Music’s pendulum was swinging back to complexity again. ibid.
By 1850 music’s on fire and things have got grand, gutsy and gory. Howard Goodall’s Story of Music IV: The Age of Tragedy
It’s hard to find a piece of music written between 1850 and 1900 that isn’t about death or destiny. ibid.
Thank goodness then for Italian opera … Verdi remained at the top of his game. ibid.
Liszt’s Innovations: 1) The Devil has all the best tunes; 2) All the fun of the Fair; 3) First Impressions; 4) Symphonic Poems; 5) Serial Thriller; 6) I can’t get no self-determination; 7) Richard Wagner. ibid.
Parsifal [Wagner] is the work of a mountainous talent. ibid.
‘Those who compose because they want to please others and have audiences in mind are not real artists.’ ibid. Arnold Schoenberg
One of the most dazzling fruits of human civilization. Howard Goodall’s Story of Music V: The Age of Rebellion
Music was shaken by a series of rebellions … Modernism in music was born. ibid.
The French were about to enjoy a musical golden age. ibid.
Wagner would have despised him because he was Jewish – he was Gustav Mahler. ibid.
Mahler took our worst fears and set them to music. ibid.
These academic rebellions were later labelled surrealism. ibid.
Richard Strauss – Germany’s leading composer after Mahler’s death. ibid.
The opera in question is Salome performed in 1905. ibid.
Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most celebrated and memorable dance music of all time. ibid.
Debussy – the piano had never sounded so exotic and so rich. ibid.
Stravinsky – poly-rhythm … the past and the present to co-exist in one dimension. ibid.
The music that was boosted most of all by recording as it turned out was that produced by African Americans. ibid.
Blues – flattened thirds and sevenths. ibid.
Ragtime picked up syncopation. ibid.
The beginning of a distinct genre of its own – jazz. ibid.
A new age for music. An age when music would belong to everyone everywhere. Howard Goodall’s Story of Music VI: The Popular Age
Radio and records helped local forms of folk music. ibid.
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue: a modern classic. ibid.
Jazz as a style eluded definition. ibid.
Cutting-edge classical music became jagged and discordant to reflect the changing world. ibid.
John Cage: 4 minutes 33 minutes, 1952. ibid.
In the music of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, Bebop became the most influential form of jazz. ibid.
Minimalism: an age of musical convergence. ibid.
What happened to classical music? For centuries composers created music with sound, with beautiful melody and harmony. Then suddenly, just over a hundred years ago, a battle began to develop for the very soul of music. The Sound and the Fury I: A Century of Music: Wrecking Ball, BBC 2013
Many composers experimented with the boundaries of sound. ibid.
Salome: Strauss captured the volcanic temperament of the new century. ibid.
Debussy argued that composers had a duty to evoke the progress of modern days. ibid.
Schoenberg: whose bloody minded musical vision hit the refined world of Viennese concert halls like a wrecking ball. Music would never be the same again … He spoke grandly of his ‘emancipation of the dissonance’. ibid.
Not all modernist composers were quite so lofty and alienated. ibid.
Stravinsky … his score for a controversial new ballet sparked the most legendary riot in all twentieth century music. ibid.
The Rite of Spring collapsed the rules of rhythm – making it jarring and unpredictable. ibid.
Modernism had transformed classical music. ibid.
America: its music too was poised between the comfort of the old and the shock of the new. ibid.
The pilgrim father of modern American music: Charles Ives. ibid.
Jazz began to emerge – and that changed everything. ibid.
George Gershwin … was also a classically trained composer. ibid.
Rhapsody in Blue was a resounding success. ibid.
Gershwin and Schoenberg … hit it off. ibid.
[Arnold] Schoenberg had been teaching in Berlin. He saw first-hand the looming inexorable rise of the Third Reich. ibid.
As the Second World War raged, the world of classical music suffered from repression and censorship. ibid.
In the early years of Modernism composers had torn up centuries-old conventions of melody, harmony and rhythm. After the War they went further. The Sound and the Fury: A Century of Music II: Free For All, BBC 2013
In 1938 the Nazis put on an exhibition they called Degenerate Music. ibid.
American composers, writers and artists were also coming under attack. ibid.
By far the most fruitful of all the avant-garde’s experiments was the development of electronic music. ibid.
Surrealism was set to conquer Manchester. ibid.
Over the course of the twentieth century classical music went through a dramatic revolution. Composers abandoned conventional rules of music. Tune was out. Abstraction was in. The Sound and the Fury: A Century of Music III: Easy Listening
John Cage’s 4 minutes 33 seconds, 1952: ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it.’ ibid.
Cage championed freedom of expression. ibid.
Minimalism was fuelled by the speeding energy of late sixties and early seventies New York. ibid.
Philip Glass: a new development in classical music – composers forming bands. ibid.
Classical music finally got its groove back. ibid.
As minimalism conquered America, in Europe its reception was more muted. ibid.
Born in London in 1944 John Tavener became a boy wonder of 1960s British music. ibid.
Classical music is alive and well. ibid.
1961: 304 Holloway Road, London: ‘Hello, they’re recording my song.’ Telstar: The Joe Meek Story 2008 starring Con O’Neill & Kevin Spacey & Pam Ferris & J J Feild & James Corden & Tom Burke & Ralf Little & Sid Mitchell & Mathew Baynton & Shaun Evans et al, director Nick Moran, opening scene Geoff, BBC 2013
The song we are recording today came to me from the other side. ibid.
It’s Presley’s act – we’ve all nicked it. ibid. Jess Conrad
It’s supposed to be fun. ibid. musician
What happens to people like us, Patrick? Music people. When all the hits have gone, when they’ve all been dried up. What do we do when we can’t do this any more? ibid. Joe
Three weeks after his death, the French courts ruled in favour of Joe. His royalties were finally released, the modern equivalent of three million pounds. He left RGM Sounds Ltd to Patrick. ibid. caption
The place where monarchy and music have met for over a millennium – Westminster Abbey. David Starkey’s Music and Monarchy, BBC 2013
Successive kings and queens have shaped the history of British music as patrons and tastemakers, and even as composers and performers. ibid.
London 2004: ‘Yo, our names Silibil n Brains from Huntington Beach, California. We’re going to rock this show.’ Storyville: The Great Hip Hop Hoax, BBC 2013, on stage
‘The moment we said we’re from California that was it: we had the crowd.’ ibid.
Rihanna: there’s something not right with it. Richard D Hall, Richplanet TV with Neil Sanders