.

I'm visiting Vienna's Theater an der Wien,

a place that was critical in Beethoven's rise to fame.

He became the theatre's artist-in-residence

shortly after writing his Eroica symphony.

It was here that the Eroica was given its first public performance.

And that's important, because the piece was originally paid for

by a prince and was premiered in private at his home.

But Beethoven sensed the opportunity here for a double whammy.

After six months, he got hold of the performing rights

to put the piece on anywhere he wanted to.

He and this theatre's impresario staged a benefit concert

and they pocketed the proceeds.

Well, see this gorgeous space.

Opened up in 1801 for the whole public of Vienna.

I mean, it's huge, is the first thing that strikes you.

But also terribly opulent and lavish.

How many people would cram in here of a night?

About 2,000, and they were both standing and sitting

and they said the seats were very comfortable.

And just the decoration was so impressive for the people

of the time, that some of them said they would even come and pay

just to see the room, even without a performance there.

What kind of a mix of people would have come here?

Especially the people living in the area,

like, the craftsman were living, the servants were living,

also upper bourgeois people, and they were the prime audience.

So, sort of, a great night out, a very lavish place to come.

And right in the centre of middle-class Vienna,

-so it was bound to succeed.

-Exactly.

The Theater an der Wien's vast size

and open-door policy reflected the new social order.

Being able to hear music like Beethoven's Eroica

gave middle-class concertgoers

the kind of highbrow, desirable cultural experience

that was previously reserved only for the rich.

And for Beethoven, getting his music performed in front of a wider public

freed him from total dependence on an aristocratic elite.

Establishing a theatre where all the public was able to come

is actually a step in the spirit of the French Revolution,

whereas of course, you still had an emperor here.

He had the power of guiding the events.

But he said that people should go to the theatre in the evening

and have some entertainment here,

rather than having revolutionary ideas on the streets.

So it's true to say, then,

that in the first decade of the 19th century,

music really starts gaining a new kind of valency, a new power?

Definitely, and it also affected the listening to music.

What used to be an aside, divertissement or something,

the new music really calls for an attentive and alert listening.

The only understanding, you get the point of it,

if you are really an attentive listener.

And a room like this invites for that.

You sit and you are concentrating on what's happening on the stage,

and you're concentrating on the sounds.

It's not a place to sit and chat and see your friends.

Oh, no, no, not at all.

People really came because of the theatre, because of the music.

Created in the democratic spirit of the French Revolution,

this theatre gave Beethoven the opportunity to experiment

in a way that previous generations couldn't.

He wasn't held back by the whims of a patron,

but could express his feelings and ideas.

And try out his bold new music on an attentive mass audience.

And in 1808, he did that on a massive scale.

On a single freezing night in December,

Beethoven put on a musical marathon...

..premiering a piano concerto, his Choral Fantasia,

a concert aria, part of a mass, and two symphonies,

including one of the most monumental pieces of all time,

his Fifth.

The audacity of staging four hours of uninterrupted new music

was breathtaking.

Beethoven's bold conviction in the power of his own music

gave him an almost mythic status,

something he was well aware of.

Beethoven himself had every confidence in his own genius.

One day in 1812, he took a walk in the park with the writer Goethe,

when their path was blocked by a group of Habsburg aristocrats.

Beethoven charged straight through the centre of the melee,

as if he were Moses parting the waves.

Goethe bowed obsequiously instead,

he was completely shocked by the composer's rudeness.

Beethoven said to him, "There are many princes

"but there are only two of us."

Beethoven created a legacy of music that is utterly unique

and packed full of beauty and meaning.

But it's now so familiar and comfortable that we just

don't get the impact it must have had on contemporary audiences.

MUSIC BOX PLAYS

In its day, Beethoven's music was new, explosive and radical

and by his death,

it had made him into music's first international superstar.

MUSIC: Symphony No 9 Choral

The democratising message of Beethoven's music chimed powerfully

with the spirit of the age.

When he was buried on the 29th of March, 1827,

the day was declared a national holiday.

Beethoven had radically re-imagined the power of music

to change the world.

Whether or not he had achieved that lofty aim,

the world had responded

by making him one of its great heroic figures.

Beethoven had conquered the international stage

and become Vienna's favourite musical son,

his bold works feeding the hunger of the city's bourgeois music fans.

Their cultural appetites didn't stop

at attending huge spectacles in public concert halls, though.

They wanted to play at being aristocrats themselves,

and their homes became a new place of opportunity

for composers and their ideas, the most popular booking,

another of Vienna's musical residents -

Franz Schubert.

Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797,

and died just a year after Beethoven at the age of just 31.

He came from a poor background and grew up in this building,

which also housed 16 other families.

While Beethoven was widely known in Vienna as "the Master",

Schubert's friends cruelly nicknamed him, "the Little Mushroom",

because he was short, squat and not a little rotund.

It's not entirely fair, really, when you think of the greatness

and the ambition of his music.

These are the spectacles that sat on those chubby cheeks

and he was never seen without them.

In fact, he even wore them in bed,

so that if the muse grabbed him in the middle of the night,

he could spring out from under the covers and immediately

start composing.

Schubert must have had many sleepless nights,

because as well as composing a catalogue of symphonies,

religious works and chamber music, he also wrote several hundred songs,

which on their own establish him as one of the 19th century's greats.

Schubert's 600 or so songs are a kind of forensic examination

of the human soul.

They talk of love and loss, death and fear,

street beggars and peddlers and soldiers coming home from war.

If Beethoven's symphonies were grand statements of noble ideals,

then Schubert's songs take on the messier business

of what it really is to be human.

They take us into the private, intimate world.

Schubert could encapsulate an entire world of emotion

and imagination in a single song.

His music was so popular that song soirees

held at fashionable addresses throughout the city

became known as Schubertiades.

They were THE event to attend.

To find out what they were like, I'm hosting one.

So, got the wine, got the snacks - now all we need is the music.

Donning my Schubertian spectacles and accompanying the tenor

Ian Bostridge, a world-class performer of his songs.

MUSIC: Der Leiermann by Franz Schubert

# Druben hinterm Dorfe

# Steht ein Leiermann... #

In The Leiermann or Hurdy-Gurdy Man, Schubert creates a perfect

three-and-a-half minute song...

telling the story of a lowly musician, an outsider

ignored by society, who shows us the harsh realities of the world.

# Barfuss auf dem Eise

# Wankt er hin und her... #

It's hauntingly simple, full of darkness and melancholy.

# Barfuss auf dem Eise

# Wankt er hin und her... #

You might think that's a bit downbeat for an evening

of entertainment...

# Und sein kleiner Teller

# Bleibt ihm immer leer... #

..but then, these events weren't just parties,

they were also magnets for intellectual discussion

and political comment.

# Keiner mag ihn horen,

# Keiner sieht ihn an... #

For all their beauty, Schubert's songs also had incendiary power.

What might at first have seemed a rather bourgeois wine

and cheese event, was actually a rather radical environment.

Under the cover of music, salons were places of subversion,

debate and dissent.

These gatherings did not pass unnoticed by the authorities.

After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, there was a backlash

as the old order tried to re-establish power.

In Vienna, this meant a clamp-down on all political expression,

and musical soirees were caught firmly in the firing line.

In 1820, a Schubertiade was raided by the secret police.

Schubert escaped with little more than bruising,

but his friend, Johann Senn, got off less lightly -

imprisoned for a year and then permanently exiled from Vienna.

The fact that the Viennese secret police bothered

to target Schubert and his recitals says a lot about

the growing power that music began to have in the early 19th century.

It had left the confines of the palace and now moved

into people's homes and public concert halls.

Composers like Schubert and Beethoven had torn up the rule book.

Rather than be governed by an aristocratic patron's agenda,

they expressed their own beliefs and ideas,

and for the first time ever, they had an audience eager to hear

what they had to say - the artist himself took centre stage.

In the world of literature, writers such as Goethe and Byron

had already made it fashionable for artists to make public

their innermost thoughts through their work,

becoming Romantic heroes.

Now composers were being placed on the same pedestal.

They were the new Romantics.

So, what was Romanticism?

Well, one bright spark of an expert

has identified 11,396 different definitions.

So, let's through another one into the mix -

the 18th century was the world of Enlightenment,

a world of order and progress, scientific rigour and logic.

Now came a new spirit - anti-authoritarian and chaotic.

The Romantics revelled in the sublime beauty of nature,

dreamt feverish dreams fuelled by their own strange desires

and nocturnal fantasies.

Above all else, they prized self-expression

and the heroic genius of the individual.

It's something we still want musicians to do today,

to talk directly to us about their feelings, their inner struggles,

to kick back against authority.

That all comes from Romanticism.

As musicians joined this club,

by the 1830s anything Romantic became de rigueur throughout Europe.

And it was in Paris that the wildest Romantic musician

of the age emerged -

Hector Berlioz.

Any Romantic composer worth his salt

was expected to pour his soul into music.

It came with the territory.

Only Berlioz had to take things a step further than that.

He lived and breathed Romanticism, his weird imagination

fuelling fantasies of personal triumph and tragedy.

On one occasion, when he was in Italy, he discovered

that a girlfriend back in Paris had got secretly engaged

to someone else, so he did what we'd all do...

He got hold of a French maid's outfit and disguised himself,

bought a pistol and some strychnine, commandeered a carriage

and set off to murder them both and then kill himself.

Only somewhere along the way he changed his mind and instead

went on holiday to Nice and wrote a rather jolly heroic overture.

By immersing himself in his music, Berlioz had averted disaster

for himself and his lover, but the lines that separated life and art,

that kept his professional and personal life apart,

would become blurred when it came to his next object of desire.

In 1827, when he was an assistant librarian

at the Paris Conservatoire,

Berlioz went to see a performance of

Shakespeare's Hamlet, starring a young British actress

by the name of Harriet Smithson as Ophelia.

He was instantly obsessed with her and his unrequited love

formed the basis of a grand, new work -

the Symphonie Fantastique.

His new work reflected a four-year stalking campaign

through the streets of Paris.

He was driven by his obsession for Harriet and the volcanic effect

of having heard Beethoven's Eroica at its Paris premiere,

a moment he described as a thunderclap.

Berlioz realised that orchestral music could tell a personal story.

And he had the perfect subject matter - his own life.

You might think a crazy obsession is best kept quiet...

..but for Berlioz it was the ideal story for his new symphony.

He even handed out a synopsis so the audience could be in no doubt.

This was music about him.

-So, the Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz...

-Yes.

..is written in 1830, which...

I know, but it constantly astounds me because it is the most

breathtakingly modern-sounding piece of music.

It's an incredibly modern-sounding piece of music,

but it's also in concept very modern.

The artist wanders around... He sees this woman that he quite fancies

and he has a bit of a think about her. He thinks about her there...

He doesn't just think about her, he obsesses about her, like crazy!

He obsesses about her but it's all in his head and then

eventually he takes some drugs

and then his thoughts go all completely haywire

and it's what I think makes it really, really modern -

is that the entire programme, the entire story is psychological

and it's about emotions and it's about how the artist is feeling.

And that's a really, really radical thing, I think.

Expecting an audience to listen to sex-crazed, drug-fuelled musings

all about me, me, me is a rock and roll norm today,

but back then it took music to a new level of autobiography.

And this was what being a Romantic was all about,

real life mixed with a hefty dose of fantasy and make-believe.

When Berlioz cannily subtitled his piece "An episode in the life

"of an artist", he knew that audiences would go wild.

So, the hero of the piece, AKA Berlioz,

falls hopelessly in love with the heroine, AKA Harriet,

then the hero murders her and gets executed for the crime.

That bit didn't really happen, but, hey, it was a great Romantic story.

It's a fantastic piece, but this movement, the March to the Scaffold,

where the main man in all of this, is being taken to his death,

kind of emerging with this execution gang out of the murk

-of the night-time - it's so atmospheric.

-It is.

And he achieves this in several really interesting ways.

First of all, the orchestra that he's got is very bottom-heavy.

He's got a lot of bassoons in it, he's got a lot of double bass.

So it gives it that kind of dark, rumbling sound

and it's really low in their register

and it just gives it that gravitas.

Really foreboding, you know that something's about to happen

and it's not good.

And then we have a lone bassoon that comes in.

He doesn't say what this is, I've always thought

this is the first sight you get of the prisoner, cos it's quite

a wailing, plangent thing.

He knows something's going to happen to him.

Berlioz from then onwards just builds up the tension.

He alternates this very slow and steady march,

which is gradually increasing in pace,

with a full-on brass band.

So you get this nice split of really the crowd cheering the fact

that Berlioz, or the artist, is going to get his comeuppance.

That's the thing he does so brilliantly, is Berlioz uses

the colours of all those different instruments

to mean different things at different times,

so you get, as you say, that murky, dark sound at the beginning,

people coming out of the night. You get the brass being quite spooky

and ominous-sounding, then you get this really triumphant

blaze of glory, which is the hero, after all, of our story.

And what of the other protagonist in all this,

the alluring actress Harriet Smithson?

Having been stalked for years, heard about the piece,

read the programme notes, where the hero - ie Berlioz -

is executed for murdering the object of his desire -

ie herself - what did Harriet do?

Take out an injunction? Run a mile?

No, she fell in love and married him. How very...romantic.

Berlioz has succeeded in putting the composer centre stage,

weaving together life and art

so that it was impossible to know where one ended and the other began.

And he had given Paris what it wanted,

a musical show stopper fit for the Romantic age.

Romanticism and high drama went hand-in-hand.

Audiences were as obsessed with the lives of the composers themselves

as they were with their music.

And it wasn't just composers whose currency was now on the rise.

Performers also wanted a piece of the action.

No-one more so than the great Niccolo Paganini.

Paganini was the very first superstar performer

and the greatest violin virtuoso of all time.

His speciality was fast, furious, pulse-racing playing

with a dash of devilish swagger thrown in for good measure.

Paganini's performances where so spectacular that people said

he was in league with the devil,

or was just the devil himself and Paganini

did nothing to discourage this.

He'd wear false teeth on stage to encourage that gaunt, spectral look.

He never, apparently, took his shoes off in front of anyone

because he had cloven hooves

and it was even rumoured he murdered his wife

and used her intestines as violin strings.

MUSIC: 24 Caprices by Paganini

So, Jack, even today, Paganini, I think,

is kind of the gold standard of violin virtuosity.

What was it that he did that was so new?

Well, he completely revolutionised the technique

and created many of the techniques that we now use today.

And spend so many hours practising.

So just give me a sense then of the kind of practical stuff

that you have to get your fingers around

in order to be able to play the music.

This is the ricochet bowing, there.

He also had these hands with a huge span,

not just... Normally, we span upwards,

his fingers could go down as well.

So you've got to stretch your fingers out in both directions?

Just to play these in tune you need to have quite

a span in your fingers.

So then there's this fast bowing.

Sorry, I'll do that again. Ha-ha! It's difficult.

Yeah... It needs practice.

I quite like the fact that you are a concert soloist

and you still find Paganini difficult.

This is not going in the film.

No, this is great that you still find it difficult.

Apart from the technical challenges then, how much do

we know about what going to a Paganini concert was actually like?

A bit like going to a rock concert today.

If you look at all the pictures of him,

he turned his back on the orchestra and he always played with

the violin down like this and with this kind of funny pose,

as if he was just showing the audience what he was doing.

Yeah, it's very Keith Richards that, kind of showing off to the audience.

People fainting and stuff. He had this persona of a real rock star.

I reckon if you keep practising you'll get there in the end.

-It will be all right.

-I'll try.

Paganini's unbridled, demonic playing

created a pumped-up kind of live performance

that's been copied by pop and classical stars ever since.

And it made him very rich.

In just eight concerts,

he earned more that Schubert had done in a lifetime.

Paganini's infamy was such that when he died in Paris in 1840,

the Catholic Church refused to allow him to be buried

in consecrated ground.

It took 36 years before he was laid to rest here,

at his birthplace in Parma.

However infamous he was,

Paganini had paved the way for the celebrity virtuoso,

creating a template for the kind of rock stars we see today.

Music, life, legend, all coming together

to create a powerful mystique.

Today, musicians get the mansion, a million Twitter followers,

a global Instagram feed, but in the 19th century,

you knew you had really made it as a superstar

when you had a recipe named after you.

How about eggs Berlioz washed down with a chilled glass

of Bellini? Or Paganini ravioli,

a recipe written down in the composer's own scrawl, no less,

filled with cabbage, sausage, egg and brains,

or testicles, if you prefer a lighter version.

Makes those Mozart balls almost seem appetising.

No, if there was one triumphant musical dish

of the 19th century, it can only be tournedos Rossini.

No other composer in the first half of the 19th century

enjoyed the fame or the wealth of the Italian

opera maestro Gioachino Rossini.

On a five-month stint in England

during one of his many European tours,

Rossini earned an incredible £5 million in today's money.

And when he and Wellington were given an audience

with King George IV, Rossini is said to have quipped,

"His Majesty is standing between two of the greatest men in Europe."

But alongside being a celebrated composer,

Rossini had a reputation as a gastronome,

so it's fitting that he was immortalised in one

of the most glutinous dishes of the day, made of steak, brioche,

foie gras and Perigord truffles.

It costs a fortune and it's still on menus today.

How'd you like your fillet cooked?

However the chef thinks it's best.

OK, we'll go for a rare, medium-rare cooking,

Good, sounds good.

And now we've got everything seared off,

we're just going to add a small amount of butter,

if you don't mind passing the butter over.

-Yes, Chef.

-Thank you. Make a good chef out of you yet.

This just adds to the richness of the dish.

-This is not a dieter's friend, this dish?

-Definitely not.

If you're on a diet, definitely avoid it.

He definitely loved his rich food, you can say that for sure.

Then we'll start frying the foie gras.

So, so far, we have beef fat, butter,

and the fat from the foie gras, so just the three types of fat.

There's a lot of fat going on in this dish, definitely..

So going to add the brioche to it, and then it's going to start

soaking up some of that fat and make that even richer...

The brioche itself already has...

I'm almost having a heart attack watching you do this.

And that's going to suck up some of the fat for you to eat.

When this dish was created, Rossini had already been

in retirement for over a decade.

This was a man who lived to be 76,

but spent the last 40 years of his life not working.

He'd been so handsomely paid, so lavishly well treated,

he could afford to sit back and enjoy life's little luxuries.

Lucky Rossini.

The miraculous thing about Rossini, was that when he did work,

he created musical genius, with apparently zilch effort,

composing one of the most popular operas of all time

in less than three weeks - the Barber of Seville.

# Figaro!

# Figaro! Figaro!

# Figaro, Figaro

# Ahime, ahime, che furia!

# Ahime, che folla!

# Uno alla volta, per carita!

# Per carita, per carita!

# Uno alla volta, uno alla volta... #

Composing 39 blockbusting operas over his working years,

Rossini was such a masterful storyteller,

he'd boast that if you gave him a laundry bill, he could even

set that to music, as long as you paid him for the service, that is.

# Figaro qua

# Figaro la, Figaro su, Figaro giu

# Figaro su, Figaro giu

# Pronto prontissimo son come il fumine

# Sono il factotum della citta

# Della citta, della citta, della citta, della citta

# Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo

# Ah, bravo Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo

# A te fortuna, te fortuna, te fortuna non manchera

# La, la, la, la, la, la, la

# A te fortuna, te fortuna, te fortuna non manchera

# Sono il factotum della citta

# Sono il factotum della citta

# Della citta

# Della citta! #

By the mid-19th century, music had become big business,

concert halls and opera houses providing a spectacular arena

where people would pay handsomely to see and be seen.

It wasn't just composers or performers who were reaping

the rewards from ticket sales,

theatres even employed members of the public as paid

audience members known as the Claque,

to really get the party going.

There were the Rieurs, who would laugh.

SHE LAUGHS EXAGGERATEDLY

The Pleureurs, who would weep.

SHE SOBS DRAMATICALLY

SHE BLOWS HER NOSE LOUDLY

And the Bisseurs, who would blow kisses

and cheer at a specially designated moments.

The drama was as much off the stage as it was on it.

Encore! Bravo!

Spectacle, showmanship, money -

the music industry now supported a veritable army

of composers, performers, impresarios,

publishers and hangers on.

But with the commercial success came the inevitable backlash

from those who believed that music should be the romantic

expression of a tortured soul,

not a massive cheque to be cashed in at the bank.

One composer in Leipzig was particularly virulent

in criticising musicians who went for popularity

over artistic profundity -

Robert Schumann.

Ironic, really, given that he relied on his ultra-famous superstar

pianist wife Clara to pay the bills while he got on with

the business of complaining bitterly about celebrity culture.

Robert Schumann was a wonderful composer,

but he also was a very prolific writer.

What was he writing about?

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

-TRANSLATION:

-Schumann was an unbelievable writer

of many articles about music.

In 1834, he founded the new periodical for music

where he devoted space to composers he regarded as important...

..like Beethoven and Schubert.

So Schumann had very definite ideas about what was good music

and what was bad music. What didn't he like?

It was banal music.

Virtuosity, that's what he attacked.

Because he thought at the time music was too commercialised.

So Rossini, for example, was a composer he couldn't stand

because of the apparent banality in the way he wrote music.

So how did he express that frustration,

that vim and hatred of people like Rossini?

In 1834, he founded The Davidsbund.

-So the League Of David.

-Of course.

A battle against the Philistines.

He spoke about virtuosity, which he regarded as un-artistic.

And yet, he's married to the great virtuoso,

the great commercial success, the pianist, Clara Schumann.

How does he reconcile that?

That was a problem for Robert Schumann.

He was never as well known in his lifetime as his wife...

..who was famous throughout Europe as a virtuoso piano player.

PIANO PLAYS

For Robert Schumann,

things must have felt like they were coming at him thick and fast.

He had seven children to contend with,

a global superstar wife who earned a lot more than him,

and there were the vulgarians like Rossini banging at his door

threatening to overthrow the musical traditions he prized so dearly.

All that, plus he was a man whose deeply struggled within himself.

There was the extrovert Schumann, who wanted recognition.

Then the quiet, introverted thinker.

And all that makes itself known in his music.

So in the opening dance of his Davidsbundlertanze,

we have two fictional friends,

Florestan and Eusebius.

"They're the people who write the music," says Schumann, "not me."

Florestan is the big, muscly extrovert of music,

so it opens like this.

And then immediately after that, we get Eusebius,

the slightly shyer, more thoughtful Robert Schumann.

For me, it's always that sense of struggle

that I get with Schumann's music.

Everything about him, inside and without,

poured into every note that he wrote.

You have to feel sorry for Robert Schumann.

He might have railed against all those pampered performers,

but secretly, he was desperate to be one himself.

He would strap mechanical devices to his fingers, use splints,

even on occasion plunge his hand into the abdominal cavity

of a freshly slaughtered animal

and let the warmth of the blood soothe his joints.

All in a bid to be a top performer.

But it was never going to work.

The mercury he was taking for rampaging syphilis was poisoning him

and it put paid to any kind of performing career.

So Schumann could scribble in any number of journals,

write any number of pieces,

but without a performing life on stage,

would anyone know he even existed?

The runaway success of the music industry was creating

a thorny problem for composers and performers alike.

HE PLAYS: Etudes D'execution Transcendante D'apres Paganini

For the first time ever, musicians began to agonise

about whether they could be a celebrity and a respected artist.

One man would prove that it was possible to be both.

Perhaps the greatest superstar of them all -

Franz Liszt.

If you thought fan frenzy started with Beatlemania in the 1960s,

think again.

In 1840s Europe, Lisztomania was sweeping the continent.

The girls went crazy for Liszt.

Tearing at his handkerchiefs, stealing his used wine glasses

and taking them home as prized possessions.

They would even get hold of his used cigar butts

and stash them proudly in their cleavage.

To find out what all the fuss was about,

I'm meeting Daniel Grimwood, a pianist and Liszt expert.

It's so fantastic. I should have brought my earplugs today.

It's such a massive piece that, and so incredibly virtuosic

and impressive.

He heard Paganini play, Liszt, and then took that baton

of how far you could push flashy playing, didn't he?

He did. He heard Paganini play

and then seemed to lock himself away in a room for a period of time

and obsessively practice scales and arpeggios,

octaves and thirds to give himself a piano technique

the like of which the world hadn't yet seen.

And how much is Liszt in a piece like that really pushing forward

what pianists were able to do?

Well, he was also pushing forward what pianos were able to do.

Strings would go flying, hammers would smash, apparently,

and obviously the tuning would go.

I mean, yes, he would have two pianos on stage and one,

at least one of the instruments by the end would be left,

this kind of poor trembling mess

because he would break pianos regularly.

What was it that Liszt did in terms of transforming

the piano, the piano concert as we know it?

Well, he invented the modern concert, basically.

The idea of having a whole evening of piano music

played by one person was...

You know, this was completely new, it hadn't been done.

It didn't happen.

There were mixed concerts, even famous symphonies,

the movements would be broken up and have a singer in between,

or a violinist playing. No, Liszt basically sat down at the piano

and played on his own for an entire evening.

And that was it. It had never been done before.

So what kind of experience would it have been,

must it have been to go and hear Liszt play?

Well, you would see the piano side on, so you would see the profile of

the very, very handsome artist in all of his drama and theatre.

You would see ladies sat around swooning,

which may have had something to do with the ridiculous corsets

-they wore at that time as well so...

-But they didn't swoon

walking down the street, they didn't swoon sitting at home.

There was a Liszt effect, this Lisztomania, which he was

-absolutely very happy to encourage I think.

-It was extraordinary.

Of course all the makers are desperate to get this superstar

attached to their name -

whether it's Erard, or Steinway or Bechstein,

they're all fighting over Liszt.

-It makes them make their pianos better in a way.

-Oh, it did.

This is very much a chicken and egg thing.

There are compositions by Liszt that were only really made possible

by developments in piano building.

I would suggest that some of Liszt's music

actually affected the piano builders themselves,

so they responded to his needs.

The introduction of the double escapement

-made things possible on the piano.

-What's a double escapement?

Well, this was a device which meant that the key

doesn't need to come all the way up in order to re-strike,

which means that you are able to do very, very rapid repetitions.

HE PLAYS RAPID NOTES

And Liszt used these things. You get it in La Campanella...

HE PLAYS RAPID EXTRACT

Things like this would scarcely have been possible to play at such

speed on the earlier pianos.

HE PLAYS MORE SLOWLY

The public hunger for Liszt was insatiable.

In the 1840s, he embarked on a tour of Europe,

performing over 1,000 concerts.

Liszt was still only in his 30s,

but he had already revolutionised 19th-century concert life.

Rushing from city to city, he was feted like royalty,

ferried around in a carriage drawn by white horses, surrounded by fans.

He bedded countless young girls and wealthy society ladies,

but it wasn't enough.

What Liszt really wanted was to be taken as seriously

as composers like Beethoven and Schubert.

He yearned to be a true Romantic,

a man who would make his imprint on history.

So, tired of the fainting women, he turned his back on celebrity

and began to think of his legacy.

As an international star,

Liszt was inundated with commissions for new music...

..including one intriguing sounding project that saw him

travel to Weimar in Germany.

Liszt got the opportunity he desperately wanted

when his new symphony was premiered in 1857 for the inauguration

of this monument.

It immortalised Germany's two great writers, Goethe and Schiller.

Liszt chose to set Goethe's story of Faust,

the tale of a man who makes a pact with the devil.

That legend he said inspired in him the white heat of creativity

and it produced what I think is his greatest work, the Faust Symphony.

MUSIC: Faust Symphony by Franz Liszt

This is a very different Franz Liszt.

What we get here is futuristic music,

anticipating the rise of atonal techniques that other composers

only started exploring several decades later.

With the Faust Symphony,

Liszt left behind the showmanship of Paganini and ditched

the kind of catchy melodies that would have made Rossini proud.

Instead he created a work with the dramatic intensity of Schumann,

a musical argument as distilled

and crystalline as Beethoven or Schubert.

In telling the Faust story, that tussle between good and evil,

Liszt was purging himself of his own Faustian pact with celebrity.

Liszt had done it all.

He'd had the money, the fans, the fame,

he'd been the darling of the music business, but he'd also

achieved the greatest heights any romantic artist could hope for,

creating music of blazing intensity, self-expression and daring.

His place in the history books was now assured.

Liszt died in 1886,

81 years after Beethoven publicly premiered the Eroica Symphony.

In those eight decades, the status of musicians had changed forever

and music had triumphed.

I'm back in Vienna where that transformation started,

visiting its central cemetery.

Built in 1863, Vienna's great and good were exhumed

and reburied here.

This is the VIP area, the Ehrengraber, the honorary graves,

reserved not for poets or painters or philosophers

or great military men, but for musicians.

Beethoven lies here.

This is Schubert's memorial over there,

just round the corner, Johann Strauss

and right in the centre of it all is Mozart,

buried in the late 18th century in a nameless grave,

but here monumentalised for eternity as a great idol.

Composers past and present had now become celebrities,

even retrospectively Mozart,

as the revolution of Romanticism swept up everything in its path.

In this era of social and political upheaval,

where the future seemed full of possibility,

musicians were the visionaries who saw those new horizons.

They weren't just tunesmiths or entertainers any more, now they

were the great heroes of the age and they captured its spirit in sound.

In the next programme,

I'll discover how, with their new-found celebrity and power,

musicians believed they could change the world.

Viva Verdi!

'And how, remarkably, they really did.'

Ohhh... LAUGHTER