0:00:02 > 0:00:04'Europe at the beginning of the 19th century,
0:00:04 > 0:00:07'a continent at war with itself.'
0:00:07 > 0:00:10ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYS
0:00:21 > 0:00:23The symphony is revolutionised,
0:00:23 > 0:00:27changed beyond all recognition in the space of just 30 years
0:00:27 > 0:00:31by two titanic men, one German and one French.
0:00:31 > 0:00:33The music and ideas of Beethoven and Berlioz
0:00:33 > 0:00:37were profoundly influenced by the French Revolution and its aftermath.
0:00:37 > 0:00:42Their symphonies would offer audiences a new understanding of the world
0:00:42 > 0:00:44in a time of great change and anxiety.
0:00:56 > 0:00:59Beethoven was a revolutionary and idealist,
0:00:59 > 0:01:02Berlioz an iconoclast and visionary
0:01:02 > 0:01:07and both men had personalities almost too big for the world that they inhabited.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15'Ludwig van Beethoven, the German who struggled with his deafness,
0:01:15 > 0:01:18'but whose nine symphonies are one the wonders of human achievement.'
0:01:21 > 0:01:25Beethoven was after something epic.
0:01:25 > 0:01:30The idea that an orchestra could portray a journey from darkness
0:01:30 > 0:01:34into the blaze of what one might call victory.
0:01:34 > 0:01:36Now this was completely original.
0:01:36 > 0:01:38Nobody had dared to do something as modern as this.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47'Hector Berlioz, the French composer who came after him,
0:01:47 > 0:01:52'driven by obsession to give the symphony his own wild and romantic voice.'
0:01:53 > 0:01:55Berlioz was a bit of a maverick.
0:01:55 > 0:01:58It's quite extraordinary the use of the orchestra.
0:01:58 > 0:02:01He seems to think of it as an instrument in itself, I think,
0:02:01 > 0:02:03as a virtuoso instrument.
0:02:10 > 0:02:14'We'll see how composers became artists determined to control their own destinies,
0:02:14 > 0:02:18'how they gave orchestral music, without words, great stories to tell
0:02:18 > 0:02:21'and how composers as different as Liszt and Schubert were inspired
0:02:21 > 0:02:25'to take this symphony to undreamt- of places after Beethoven's death.'
0:02:41 > 0:02:45'Our story starts in the imperial Austrian city of Vienna
0:02:45 > 0:02:50'where 200 years ago, an extraordinary concert would change the course of music.'
0:03:00 > 0:03:04It was here at the Theater an der Wien just before Christmas 1808
0:03:04 > 0:03:06that the curtain was raised.
0:03:10 > 0:03:14'This was the 38-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven's declaration of his status
0:03:14 > 0:03:18'as an independent artist in control of his own destiny.
0:03:18 > 0:03:22'He was the composer, conductor, piano soloist and concert promoter
0:03:22 > 0:03:24'and this performance would last four hours.'
0:03:31 > 0:03:35It was an evening that featured not just one new symphony but two,
0:03:35 > 0:03:39each as different from the other as they were from any music that had preceded them.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42It was during this mammoth concert - it really does take your breath away -
0:03:42 > 0:03:46there were half a dozen other pieces by Beethoven on the programme, old and new -
0:03:46 > 0:03:51that the Fifth and Sixth Symphony were heard for the first time.
0:03:51 > 0:03:53OPENING NOTES TO FIFTH SYMPHONY
0:03:58 > 0:04:02'The most famous four-note sequence in music,
0:04:02 > 0:04:05'instantly recognisable to us today as Beethoven's Fifth
0:04:05 > 0:04:07'and full of associations.'
0:04:11 > 0:04:15'Fate knocking at the door, "V" for victory.
0:04:15 > 0:04:19'But how must it have sounded to that original audience?'
0:04:22 > 0:04:25'Beethoven presented it as pure music.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29'No clue to its significance or meaning.'
0:04:33 > 0:04:37Well, Beethoven, as a personality, was so tricky
0:04:37 > 0:04:39and so uncouth in so many ways
0:04:39 > 0:04:42and had such a difficult, troubled childhood,
0:04:42 > 0:04:45that the adult that gave us some of these pieces was a man
0:04:45 > 0:04:49so often at odds with the world around him.
0:04:52 > 0:04:54'Born in poverty in the German town of Bonn,
0:04:54 > 0:04:57'he was bullied as a child by his alcoholic father
0:04:57 > 0:05:00'and in his 20s realised he was going deaf,
0:05:00 > 0:05:03'surely the cruellest of tragedies for a musician.'
0:05:04 > 0:05:08'But Beethoven was a man with a will of iron
0:05:08 > 0:05:12'and, in the Fifth, he harnesses the power of the orchestra to an insistent propulsive rhythm
0:05:12 > 0:05:17'forcing the symphony to articulate the profoundest personal drama.'
0:05:19 > 0:05:25The story of a soul struggling against implacable fate and emerging incandescently victorious.
0:05:27 > 0:05:32One of the great contrasts available to a composer
0:05:32 > 0:05:35are the contrasts of darkness and lightness.
0:05:36 > 0:05:41And in his Fifth Symphony, builds up from hesitant darkness
0:05:41 > 0:05:46into the radiant blaze of optimism, confidence, whatever.
0:05:46 > 0:05:49Now he does this through the simplest of means.
0:05:49 > 0:05:55At the end of the third movement, which is the rather shadowy, dark scherzo,
0:05:55 > 0:06:00his plan is to burst us into the light without stopping.
0:06:00 > 0:06:04Now he does this by making the orchestra play as quietly as it can,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07all the strings just plucking very, very quietly.
0:06:18 > 0:06:23Then comes the heartbeat of the drum, very, very quiet and distant
0:06:23 > 0:06:28and the strings just moving up and down, uncertain about which way they're going to go.
0:06:32 > 0:06:37And then suddenly, very quickly, the whole orchestra comes in
0:06:37 > 0:06:41and, without stopping, we burst into the final movement.
0:06:41 > 0:06:43This is in the major key.
0:06:43 > 0:06:46Lights full on after lights hardly on at all.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02'The symphony is a masterpiece of storytelling without words.
0:07:02 > 0:07:05When the French Revolution erupted, Beethoven was a teenager,
0:07:05 > 0:07:08'struggling to support his family after the death of their mother
0:07:08 > 0:07:12'and the concept of individual liberty became a lifelong issue.
0:07:12 > 0:07:17'We, the listeners, are compelled to share his battle against fate.'
0:07:20 > 0:07:25Although Beethoven wanted to write something that was comprehensible at first hearing,
0:07:25 > 0:07:27he wasn't writing simply to give pleasure.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31He wanted it to be a potentially life-changing experience,
0:07:31 > 0:07:36music that would resonate in the mind long after the last note had sounded.
0:07:43 > 0:07:48'The other symphony couldn't have been more different from the dramatic Fifth,
0:07:48 > 0:07:52'demonstrating the breadth of Beethoven's extraordinary vision of what the symphony could be.
0:08:01 > 0:08:05'However, making a living as an independent professional composer
0:08:05 > 0:08:10'was something very new and his early concerts were under-rehearsed, badly organised financial disasters.
0:08:10 > 0:08:15'To escape his troubles, he loved to walk in the country
0:08:15 > 0:08:21'and in the Sixth symphony we join him on one of his walks through his beloved Austrian countryside.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24'A friend said nature was almost meat and drink to him.
0:08:24 > 0:08:27'He seemed positively to exist upon it.'
0:08:42 > 0:08:44'But this was more than recreation.
0:08:44 > 0:08:48'To walk in the country was a kind of political act.
0:08:48 > 0:08:52'Beethoven was a romantic in the strictest sense.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55'As you walked away from urban society, you became a natural being,
0:08:55 > 0:08:59'no longer measured in terms of wealth or social status,
0:08:59 > 0:09:03'but able to find your place as part of the natural order of things.'
0:09:07 > 0:09:11It's actually opening spaces for people's imagination
0:09:11 > 0:09:13rather than telling them what to think.
0:09:13 > 0:09:18And this creates a wonderful myth about the transformation,
0:09:18 > 0:09:23almost the redemption of the artist in the urban situation
0:09:23 > 0:09:24by going into the countryside
0:09:24 > 0:09:29that became a very influential model for composers later.
0:09:29 > 0:09:34It's not really about the countryside, it's really about
0:09:34 > 0:09:39someone in the city thinking about the countryside and creating a myth about it.
0:10:01 > 0:10:03This symphony has five distinct movements
0:10:03 > 0:10:05rather than the standard four
0:10:05 > 0:10:08and for the first and only time in a Beethoven symphony
0:10:08 > 0:10:11each one had a title that was printed in the programme.
0:10:11 > 0:10:13This is programmatic music.
0:10:13 > 0:10:16The first movement is The Awakening Of Cheerful Feelings
0:10:16 > 0:10:18Upon Arrival In The Country
0:10:18 > 0:10:21and he called the second Scene By A Brook.
0:10:26 > 0:10:29The programme headings were uncharacteristic for Beethoven,
0:10:29 > 0:10:33but they looked forward to the literary symphonies to come.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44The French composer Hector Berlioz who, as we shall see later,
0:10:44 > 0:10:46took up the idea of programmatic music with grand elan,
0:10:46 > 0:10:51wrote of this second movement Scene By A Brook,
0:10:51 > 0:10:53"I think here the composer actually created the music
0:10:53 > 0:10:57"whilst lying on his back on a grassy bank.
0:10:57 > 0:11:01"His eyes turn towards heaven, he's observing and listening,
0:11:01 > 0:11:04"enthralled by the countless reflections of sound and light
0:11:04 > 0:11:06"as the current of the brook
0:11:06 > 0:11:09"sends ripples across the surface of the water."
0:11:09 > 0:11:12This is the actual brook.
0:11:13 > 0:11:15Not quite so pastoral nowadays.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28The symphony is a sequence of encounters with nature,
0:11:28 > 0:11:31scene painting which stimulates thoughts and feelings
0:11:31 > 0:11:33and Beethoven rarely allowed himself
0:11:33 > 0:11:35to be so light and charming or so literal.
0:11:35 > 0:11:40This movement ends with a faithful music reproduction of birdsong.
0:11:42 > 0:11:45And what's so funny about it is the birds that he chose.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48It says in the score here, the nightingale...
0:11:48 > 0:11:49TRILLING NOTES ON PIANO
0:11:49 > 0:11:51And then you hear the quail!
0:11:51 > 0:11:52STACCATO NOTE ON PIANO
0:11:52 > 0:11:55- I don't know when you last heard a quail...- I haven't heard many.
0:11:55 > 0:11:57- Normally... - Well, not consciously.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00And then there's a cuckoo isn't there? A famous cuckoo.
0:12:00 > 0:12:02IMITATES CUCKOO ON PIANO Yeah.
0:12:02 > 0:12:06- If you play the...- Shall I do the nightingale?- The Nachtigall.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17THEY BUILD A BIRDSONG CHORUS TOGETHER
0:12:25 > 0:12:26'We struggled to play it,
0:12:26 > 0:12:31'but it's a work of great freshness, full of humour,'
0:12:31 > 0:12:34of dancing exhilaration,
0:12:34 > 0:12:35of great beauty
0:12:35 > 0:12:37and a masterpiece of form.
0:12:37 > 0:12:39WOODWIND BUILD THE BIRDSONG CHORUS
0:12:41 > 0:12:43The songs of the nightingale, quail and cuckoo
0:12:43 > 0:12:45gain an extra poignancy
0:12:45 > 0:12:48if you bear in mind the composer's growing deafness.
0:13:09 > 0:13:12In its own way, the Pastoral is a work
0:13:12 > 0:13:13just as visionary as the Fifth,
0:13:13 > 0:13:17offering a utopian vision of peace, harmony and fulfilment
0:13:17 > 0:13:21against the contemporary backdrop of war-torn Europe.
0:13:32 > 0:13:36When Beethoven was a young man in the late 1780s and early 1790s,
0:13:36 > 0:13:39he was fascinated by what was happening
0:13:39 > 0:13:40across the border in France.
0:13:40 > 0:13:42He was a member of republican circles
0:13:42 > 0:13:45and for him the notion of being an independent composer
0:13:45 > 0:13:49was linked to ideas of liberty and the rights of man.
0:13:49 > 0:13:51Once when someone asked him whether the "Van"
0:13:51 > 0:13:55in his name, Ludwig Van Beethoven, denoted aristocratic origins
0:13:55 > 0:14:00he snapped back "I am not a landowner, I'm a brain owner."
0:14:10 > 0:14:12After the premiere of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies,
0:14:12 > 0:14:16Napoleon invades Austria and occupies Vienna.
0:14:16 > 0:14:19Beethoven hides in his brother's cellar, protecting his ears
0:14:19 > 0:14:23from the sound of French cannon by burying his head in pillows.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27His former teacher, the 77-year-old Joseph Haydn, is luckier.
0:14:27 > 0:14:30Such is Napoleon's respect for the father of the symphony
0:14:30 > 0:14:33that he orders guards to protect him.
0:14:33 > 0:14:37Haydn, a firm anti-republican, makes a point of taking up his hymn,
0:14:37 > 0:14:39Gott Erhalte Franz Den Kaiser,
0:14:39 > 0:14:42otherwise known as the tune of Deutschland Uber Alles,
0:14:42 > 0:14:46and playing it loudly in protest every morning.
0:14:46 > 0:14:50Sadly, within weeks of the French invasion, Haydn is gone,
0:14:50 > 0:14:52dying peacefully in his sleep.
0:14:56 > 0:15:00Now Beethoven became Vienna's indisputable musical hero.
0:15:02 > 0:15:05The premiere of his Seventh Symphony in 1813
0:15:05 > 0:15:09coincided with Napoleon's defeat and was hailed as a victory symphony.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17The following year, his Eighth won new admirers
0:15:17 > 0:15:18with its wit and humour.
0:15:18 > 0:15:22Now his concerts had become major musical events.
0:15:25 > 0:15:27The audiences of Vienna
0:15:27 > 0:15:30were the most musically sophisticated in Europe.
0:15:30 > 0:15:33They knew what they had lost with Haydn and Mozart
0:15:33 > 0:15:36and when another one came along they went,
0:15:36 > 0:15:39"Blimey, but have you heard him?"
0:15:39 > 0:15:43And people would say "Beethoven's giving a concert. Let's go,
0:15:43 > 0:15:45"you never quite know what's going to happen."
0:15:47 > 0:15:51Finally, in 1824, at the most prestigious venue in Vienna,
0:15:51 > 0:15:52the Karntnertor Theatre,
0:15:52 > 0:15:54Viennese audiences would hear
0:15:54 > 0:15:57his final and most groundbreaking symphony yet.
0:16:02 > 0:16:04The Karntnertor Theatre is long gone,
0:16:04 > 0:16:07but on its site stands one of Vienna's great
0:16:07 > 0:16:09and most glorious institutions, The Hotel Sacher,
0:16:09 > 0:16:14home to one of the world's most famous cakes, the Sacher torte.
0:16:16 > 0:16:17Right from the opening notes
0:16:17 > 0:16:20where the orchestra seem to be suspended
0:16:20 > 0:16:22in the cosmic vastness of space,
0:16:22 > 0:16:24it was clear that Beethoven's Ninth
0:16:24 > 0:16:26was going to be another leap forward.
0:16:56 > 0:16:59I've been trying to think how to compare the Ninth Symphony
0:16:59 > 0:17:00with a chocolate cake,
0:17:00 > 0:17:03but beyond the fact that both are rich and satisfying, I can't do it.
0:17:03 > 0:17:06The fact of the matter is that the Ninth Symphony
0:17:06 > 0:17:10is not just any old piece of music, it's a colossal achievement,
0:17:10 > 0:17:13a comprehensive if unpredictable tour through the human condition.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16It would be better to compare it to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
0:17:16 > 0:17:18or the Great Wall Of China.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22In fact it's so big it probably can be seen from space.
0:17:22 > 0:17:24And it has great tunes.
0:17:27 > 0:17:30This is Beethoven at his most iconoclastic.
0:17:30 > 0:17:33He hadn't written a symphony for a dozen years
0:17:33 > 0:17:36and he really was now the most celebrated composer in the world.
0:17:36 > 0:17:37So his devoted supporters
0:17:37 > 0:17:40flocked to see how he no longer just broke the rules,
0:17:40 > 0:17:42but barely acknowledged that they existed.
0:18:01 > 0:18:04The inspiration behind the Ninth Symphony
0:18:04 > 0:18:08was Friedrich Schiller's poem An Die Freude, the Ode To Joy -
0:18:08 > 0:18:12a stirring celebration of human happiness and universal brotherhood.
0:18:16 > 0:18:21He first read Schiller's An Die Freude when he was a student.
0:18:21 > 0:18:23And he wrote a setting of it
0:18:23 > 0:18:26only a year or two after he first read it,
0:18:26 > 0:18:27so he was about 20 or 21.
0:18:27 > 0:18:32So the idea to set that poem had been in his mind all his adult life.
0:18:36 > 0:18:40Remember, Beethoven lived through the French Revolution
0:18:40 > 0:18:44and there's a crucial line, "Alles menschen werden bruder," all mankind will be brothers.
0:18:44 > 0:18:47And that line appealed to him because Beethoven was,
0:18:47 > 0:18:51although he never spelled it out as such, the great democrat.
0:18:51 > 0:18:53I get this feeling there was a moment
0:18:53 > 0:18:56he thought, "I can't go further with just instruments."
0:18:56 > 0:18:59Well, he brought voices in for the first time in a symphony.
0:18:59 > 0:19:01He struggled over that.
0:19:01 > 0:19:04He could not work out a way to bring them in.
0:19:04 > 0:19:09And the sudden idea of the solo bass singer singing...
0:19:09 > 0:19:11# O freunde. #
0:19:11 > 0:19:15Which to us again is as natural as breathing,
0:19:15 > 0:19:19was about his fourth or fifth idea before he got what he wanted.
0:19:29 > 0:19:35# O Freunde... #
0:20:27 > 0:20:30Right from the beginning, this final section of the Ninth Symphony
0:20:30 > 0:20:33seemed to take on an independent life of its own.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37There's always been a particular resonance for German speakers
0:20:37 > 0:20:40and in the 1930s and '40s, it was used as a propaganda tool
0:20:40 > 0:20:46by the Nazi Party, performed to mark such events as Hitler's birthday.
0:20:53 > 0:20:57Well, it had such incredible familiarity value, didn't it?
0:20:57 > 0:21:00I mean, it's one of the great things about the main tune of the symphony
0:21:00 > 0:21:04is that once you've heard it once - it stays with you.
0:21:04 > 0:21:06You could always hum along with it.
0:21:06 > 0:21:11The work is about brotherhood and the trouble with it is
0:21:11 > 0:21:16that it's asking you to come together in one uniformed mass
0:21:16 > 0:21:20which suits the kind of pictures we're seeing at the moment.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23You don't have to interpret it that way, however,
0:21:23 > 0:21:26because you can always say we need to come together
0:21:26 > 0:21:32because we're reacting against an authoritarian idea of normality,
0:21:32 > 0:21:35so the piece can be read two ways.
0:21:35 > 0:21:38- But the music isn't ambiguous at all, is it?- No, it's about joy.
0:21:38 > 0:21:42Yeah, and energy and the realisation that it's a statement
0:21:42 > 0:21:46- of everybody reaching for something bigger...- Sure.- ..and better.
0:21:50 > 0:21:54On Christmas Day in 1989, a global audience of a hundred million
0:21:54 > 0:21:56watched Leonard Bernstein conduct the work in Berlin.
0:21:56 > 0:21:58A month after the wall
0:21:58 > 0:22:01that had divided the communist East from the West came down.
0:22:09 > 0:22:14Very odd, though, that if it starts a poem about joy
0:22:14 > 0:22:17that it has so transmogrified into music about freedom.
0:22:17 > 0:22:23The musical quality is so inspired in its accumulative power
0:22:23 > 0:22:26that it seems, and this to me is one of the reasons
0:22:26 > 0:22:31why it's such an important piece for very epic global occasions,
0:22:31 > 0:22:33that it seems that the music
0:22:33 > 0:22:36is so much bigger than anybody who's taking part in it.
0:22:41 > 0:22:45In September 2001, just four days after 9/11,
0:22:45 > 0:22:48Leonard Slatkin conducted the choral finale
0:22:48 > 0:22:52at the Last Night Of The Proms as a tribute to the victims of terror.
0:23:17 > 0:23:21CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:23:22 > 0:23:26Many years later, Hector Berlioz would write that with the Ninth,
0:23:26 > 0:23:28Beethoven had built himself a magnificent monument
0:23:28 > 0:23:32and imagined the composer saying to himself,
0:23:32 > 0:23:35"Let death come now, my work is done."
0:23:40 > 0:23:44Beethoven died on the 26th of March 1827,
0:23:44 > 0:23:47three years after completing his Ninth Symphony.
0:23:47 > 0:23:49He was 56.
0:23:49 > 0:23:5320,000 mourners attended his funeral -
0:23:53 > 0:23:55one in ten of the Viennese population.
0:23:59 > 0:24:03Among them was another symphonist, Franz Schubert.
0:24:04 > 0:24:08He accompanied the body to this graveyard in North Vienna,
0:24:08 > 0:24:12but tragically, within two years, barely into his 30s,
0:24:12 > 0:24:14he would himself be buried here,
0:24:14 > 0:24:16just a few metres from his great hero.
0:24:21 > 0:24:23Yes.
0:24:23 > 0:24:28This is where Schubert was first put to rest in 1828.
0:24:28 > 0:24:30What's this part of the funeral...
0:24:30 > 0:24:34It says, "Music has laid to rest a rich treasure
0:24:34 > 0:24:37"and still greater hopes for the future."
0:24:37 > 0:24:39But ironically his two best symphonies
0:24:39 > 0:24:41were of course in the future.
0:24:41 > 0:24:46They weren't actually discovered until, um, 1839
0:24:46 > 0:24:48and the Unfinished wasn't first performed
0:24:48 > 0:24:52until the 1860s here in Vienna.
0:24:52 > 0:24:54- So that's 30 years after his death. - 30 years after.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19During his short lifetime, Schubert acquired
0:25:19 > 0:25:21a reputation for his songs and piano pieces,
0:25:21 > 0:25:26but he'd actually composed over half a dozen symphonies.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29However, because they were not specially commissioned,
0:25:29 > 0:25:31none had a public performance in his lifetime,
0:25:31 > 0:25:37and the most famous was left half completed, the Unfinished Symphony.
0:25:37 > 0:25:40Just before he died, he wanted to write symphonies
0:25:40 > 0:25:43and really concentrate on big ideas,
0:25:43 > 0:25:47which is why the Ninth Symphony of his has this huge grand plan.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50I think he was intending that to be something...
0:25:50 > 0:25:52- The Grosse Symphony?- Die Grosse Symphony, yes.
0:25:58 > 0:26:01The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
0:26:01 > 0:26:05are performing the C Major symphony on authentic period instruments.
0:26:05 > 0:26:10But Schubert himself only ever heard an orchestra play this symphony
0:26:10 > 0:26:13in a rehearsal in 1828 for a concert that was never given.
0:26:16 > 0:26:20His music was invariably performed by and for his friends,
0:26:20 > 0:26:22often in the comfortable surroundings of this school
0:26:22 > 0:26:24where his father was the headmaster.
0:26:27 > 0:26:29The importance of Schubert is that you see
0:26:29 > 0:26:32a much more relaxed attitude to the musical material.
0:26:32 > 0:26:35He was really a superb composer because he could play with
0:26:35 > 0:26:41the music in his symphonies, playing with sound for its own sake
0:26:41 > 0:26:45and not worrying too much about where it's going all the time,
0:26:45 > 0:26:49although there is that sort of Beethoven logic as well.
0:27:14 > 0:27:16He leaves spaces in the music
0:27:16 > 0:27:20for anybody with any ideas whatever to enter.
0:27:20 > 0:27:22That's part of the generosity.
0:27:22 > 0:27:25There's something very positive about the music,
0:27:25 > 0:27:27but also something very daring at the same time.
0:27:40 > 0:27:44There's something about Schubert's music which takes the listener
0:27:44 > 0:27:48on a journey and sometimes the listener doesn't know quite where it's going
0:27:48 > 0:27:52and Schubert leaves the listener deliberately asking which way.
0:27:52 > 0:27:54The ambiguity's wonderful.
0:27:54 > 0:27:59It is hugely confident music, which makes it all the more tragic that
0:27:59 > 0:28:03he would say "I want to write symphonies" and then died.
0:28:10 > 0:28:13And later he was moved from here?
0:28:13 > 0:28:15He was exhumed in 1888.
0:28:15 > 0:28:20The cemetery was decommissioned and his body was moved to
0:28:20 > 0:28:23the central cemetery along with Beethoven,
0:28:23 > 0:28:27who is almost next to him here.
0:28:27 > 0:28:29- Oh, bye bye, Schubert.- Bye.
0:28:31 > 0:28:34And here's Beethoven. Here's Beethoven.
0:28:34 > 0:28:38This is where he was originally put to rest.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41This is a modern replacement of the original graveside,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44but it's still basically the same design.
0:28:44 > 0:28:47It looks much austere, doesn't it, than Schubert?
0:28:47 > 0:28:49- Yes, and very much grander. - Ferdinand Schubert,
0:28:49 > 0:28:52Schubert's brother, claimed to have designed this.
0:28:52 > 0:28:54Here we have Apollo's Lyre
0:28:54 > 0:28:58and at the very top we have an ouroboros,
0:28:58 > 0:29:02this is an old Egyptian symbol for universality,
0:29:02 > 0:29:04a snake consuming its own tail,
0:29:04 > 0:29:09and in the middle a butterfly that's meant to represent immortality.
0:29:19 > 0:29:22All Beethoven's symphonies had already been published
0:29:22 > 0:29:25during his lifetime and began to receive public performances
0:29:25 > 0:29:28in major cities across Europe. Our story now takes us to Paris.
0:29:33 > 0:29:37In 1825, despite fierce opposition from his father,
0:29:37 > 0:29:41a provincial doctor, a young medical student called Hector Berlioz
0:29:41 > 0:29:44quit his studies, leaving the dissection of corpses
0:29:44 > 0:29:47to pursue his all-consuming ambition to become a composer,
0:29:47 > 0:29:48a great composer.
0:29:55 > 0:29:58He enrolled here at the Conservatoire of Music
0:29:58 > 0:30:00and threw himself into his work.
0:30:00 > 0:30:04But not long into his studies, he had a life-changing experience,
0:30:04 > 0:30:06a revelation.
0:30:06 > 0:30:09Hector was rather prone to revelations.
0:30:09 > 0:30:12He heard the symphonies of Beethoven
0:30:12 > 0:30:14and in particular the first performances in France
0:30:14 > 0:30:16of Beethoven's Fifth.
0:30:20 > 0:30:25Beethoven, who had died just the previous year, was regarded
0:30:25 > 0:30:28by the French establishment as a German who wrote bizarre,
0:30:28 > 0:30:33incoherent, harsh and noisy music with no melody to speak of,
0:30:33 > 0:30:37disagreeable to listen to and horribly difficult to play.
0:30:37 > 0:30:39Berlioz thought it was wonderful.
0:30:47 > 0:30:51"The Fifth," he said, "gave wings to Beethoven's despair,
0:30:51 > 0:30:56"but also to his nobility of soul, this style of writing is far above
0:30:56 > 0:31:00"and beyond anything ever written in orchestral music until now."
0:31:02 > 0:31:06He himself, in his own words, "would fire along another path".
0:31:14 > 0:31:16Berlioz, of course, was a naughty boy.
0:31:16 > 0:31:19He never obeyed the rules when he was at the Conservatoire
0:31:19 > 0:31:26and he was one of the first to say so unashamedly that music can
0:31:26 > 0:31:32express the self, the romantic ideal of the creative artist
0:31:32 > 0:31:36at loggerheads with his environment, living solely for his art.
0:31:36 > 0:31:39I love his music and I love everything about him,
0:31:39 > 0:31:41what he stood for.
0:31:46 > 0:31:50This is the Place de la Bastille, named after one of the key events
0:31:50 > 0:31:52of the French Revolution -
0:31:52 > 0:31:55the storming of the Bastille Prison in 1789.
0:31:55 > 0:31:59But 1830 was also a revolutionary year and this column commemorates
0:31:59 > 0:32:03the death of 18,000 Parisians who died during three days
0:32:03 > 0:32:07of bitter street fighting following a disputed election.
0:32:12 > 0:32:15Berlioz was excited.
0:32:15 > 0:32:18It was as if he would finish his musical work for the day and then
0:32:18 > 0:32:20dash outside, pistol in hand,
0:32:20 > 0:32:23to join the riots and the street fighting.
0:32:23 > 0:32:25His symphony was to have a story,
0:32:25 > 0:32:28an episode in the life of an artist in five parts.
0:32:33 > 0:32:37Berlioz's short story was to be printed in the concert programme -
0:32:37 > 0:32:41"Our hero falls in love with an unattainable woman.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45"Pushed towards madness by unrequited passion,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48"he attempts to kill himself with an overdose of opium,
0:32:48 > 0:32:50"but the drug causes him to suffer
0:32:50 > 0:32:54"a sequence of ever more grotesque hallucinations".
0:32:56 > 0:32:59Berlioz was profoundly influenced by Beethoven's music,
0:32:59 > 0:33:03but he twisted the Beethoven model into startling new forms -
0:33:03 > 0:33:05the journey from darkness into light that we see
0:33:05 > 0:33:09in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony into a drug-induced descent into hell.
0:33:17 > 0:33:22He called his new work the Symphonie Fantastique, the Fantastic Symphony,
0:33:22 > 0:33:26"fantastic" meaning uncanny or unreal as in a dream,
0:33:26 > 0:33:31but also "incroyable", unbelievable, terrifying, extraordinary.
0:33:32 > 0:33:35And it is an extraordinary musical achievement.
0:33:35 > 0:33:39One of his formal innovations was the use of an idee fixe,
0:33:39 > 0:33:43a tune that symbolises an obsessive idea.
0:33:54 > 0:33:57This strange, unearthly melody lasts nearly 40 seconds
0:33:57 > 0:34:01and keeps recurring throughout the symphony.
0:34:01 > 0:34:03To gain an insight into how this actually works
0:34:03 > 0:34:07I visited the composer Robert Saxton at his home in South London.
0:34:12 > 0:34:15So he keeps the tune the same right the way through the whole piece?
0:34:15 > 0:34:19It appears in different guises, but it's always very recognisable.
0:34:19 > 0:34:25The landscape changes around it rather than the tune itself changing.
0:34:25 > 0:34:27- Is this one here? Shall I play it?- Yes.
0:34:27 > 0:34:29- The beginning of it?- Absolutely.
0:34:37 > 0:34:41A composer like Beethoven will take something that's more
0:34:41 > 0:34:46like a motif and gradually take parts out of it and develop it,
0:34:46 > 0:34:49whereas with Berlioz the idee fixe remains more or less intact.
0:34:55 > 0:35:00The opening is revelry and passions and he's dreaming
0:35:00 > 0:35:02and the idee fixe is the beloved.
0:35:02 > 0:35:05- Yeah.- That is her.- Right.
0:35:05 > 0:35:09He then here introduces the tune totally unaccompanied and
0:35:09 > 0:35:13when he does put the accompaniment in, where most composers would have
0:35:13 > 0:35:17had a running accompaniment, he's got this jerky "badum-badum-badum".
0:35:28 > 0:35:30Berlioz couldn't play the piano, which is significant.
0:35:30 > 0:35:33He played the flute and the guitar.
0:35:33 > 0:35:37And I think he thought in these great, long,
0:35:37 > 0:35:39almost folk-derived melodies.
0:36:02 > 0:36:04For Berlioz, the conventional orchestra, as it existed
0:36:04 > 0:36:08in the early 1830s, was too polite and genteel sounding
0:36:08 > 0:36:11for his vision of Symphonie Fantastique.
0:36:12 > 0:36:14For all his wild, romantic imagination,
0:36:14 > 0:36:19he approached actually writing the score as if he was a scientist.
0:36:19 > 0:36:21How could he get exactly the sound that he wanted?
0:36:21 > 0:36:25"You big baby," he wrote addressing an imaginary orchestra,
0:36:25 > 0:36:27"It's time you learned to speak properly
0:36:27 > 0:36:29"and I am the one to teach you."
0:36:31 > 0:36:35He examined the potential of the instruments
0:36:35 > 0:36:41and fearlessly felt unconstrained by what had come before him.
0:36:51 > 0:36:54Berlioz was a child of the Industrial Revolution.
0:36:54 > 0:36:56Heavy industry was transforming Europe
0:36:56 > 0:36:59and the invention of the valve in the 1820s meant
0:36:59 > 0:37:01that there were new brass instruments.
0:37:03 > 0:37:06The tuba was patented within five years of the premiere of
0:37:06 > 0:37:10his symphony and the score was revised
0:37:10 > 0:37:12to include its deep, smooth tones.
0:37:21 > 0:37:25Obsessively interested in the design of instruments
0:37:25 > 0:37:27and the techniques used to play them,
0:37:27 > 0:37:29he began to create a new type of orchestra,
0:37:29 > 0:37:33one that could play the music he heard in his head.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42- I adore this Symphonie Fantastique. - As a composer?
0:37:42 > 0:37:45Yes, it's endless, endlessly fascinating.
0:37:45 > 0:37:50It's quite extraordinary, the use of the orchestra, the blending
0:37:50 > 0:37:54of the tone colours that he uses, the extraordinary orchestration.
0:38:17 > 0:38:22He seems to think of the orchestra as a virtuoso instrument in itself.
0:38:22 > 0:38:25He's the first composer really to specify how many instruments
0:38:25 > 0:38:27he wants in each section.
0:38:27 > 0:38:30He's very specific that it's got to be 15 first violins,
0:38:30 > 0:38:3215 second violins.
0:38:32 > 0:38:35And, indeed, he asks for a 60-piece string orchestra,
0:38:35 > 0:38:39very large by those standards and by our standards.
0:38:46 > 0:38:48He extends the technique of them.
0:38:48 > 0:38:52He gives them tremolo to play which is when they go "drr-drr-drr"
0:38:52 > 0:38:56like this on the string, which was quite unusual for those days.
0:39:09 > 0:39:10Throughout his life,
0:39:10 > 0:39:14Berlioz continued to speculate about his ideal orchestra,
0:39:14 > 0:39:20an ensemble that would have unsurpassed rhythmic and melodic power.
0:39:20 > 0:39:23Eventually he was to calculate the exact number of players,
0:39:23 > 0:39:27this ideal would require - 467.
0:39:27 > 0:39:29That's more than four times the number
0:39:29 > 0:39:31of players in a modern orchestra.
0:39:37 > 0:39:39Even with a mere 80 or so players,
0:39:39 > 0:39:43the Symphonie Fantastique is an overwhelming experience
0:39:43 > 0:39:47and the detailed literary programme only adds to the intensity.
0:39:49 > 0:39:53The Halle Orchestra are playing the March To The Scaffold.
0:39:54 > 0:39:58Berlioz's romantic hero has a vision that he's murdered his beloved
0:39:58 > 0:40:01and that he is to be guillotined for the crime.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05His head will be laid on the block and we will hear the idee fixe
0:40:05 > 0:40:08run through his mind like a final thought of his beloved,
0:40:08 > 0:40:11only to be literally chopped off by the fall of the blade.
0:40:30 > 0:40:33Bizarre though the storyline of the Symphonie Fantastique might be,
0:40:33 > 0:40:38the story behind the composition of the work is stranger yet.
0:40:38 > 0:40:40One September in 1827,
0:40:40 > 0:40:44Berlioz came here to the Theatre de l'Odeon to see two performances
0:40:44 > 0:40:48of Shakespeare in English, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.
0:40:48 > 0:40:51The star of the show was an Irish actress called Harriet Smithson.
0:40:51 > 0:40:55In Hamlet she was Ophelia and in Romeo and Juliet,
0:40:55 > 0:40:57she was, of course, playing Juliet.
0:40:57 > 0:41:00Berlioz fell madly in love.
0:41:05 > 0:41:09How could he, a humble music student, ever hope to win the heart
0:41:09 > 0:41:11of this great Shakespearean actress?
0:41:13 > 0:41:16This desire was the seed for the Symphonie Fantastique.
0:41:16 > 0:41:21He would write a grand symphony, be recognised as a great composer
0:41:21 > 0:41:25and then he could approach the beloved Harriet as an equal.
0:41:28 > 0:41:31To help tell the story of their peculiar romance
0:41:31 > 0:41:34I've asked my fellow actor, Emma Fielding, to meet me
0:41:34 > 0:41:37at the British ambassador's residence in Paris.
0:41:41 > 0:41:43So 1827...
0:41:43 > 0:41:47Was when Berlioz first saw Harriet in the theatre playing Ophelia
0:41:47 > 0:41:49and then Juliet and fell madly in love with her.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53Now, it was three years later that he wrote the Symphonie Fantastique,
0:41:53 > 0:41:56which is based on his thoughts about her
0:41:56 > 0:41:58and that's 1830, so there's quite a long time.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02Three years, but during that time he pursued her quite voraciously.
0:42:02 > 0:42:03Never actually met.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06He didn't want to meet her. He avoided her.
0:42:06 > 0:42:08Yes, but he took a flat round the corner
0:42:08 > 0:42:10so he could follow her movements to and from the theatre.
0:42:10 > 0:42:13- So basically he was stalking her? - He was stalking her.
0:42:20 > 0:42:21And at the end of 1832,
0:42:21 > 0:42:24she attends a concert, which she doesn't normally do.
0:42:24 > 0:42:26She's not a great classical music lover.
0:42:26 > 0:42:29And she reads the programme notes for the Symphonie Fantastique
0:42:29 > 0:42:31and realises it's all about her.
0:42:31 > 0:42:34Which is extraordinary, because all of Paris society
0:42:34 > 0:42:37- knew about his infatuation but she didn't.- But she didn't.
0:42:37 > 0:42:39But that evening they are introduced to each other,
0:42:39 > 0:42:42he proposes and she accepts.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45And then ten months later, they were married here
0:42:45 > 0:42:49on 3rd October 1833 in the British Embassy in Paris.
0:42:57 > 0:43:00"My 30-year war against the mediocre,
0:43:00 > 0:43:02"the academics and the death."
0:43:02 > 0:43:05That was Berlioz's own description of his career in Paris
0:43:05 > 0:43:08during which time he composed four symphonies in 12 years,
0:43:08 > 0:43:12the Symphonie Fantastique, a second symphony based on a Lord Byron poem,
0:43:12 > 0:43:17a massive funeral symphony, and this Shakespearian masterpiece.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25The Romeo and Juliet Symphony is the 36-year-old Berlioz's
0:43:25 > 0:43:29musical expression of his love for both Harriet
0:43:29 > 0:43:33and for the works of the playwright who first brought them together.
0:43:35 > 0:43:38The symphony is his most sophisticated storytelling yet.
0:43:38 > 0:43:41The orchestra here doesn't simply evoke the story,
0:43:41 > 0:43:44he wants the instruments to become the actors in the play
0:43:44 > 0:43:48and actually deliver Shakespeare's lines.
0:43:50 > 0:43:54The flute and woodwinds are the voice of Juliet.
0:43:58 > 0:44:02Yeah, lovely. Then we hear the cellos, representing Romeo's speech.
0:44:15 > 0:44:17Then her fear.
0:44:19 > 0:44:22He had this idea that no one else had done before,
0:44:22 > 0:44:25that he didn't need the words if he could get the listener
0:44:25 > 0:44:29to think that the words might be somewhere in the orchestra.
0:44:33 > 0:44:36Being actors, Emma and I couldn't resist trying an experiment here.
0:44:36 > 0:44:40Just how closely does Berlioz parallel Shakespeare's lines
0:44:40 > 0:44:43and the action from the balcony scene with his music?
0:44:45 > 0:44:49But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
0:44:49 > 0:44:52It is the east and Juliet is the sun.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01You can clearly hear Romeo's climb to the balcony
0:45:01 > 0:45:05in the cellos' ardent ascending phrase and Romeo and Juliet's
0:45:05 > 0:45:07blossoming love in the radiant music that follows.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21Berlioz strives to give the audience all the nuance
0:45:21 > 0:45:26and drama of Shakespeare's poetry as he himself experienced it.
0:45:26 > 0:45:29"Shakespeare," he said "hit me like a thunder bolt
0:45:29 > 0:45:32"and revealed in a flash of lightning the whole heaven of art."
0:45:39 > 0:45:42When he'd first seen Harriet portray Juliet on stage, he spoke no English.
0:45:42 > 0:45:48Now, ten years later, he'd mastered the language and could translate it into music.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53What man art thou that thus bescreened in night
0:45:53 > 0:45:55so stumblest on my counsel?
0:45:58 > 0:46:01I know not how to tell thee who I am.
0:46:01 > 0:46:04My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself
0:46:04 > 0:46:06because it is an enemy to thee.
0:46:16 > 0:46:22My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28Art thou not Romeo and a Montague?
0:46:28 > 0:46:31Neither, fair saint, if either thee displease.
0:46:58 > 0:47:02Three years after the premiere of Romeo and Juliet,
0:47:02 > 0:47:04he and Harriet's marriage failed and they separated.
0:47:04 > 0:47:07She died a decade later.
0:47:12 > 0:47:14Then, shortly before his own death,
0:47:14 > 0:47:18Berlioz returned to Grenoble in provincial France, where he'd been born.
0:47:21 > 0:47:23Over 60, lonely and in failing health,
0:47:23 > 0:47:25he was overcome by childhood memories.
0:47:32 > 0:47:36As a teenager, he'd been infatuated by a girl called Estelle.
0:47:36 > 0:47:44He now tracked her down and though she was a widow of 70, in his imagination, she seemed unchanged.
0:47:44 > 0:47:48"Star who brightened the morning of my life," he declared to her,
0:47:48 > 0:47:50"I should write you a symphony.
0:47:50 > 0:47:54"Only with the orchestra can I express what I feel for you."
0:48:00 > 0:48:05Berlioz's literary symphonies realised the potential for storytelling
0:48:05 > 0:48:08that Beethoven had first explored with his Pastoral Symphony.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13But the next step forward for symphonic writing was to come from
0:48:13 > 0:48:17a school of thought centred on a small town in Germany called Weimar.
0:48:20 > 0:48:24It was dominated by these two intellectual giants.
0:48:24 > 0:48:27The first, on the left, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
0:48:27 > 0:48:31and on the right, Friedrich Schiller, whose Ode To Joy
0:48:31 > 0:48:34Beethoven had set in his Ninth Symphony.
0:48:40 > 0:48:46Weimar was a powerhouse of political and philosophical thought in the middle of the 19th century.
0:48:46 > 0:48:49But it was one charismatic individual who was to put it on the musical map.
0:48:51 > 0:48:56And this is his distinctive piano arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth.
0:48:56 > 0:48:58He was the great Franz Liszt.
0:49:01 > 0:49:06When Liszt was offered the post of artist in residence by the court here in Weimar,
0:49:06 > 0:49:08many people were surprised.
0:49:08 > 0:49:12He was the most famous piano virtuoso in Europe,
0:49:12 > 0:49:17a personality and a talent that had been adored and celebrated like a rock star for 20 years
0:49:17 > 0:49:20but he had little experience of conducting
0:49:20 > 0:49:23and most of his compositions were for the piano.
0:49:23 > 0:49:28Why on earth would this flamboyant man take on the unfamiliar responsibilities
0:49:28 > 0:49:34of executive manager and conductor that his role as Kapellmeister extraordinaire required?
0:49:35 > 0:49:36Well...
0:49:38 > 0:49:41..perhaps THIS was part of the appeal.
0:49:47 > 0:49:52Unlike Beethoven and Berlioz, who never made much money from their careers as freelance musicians,
0:49:52 > 0:49:56Liszt was used to an affluent and comfortable lifestyle.
0:49:57 > 0:50:00Accepting the patronage of the Grand Duke of Weimar
0:50:00 > 0:50:05guaranteed that he could continue to live and work in the lavish style to which he'd become accustomed.
0:50:09 > 0:50:15In his first decade here, he wrote a dozen, not symphonies, but symphonic poems,
0:50:15 > 0:50:18single-movement works that use the full orchestra
0:50:18 > 0:50:22to explore new ways of pursuing a musical narrative.
0:50:24 > 0:50:28They were all programmatic and highly literate.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31His sources include Schiller and Shakespeare
0:50:31 > 0:50:34but they refrain from any kind of linear story.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37In their concentration on mood and character
0:50:37 > 0:50:40they were more like illustrations than translations.
0:50:45 > 0:50:50The idea was that this new music, this symphonic avant-garde,
0:50:50 > 0:50:52would speak to an educated audience that already knew
0:50:52 > 0:50:55the literature behind the work.
0:50:58 > 0:51:00His compositional ideas reflected
0:51:00 > 0:51:03his own individuality, his own flamboyance,
0:51:03 > 0:51:07his own egocentric personality, perhaps one could say.
0:51:07 > 0:51:13And he decided to go down a very dark and macabre path.
0:51:13 > 0:51:18So it was natural that he would be drawn to the great German play - Goethe's Faust.
0:51:31 > 0:51:36Liszt's first full-scale symphony is a powerful and disturbing orchestral companion piece
0:51:36 > 0:51:38to Goethe's poetic drama
0:51:38 > 0:51:42about a man who sells his soul to the devil,
0:51:42 > 0:51:47written for the inauguration of a statue in Weimar town square in 1857.
0:51:53 > 0:51:57Liszt was genuinely thrilled by both the Faust story
0:51:57 > 0:52:01and by the radical ideas about art and beauty that Goethe had developed.
0:52:04 > 0:52:08Goethe believed that excellence and good taste could unite
0:52:08 > 0:52:12the polarities of classicism with its concern for balance and proportion
0:52:12 > 0:52:17and the wilder philosophy of romanticism, which put the individual and his concerns
0:52:17 > 0:52:18at the centre of the universe.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27Liszt assumed that his educated audience were familiar with both Goethe's Faust
0:52:27 > 0:52:30and with the philosophy behind it.
0:52:30 > 0:52:33His ambition for his symphonic poetry was that it would convert
0:52:33 > 0:52:37the listener's existing intellectual thoughts into a visceral, emotional reaction.
0:52:43 > 0:52:48One of the best ways to look at a Liszt symphonic poem
0:52:48 > 0:52:52is to compare it with that period, you know, the silent film era
0:52:52 > 0:52:56where the pianists were dished out with certain quotations
0:52:56 > 0:52:59from various pieces of music that had moods and things.
0:52:59 > 0:53:03So you had, you know, crisis or melancholy
0:53:03 > 0:53:05and you'd go like this...
0:53:05 > 0:53:07HE PLAYS DRAMATICALLY
0:53:07 > 0:53:10Or something sentimental or pathetic...
0:53:10 > 0:53:13HE PLAYS EMOTIONALLY
0:53:15 > 0:53:20Just making that up, because Liszt is using all of these types,
0:53:20 > 0:53:22putting them together as a series of pictures.
0:53:37 > 0:53:43Each of the symphony's three movements depicts one of the drama's three key characters,
0:53:43 > 0:53:45starting with Faust himself.
0:53:45 > 0:53:51And Liszt plunges us straight into the maelstrom of this unfortunate soul's troubled, restless thoughts.
0:54:08 > 0:54:12The long, slow second movement is a portrait of Gretchen, the heroine.
0:54:20 > 0:54:24Here, two sections of the orchestra, the violins and the woodwind,
0:54:24 > 0:54:30interweave to evoke a simple girl thinking about her lover whilst plucking at the petals of a flower,
0:54:30 > 0:54:32he loves me, he loves me not.
0:54:53 > 0:54:56The third movement represents Mephistopheles.
0:54:56 > 0:54:59Liszt doesn't give Mephistopheles any original themes.
0:54:59 > 0:55:02Goethe maintained that evil couldn't create anything,
0:55:02 > 0:55:04it could only destroy.
0:55:04 > 0:55:09And so Faust's themes from the first movement are warped, mutilated,
0:55:09 > 0:55:12distorted by Mephistopheles' music,
0:55:12 > 0:55:15just as the hero himself succumbed to the devil.
0:55:39 > 0:55:43This was difficult music, sometimes violent and uncomfortable to listen to
0:55:43 > 0:55:47and many would reject it as unmusical.
0:55:47 > 0:55:51Liszt, who'd tasted success and adulation as a young piano superstar,
0:55:51 > 0:55:55now seemed happy to alienate casual listeners if necessary.
0:55:59 > 0:56:03But his ability to portray characters and their emotional lives through musical motifs
0:56:03 > 0:56:07was to influence, profoundly, many of his contemporaries.
0:56:07 > 0:56:09Richard Wagner visited Liszt in Weimar.
0:56:09 > 0:56:13He called symphonic poetry the music of the future,
0:56:13 > 0:56:17and freely admitted that he'd borrowed heavily from Liszt in his operas.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24Aside from his actual compositions, Liszt's other great contribution
0:56:24 > 0:56:31to the history of the symphony is his clever keyboard transcriptions of music by Beethoven and Berlioz.
0:56:31 > 0:56:35In an age before recording, these elegant versions of orchestral music
0:56:35 > 0:56:38that you could play at home on your own piano were essential
0:56:38 > 0:56:41in the disseminating and popularising of the symphony.
0:56:57 > 0:57:03By the middle of the 19th century, the symphony was seen as the supreme expression of a composer's art
0:57:03 > 0:57:06and its creators enshrined as heroes of the age.
0:57:06 > 0:57:10Here in the Zentralfriedhof, Vienna's main cemetery,
0:57:10 > 0:57:14two of our great symphonists found their final resting place.
0:57:14 > 0:57:18Beethoven, who was moved here some years after his death
0:57:18 > 0:57:22and Schubert, re-buried at the same time as Beethoven and lying,
0:57:22 > 0:57:27as he wished, apparently, just a few steps from his great predecessor.
0:57:33 > 0:57:36However, there was a serious problem.
0:57:36 > 0:57:40Now that Liszt and Berlioz had perfected the form's ability to tell stories,
0:57:40 > 0:57:42if supported by a literary text,
0:57:42 > 0:57:47had the abstract, pure music model - storytelling by instrumental sounds alone,
0:57:47 > 0:57:50died along with Beethoven and Schubert?
0:57:55 > 0:57:58But there were those who, while admitting there was a problem,
0:57:58 > 0:58:02refused to accept that it was insurmountable and pursued a different path,
0:58:02 > 0:58:06a new step forward in the history of the symphony.
0:58:10 > 0:58:16In the next episode, we trace Johannes Brahms' journey into the realm of pure music.
0:58:17 > 0:58:22To go deeper into the music and unravel the secrets of the symphony,
0:58:22 > 0:58:25follow the links to the Open University at:
0:58:46 > 0:58:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:48 > 0:58:50E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk