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