0:00:02 > 0:00:05Famously, the philosopher Adorno stated after the Second World War,
0:00:05 > 0:00:08"No more poetry is possible after Auschwitz."
0:00:08 > 0:00:10In the decade that followed the war,
0:00:10 > 0:00:15avant-garde composers tried to prove Adorno wrong.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18Their music may not always have struck listeners as poetic,
0:00:18 > 0:00:21but its inner purpose was often as profound
0:00:21 > 0:00:23as its expression was esoteric.
0:00:23 > 0:00:28Composers are seeking emblems of the sacred,
0:00:28 > 0:00:31trying to express the unsayable.
0:00:31 > 0:00:33In the early years of modernism,
0:00:33 > 0:00:36composers had torn up centuries-old conventions
0:00:36 > 0:00:38of melody, harmony and rhythm.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43After the war, they went further.
0:00:43 > 0:00:47They invented a new musical language that tried to express the unsayable,
0:00:47 > 0:00:51and come to terms with the horrors they'd witnessed at first hand.
0:00:51 > 0:00:53Boulez and Stockhausen and Nono
0:00:53 > 0:00:57and Xenakis were looking back at musical history and saying,
0:00:57 > 0:01:00"You know, we want to wipe the slate clean."
0:01:00 > 0:01:01For many listeners,
0:01:01 > 0:01:05the new language of music was simply unintelligible, even unbearable.
0:01:05 > 0:01:09The chasm that resulted between what modernist composers wanted to write
0:01:09 > 0:01:11and what the mainstream audience wanted to hear,
0:01:11 > 0:01:13had never been wider.
0:01:18 > 0:01:22I hated it that people didn't like what I was doing,
0:01:22 > 0:01:26but I was determined to go on doing it until they did.
0:01:28 > 0:01:31This is the story of one of the most controversial periods
0:01:31 > 0:01:33in the history of music.
0:01:33 > 0:01:35Welcome to the avant-garde.
0:01:57 > 0:02:02One of the most extraordinary premieres in 20th-century music
0:02:02 > 0:02:06happened on a cold January night in 1941,
0:02:06 > 0:02:08in the prisoner of war camp
0:02:08 > 0:02:11Stalag VIII-A, in Germany.
0:02:11 > 0:02:12And it was the first performance
0:02:12 > 0:02:15of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet For The End Of Time.
0:02:21 > 0:02:26Messiaen had been taken prisoner during the German invasion in 1940.
0:02:26 > 0:02:29He knew several musicians in the camp.
0:02:29 > 0:02:31Their instruments were clarinet,
0:02:31 > 0:02:34violin and cello.
0:02:34 > 0:02:36He himself played piano.
0:02:53 > 0:02:56Messiaen's Quartet was to prove vastly influential,
0:02:56 > 0:02:59but in a way no-one present at its premiere
0:02:59 > 0:03:01could possibly have imagined.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11In the three decades after the Quartet's first performance,
0:03:11 > 0:03:14composers taught by Messiaen -
0:03:14 > 0:03:16Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis -
0:03:16 > 0:03:19would reconfigure the rules of music
0:03:19 > 0:03:21in one of the most ruthlessly experimental periods
0:03:21 > 0:03:24in the whole history of music.
0:03:24 > 0:03:27The seeds of the avant-garde movement were sown
0:03:27 > 0:03:30in the cataclysm of the 1940s.
0:03:30 > 0:03:33What these composers had been through
0:03:33 > 0:03:36in the last years of the Second World War,
0:03:36 > 0:03:39you can't help feeling that their experiences must have affected
0:03:39 > 0:03:42what they wrote subsequently.
0:03:42 > 0:03:46Xenakis having part of his face blown off.
0:03:46 > 0:03:50Ligeti losing much of his family in the Holocaust.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56Stockhausen, as a medical orderly,
0:03:56 > 0:04:01witnessing indescribably horrible things.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04Trying to feed water through a straw
0:04:04 > 0:04:09to soldiers whose faces had melted away.
0:04:09 > 0:04:15Piling body upon body in a church that had become a morgue.
0:04:21 > 0:04:24There was a kind of defiance, as if they were saying,
0:04:24 > 0:04:26"Well, all this lovely music
0:04:26 > 0:04:28"that people created,
0:04:28 > 0:04:31"and all these wonderful systems and theories,
0:04:31 > 0:04:34"but, in the end, what kind of society do we have?"
0:04:34 > 0:04:37The music didn't do anything at all to make it a better world.
0:04:37 > 0:04:40So let's rid ourselves of all of that
0:04:40 > 0:04:43and just try and make music an abstraction.
0:04:46 > 0:04:50Boulez and Stockhausen and Xenakis were saying,
0:04:50 > 0:04:52"Not only can we not have
0:04:52 > 0:04:55"melodies and harmony that has got a,
0:04:55 > 0:04:58"you know, a tonic that you always come back to,"
0:04:58 > 0:05:00but also Stockhausen said,
0:05:00 > 0:05:02"I can't have four regular beats in a bar
0:05:02 > 0:05:06"because it makes me think of marching Nazis,
0:05:06 > 0:05:08"it makes me think of jackboots."
0:05:14 > 0:05:18When Fascism had first emerged, in Italy and in Germany,
0:05:18 > 0:05:23it came with a high-minded promise to support and fund the arts.
0:05:25 > 0:05:29The preceding three decades had seen an explosion of modernism.
0:05:29 > 0:05:31Some of its practitioners now hoped
0:05:31 > 0:05:35that Totalitarianism would look kindly on new music.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38Modern composers did have
0:05:38 > 0:05:41a thorny relationship with the general public
0:05:41 > 0:05:44and they thought that total, totalitarian leaders,
0:05:44 > 0:05:50in Italy as well, would give funds and support for this art form
0:05:50 > 0:05:53in a way that a more democratic civilisation wouldn't.
0:05:53 > 0:05:57And so, at first, at least, they had high hopes for Fascism, sadly.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01And a composer like Stravinsky was still in the late '30s
0:06:01 > 0:06:04going to Germany and having and conducting performances in Berlin.
0:06:04 > 0:06:07And there's a regrettable meeting between him and Mussolini
0:06:07 > 0:06:11when he inscribed a score with very warm greetings to Il Duce.
0:06:13 > 0:06:16The Nazis' cultural policies turned out to be based on
0:06:16 > 0:06:20banning works by those considered the enemies of the Third Reich.
0:06:23 > 0:06:27In 1938, the Nazis put on an exhibition they called
0:06:27 > 0:06:29Degenerate Music - A Reckoning.
0:06:33 > 0:06:37It was a house of horrors presenting, for the last time,
0:06:37 > 0:06:39music that was now to be outlawed.
0:06:39 > 0:06:43Included was anything written by Jews, Communists,
0:06:43 > 0:06:45or African-Americans.
0:06:45 > 0:06:48Many composers played along with the regime.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51Most controversially, Germany's greatest living composer,
0:06:51 > 0:06:53Richard Strauss.
0:06:53 > 0:06:58In 1933, he agreed to preside over the Third Reich's music policy.
0:07:00 > 0:07:03Strauss was in some cases, regrettably even,
0:07:03 > 0:07:07even shockingly willing to go along with the strictures of the regime.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11In other cases, less so.
0:07:11 > 0:07:16He dragged his feet in the matter of removing music
0:07:16 > 0:07:20by Jewish composers from the repertory.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23He hated the idea that Mendelssohn could no longer be performed.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33The Nazis promoted the music of Aryan German composers -
0:07:33 > 0:07:36Beethoven, Bruckner, Wagner -
0:07:36 > 0:07:38as a soundtrack for their rallies
0:07:38 > 0:07:41and a touchstone for their cultural values.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45But they wanted new music to have a modern, National Socialist twist.
0:07:45 > 0:07:47It was Goebbels who said,
0:07:47 > 0:07:48"What we need now in the '30s
0:07:48 > 0:07:50"is a romanticism of steel."
0:07:50 > 0:07:52It's a romanticism,
0:07:52 > 0:07:53it has to be modern
0:07:53 > 0:07:55but it has to be approachable.
0:07:55 > 0:07:57It has to appeal to the people.
0:08:03 > 0:08:06The Nazis' policy on music was uncannily similar
0:08:06 > 0:08:08to that adopted in the Soviet Union,
0:08:08 > 0:08:11in a rare meeting of totalitarian minds.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19Stalin wanted to establish an absolutely modern,
0:08:19 > 0:08:21indeed modernist musical tradition
0:08:21 > 0:08:25that would reflect Soviet, socialist ideology.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29So Stalin actually isn't harking back to, um, you know,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32Tchaikovsky or Glinka or Rimsky-Korsakov,
0:08:32 > 0:08:35he wants the composers of today, Shostakovich, Khachaturian,
0:08:35 > 0:08:37whoever, to, to be writing the music
0:08:37 > 0:08:40that will become part of the people's consciousness
0:08:40 > 0:08:42and serve Soviet ideology.
0:08:44 > 0:08:49The new style became known as Socialist Realism.
0:08:53 > 0:08:57I really think it was designed to be an opposition to modernism, yeah.
0:08:57 > 0:08:59Because modernism doesn't have
0:08:59 > 0:09:02this relation to human experience,
0:09:02 > 0:09:04and therefore, it's de-humanized.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08Well, if you built a state for people, yeah,
0:09:08 > 0:09:10you want the people to enjoy the music,
0:09:10 > 0:09:13you can't present them with this de-humanised music
0:09:13 > 0:09:15because they're not going to understand it,
0:09:15 > 0:09:18they're not going to love it, it will have no relation to their experience.
0:09:18 > 0:09:21Therefore, you have to write something exactly the opposite.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24The last worker in the factory has to be able to hum it
0:09:24 > 0:09:28when he comes out of the concert hall or out of the opera house.
0:09:32 > 0:09:37Socialist Realism's most famous victim was Dmitri Shostakovich,
0:09:37 > 0:09:40a former child prodigy, born in 1906.
0:09:45 > 0:09:47He and fellow modernists
0:09:47 > 0:09:48like Alexander Mosolov,
0:09:48 > 0:09:52set about creating a revolutionary new style of music
0:09:52 > 0:09:54for a revolutionary new style of society.
0:09:56 > 0:09:57By the early '30s,
0:09:57 > 0:10:00Shostakovich had become the Soviet Union's star composer.
0:10:03 > 0:10:09He wrote this wonderful opera, Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk District
0:10:09 > 0:10:14and it had great success, it was feted as the first Soviet opera,
0:10:14 > 0:10:16even as the first socialist realist opera
0:10:16 > 0:10:21and for two years everything was great - until Stalin came to see it.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24He was seen in his box at the Bolshoi Theatre
0:10:24 > 0:10:28surrounded by members of the Politburo and Shostakovich
0:10:28 > 0:10:34was perhaps hoping for a sign of approval and none came.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38In fact, Stalin and the members of Politburo walked out
0:10:38 > 0:10:41before the end of the opera and Shostakovich immediately felt very nervous.
0:10:47 > 0:10:51What Stalin had been watching was a hotchpotch of love, sex,
0:10:51 > 0:10:54betrayal and murder set in the last days of the Tsars.
0:11:06 > 0:11:10We don't really know what he disliked so much about it
0:11:10 > 0:11:14and it's more likely that he actually disliked the sexual aspect
0:11:14 > 0:11:17of it and the fact how it was produced, how it was presented.
0:11:17 > 0:11:19That there was a bed in the centre of the stage
0:11:19 > 0:11:22and, prude as he was, he couldn't take this.
0:11:22 > 0:11:26And two days later there was this terrifying editorial.
0:11:26 > 0:11:31The most terrifying bad review in musical history, perhaps -
0:11:31 > 0:11:33"Muddle instead of music" -
0:11:33 > 0:11:37in the pages of Pravda which obviously reflected
0:11:37 > 0:11:42Stalin's own sentiments, denouncing the opera as a deliberately
0:11:42 > 0:11:48dissonant, muddled stream of sounds and asking whether something bad
0:11:48 > 0:11:52might happen to the composer if he continued on this path.
0:12:00 > 0:12:03A month later, Shostakovich was summoned to meet
0:12:03 > 0:12:06a cultural commissar, who advised to rein in his style.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11If he needed an example of what could happen to a composer
0:12:11 > 0:12:14who defied the new policy, Alexander Mosolov,
0:12:14 > 0:12:18writer of The Iron Foundry, provided one.
0:12:18 > 0:12:21He resisted all attempts to make him write simpler music
0:12:21 > 0:12:26and, in 1936, he was thrown out of the Union of Composers,
0:12:26 > 0:12:28and thus unable to earn a living.
0:12:30 > 0:12:33The next year, with Stalin's Great Purge
0:12:33 > 0:12:36of counter-revolutionary elements in full swing,
0:12:36 > 0:12:39his enemies in the Union contrived to get him sent to a labour camp.
0:12:41 > 0:12:45Against this background of show trials and summary executions,
0:12:45 > 0:12:48Shostakovich unveiled his Fifth Symphony.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51A note out of place could spell disaster.
0:13:10 > 0:13:12The Fifth Symphony was subtitled -
0:13:12 > 0:13:15though probably not by Shostakovich himself -
0:13:15 > 0:13:19A Soviet Artist's Reply To Just Criticism.
0:13:19 > 0:13:23What a change of direction the Fifth Symphony was.
0:13:23 > 0:13:25Not one move is in excess
0:13:25 > 0:13:28and a piece which relates
0:13:28 > 0:13:32so powerfully to all Russian music before then.
0:13:46 > 0:13:50There are oddities in it, these quotations from Bizet's Carmen,
0:13:50 > 0:13:55and possible references to Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov,
0:13:55 > 0:13:58the ultimate pageants of Russian suffering.
0:14:04 > 0:14:06Here was a possible hidden meaning.
0:14:06 > 0:14:09Mussorgsky's 1872 opera Boris Godunov
0:14:09 > 0:14:12ends with the lament to Russia,
0:14:12 > 0:14:16"Flow, bitter tears," which is echoed in Shostakovich's symphony.
0:14:23 > 0:14:26That's really what he was relying on -
0:14:26 > 0:14:31that knowledgeable listeners would be aware of the parallels
0:14:31 > 0:14:35between what he was writing and specific moments in repertoire
0:14:35 > 0:14:39of the past and the politicos would not be aware of those things.
0:14:39 > 0:14:44TRIUMPHANT FANFARE
0:14:54 > 0:14:57Then there's this brutally triumphant finale which
0:14:57 > 0:15:00people still constantly debate about to this day.
0:15:00 > 0:15:03Is it a celebration of Stalin?
0:15:03 > 0:15:06Is it a kind of secret denunciation
0:15:06 > 0:15:12or kind of critical embodiment of the terror of his regime or
0:15:12 > 0:15:14is it something in-between?
0:15:32 > 0:15:35The Fifth Symphony was a triumph, luckily for Shostakovich.
0:15:35 > 0:15:39In 1941, during the Siege of Leningrad,
0:15:39 > 0:15:43his patriotic 7th Symphony was ecstatically received.
0:15:43 > 0:15:45But after the war, he found himself
0:15:45 > 0:15:49under attack by the authorities all over again.
0:15:49 > 0:15:53Until his death in 1975, he was under constant threat
0:15:53 > 0:15:57of further humiliation and disgrace.
0:15:57 > 0:16:02But remarkably, he kept his musical voice intact,
0:16:02 > 0:16:05while many others were beaten down by the oppression of the system,
0:16:05 > 0:16:08Alexander Mosolov among them.
0:16:08 > 0:16:11Alexander Mosolov changed his style completely, altogether.
0:16:11 > 0:16:13He is unrecognisable.
0:16:13 > 0:16:16There's nothing left of, of himself, of his earlier self,
0:16:16 > 0:16:20after he spends seven months in a labour camp.
0:16:20 > 0:16:24But Shostakovich adjusted. He never lost his style.
0:16:29 > 0:16:31American composers,
0:16:31 > 0:16:34writers and artists were also coming under attack.
0:16:34 > 0:16:36Not for ignoring socialist realism, but for embracing it.
0:16:36 > 0:16:38Do you permit us to cross-examine?
0:16:38 > 0:16:40Are you a member of the Communist Party?
0:16:40 > 0:16:42Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
0:16:42 > 0:16:45It's unfortunate and tragic that I have to teach this committee the
0:16:45 > 0:16:49- basic principles...- That's not the question, that's not the question.
0:16:49 > 0:16:51In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee
0:16:51 > 0:16:54opened its own show trial -
0:16:54 > 0:16:59an investigation into supposed communist influence in Hollywood.
0:16:59 > 0:17:02Also in the Committee's sights was America's leading classical
0:17:02 > 0:17:05composer, Aaron Copland.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16Brooklyn-born, the son of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants,
0:17:16 > 0:17:20Copland fashioned a series of all-American classics.
0:17:20 > 0:17:23That he should find himself targeted as un-American was
0:17:23 > 0:17:26one of the many ironies of the Cold War.
0:17:28 > 0:17:31The seeds of the Red Scare are to be found two decades earlier,
0:17:31 > 0:17:33with the election of Franklin D Roosevelt,
0:17:33 > 0:17:36in the depths of the Depression.
0:17:36 > 0:17:43I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58Roosevelt's massive job creation programme in the 1930s also
0:17:58 > 0:18:02included the arts, which were generously funded.
0:18:02 > 0:18:06Many left-wing writers, artists and composers were put on the
0:18:06 > 0:18:10government's payroll to help promote the social aims of the New Deal.
0:18:10 > 0:18:14This was all perfect for Copland because, first of all,
0:18:14 > 0:18:17that was his own political orientation
0:18:17 > 0:18:22but it also allowed him to create this populist style that had
0:18:22 > 0:18:24a little bit of a political focus
0:18:24 > 0:18:29and so it makes this pieces which could be a little bit cliched -
0:18:29 > 0:18:34Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Lincoln Portrait,
0:18:34 > 0:18:37the Fanfare For The Common Man.
0:18:37 > 0:18:42Under the surface, you actually find some pointed political messages that
0:18:42 > 0:18:49were in tune with what many American leftists were pursuing at that time.
0:19:04 > 0:19:08When the Depression hit, it was such a shock for the country that
0:19:08 > 0:19:10all artists, including composers,
0:19:10 > 0:19:17changed their voice and they became very populist because, you know,
0:19:17 > 0:19:21the country was in desperate conditions
0:19:21 > 0:19:27and for some reason a kind of very personal, confrontational
0:19:27 > 0:19:32avant-garde way of expressing things just didn't seem right
0:19:32 > 0:19:36when people were starving in the streets, which is what they were.
0:19:36 > 0:19:41As he saw the impending menace of the Depression,
0:19:41 > 0:19:46of all of the political antagonism taking place in the world,
0:19:46 > 0:19:50he realised, as all of his left-leaning composer friends did,
0:19:50 > 0:19:55that music had to have a purpose and he took on the purpose of
0:19:55 > 0:20:01creating a language that Americans could identify as American.
0:20:01 > 0:20:04And he did it by putting together music which came from Jewish
0:20:04 > 0:20:08music, from black music, from Latino music, from folk songs of
0:20:08 > 0:20:12so many different varieties and that becomes the mixture that
0:20:12 > 0:20:18Copland uses really as a political tool during the days that precede
0:20:18 > 0:20:21the Second World War, to create a musical language that Americans
0:20:21 > 0:20:26will recognise as being American and help them to rally together
0:20:26 > 0:20:32to deal with the social, political consequences of their time.
0:20:39 > 0:20:43Even a Copland ballet score about a fabled American outlaw
0:20:43 > 0:20:47contained political grit amongst the nostalgia.
0:20:47 > 0:20:52Billy the Kid is this renegade in this Wild West world which
0:20:52 > 0:20:57is about to be overrun by capitalist forces.
0:20:57 > 0:21:01The America that will soon be paved by asphalt.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04And I think you can hear musical suggestions of that, as well,
0:21:04 > 0:21:07particularly in the, in the slightly threatening,
0:21:07 > 0:21:12although very grandiose march music that enters at the end,
0:21:12 > 0:21:19you know, this is the new America, the supreme capitalist America.
0:21:45 > 0:21:48When the Soviet Union and the USA were allies,
0:21:48 > 0:21:53during the Second World War, the American left, while not encouraged,
0:21:53 > 0:21:55had been tolerated.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58But with the onset of the Cold War, that changed.
0:21:58 > 0:22:03One casualty of the great red witch hunt that ensued was Aaron Copland.
0:22:03 > 0:22:08He was denounced in 1949 as one of many dupes and fellow travellers when
0:22:08 > 0:22:13he appeared at a leftist conference in New York alongside Shostakovich.
0:22:13 > 0:22:18Being investigated by the FBI, long lists being made of his leftist
0:22:18 > 0:22:22political affiliations and then most ominously being
0:22:22 > 0:22:30called before Senator McCarthy's infamous committee in May of 1953.
0:22:35 > 0:22:38Copland once said that if an artist is thrown into a mood of suspicion,
0:22:38 > 0:22:42ill will and dread, that typifies the Cold War attitude,
0:22:42 > 0:22:44he'll create nothing.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48Though he carried on composing, his musical output dwindled, and
0:22:48 > 0:22:52he failed to create anything that matched his pre-McCarthy era impact.
0:23:03 > 0:23:07America also had communism on its mind in a Western Europe
0:23:07 > 0:23:10newly liberated from the Nazi machine.
0:23:10 > 0:23:13To prevent the nightmare vision of its falling into Soviet hands,
0:23:13 > 0:23:16America set about rebuilding Europe's shattered cities
0:23:16 > 0:23:18and her culture too.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22Bizarrely, it was avant-garde music
0:23:22 > 0:23:24that was to be one of the main beneficiaries
0:23:24 > 0:23:27of the drive to win the hearts and minds of a free Europe.
0:23:28 > 0:23:33There was a very, very strong anti-Americanism amongst the European
0:23:33 > 0:23:37intelligentsia in particular which was almost pathological,
0:23:37 > 0:23:41a kind of psychological necessity, if you like, to be anti-American.
0:23:41 > 0:23:44And I think what the high-level strategists
0:23:44 > 0:23:48in the cultural field were on to pretty quickly was that what
0:23:48 > 0:23:52needed to happen was that America needed to show that, actually, there
0:23:52 > 0:23:55was an elective affinity between the various countries and America,
0:23:55 > 0:24:00that the cultural heritage of Europe was not being threatened by American
0:24:00 > 0:24:05democratic values but in some way enhanced and fortified by them.
0:24:10 > 0:24:12So avant-garde music may be unpopular
0:24:12 > 0:24:15and it may be difficult, it may be squawks and thumps
0:24:15 > 0:24:18and maybe most people who were involved with the cultural programmes
0:24:18 > 0:24:21wouldn't want to sit and listen to any of it but they recognise it,
0:24:21 > 0:24:24they back it and they recognise it straight away as something
0:24:24 > 0:24:29that, for all its unpopularity, is a fantastically potent symbol
0:24:29 > 0:24:34of America's cultural sophistication and of her political freedoms.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39The godfather of the avant-garde was Olivier Messiaen.
0:24:40 > 0:24:43After the war, he taught music in Paris and became
0:24:43 > 0:24:47one of the most influential teachers of the 20th century.
0:24:48 > 0:24:53Among his pupils were future titans of the avant-garde like
0:24:53 > 0:24:56Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis,
0:24:56 > 0:24:58and later, George Benjamin.
0:25:01 > 0:25:03But Messiaen was a wild card, a one-off.
0:25:04 > 0:25:06Devoutly Roman Catholic,
0:25:06 > 0:25:09he was the organist at a Paris church for over 60 years.
0:25:17 > 0:25:20He was also an ornithologist...
0:25:21 > 0:25:24..believing birds to be better composers than humans
0:25:24 > 0:25:28and incorporating birdsong into his music.
0:25:28 > 0:25:29TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH
0:25:29 > 0:25:32Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch...
0:25:42 > 0:25:44Ju-ju-ju-ju-ju-ju...
0:26:17 > 0:26:19Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time
0:26:19 > 0:26:22was inspired by the Book of Revelation.
0:26:22 > 0:26:24"There shall be time no longer."
0:26:25 > 0:26:28But its title is also a pun - the end of time,
0:26:28 > 0:26:30as in conventional rhythm.
0:26:30 > 0:26:33This is what made it so influential on the future avant-garde.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33Nothing happens quite how you expect it to.
0:27:33 > 0:27:38The rhythms just go on for slightly too long or slightly shorter
0:27:38 > 0:27:40than you might expect.
0:27:40 > 0:27:48The melody goes, absolutely avoids any kind of cliche
0:27:48 > 0:27:52and those factors mean that it has this eternal quality that
0:27:52 > 0:27:56just seems to drift on and on and on towards eternity.
0:27:58 > 0:28:02It's one of the most emotional pieces of 20th century music there is.
0:29:31 > 0:29:35The music of the avant-garde was rarely given at concerts,
0:29:35 > 0:29:38and rarely released on record until the late '50s.
0:29:38 > 0:29:42Rather, it spread through radio, academic institutions
0:29:42 > 0:29:43and new music festivals.
0:29:45 > 0:29:47The most important of these were
0:29:47 > 0:29:51the International Summer Courses for New Music at Darmstadt in Germany,
0:29:51 > 0:29:54at which Messiaen was a guest teacher.
0:29:56 > 0:30:01They began in 1946, part-funded by the American military government.
0:30:01 > 0:30:05A new generation of composers, all born in the 1920s,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08were drawn to Darmstadt like moths to a flame,
0:30:08 > 0:30:10from all over Western Europe and America.
0:30:13 > 0:30:17Darmstadt was the opportunity of meeting each other and you know in
0:30:17 > 0:30:19my generation we were approximately
0:30:19 > 0:30:2212 years without going out of
0:30:22 > 0:30:28the country where we were born and we wanted to know the other ones.
0:30:28 > 0:30:33And, therefore, so I mean, it was such an atmosphere.
0:30:33 > 0:30:36Sometimes, you know, with tensions, certainly.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39But, I mean, it was such an atmosphere where
0:30:39 > 0:30:43we were trying to know each other, to know the tradition of each other
0:30:43 > 0:30:49and to see how we can also profit from these meetings.
0:30:49 > 0:30:52We wanted to discover the world, simply that.
0:30:52 > 0:30:54Darmstadt has to be considered
0:30:54 > 0:30:56one of the American military government's great successes
0:30:56 > 0:30:58and I think that when they see Darmstadt, they think,
0:30:58 > 0:31:02"This is something that gives them a very specific focus
0:31:02 > 0:31:05"on the kind of work that they want to be picking up on
0:31:05 > 0:31:07"and they want to be asserting the merits of."
0:31:10 > 0:31:13The avant-garde dusted down the 12-tone,
0:31:13 > 0:31:17or serialist system developed in the 1920s by Arnold Schoenberg,
0:31:17 > 0:31:20whose music had been banned by the Nazis.
0:31:20 > 0:31:24It required composers to decide on a set order of notes,
0:31:24 > 0:31:28in which each pitch of the 12-note scale is used only once.
0:31:28 > 0:31:31These tone rows can then be turned upside down
0:31:31 > 0:31:34or played backwards or both.
0:31:34 > 0:31:36But this wasn't enough for the Darmstadt school.
0:31:38 > 0:31:42There was this intensification and development of the 12-tone idea.
0:31:42 > 0:31:47First Messiaen really setting it into motion and then being taken up
0:31:47 > 0:31:53by Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono and others, known as total serialism,
0:31:53 > 0:31:57which means that not just the 12 pitches would be ordered according
0:31:57 > 0:32:01to a row but also the durations
0:32:01 > 0:32:05of the notes are longer or shorter.
0:32:05 > 0:32:11The dynamic levels, from the very loud to the very soft
0:32:11 > 0:32:15and all the gradations in between, and the attacks,
0:32:15 > 0:32:19the style with which a particular note was
0:32:19 > 0:32:25approached by the instrumental player, legato, staccato and so on.
0:32:25 > 0:32:30All of these aspects of composition would now be organised.
0:32:32 > 0:32:35Messiaen had written the first piece approaching total serialism
0:32:35 > 0:32:38at Darmstadt in 1949 -
0:32:38 > 0:32:41Scale Of Durations And Dynamics.
0:32:41 > 0:32:43The summer courses at Darmstadt quickly became
0:32:43 > 0:32:46a kind of shrine to the new system.
0:32:49 > 0:32:54Composers withdrew to a sort of laboratory and questioned every
0:32:54 > 0:33:00element of music, in a rather severe and doctrinal way, even dogmatic.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04It was a hotbed of serialism when I went anyway.
0:33:04 > 0:33:09It was serialism and, you know, some terrifying pieces of music.
0:33:17 > 0:33:20Pierre Boulez was the first of Messiaen's pupils
0:33:20 > 0:33:23to come to prominence. But his music, and that of his fellow
0:33:23 > 0:33:26Messiaen pupil Karlheinz Stockhausen,
0:33:26 > 0:33:29proved to be very different in character to that of their master.
0:33:29 > 0:33:32Boulez and Stockhausen were embarrassed by the simplicity
0:33:32 > 0:33:40and naivety of his vision and highly interested by the novelty
0:33:40 > 0:33:42of some of his techniques, particularly regarding harmony,
0:33:42 > 0:33:45and above all regarding rhythm, but very dismissive
0:33:45 > 0:33:49of his apparently garish musical colours, some of them approaching
0:33:49 > 0:33:53Hollywood and his naive obsessions with religion and with bird song.
0:33:57 > 0:34:02For the composers after the war - Stockhausen, Boulez -
0:34:02 > 0:34:05there was a tremendous element of rebellion in them.
0:34:05 > 0:34:09Hostility toward the whole world of so-called expression.
0:34:13 > 0:34:18Those of us who knew Boulez remember the tremendous power
0:34:18 > 0:34:22of his anger as it was expressed in the Second Sonata.
0:34:27 > 0:34:30Boulez's spikiness wasn't confined to his music.
0:34:30 > 0:34:33As the avant-garde's chief polemicist, he gored,
0:34:33 > 0:34:37tossed and dispatched any composer who had the temerity to
0:34:37 > 0:34:39stray from the 12-tone path.
0:34:39 > 0:34:47Oh, he wrote articles in a very sort of intellectual Parisian style
0:34:47 > 0:34:49in the '60s that said some terrible things.
0:34:51 > 0:34:55He praised Mao Tse-tung's Red Guards for their ability to destroy things.
0:34:55 > 0:34:58I mean, it was a time when people said things and
0:34:58 > 0:35:02he loved to provoke and also someone who is attacked,
0:35:02 > 0:35:05often defends themselves by attacking first.
0:35:08 > 0:35:13It was a period of provocation, yes, but provocation is a good,
0:35:13 > 0:35:18a very healthy thing when it's not artificial.
0:35:18 > 0:35:21When it is genuine, natural, spontaneous,
0:35:21 > 0:35:23provocation is necessary.
0:35:23 > 0:35:26One of the most famous pieces of polemicism he wrote
0:35:26 > 0:35:29is an article written just after Schoenberg died
0:35:29 > 0:35:32called Schoenberg Est Mort - Schoenberg Is Dead.
0:35:32 > 0:35:35And it includes really an incredibly vociferous
0:35:35 > 0:35:38critique of Schoenberg's late music. he also says in that article
0:35:38 > 0:35:41that any composer who doesn't use serialism, you know,
0:35:41 > 0:35:43isn't a composer.
0:35:43 > 0:35:45I did not want to be provocative
0:35:45 > 0:35:48just for the sake of being provocative.
0:35:48 > 0:35:53I was provocative only simply because it was necessary to go forward.
0:35:56 > 0:36:00While he never wrote tonal music, Boulez softened his style and
0:36:00 > 0:36:04moved away from the strictures of total serialism in the early 1950s.
0:36:10 > 0:36:17For me, the great moment was the Le Marteau Sans Maitre by Boulez.
0:36:35 > 0:36:39It did something with music that nothing had ever done before.
0:36:41 > 0:36:47It was completely radical and a very attractive one as well.
0:36:47 > 0:36:50It's one of the most attractive pieces he's written.
0:36:50 > 0:36:51Ein...
0:36:52 > 0:36:53..zwei...
0:36:55 > 0:36:56..drei...
0:36:59 > 0:37:01..vier.
0:37:01 > 0:37:05By far the most fruitful of all the avant-garde's experiments was
0:37:05 > 0:37:07the development of electronic music,
0:37:07 > 0:37:11making use of tape technology developed in Germany during the war.
0:37:11 > 0:37:15The man who put it on the map was the Andy Warhol of European music,
0:37:15 > 0:37:17Karlheinz Stockhausen.
0:37:29 > 0:37:33He was an amazing, baffling personality,
0:37:33 > 0:37:36highly technocratic on the one hand,
0:37:36 > 0:37:40of course, highly attuned to the possibilities of technology
0:37:40 > 0:37:45right there in the forefront of the development of electronic music.
0:37:45 > 0:37:49But there's also this mystical side to him,
0:37:49 > 0:37:56tending toward psychedelic hippy propensities in the 1960s.
0:37:56 > 0:37:57Think nothing.
0:37:57 > 0:38:02Wait until it becomes absolutely quiet inside of you.
0:38:04 > 0:38:07When you have reached that, start playing.
0:38:07 > 0:38:11As soon as you begin to think again, stop playing...
0:38:12 > 0:38:17..and try to reach again the state of non-thinking.
0:38:19 > 0:38:21Then continue playing.
0:38:50 > 0:38:53A lot of his colleagues increasingly had the impression that
0:38:53 > 0:38:55Stockhausen had gone a little bit mad
0:38:55 > 0:38:58or at least was no longer fully in his right mind.
0:39:07 > 0:39:10In 1956, Stockhausen premiered Song of The Youths
0:39:10 > 0:39:12at a Cologne radio station.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16Mixing the human voice with synthesized sounds,
0:39:16 > 0:39:19it revolutionised electronic music.
0:39:20 > 0:39:24I think Stockhausen was a great showman of a very esoteric kind
0:39:24 > 0:39:28but, you know, certain pieces that he produced are spectacular pieces,
0:39:28 > 0:39:31they're not easy to listen to,
0:39:31 > 0:39:35to comprehend but they have a kind of childlike wonder.
0:39:42 > 0:39:44He's really one of the most interesting
0:39:44 > 0:39:49and bizarre thinkers of our day and pieces like Stimmung
0:39:49 > 0:39:53which is sonically beautifully because it says the only
0:39:53 > 0:39:57thing that's going to happen is this one overtone series and that's it.
0:40:04 > 0:40:09It's animated completely by text and the text is insane.
0:40:09 > 0:40:15You know the text is, you know, "I went to California, I had sex.
0:40:15 > 0:40:18"Now I'm going to make some German people sing about it."
0:40:26 > 0:40:27It's fair to say that,
0:40:27 > 0:40:31though he was vastly influential on like-minded composers, Stockhausen's
0:40:31 > 0:40:36experiments didn't always carry a mainstream audience along with him.
0:40:36 > 0:40:38But that didn't matter. Thanks to radio commissions
0:40:38 > 0:40:41and guest lectureships, avant-garde composers could flourish
0:40:41 > 0:40:44without the need to please a paying public.
0:40:48 > 0:40:52Boulez and Stockhausen were writing music which was
0:40:52 > 0:40:54so abstract and so extreme
0:40:54 > 0:40:59in some cases that the idea of an audience was not what
0:40:59 > 0:41:03they were thinking of, they were not thinking about communicating.
0:41:04 > 0:41:08It was music that means itself, that means nothing except itself.
0:41:08 > 0:41:10I think that was the purpose.
0:41:10 > 0:41:12Which is why they were, of course, so viciously attacked
0:41:12 > 0:41:16by the Soviets, because they saw them as kind of decadent Westerners
0:41:16 > 0:41:21and, you know, their music didn't have any appeal to the people.
0:41:22 > 0:41:24That's not to say that the Darmstadt composers weren't
0:41:24 > 0:41:27engaged in politics. Far from it.
0:41:34 > 0:41:37Iannis Xenakis fought for the Greek communist partisans
0:41:37 > 0:41:42against the Germans and then against the British in the Greek Civil War.
0:41:42 > 0:41:46He trained not as a composer but as an architect and engineer.
0:41:49 > 0:41:52Xenakis wanted to create a kind of music which was really
0:41:52 > 0:41:56driven from pure scientific mathematical principles.
0:41:56 > 0:42:00So if you hear a piece such as Metastaseis,
0:42:00 > 0:42:03this was music that came from somewhere absolutely other
0:42:03 > 0:42:09than the Romantic Austro-German tradition, it came from
0:42:09 > 0:42:13the world of science, from the world of nature and mathematics.
0:42:18 > 0:42:23It also, though, in its own way, has a political message because
0:42:23 > 0:42:24you can listen to this piece
0:42:24 > 0:42:30and you can hear your mathematical shape, your architectural shape,
0:42:30 > 0:42:36but it also describes, quite simply, the sounds of war.
0:42:36 > 0:42:39You can hear the screaming of shells.
0:42:39 > 0:42:42You know, the shell that might have been the one that
0:42:42 > 0:42:43blew half of his face off.
0:42:53 > 0:42:58The most politically engaged avant-garde composer was Luigi Nono,
0:42:58 > 0:43:01a leading member of the Italian Communist Party.
0:43:01 > 0:43:04His music, unlike that of his Darmstadt contemporaries,
0:43:04 > 0:43:06was overtly political.
0:43:06 > 0:43:12In Italy after the war, most of the culture that was important
0:43:12 > 0:43:17and the writers and the film makers and the musicians
0:43:17 > 0:43:24felt that they needed to be close to the people of their country.
0:43:24 > 0:43:29What Nono was interested in was to inform the people who listen
0:43:29 > 0:43:34to his music of human suffering in many different forms.
0:43:34 > 0:43:38That could be miners who were dying under the most terrible
0:43:38 > 0:43:41conditions, it could be people working in factories.
0:43:55 > 0:43:57Pieces such as La Fabbrica Illuminata, you know,
0:43:57 > 0:43:59that's the illuminated factory,
0:43:59 > 0:44:02were expressions of his political beliefs.
0:44:05 > 0:44:06Now, you may think,
0:44:06 > 0:44:11"Well, you know, the workers are going to love that, aren't they?"
0:44:11 > 0:44:17But I think that Nono very sincerely felt that by creating music
0:44:17 > 0:44:23which was, you know, really rigorous and as extreme and powerful
0:44:23 > 0:44:27as he possibly could, that he would connect on an emotional level.
0:44:39 > 0:44:41Nono's most celebrated piece included
0:44:41 > 0:44:45quotations from the letters of executed Italian partisans.
0:44:45 > 0:44:48When Stockhausen, in all sincerity,
0:44:48 > 0:44:50congratulated him for having succeeded in making
0:44:50 > 0:44:54the quotations unintelligible, he was highly displeased.
0:44:54 > 0:44:56But he remained a dedicated serialist
0:44:56 > 0:44:58for the rest of his career.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01I remember Luigi Nono saying to me,
0:45:01 > 0:45:04he saw an F minor chord in a piece of mine, he said, in Italian,
0:45:04 > 0:45:08"You're a traitor, you're a traitor to the cause of new music."
0:45:08 > 0:45:09It became an orthodoxy.
0:45:09 > 0:45:13It became almost a form of totalitarianism, when you had
0:45:13 > 0:45:17to be a serial composer or you basically couldn't be a composer.
0:45:17 > 0:45:21I don't think it happened in, in painting or in literature.
0:45:21 > 0:45:25Could be one of the reasons why the media have almost
0:45:25 > 0:45:27sidelined classical music.
0:45:27 > 0:45:30Because there was this period where
0:45:30 > 0:45:38there was no connection with very clever and very intelligent people.
0:45:38 > 0:45:41Classical music sort of lost its way.
0:45:42 > 0:45:46The same thought was also beginning to occur to some at Darmstadt.
0:45:46 > 0:45:48In 1958, a recent arrival,
0:45:48 > 0:45:52Gyorgy Ligeti, dared to write an article attacking Pierre Boulez.
0:45:54 > 0:45:57Cracks were beginning to appear in the facade of the avant-garde.
0:45:57 > 0:46:02Ligeti used the phrase "character assassination" in terms
0:46:02 > 0:46:07of people attacking each other and doubting each other's motives.
0:46:07 > 0:46:12It reminded him too much of what he had seen back in Hungary.
0:46:12 > 0:46:16Ligeti, a Romanian-born Jew who'd settled in Hungary,
0:46:16 > 0:46:18had managed to escape from Budapest just after Soviet tanks
0:46:18 > 0:46:24rolled in to suppress an anti-communist uprising in 1956.
0:46:24 > 0:46:28He'd seen the chaos of the post-war Eastern Bloc at first hand.
0:46:30 > 0:46:32My father used to tell me bedtime stories,
0:46:32 > 0:46:35sitting by my bedside when I was, like, three years old, and he told
0:46:35 > 0:46:38me about how, after World War II, he had to go
0:46:38 > 0:46:40between Hungary and Romania,
0:46:40 > 0:46:43which was already illegal in its own right, so it was always kind
0:46:43 > 0:46:48of crossing the border illegally but he couldn't afford to buy
0:46:48 > 0:46:52a ticket inside the train so he had to ride on the roof of the train.
0:46:52 > 0:46:58And there were electrical cables going across, you know,
0:46:58 > 0:46:59the train tracks.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03So my father would always get towards the rear of the train
0:47:03 > 0:47:06and sit on, and hang on to the roof towards the rear of the train,
0:47:06 > 0:47:09and when he saw people being decapitated in the front
0:47:09 > 0:47:11of the train he would duck.
0:47:11 > 0:47:15So, you know, those were the kinds of bedtime stories.
0:47:15 > 0:47:19During the war, Ligeti had been sent to a forced labour camp.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21His father, brother and other relatives
0:47:21 > 0:47:23died in concentration camps.
0:47:23 > 0:47:25His mother survived Auschwitz.
0:47:25 > 0:47:28The people who survived the Holocaust, I think, there is
0:47:28 > 0:47:31a certain sense of invincibility that they, you know,
0:47:31 > 0:47:34"If we survived that, nothing can kill us now."
0:47:34 > 0:47:41And, at the same time, I know that my father was always extremely
0:47:41 > 0:47:47angry inside about, you know,
0:47:47 > 0:47:49his father and especially his little brother
0:47:49 > 0:47:52having been killed in the concentration camp.
0:47:52 > 0:47:55And when my father was very sick, near the end of his life,
0:47:55 > 0:48:00he used to speak about that a lot more and, you know,
0:48:00 > 0:48:04it's something that he carried with him for the rest of his life.
0:48:04 > 0:48:07It really marked, you know, it...
0:48:07 > 0:48:12Both the Nazis and the communists really, really influenced,
0:48:12 > 0:48:15in a profound way, his way of thinking.
0:48:15 > 0:48:22And you can't really understand his work without understanding
0:48:22 > 0:48:26that element of, you know, of what he experienced.
0:48:32 > 0:48:36Famously, the philosopher Adorno stated after
0:48:36 > 0:48:39the Second World War, "No more poetry is possible after Auschwitz."
0:48:39 > 0:48:45Ligeti is the absolute contradiction of that because he's someone
0:48:45 > 0:48:48who came from within that appalling darkness and somehow,
0:48:48 > 0:48:52through genius and imagination and courage, found an utterly
0:48:52 > 0:48:58original and gloriously colourful and expressive musical universe.
0:49:00 > 0:49:05There is a sensuousness in Ligeti's music which,
0:49:05 > 0:49:08I think, was very much his intention.
0:49:08 > 0:49:11He wanted to make beautiful objects,
0:49:11 > 0:49:16strangely, eerily beautiful objects, but beautiful nonetheless.
0:49:36 > 0:49:39It really opened up a new way of writing for the avant-garde.
0:49:39 > 0:49:42You didn't have to write the Stockhausen or Boulez
0:49:42 > 0:49:44pointillist stuff any more,
0:49:44 > 0:49:48you could write this textural music that would somehow also be
0:49:48 > 0:49:51absolutely true to what you wanted modern music to be.
0:50:17 > 0:50:19Ligeti, like Messiaen,
0:50:19 > 0:50:23wanted to introduce a spiritual quality into avant-garde music.
0:50:23 > 0:50:27In the 1960s, he wrote a Requiem, and Lux Aeterna,
0:50:27 > 0:50:28both based on the Latin Mass.
0:50:30 > 0:50:33The 20th Century was really a great period of music
0:50:33 > 0:50:36with some kind of spiritual implication
0:50:36 > 0:50:38and, I think, this supplies us
0:50:38 > 0:50:44with a different explanation for some of these abstract sounds -
0:50:44 > 0:50:49the sense that composers are seeking these emblems of the sacred,
0:50:49 > 0:50:52trying to express the unsayable.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01And it found its way on to movie soundtracks,
0:51:01 > 0:51:04famously 2001.
0:51:04 > 0:51:09You hear the Requiem to greatly unsettling effect, suggesting
0:51:09 > 0:51:16incomprehensible, unearthly other-worldly forces, but music that
0:51:16 > 0:51:19nonetheless, in its seamlessness
0:51:19 > 0:51:25and its sense of constantly evolving
0:51:25 > 0:51:33underscores very beautifully Kubrick's grandiose cinematic style.
0:51:33 > 0:51:35The two go surprisingly well together.
0:51:35 > 0:51:40Having once blithely professed to ignore the mainstream audience,
0:51:40 > 0:51:44avant-garde music was now began to reach an audience of millions
0:51:44 > 0:51:45through the cinema door.
0:51:59 > 0:52:02Avant-garde music had managed to thrive with
0:52:02 > 0:52:04no help from the United Kingdom.
0:52:04 > 0:52:06Like its beer,
0:52:06 > 0:52:09Britain's music had tended to be mostly for local consumption.
0:52:11 > 0:52:14Up until the early 1950s, the pastoral tradition
0:52:14 > 0:52:17of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Delius - unkindly derided
0:52:17 > 0:52:20as the Cowpat School - had ploughed its own furrow.
0:52:22 > 0:52:27But a new, iconoclastic generation of British composers was emerging
0:52:27 > 0:52:28in Manchester.
0:52:34 > 0:52:37Not everyone shared their musical tastes.
0:52:41 > 0:52:45At the university, I was thrown out of the composition course.
0:52:45 > 0:52:49The professor there said, "Oh, my dear boy, you're too interested
0:52:49 > 0:52:52"in these dreadful modern Stravinsky and Bartok,"
0:52:52 > 0:52:54and out I was thrown.
0:52:54 > 0:52:57He said, "You'll never be a composer, my boy."
0:52:57 > 0:53:03We had some very primitive lectures on the history of music
0:53:03 > 0:53:05and when it got to serialism,
0:53:05 > 0:53:11I remember the lecturer called out notes from...
0:53:11 > 0:53:17Pick a note out of 12 and once you've had it you can't have another.
0:53:17 > 0:53:20So somebody else... And we went on like that and he wrote it
0:53:20 > 0:53:24on the board and proceeded to write a sort of stupid piece of music.
0:53:29 > 0:53:32But serialism was set to conquer Manchester,
0:53:32 > 0:53:34thanks to the arrival, in the early '50s, of a student whose
0:53:34 > 0:53:38father had conducted the music of Arnold Schoenberg - Alexander Goehr.
0:53:40 > 0:53:43The only reason that one became aware
0:53:43 > 0:53:47of what was going was that there was a very good group
0:53:47 > 0:53:50of young students there, led by Alexander Goehr
0:53:50 > 0:53:53and he had access to scores of Schoenberg and recordings
0:53:53 > 0:53:58and whatever that we could only dream about.
0:53:58 > 0:54:01British composers have often wanted to shut their ears
0:54:01 > 0:54:03to what's evolving outside.
0:54:03 > 0:54:05But the generation of Birtwistle and Goehr and Maxwell Davies
0:54:05 > 0:54:08decided to break with that for all sorts of reasons
0:54:08 > 0:54:10and they all went to the continent, they all
0:54:10 > 0:54:13went to Darmstadt, they went to Paris where they heard the newest
0:54:13 > 0:54:18things and brought them back here and gave them an English accent.
0:54:48 > 0:54:55I once won a prize in Germany and I had to do interviews, you know,
0:54:55 > 0:54:59critics and things, one after the other, and a lot of them said
0:54:59 > 0:55:02did I know that my music was English? And I said,
0:55:02 > 0:55:06"Well, it's the one thing that I've self-consciously tried to avoid."
0:55:23 > 0:55:25Well, his early music is so rude.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29It's aggressive, it's dissonant, it's harsh, it's angular.
0:55:29 > 0:55:34But it has this British quality about it as well.
0:55:34 > 0:55:36Hard to define, you know, it also has a prehistoric, I feel,
0:55:36 > 0:55:41quality to it. There's something earthy, and something ancient,
0:55:41 > 0:55:42deeply ancient about it.
0:55:42 > 0:55:45I feel it inhabits a world of 1,200 years ago as much as it
0:55:45 > 0:55:47does of a world of today.
0:55:59 > 0:56:01The scene in the 1960s with Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies
0:56:01 > 0:56:04had a tremendous amount of energy about it.
0:56:04 > 0:56:08Expressionist poetry, a soprano screaming into a megaphone
0:56:08 > 0:56:12and, you know, ensemble in the back playing very sort of harsh music.
0:56:12 > 0:56:14It was so confident.
0:56:14 > 0:56:20It was so in-your-face and it took the establishment by storm.
0:56:28 > 0:56:32In 1969, one of Peter Maxwell Davies' pieces
0:56:32 > 0:56:37caused a ruckus when it was boldly scheduled at the BBC Proms -
0:56:37 > 0:56:41much to the surprise and dismay of its composer.
0:56:41 > 0:56:44I don't think I ever set out to stir up and shock.
0:56:44 > 0:56:45I was very upset
0:56:45 > 0:56:48when people were shouting "rubbish!" from the audience and when people
0:56:48 > 0:56:53walked out of Worldes Blis in the Albert Hall. It's very upsetting.
0:56:53 > 0:56:57You try to do your best to communicate something which
0:56:57 > 0:57:02means an awful lot to you in as direct and, dare I say it, as simple
0:57:02 > 0:57:07a language as you possibly can, and sometimes people just don't get it.
0:57:07 > 0:57:08It's their problem.
0:57:10 > 0:57:16I do it honestly and I do the only thing I can do at that moment, yeah?
0:57:16 > 0:57:18It's like at school when they used to
0:57:18 > 0:57:21tell me I could do better. I couldn't.
0:57:24 > 0:57:27The '60s avant-garde may have perplexed and upset some members
0:57:27 > 0:57:31of the audience at the time, but its musical language
0:57:31 > 0:57:36and attitude has now become part of the DNA of new British music.
0:57:36 > 0:57:39There are people like Thomas Ades, or Turnage,
0:57:39 > 0:57:45or Judith Weir, Jimmy MacMillan who use tonality plus that language
0:57:45 > 0:57:50and they get absolutely wonderful, dramatic effects out of it.
0:57:50 > 0:57:55But I think without that '60s music that Birtwistle and to
0:57:55 > 0:58:00a probably lesser extent I put there, this wouldn't have happened.
0:58:03 > 0:58:07In the next programme, the focus shifts to America
0:58:07 > 0:58:11as classical music regains its audience by pumping up the volume
0:58:11 > 0:58:13and getting its groove back.
0:58:14 > 0:58:17This is hard core, rocking and rolling minimalist music
0:58:17 > 0:58:21and it was loud and it was fierce and it was...
0:58:21 > 0:58:22it made a very big impression.
0:58:26 > 0:58:29To find out more about 20th-century composers
0:58:29 > 0:58:32and for details of a year-long festival of events
0:58:32 > 0:58:36celebrating a century of revolution in music, art and culture, go to
0:58:36 > 0:58:42bbc.co.uk/soundandthefury and follow the links to The Open University.
0:58:44 > 0:58:48Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd