0:00:03 > 0:00:06What happened to classical music?
0:00:06 > 0:00:08For centuries,
0:00:08 > 0:00:13composers created music that sang with beautiful melody and harmony.
0:00:13 > 0:00:17Then suddenly, just over 100 years ago,
0:00:17 > 0:00:20a battle began for the very soul of music.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29The early 20th century was an explosion of possibilities.
0:00:29 > 0:00:35The spirit of the day was to experiment,
0:00:35 > 0:00:38to seek out new sounds,
0:00:38 > 0:00:41moving really almost for the first time
0:00:41 > 0:00:46in musical history into the sphere of pure noise.
0:00:48 > 0:00:52In concert halls across the world, radical new composers decided
0:00:52 > 0:00:57they'd had enough of the staple diet of Beethoven and Mozart
0:00:57 > 0:01:01There was a certain point in music where it was very mental.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07Screechy music. Pots and pans music.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11My cat could write that music.
0:01:11 > 0:01:14Listening to it makes my head want to explode.
0:01:15 > 0:01:17As the century progressed,
0:01:17 > 0:01:21many composers experimented with the boundaries of sound.
0:01:21 > 0:01:25Their music became more and more confrontational, extreme,
0:01:25 > 0:01:27and challenging.
0:01:27 > 0:01:29The rule book was torn up.
0:01:29 > 0:01:31I mean, let's make a noise that nobody likes.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37If the audience applauded your work, you'd failed as a composer.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40I long for the days of 19th century opera where somebody would
0:01:40 > 0:01:43just stand up and start yelling. Say, "Stop this madness!"
0:01:47 > 0:01:51But the 20th century was also one of the most extreme periods in history,
0:01:51 > 0:01:59civil unrest, dictators, brutal wars, and the atom bomb.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05The rebels of modern music said they were simply reflecting
0:02:05 > 0:02:09the turmoil and madness of the world they lived in.
0:02:09 > 0:02:11It was almost as if the history of music had been
0:02:11 > 0:02:13in black and white before.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15Music, like culture, like civilisation in the West,
0:02:15 > 0:02:17cannot stand still.
0:02:19 > 0:02:21You have to destroy to grow.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25This is the story of a revolution in sound,
0:02:25 > 0:02:30of how avant-garde composers broke from the melodic mainstream,
0:02:30 > 0:02:34and catapulted classical music from beauty into beyond.
0:02:34 > 0:02:42This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting
0:02:48 > 0:02:53One legendary evening in May, 1906, the great and the good of the
0:02:53 > 0:02:58classical music world descended on the elegant Austrian city of Graz.
0:03:00 > 0:03:03They had travelled from far and wide to see an opera that had been
0:03:03 > 0:03:05banned by the Court Opera in Vienna.
0:03:09 > 0:03:13Its composer was an unlikely rebel, Richard Strauss,
0:03:13 > 0:03:19the 42 year-old, German whose lush, romantic music had made him a star.
0:03:19 > 0:03:22But this was no ordinary opera.
0:03:22 > 0:03:27It was Salome, a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde's scandalous play
0:03:27 > 0:03:32about Princess Judea's necrophiliac lust for John the Baptist,
0:03:32 > 0:03:36and it ushered in a century of musical scandals.
0:03:38 > 0:03:40Strauss was conducting.
0:03:40 > 0:03:42Mahler was there,
0:03:42 > 0:03:46Schoenberg came with no fewer than six of his pupils.
0:03:46 > 0:03:50Puccini took the trip up from Italy to see
0:03:50 > 0:03:52what his operatic rival had come up with.
0:03:52 > 0:03:58And then there is this rumour that the teenage Adolf Hitler was present.
0:03:58 > 0:04:03Hitler himself, in fact, told Strauss's son that he was there.
0:04:04 > 0:04:06So it was very scandalous.
0:04:06 > 0:04:10I mean, you know, Wilde had undergone his
0:04:10 > 0:04:12trial and imprisonment
0:04:12 > 0:04:18and his name was simply not spoken in many circles.
0:04:18 > 0:04:20It was somewhat daring,
0:04:20 > 0:04:25I think, of Strauss to make an opera on an Oscar Wilde text.
0:04:28 > 0:04:32Even today, Salome is daring and shocking,
0:04:32 > 0:04:35a depraved trip into the underbelly of human emotion.
0:04:37 > 0:04:39But in 1906 it was beyond the pale.
0:04:41 > 0:04:44Its original leading lady, Marie Wittich,
0:04:44 > 0:04:47refused to perform its erotic dance, or kiss John the Baptist's
0:04:47 > 0:04:50severed head, because she was too respectable.
0:04:51 > 0:04:56Strauss was giving us sado-masochism and the unconscious,
0:04:56 > 0:05:01showing that life is full of volcanic feelings and temperaments
0:05:01 > 0:05:06and so forth, and so you have really a blood fest in Salome.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08You have the head of St John the Baptist,
0:05:08 > 0:05:12and then you have Salome herself crushed to death at the end.
0:05:12 > 0:05:13People didn't like it.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17They found it painful, inharmonious indecent.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35But Strauss saved the biggest shock till the end.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39A short burst of unholy sound that has been called
0:05:39 > 0:05:42"the most sickening chord in all opera."
0:05:51 > 0:05:55With just eight notes of dissonance, Strauss captured the volcanic
0:05:55 > 0:06:01temperament of the new century and fired up a musical revolution.
0:06:01 > 0:06:04It's still a thrilling and successful piece,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07and still a little unsettling.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11It is amazing to hear these sounds coming out of nowhere,
0:06:11 > 0:06:17out of Strauss's imagination that simply no-one had thought of before.
0:06:23 > 0:06:26But the wind of change in classical music had been stirring
0:06:26 > 0:06:32since the end of the 19th century, in Paris, a city already
0:06:32 > 0:06:38enthralled to the sights, sounds and possibilities of a new modern world.
0:06:38 > 0:06:41Paris then, in the 1880s/1890s, in terms of literature
0:06:41 > 0:06:44and in terms of bubble of painting, but also of music, all the arts,
0:06:44 > 0:06:48was just bursting at its seams with imagination and genius.
0:06:50 > 0:06:54There was a universal exposition in Paris in 1889 to mark
0:06:54 > 0:06:58the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution.
0:06:58 > 0:07:01And that's when the Eiffel Tower went up.
0:07:01 > 0:07:04And the very form and size of the Eiffel Tower
0:07:04 > 0:07:07is a kind of modernist symbol.
0:07:07 > 0:07:12And had this amazing 260 acre site in the centre of Paris
0:07:12 > 0:07:17with 36 turnstiles admitting a thousand people a minute.
0:07:17 > 0:07:20That's how vast it was.
0:07:22 > 0:07:25Among the millions inspired by the exotic sights
0:07:25 > 0:07:31and sounds of the Paris Expo was the 27-year-old Claude Debussy,
0:07:31 > 0:07:35a composer with a mission to drive music into the 20th century.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40Debussy is a unique figure.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43He probably is the start of what we call modern music.
0:07:43 > 0:07:45He was very ambitious.
0:07:45 > 0:07:47He said something along the lines of,
0:07:47 > 0:07:49"I must invent a music that's worthy of the motor car
0:07:49 > 0:07:52"and the era of the aeroplane and the Eiffel Tower."
0:07:52 > 0:07:56Debussy went to the Paris exhibition in 1889
0:07:56 > 0:07:59and he heard all sorts of music from all over the world.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02And he was just absolutely gobsmacked.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06None of this had been heard by Westerners before.
0:08:06 > 0:08:10And one of the key things he heard was the Javanese Gamelan.
0:08:10 > 0:08:14The Gamelan's an ensemble, an orchestra of gongs of all
0:08:14 > 0:08:17different sizes, metallophones and xylophones.
0:08:19 > 0:08:23And the sound itself is extremely sonorous.
0:08:23 > 0:08:26It's a completely different world.
0:08:26 > 0:08:32This had a cataclysmic effect on the sound that Debussy's music made.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49In 1894, Debussy fused the sounds of the Eastern
0:08:49 > 0:08:54and Western worlds into a modern masterpiece, a unique sonic tapestry
0:08:54 > 0:08:58that threw open the doors to a century of musical innovation.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08Prelude To The Afternoon Of The Faun is considered, perhaps, to be
0:09:08 > 0:09:13the great radical piece of the late 19th century.
0:09:13 > 0:09:16It did not cause too great a scandal in its time,
0:09:16 > 0:09:22even if there was a camp who thought that Debussy had gone over the edge.
0:09:22 > 0:09:24But you are moving
0:09:24 > 0:09:27into a new world with the Afternoon Of A Faun.
0:09:30 > 0:09:34You could say that that opening flute melody
0:09:34 > 0:09:37is the start of modern music.
0:09:37 > 0:09:40You have this sole, lone instrument.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46A melody that's suspended in space,
0:09:46 > 0:09:50and there's an immediate sense of disorientation.
0:10:01 > 0:10:05And then the way in which the music proceeds
0:10:05 > 0:10:12in this free-flowing organic sort of stream of consciousness almost,
0:10:12 > 0:10:17is the opposite of the very directional classical music,
0:10:17 > 0:10:20Brahms, Beethoven.
0:10:20 > 0:10:22And when it was heard by that audience
0:10:22 > 0:10:24in the middle of the 1890s in Paris,
0:10:24 > 0:10:28it would not have been unstrange, it would have been very strange indeed.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31MUSIC: Prelude A L'Apres-Midi D'un Faune
0:10:31 > 0:10:34Debussy argued that composers had a duty to
0:10:34 > 0:10:38"evoke the progress of modern days."
0:10:38 > 0:10:40If classical music was to survive,
0:10:40 > 0:10:44it had to adapt to the dynamism and uproar of the modern world.
0:10:44 > 0:10:48The early years of the 20th century were probably the greatest
0:10:48 > 0:10:50period of innovation in history.
0:10:50 > 0:10:52There's a whole raft of new discoveries.
0:10:52 > 0:10:56You have everything from the invention of flight, the
0:10:56 > 0:11:02invention of the cinema, relativity, Freud's theories of the unconscious.
0:11:02 > 0:11:06You've got all of these things coming within a generation.
0:11:06 > 0:11:10There's this feeling about that this really is a new age.
0:11:10 > 0:11:13And Ezra Pound said it clearly,
0:11:13 > 0:11:15"Make it new, make it new, make it new."
0:11:17 > 0:11:22All over Europe, artists dismantled the old forms of their art,
0:11:22 > 0:11:26inventing radical new styles that perplexed and shocked.
0:11:27 > 0:11:32This was the birth of the century's most dramatic cultural revolution,
0:11:32 > 0:11:36the movement that became known as modernism.
0:11:36 > 0:11:40Modernism turned the world round and saw it from different angles.
0:11:40 > 0:11:44But that's what... That is what each epoch has tended to do to music,
0:11:44 > 0:11:45each century.
0:11:45 > 0:11:48Music changes, it develops, it alters.
0:11:48 > 0:11:51I mean, there are aspects of modernism which were extreme
0:11:51 > 0:11:55very extreme, but tremendously exciting as well.
0:11:55 > 0:11:57And there was a very great
0:11:57 > 0:11:59and violent rejection of elements of the past.
0:12:10 > 0:12:14Nowhere were the shockwaves more violently felt than in the city
0:12:14 > 0:12:18that was virtually a byword for classical music, Vienna.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25For 100 years, the capital of the Austral Hungarian Empire had
0:12:25 > 0:12:31worshipped the giants of romanticism - Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven.
0:12:32 > 0:12:35Sophisticated bourgeois audiences flocked to concerts of this
0:12:35 > 0:12:38exquisite, melodic music.
0:12:38 > 0:12:42What chance then, for a rebellious modern composer?
0:12:43 > 0:12:48I try to put myself in a position of a composer during that time.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53You know, they may have felt much more bludgeoned
0:12:53 > 0:12:56by tradition than we understand.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59They may have wanted to go in just the opposite direction,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02which is what we as composers very often do.
0:13:02 > 0:13:04It's our only way to be original,
0:13:04 > 0:13:08is to do the opposite of what is a big deal.
0:13:12 > 0:13:15Step forward, Arnold Schoenberg,
0:13:15 > 0:13:19a formidable Austrian painter, inventor,
0:13:19 > 0:13:25and, most significantly, composer whose bloody-minded musical vision
0:13:25 > 0:13:30hit the refined world of Viennese concert halls like a wrecking ball.
0:13:30 > 0:13:32Music would never be the same again.
0:13:34 > 0:13:39I am asking myself, "Would the music of the 20th century
0:13:39 > 0:13:42"be changed if Schoenberg had not been born?"
0:13:43 > 0:13:48And I say, "Yes, the life of music would have been totally
0:13:48 > 0:13:52"changed if Schoenberg would not have existed."
0:13:52 > 0:13:54And poor Schoenberg.
0:13:54 > 0:13:58You know, he carries the great weight of
0:13:58 > 0:14:03causing this terrible rot that happened in classical music.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07And I think, Schoenberg especially, is such a tragic figure,
0:14:07 > 0:14:10at least to me, because he started with such promise.
0:14:10 > 0:14:13You look at his early pieces, they're so beautiful,
0:14:13 > 0:14:18high romantic music, and then he found this other way.
0:14:22 > 0:14:27Schoenberg was a loose cannon in the Viennese musical world.
0:14:27 > 0:14:31Largely self-taught, but brimming with confidence.
0:14:31 > 0:14:34He wanted nothing more than to overthrow the very rules
0:14:34 > 0:14:40of music itself, to be tune-less, rather than tuneful.
0:14:42 > 0:14:46The beautiful melodies of traditional Viennese music
0:14:46 > 0:14:48were rooted in consonance,
0:14:48 > 0:14:52complementary notes and chords that were harmonious to the ear.
0:14:52 > 0:14:55But Schoenberg embraced the opposite, dissonance.
0:14:55 > 0:15:01He used harsh, clashing patterns of notes,
0:15:01 > 0:15:04that were tonally at war with each other.
0:15:07 > 0:15:09His aim was to set music free.
0:15:10 > 0:15:14He spoke grandly of his "emancipation of the dissonance."
0:15:17 > 0:15:20When Schoenberg first emancipated the dissonance,
0:15:20 > 0:15:25first, you know, moved away from the big tonal centres,
0:15:25 > 0:15:30the home keys of classical and romantic music.
0:15:30 > 0:15:32Every sense of anything that was resembling home
0:15:32 > 0:15:34seems to have been taken away.
0:15:34 > 0:15:38MUSIC: Three Piano Pieces
0:15:49 > 0:15:55Schoenberg was working to explode the parameters of harmony,
0:15:55 > 0:15:58and his harmony is a complex beast.
0:16:00 > 0:16:03It's a difficult thing to understand and engage with.
0:16:08 > 0:16:15I find most of his music amazingly aurally ugly.
0:16:19 > 0:16:24I've never ever been able to find a way into really loving it.
0:16:25 > 0:16:32I find it just sensually very, very punishing to my ear.
0:16:36 > 0:16:41The sound-world is just sort of angsty and very, sort of, brittle.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46You would think by now that Schoenberg would be
0:16:46 > 0:16:49standard repertoire and nobody would have a problem with it.
0:16:49 > 0:16:52But I think it's really interesting that quite a few of those pieces
0:16:52 > 0:16:55around that time are still difficult for 21st century audiences.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09Difficult today, scandalous then.
0:17:09 > 0:17:15With his Second String Quartet, Schoenberg unveiled atonal music,
0:17:15 > 0:17:19a seemingly shapeless concoction of jarring sounds
0:17:19 > 0:17:22which tormented the audience into loud booing,
0:17:22 > 0:17:25and provoked a critic to scream, "Stop it!"
0:17:28 > 0:17:33For the composer, it was visionary, for the listeners, it was cacophony.
0:17:37 > 0:17:42There's a famous moment where the soprano sings a Stefan George poem,
0:17:42 > 0:17:46"Ich fuhle luft von anderem Planeten."
0:17:46 > 0:17:48"I feel the air of under of another planet."
0:18:12 > 0:18:15And it's at that moment that Schoenberg's music, it is said,
0:18:15 > 0:18:20develops or goes into a kind of atonal sphere.
0:18:20 > 0:18:23But have a think about what the words are there.
0:18:23 > 0:18:27You know, it's a stroke of composition and imagination,
0:18:27 > 0:18:30absolutely not a kind of attempt to sort of shock people.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33It's actually about, you know, what's the best way of
0:18:33 > 0:18:35expressing what's happening in that poem?
0:18:35 > 0:18:37Air of other planets, non-gravitational music.
0:18:37 > 0:18:40Well, the most obvious thing to do, frankly, would be to write
0:18:40 > 0:18:43music that is unmoored, that isn't anchored to tonal centre
0:18:43 > 0:18:47and doesn't give you that same sense of homecoming and going away
0:18:47 > 0:18:50from things that basically a lot of music before had been based on.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58When Schoenberg is finding these things, he's finding them
0:18:58 > 0:19:01because he has to, cos he has to express something
0:19:01 > 0:19:04at the absolute extremes of human emotion.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07It's music that's rendered as absolutely as pure feeling.
0:19:33 > 0:19:37He was a bit of an emotional wreck at the time.
0:19:37 > 0:19:41There was turmoil in his personal life.
0:19:41 > 0:19:46He discovered, in the summer of 1908, that his wife was having an affair
0:19:46 > 0:19:50with an unstable expressionist painter named Richard Gerstl,
0:19:50 > 0:19:55who ended up committing suicide by hanging himself in his studio.
0:19:55 > 0:19:58And Schoenberg, he was Jewish in Vienna, and I think
0:19:58 > 0:20:02this was a factor as well, in terms of his feeling of being watched
0:20:02 > 0:20:05from all sides and measured up.
0:20:05 > 0:20:11And as he went on, his situation as a Jew in that world
0:20:11 > 0:20:14became more and more important to him.
0:20:19 > 0:20:22Schoenberg was fuelled by rage and disgust.
0:20:24 > 0:20:28He saw Viennese society as sick, anti-Semitic, desperately
0:20:28 > 0:20:32clinging to the coat-tails of its decadent, imperialist past.
0:20:35 > 0:20:38In an age of psychoanalysis and expressionist art,
0:20:38 > 0:20:40his music was forward-thinking.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43It was the audience that was backward.
0:20:43 > 0:20:46He stood tall in the face of rejection.
0:20:46 > 0:20:51"If I must commit artistic suicide," he announced, "I must live by it."
0:20:53 > 0:20:59Schoenberg was aggressive. He was such a prickly individual.
0:20:59 > 0:21:02There was a very powerful and, in some cases,
0:21:02 > 0:21:07dark emotion at work in this music, which was the music Vienna
0:21:07 > 0:21:12at that time where so many artists and writers were playing
0:21:12 > 0:21:15with these, these very dark and extreme emotions.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22If you think of these harsh and angular images of Kokoschka
0:21:22 > 0:21:27or Egon Schiele, it was the style of that time in Vienna
0:21:27 > 0:21:31to really confront the audience, to show them things
0:21:31 > 0:21:33that they didn't want to see,
0:21:33 > 0:21:39to expose the dark underside of human life, to go to the dark side.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45Oh, there was definitely something in the air.
0:21:45 > 0:21:47I mean, whether we... With the benefit of hindsight,
0:21:47 > 0:21:50we can see the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire
0:21:50 > 0:21:53and the degeneration of that environment.
0:21:53 > 0:21:55The thing that Schoenberg did, of course,
0:21:55 > 0:21:58was to take those moments of crisis to another level.
0:21:58 > 0:22:04And it's through that kind of crisis that he actually steps into
0:22:04 > 0:22:07this abyss, as it's called, you know, the abyss of no tonal centre,
0:22:07 > 0:22:11which is what the audiences at the time found disturbing and difficult.
0:22:13 > 0:22:16But Schoenberg's music of crisis didn't just upset their ears.
0:22:18 > 0:22:20By seemingly rejecting two centuries' worth
0:22:20 > 0:22:24of music tradition, audiences felt his work was
0:22:24 > 0:22:28a slap in the face to their culture of beauty and refinement.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33There are musical reasons for these cataclysmic audience reactions,
0:22:33 > 0:22:35but there are also social reasons.
0:22:35 > 0:22:38The growing bourgeoisie in the cities across Europe,
0:22:38 > 0:22:40they expected music to behave like they wanted.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44They cared desperately about this music.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48And to hear these weird sounds where the rules of harmony break down,
0:22:48 > 0:22:51seemed like an attack, not only on their artistic world,
0:22:51 > 0:22:55but on themselves, on their universe, in fact, on their society.
0:23:02 > 0:23:07My father was not discrediting, and he said that over and over again,
0:23:07 > 0:23:10he was not discrediting the past, he was saying,
0:23:10 > 0:23:13"I am living in a certain period
0:23:13 > 0:23:21"and I'm going to evolve from what was proper in another period."
0:23:21 > 0:23:25In a lot of other disciplines people do want to be modern,
0:23:25 > 0:23:28and they do want to have change,
0:23:28 > 0:23:33and it seems like in music people would rather stay with the old.
0:23:38 > 0:23:42It was only a few years earlier that Debussy and Strauss had paved
0:23:42 > 0:23:45the way for Schoenberg's radical reinvention of music's language.
0:23:45 > 0:23:48If the public couldn't get to grips with it,
0:23:48 > 0:23:51surely at least his fellow composers could?
0:23:53 > 0:23:57I think Schoenberg thought that of all people, Richard Strauss,
0:23:57 > 0:24:00the composer of Salome and Elektra,
0:24:00 > 0:24:03would understand what he was trying to do.
0:24:03 > 0:24:09But Strauss did not at all comprehend what Schoenberg was trying to do
0:24:09 > 0:24:13and thought that he had gone off at the deep end,
0:24:13 > 0:24:15as so many other people were saying at the time.
0:24:15 > 0:24:21And there was really then a serious falling out between them when
0:24:21 > 0:24:26Schoenberg discovered that Strauss had written a letter saying that
0:24:26 > 0:24:29Schoenberg would be better off shovelling snow
0:24:29 > 0:24:32than writing on music paper.
0:24:32 > 0:24:34And so that was the end of that really.
0:24:34 > 0:24:36Down, but not out.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39Atonality continued its forward march,
0:24:39 > 0:24:43for Schoenberg had partners in crime.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47Two of his former pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern,
0:24:47 > 0:24:51had become converts to the "emancipation of the dissonance."
0:24:51 > 0:24:55When quizzed about their music's absence of tonality,
0:24:55 > 0:24:57Webern snapped, "We broke its neck."
0:25:09 > 0:25:11Oh, Webern is a strange animal.
0:25:11 > 0:25:16He was a strange, lonely, quiet, melancholy man,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19very, very sensitive. Nervous as well.
0:25:29 > 0:25:32And he evolved through the encouragement and above all,
0:25:32 > 0:25:35through the technical expertise that Schoenberg gave him.
0:25:35 > 0:25:37One of the most amazingly individual
0:25:37 > 0:25:41and poetic styles of music that we've ever had in Western music.
0:25:52 > 0:25:54Webern's breakthrough works were the polar opposite
0:25:54 > 0:25:57of grand 19th century symphonies.
0:25:58 > 0:26:01They were brief and fragmented.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05He arranged musical notes as if they were
0:26:05 > 0:26:08brushstrokes on an abstract painting.
0:26:10 > 0:26:13Schoenberg himself described them as
0:26:13 > 0:26:16"a novel contained within a single sigh."
0:26:24 > 0:26:26Webern's music just moves.
0:26:26 > 0:26:28It behaves in a completely different way,
0:26:28 > 0:26:33so it's more like looking at a crystal under a microscope or
0:26:33 > 0:26:37thinking about the way that plants form and develop.
0:26:37 > 0:26:41And it's able, I think, to do strange things with space and time.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48You feel that time moves in a special way
0:26:48 > 0:26:53and you feel yourself hovering, almost weightless.
0:26:57 > 0:27:01His music is so deprived of most of the sensual pleasures of music.
0:27:01 > 0:27:06It doesn't have great energy, it doesn't have a massive sound.
0:27:06 > 0:27:10He had a sort of fanatical belief in the structures that he was
0:27:10 > 0:27:13creating as if they had some sort of deep, universal,
0:27:13 > 0:27:15mystical truth about them.
0:27:17 > 0:27:22I like Webern, but I also find it emotionally stingy.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26Webern fit a certain kind of sensibility of the time,
0:27:26 > 0:27:30which is that he was very tightly wired.
0:27:34 > 0:27:40His organisation of all the elements of the music was something
0:27:40 > 0:27:43that gave particular kinds of anal retentives,
0:27:43 > 0:27:46just, you know, a frisson of pleasure.
0:27:52 > 0:27:57No element in the music was spontaneously generated or intuitive.
0:27:57 > 0:28:05It's the scientific imposition onto an artistic activity.
0:28:05 > 0:28:07MUSIC: Five Orchestral Pieces
0:28:07 > 0:28:12With their unfathomable music receiving few performances, atonal
0:28:12 > 0:28:15composers were forced to conduct and to teach to make a living.
0:28:22 > 0:28:24But they were undaunted.
0:28:24 > 0:28:27They saw themselves making a quantum leap in music,
0:28:27 > 0:28:31the equivalent of Einstein's discoveries in physics.
0:28:32 > 0:28:36And just as few people could figure out e=mc squared,
0:28:36 > 0:28:40so atonality was unashamedly complex.
0:28:41 > 0:28:45"If it is art," Schoenberg said, "it is not for all.
0:28:45 > 0:28:47"And if it is for all, it is not art."
0:28:49 > 0:28:54Modernism was, and maybe still is, elitist.
0:28:54 > 0:29:01Composers felt that only people that were educated or had some sort
0:29:01 > 0:29:07of genius or talent could really appreciate what was being said.
0:29:09 > 0:29:10The rise of scientific thinking
0:29:10 > 0:29:12and critical thinking changed everything.
0:29:12 > 0:29:16And classical music became so intellectual
0:29:16 > 0:29:22that it couldn't be enjoyed, or that it wasn't allowed to be enjoyed,
0:29:22 > 0:29:24by a common audience member.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28His argument was - I'm working at this level
0:29:28 > 0:29:31and it's up to you to have the education
0:29:31 > 0:29:33and the experience to come and understand it.
0:29:33 > 0:29:35I'm at the mountaintop, you come to me.
0:29:39 > 0:29:43But not all modernist composers were quite so lofty and alienating.
0:29:43 > 0:29:47While Viennese audiences scratched their heads at atonality,
0:29:47 > 0:29:50Parisians were wowed by the inventions
0:29:50 > 0:29:53of a gregarious Russian emigre who became arguably
0:29:53 > 0:29:57the most popular modernist of all, Igor Stravinsky.
0:29:57 > 0:29:59For me, it's just an open and shut case. If you say,
0:29:59 > 0:30:03"Who's the greatest composer of the 20th century?" It's Igor Stravinsky.
0:30:03 > 0:30:05You know, is there any further discussion?
0:30:05 > 0:30:07I don't have any further discussion.
0:30:07 > 0:30:10Although I love Schoenberg and Berg and Webern,
0:30:10 > 0:30:11I mean, Stravinsky is my God.
0:30:11 > 0:30:15I first saw Stravinsky conduct when I was 11 years old.
0:30:15 > 0:30:20And I later played under his direction and he had such a sparkle
0:30:20 > 0:30:23and such a curiosity, a delight,
0:30:23 > 0:30:27it was so clear how much he enjoyed composing.
0:30:27 > 0:30:34The interest of my life, my everyday life, is to make.
0:30:37 > 0:30:42Stravinsky, a former law student who arrived in Paris in 1910,
0:30:42 > 0:30:44was not without his own share of controversy.
0:30:45 > 0:30:50In 1913, at Paris's Theatre de Champs Elysees,
0:30:50 > 0:30:53his score for a controversial new ballet sparked the most
0:30:53 > 0:30:55legendary riot in all 20th century music.
0:30:57 > 0:30:59An orchestral force of nature,
0:30:59 > 0:31:04The Rite Of Spring was a musical jolt that packed a mighty punch.
0:31:13 > 0:31:15I was about 13 years old
0:31:15 > 0:31:18when I heard The Rite Of Spring for the first time.
0:31:19 > 0:31:21It was like opening the door to a world that I'd never
0:31:21 > 0:31:25conceived of before. I mean, it was just so powerful.
0:31:25 > 0:31:27Talk about visceral with a capital V.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31It was just completely overwhelming.
0:31:32 > 0:31:35Every time you hear The Rite Of Spring today
0:31:35 > 0:31:37you're always taken by surprise.
0:31:37 > 0:31:38You have this rhythm coming at you.
0:31:38 > 0:31:42One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
0:31:42 > 0:31:44One, TWO, three, FOUR, five, six, seven, eight.
0:31:44 > 0:31:46One, TWO, three, four, FIVE, six, seven, eight.
0:31:46 > 0:31:48ONE, two, three, four, five, SIX, seven, eight.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52And it's like a boxer coming at you from all angles.
0:31:52 > 0:31:56You never know where the next blow is going to land.
0:31:57 > 0:32:01And that particular section, this is where the big riot
0:32:01 > 0:32:05broke out in the Theatre de Champs Elysees in 1913.
0:32:07 > 0:32:14Just full of very noisy public. A very austere public.
0:32:17 > 0:32:24And so I went out and I heard all this noise. I said, "Go to hell!
0:32:24 > 0:32:28"Excuse me, Monsieur, Madame and goodbye."
0:32:36 > 0:32:39The Rite of Spring collapsed the rules of rhythm
0:32:39 > 0:32:41making it jarring and unpredictable,
0:32:41 > 0:32:44just like Schoenberg had done with melody.
0:32:46 > 0:32:48Yet Schoenberg felt Stravinsky was merely
0:32:48 > 0:32:51dipping his toe in the troubled water of modernism,
0:32:51 > 0:32:57still holding on to old modes of harmony and tonality.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01He nick-named his great rival the little modernsky.
0:33:02 > 0:33:05Stravinsky had a very different attitude to melody
0:33:05 > 0:33:07and harmony from Schoenberg.
0:33:07 > 0:33:12He was much more about taking what we know and fragmenting it
0:33:12 > 0:33:15in an almost cubist type way.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22You get one very familiar harmony and another very familiar harmony
0:33:22 > 0:33:24and they're juxtaposed together
0:33:24 > 0:33:26so that they sound really crunchy and dissonant.
0:33:33 > 0:33:37It's a bit like Picasso sort of cutting up an image of a violin,
0:33:37 > 0:33:41it's something very familiar, but it's fractured and fragmented.
0:33:50 > 0:33:53Stravinsky placed himself at the heart of
0:33:53 > 0:33:57the 20th century revolution in European culture.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05He'd gone to Paris to escape the imperial music of his native Russia,
0:34:05 > 0:34:09dominated by the rousing nationalism of his teacher,
0:34:09 > 0:34:12Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov.
0:34:12 > 0:34:16Yet ironically, his radical compositions were unthinkable
0:34:16 > 0:34:18without the old tunes of his homeland.
0:34:21 > 0:34:24You have these dissonances in Stravinsky
0:34:24 > 0:34:26in The Rite of Spring and even before,
0:34:26 > 0:34:29in Firebird and Petrushka,
0:34:29 > 0:34:32but they come from a completely different source.
0:34:32 > 0:34:35They come, to a great extent, from folk music.
0:34:39 > 0:34:44Stravinsky is delving into folk music,
0:34:44 > 0:34:47Eastern Europe, Russia,
0:34:47 > 0:34:50the sounds of the rural population,
0:34:50 > 0:34:55trying to listen more closely than others had done before.
0:35:01 > 0:35:05And to try to think about, well, how can I really capture what
0:35:05 > 0:35:10it's like to see people sort of dancing in the street of a village?
0:35:12 > 0:35:15What would that sound like and how can I make it different
0:35:15 > 0:35:18from the conventional music of the present?
0:35:35 > 0:35:39In Russia, reception of Stravinsky's music was difficult.
0:35:39 > 0:35:43There was great suspicion about the kind of nationalism
0:35:43 > 0:35:45that Stravinsky created.
0:35:45 > 0:35:48For example, Rimsky-Korsakov's son, Andre Rimsky-Korsakov,
0:35:48 > 0:35:51stopped speaking to Stravinsky after Petrushka
0:35:51 > 0:35:55because he felt that this folk material was distorted.
0:35:55 > 0:35:57It was presented in an ironic way.
0:35:57 > 0:35:59It was like he was making fun of all these tunes.
0:35:59 > 0:36:03And that was not the good way of his father Rimsky Korsakov,
0:36:03 > 0:36:05who glorified these tunes.
0:36:05 > 0:36:08And Stravinsky didn't do that, yeah, he sort of cut them up,
0:36:08 > 0:36:10sliced them up, and you know,
0:36:10 > 0:36:13served it as a completely different sort of modernist dish.
0:36:18 > 0:36:21Early Stravinsky is an extremely nationalistic composer.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24And this was another aspect of modernism,
0:36:24 > 0:36:28this idea of people strongly departing from the
0:36:28 > 0:36:31Austro-German Empire's musical language, and writing with the
0:36:31 > 0:36:35help of indigenous music and folk tunes above all, a type of music
0:36:35 > 0:36:40which reflects their society, their civilisation, on the world stage.
0:36:53 > 0:36:56In the capitals of early 20th century Europe,
0:36:56 > 0:37:00modernism had transformed classical music.
0:37:00 > 0:37:03It would soon rear its head thousands of miles away,
0:37:03 > 0:37:05in the New World, America.
0:37:08 > 0:37:12At the turn of the century, America was a nation in transition,
0:37:12 > 0:37:15only 40 years since the Civil War,
0:37:15 > 0:37:18but on the brink of becoming the most powerful country in the world.
0:37:20 > 0:37:24Its music, too, was poised between the comfort of the old
0:37:24 > 0:37:26and the shock of the new.
0:37:28 > 0:37:32The American culture was a very conservative atmosphere.
0:37:32 > 0:37:35There were these wonderful orchestras and opera houses,
0:37:35 > 0:37:38but the repertory was heavily European.
0:37:38 > 0:37:43There wasn't a sense yet of a new absolutely American sound
0:37:43 > 0:37:45or even an individual sound.
0:37:45 > 0:37:49I mean, there were very few composers that you could identify
0:37:49 > 0:37:51as really having a very strong personality.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01Enter a maverick New Englander, lauded as the pilgrim father
0:38:01 > 0:38:05of modern American music, Charles Ives.
0:38:05 > 0:38:07# Hip hip hooray
0:38:07 > 0:38:10# You'll hear them say... #
0:38:10 > 0:38:14Charles Ives trained in music at Yale
0:38:14 > 0:38:17right at the turn of the century, and then he dropped out.
0:38:17 > 0:38:20He disappeared, from the music world, at least.
0:38:20 > 0:38:22He went into life insurance
0:38:22 > 0:38:25and became a very successful life insurance executive.
0:38:25 > 0:38:29Made a great deal of money for himself and for his company.
0:38:29 > 0:38:32He was a master of the hard sell,
0:38:32 > 0:38:37he would show door-to-door salespeople how to relentlessly
0:38:37 > 0:38:43get the product across so that people couldn't resist, in a way.
0:38:43 > 0:38:46And in music he was the complete the opposite.
0:38:46 > 0:38:51He continued composing, but in almost total privacy, isolation.
0:38:51 > 0:38:55It was a long time before a lot of pieces by Ives were even played.
0:39:04 > 0:39:08For me, Ives is America's most important modernist composer.
0:39:11 > 0:39:14And it's no accident that so many of these composers,
0:39:14 > 0:39:20Stravinsky, Ives, are so heavily based on vernacular music.
0:39:20 > 0:39:24It's village music, it's folk music, but it's abstracted
0:39:24 > 0:39:28and taken to remarkably visionary places.
0:39:31 > 0:39:33It's almost a photo album, a sonic photo album,
0:39:33 > 0:39:38because you're literally hearing the sounds of America
0:39:38 > 0:39:39at the time that he was alive.
0:39:39 > 0:39:42He's taken the sounds of marching bands,
0:39:42 > 0:39:45of quartets that he'd heard, church hymnals,
0:39:45 > 0:39:49the sounds of his life and integrated them into the music.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52Sometimes layered over the top of each other.
0:39:52 > 0:39:57It's evocative of America, first because it is America.
0:40:02 > 0:40:05Ives took the humble, homespun tunes of his childhood,
0:40:05 > 0:40:08chopped them up like Stravinsky, then collapsed them
0:40:08 > 0:40:13into a discordant jigsaw of sound as jarring and radical as Schoenberg.
0:40:13 > 0:40:16But his music didn't challenge or disturb his audience,
0:40:16 > 0:40:19because he didn't have one.
0:40:19 > 0:40:22He was a lone modernist voice in an old world country.
0:40:25 > 0:40:30America was a very raw young country, and Charles Ives
0:40:30 > 0:40:36simply arrived at a too early time in our country's development.
0:40:36 > 0:40:44And I think he also felt strangely bifurcated.
0:40:44 > 0:40:48You know, he felt he had to be a businessman
0:40:48 > 0:40:53and a good American, a good Protestant ethic kind of guy.
0:40:53 > 0:40:58And then he had this other side, which was his creative side,
0:40:58 > 0:41:04and you know, in New York City and Connecticut in 1890,
0:41:04 > 0:41:08you were a dandy if you liked classical music.
0:41:08 > 0:41:12It wasn't manly, you know, it wasn't something the guys did.
0:41:12 > 0:41:19So I think that caused a great kind of internal dissonance for Ives.
0:41:30 > 0:41:33Dissonance and consonance,
0:41:33 > 0:41:36in music Ives favoured neither one nor the other.
0:41:36 > 0:41:40He loved the Sturm und Drang of atonality,
0:41:40 > 0:41:43but he also loved traditional melodies.
0:41:43 > 0:41:47When he finally made his music available to fellow musicians
0:41:47 > 0:41:52in 1920, it was with a piano sonata that encompassed both.
0:41:54 > 0:41:59The Concord Sonata is probably his, his most familiar masterpiece
0:41:59 > 0:42:02and also one of his most radical works.
0:42:04 > 0:42:07In the opening movement in Emerson,
0:42:07 > 0:42:13you have the impression of just some kind of titanic force coming at you.
0:42:18 > 0:42:20And it gives this impression of
0:42:20 > 0:42:25massiveness, of sort of imperturbable nature,
0:42:25 > 0:42:28and all of the violence of nature as well.
0:42:38 > 0:42:41Then there's this remarkable third movement,
0:42:41 > 0:42:43which is very different in tone.
0:42:43 > 0:42:48The Alcotts, a domestic scene of people playing music and singing
0:42:48 > 0:42:53and you hear little bits of Beethoven sort of coming in and out.
0:42:53 > 0:42:58The so-called fate motif of Beethoven's Fifth keeps recurring.
0:43:16 > 0:43:21It's a piece about music, about listening in a lot of ways.
0:43:21 > 0:43:24That Alcotts movement, it's extremely touching.
0:43:55 > 0:43:58The thing about Ives now is, it doesn't matter
0:43:58 > 0:44:03when he wrote these things, it only matters what his music says,
0:44:03 > 0:44:08and what his music says is mostly sad and beautiful things.
0:44:11 > 0:44:15The music is about a world of America that he sees slipping away.
0:44:15 > 0:44:19It's not even his world, it's his father's world.
0:44:19 > 0:44:24It's the way people felt in those little towns after the Civil War,
0:44:24 > 0:44:27the idealism they had, the neighbourliness,
0:44:27 > 0:44:30the closeness, the way the little tunes were drifting
0:44:30 > 0:44:35from the blacksmith's shop into the parlour and the church organ.
0:44:35 > 0:44:38All that... that closeness was gone
0:44:38 > 0:44:42and Ives' music has this meditative farewell,
0:44:42 > 0:44:46leave-taking to all of that and sometimes a kind of rage -
0:44:46 > 0:44:48why has this happened?
0:44:53 > 0:44:54What had happened?
0:44:56 > 0:45:01America had become the most advanced nation in the modern world.
0:45:01 > 0:45:05In just over 100 years, its population had gone from
0:45:05 > 0:45:08six million to 106 million.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12Ives' radical sound was ahead of its time,
0:45:12 > 0:45:17but now the European avant-garde was making an impact in the USA,
0:45:17 > 0:45:22where the music of chaos fit its cityscapes of speed and noise.
0:45:25 > 0:45:28You look at the cross section of any year what composers were doing
0:45:28 > 0:45:32in the 20th century, you will find every sort of human reaction
0:45:32 > 0:45:35to the events that are happening in the world.
0:45:35 > 0:45:38So you will find composers who stick their head in the sand to
0:45:38 > 0:45:41lament the loss of a lost culture, and you will find composers who say,
0:45:41 > 0:45:44"We need to find, not just a completely new way of writing music,
0:45:44 > 0:45:46"but a completely different world order.
0:45:46 > 0:45:49"We need to reflect the sound, the noise, the fury
0:45:49 > 0:45:52"of the world around us, whether it's the sound of popular cultures
0:45:52 > 0:45:56"that people are hearing or whether it's the sounds of machinery."
0:45:58 > 0:46:03I suppose the composer who grabbed the machine age most
0:46:03 > 0:46:06enthusiastically was Edgar Varese.
0:46:06 > 0:46:11He was originally French and then towards
0:46:11 > 0:46:14the end of the First World War he went to live in New York.
0:46:14 > 0:46:19He arrived in New York as the first skyscrapers were going up,
0:46:19 > 0:46:24and immediately he absolutely grabbed the sights
0:46:24 > 0:46:28and sounds of the machine age and all of that went into his music.
0:46:36 > 0:46:38Varese said he wanted to find
0:46:38 > 0:46:41"a bomb that would make the musical world explode."
0:46:44 > 0:46:49In 1922, with the gargantuan orchestral piece Ameriques,
0:46:49 > 0:46:52he dragged the sounds of the city into the sedate
0:46:52 > 0:46:54world of the concert hall.
0:47:07 > 0:47:09Ameriques has got
0:47:09 > 0:47:12so much in common with Stravinsky's Rite Of Spring.
0:47:14 > 0:47:19It has those thrashing, off-kilter rhythms of The Rite Of Spring.
0:47:19 > 0:47:23But whereas The Rite of Spring is a sort of pagan ritual,
0:47:23 > 0:47:26Ameriques is a hymn to the modern age, a hymn to the machine age.
0:47:29 > 0:47:33So you hear the sound of a dredger on the Hudson River.
0:47:33 > 0:47:36You hear the sound of the overhead railway that
0:47:36 > 0:47:38went past his apartment.
0:47:38 > 0:47:39You hear sirens.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46He was trying to imagine a music of the future.
0:47:46 > 0:47:51He saw this great city of noise,
0:47:51 > 0:47:53of din,
0:47:53 > 0:47:54of chaos.
0:48:07 > 0:48:10It remains one of the great evocations of the city
0:48:10 > 0:48:14and really one of...one of the wildest pieces ever created.
0:48:16 > 0:48:18Wild, but also a sensation.
0:48:18 > 0:48:22When Ameriques made its explosive New York debut at Carnegie Hall
0:48:22 > 0:48:27in 1926, it was a surprise hit with audience and critics alike.
0:48:30 > 0:48:34Somehow, Varese had managed to capture the zeitgeist
0:48:34 > 0:48:40of his adopted country, deafening, determined and dynamic.
0:48:42 > 0:48:47There is something about the spirit of America and New York, especially
0:48:47 > 0:48:51in the first part of the 20th century that was really anything goes.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54There was the spirit of optimism in that moment,
0:48:54 > 0:48:59and right in that time, jazz began to emerge.
0:48:59 > 0:49:01And that changed everything.
0:49:08 > 0:49:10In the Roaring '20s,
0:49:10 > 0:49:15America's cities were buzzing with new sounds on every corner.
0:49:15 > 0:49:18A huge immigrant population had seized the promise of
0:49:18 > 0:49:20the good life in the New World.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26They brought with them a melting pot of musical styles,
0:49:26 > 0:49:29and jazz took over as the hot new sound.
0:49:31 > 0:49:33For the first time in history,
0:49:33 > 0:49:37popular music rivalled art music for invention and modernity.
0:49:39 > 0:49:43What did happen that was very unique in the 20th century
0:49:43 > 0:49:46was that at a certain point,
0:49:46 > 0:49:51art actually entered the province of the popular.
0:49:57 > 0:50:01So you had people like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington,
0:50:01 > 0:50:06George Gershwin, who actually reached hundreds, if not thousands,
0:50:06 > 0:50:08if not millions of people
0:50:08 > 0:50:11with something that they considered popular,
0:50:11 > 0:50:14but they did have the substance of fine art.
0:50:22 > 0:50:26The son of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, George Gershwin was,
0:50:26 > 0:50:28by the age of just 20,
0:50:28 > 0:50:31one of the most successful songwriters on Broadway.
0:50:33 > 0:50:37But he was also a classically trained composer who strove
0:50:37 > 0:50:40to write symphonic pieces that would be taken seriously
0:50:40 > 0:50:42in America's concert halls.
0:50:58 > 0:51:00As with so many modernists,
0:51:00 > 0:51:04his orchestral music drew on traditional folk styles,
0:51:04 > 0:51:07the sounds of his own Jewish heritage and, equally,
0:51:07 > 0:51:12the church spirituals and jazz sound of the black population.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16But his ear for a great melody was always front and centre.
0:51:19 > 0:51:22Gershwin was this, this wonderfully ambiguous figure,
0:51:22 > 0:51:25between classical music and popular music.
0:51:26 > 0:51:30The Rhapsody In Blue was premiered at a concert called
0:51:30 > 0:51:35An Experiment In Modern Music and it was another great spectacle
0:51:35 > 0:51:37of the period, much talked about, much written about.
0:51:37 > 0:51:39Somewhat controversial because people thought,
0:51:39 > 0:51:43"Well, these worlds shouldn't mix, necessarily."
0:51:43 > 0:51:46You know, you should have classical, it's one world, and jazz
0:51:46 > 0:51:49in the other and you shouldn't try to combine them together,
0:51:49 > 0:51:54you end up falling between two stools, and yet he pulled it off.
0:52:07 > 0:52:12He realised that there was something that was going on with
0:52:12 > 0:52:17the black people, that everybody that was humanly available
0:52:17 > 0:52:20and should...and could touch everybody.
0:52:20 > 0:52:24He went to the churches, he sang with people,
0:52:24 > 0:52:26he also went to Harlem.
0:52:26 > 0:52:32And see, Rhapsody In Blue actually is his musical paean to Harlem,
0:52:32 > 0:52:36to stride piano Negro melodies and rhythms,
0:52:36 > 0:52:39to all of those things that he heard.
0:52:47 > 0:52:49So he was basically saying
0:52:49 > 0:52:53look, this is what all of us need to be building on.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58Music communicates human experience. That's the power of it.
0:53:04 > 0:53:08Rhapsody In Blue was a resounding success,
0:53:08 > 0:53:12totally eclipsing in popularity the experimental modernism
0:53:12 > 0:53:14of his European colleagues.
0:53:14 > 0:53:17But it symbolised the great schism that hung over much
0:53:17 > 0:53:18early 20th century music.
0:53:20 > 0:53:23If Gershwin's tunes spoke to millions,
0:53:23 > 0:53:26did that make him a less serious composer?
0:53:27 > 0:53:31It wasn't that long ago that popular music was a good thing,
0:53:31 > 0:53:35and in fact composers tried to be popular, or at the very least
0:53:35 > 0:53:39they tried to write music that people would like to listen to.
0:53:39 > 0:53:46But something happened in the 20th century where critically, especially,
0:53:46 > 0:53:50artists began to be frowned upon for the popularity of their work.
0:53:52 > 0:53:55And isn't that odd? It should be the exact opposite.
0:53:55 > 0:53:58I'm amazed now, even these days that Rhapsody In Blue,
0:53:58 > 0:54:02or An American In Paris, for instance, it'd be odd, almost,
0:54:02 > 0:54:05to see it performed on a "serious concert."
0:54:05 > 0:54:09And, in fact, the audiences they desperately want to hear it,
0:54:09 > 0:54:10they love it, I love it.
0:54:10 > 0:54:12Why not have it on there?
0:54:12 > 0:54:16Why not let audiences enjoy that as well as the tough stuff?
0:54:22 > 0:54:26Gershwin himself was torn between the popular and the tough stuff.
0:54:26 > 0:54:30He travelled to Europe in 1928, to seek out the titans
0:54:30 > 0:54:36of European modernism, for he felt that to become a serious composer,
0:54:36 > 0:54:41he should adopt their hard-core, revolutionary styles.
0:54:41 > 0:54:45Gershwin went to Stravinsky and to my father
0:54:45 > 0:54:47and wanted to study with them.
0:54:47 > 0:54:51And each of them refused to teach him.
0:54:51 > 0:54:57And the story goes that, that he asks Stravinsky to teach him
0:54:57 > 0:55:00and Stravinsky said, "How much do you earn?"
0:55:00 > 0:55:04And Gershwin told him how many millions he was making
0:55:04 > 0:55:07and so Stravinsky said, "Well, then I should study with you!"
0:55:07 > 0:55:09So that's Stravinsky.
0:55:09 > 0:55:12And then he came to my father and said,
0:55:12 > 0:55:15"I would like to study with you." And my father said,
0:55:15 > 0:55:20"No, I will not accept you because right now you are a great Gershwin,
0:55:20 > 0:55:24"and if you studied with me, you would be a mediocre Schoenberg."
0:55:24 > 0:55:29And yet, by the early 1930s, the great Broadway tunesmith
0:55:29 > 0:55:34and the father of atonality had hit it off.
0:55:34 > 0:55:37Their rivalry confined only to the tennis court.
0:55:37 > 0:55:41Because by then Schoenberg was, somewhat ironically, living in the
0:55:41 > 0:55:46very heart of popular entertainment, Los Angeles, California.
0:55:50 > 0:55:53He'd fled from a Europe where the radical experiments
0:55:53 > 0:55:56of modernist Jewish composers were facing a much
0:55:56 > 0:56:00more terrifying enemy than unwelcoming, bourgeois audiences.
0:56:04 > 0:56:08In Vienna, crowds of Austrian Nazis were taking to the streets.
0:56:08 > 0:56:12They were campaigning to forge a union between Austria and Germany.
0:56:17 > 0:56:20Schoenberg had been teaching in Berlin.
0:56:20 > 0:56:25He saw at first hand the looming, inexorable rise of the Third Reich.
0:56:30 > 0:56:35My father was aware of the political situation in Germany.
0:56:35 > 0:56:38He knew Hitler was coming to power
0:56:38 > 0:56:43and he expected things to go really badly.
0:56:43 > 0:56:46He had already written, "How can this end?
0:56:46 > 0:56:49"It can only end in the destruction and the killing of Jews."
0:56:49 > 0:56:51And things like this.
0:56:51 > 0:56:56Well, he was, he was really very much aware and way ahead of his time
0:56:56 > 0:57:00in understanding what a terrible situation this would come to.
0:57:06 > 0:57:10Schoenberg foresaw that his music would die under the Nazis basically,
0:57:10 > 0:57:13and saw the catastrophe that was looming.
0:57:15 > 0:57:18Other great composers didn't have the same moral compass,
0:57:18 > 0:57:21and were slightly more confused by what must have been
0:57:21 > 0:57:25an appalling epoch to live through. And it's very easy to judge today.
0:57:25 > 0:57:27But there are writings in the early '40s of Webern
0:57:27 > 0:57:32which praised Hitler in an embarrassing and terrible way.
0:57:32 > 0:57:36One has to either forgive or forget a naive
0:57:36 > 0:57:39and confused composer during a very difficult time.
0:57:39 > 0:57:44Modern composers did have a thorny relationship with the general public
0:57:44 > 0:57:48and they thought that totalitarian leaders,
0:57:48 > 0:57:52in Italy as well, would give funds and support this art form
0:57:52 > 0:57:56in a way that the more democratic civilisation wouldn't.
0:57:56 > 0:58:00And so at first, at least, they had high hopes for Fascism, sadly.
0:58:00 > 0:58:02CROWD CHANTING
0:58:02 > 0:58:06"I see such a good future," Webern wrote of Hitler's rise.
0:58:07 > 0:58:09He couldn't have been more wrong.
0:58:12 > 0:58:15The world was about to be plunged into war,
0:58:15 > 0:58:20and music's modernist progress would be derailed by totalitarianism.
0:58:24 > 0:58:27In the next programme, as the Second World War raged,
0:58:27 > 0:58:29the world of classical music
0:58:29 > 0:58:31suffered from repression and censorship.
0:58:36 > 0:58:40But when peace was restored, composers responded by taking music
0:58:40 > 0:58:43to the extremes of violence and noise.
0:58:43 > 0:58:45STRINGS SCREECH
0:58:46 > 0:58:49To find out more about 20th century composers,
0:58:49 > 0:58:52and for details of a year-long festival of events
0:58:52 > 0:58:56celebrating a century of revolution in music, art and culture, go to...
0:58:59 > 0:59:01Follow the links to the Open University.
0:59:13 > 0:59:16Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd