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  • 'Music, one of the most dazzling fruits of human civilisation,

  • 'is, today, a massive global phenomenon.'

  • And so it's hard for us to imagine a time, when, in centuries gone by,

  • people could go weeks without hearing any music at all.

  • Even in the 19th century,

  • you might hear your favourite symphony four or five times

  • in your whole lifetime, in the days before music could be recorded.

  • 'The story of music, successive waves of discoveries, breakthroughs

  • 'and inventions, is an ongoing process.'

  • The next great leap forward may take place in a backstreet of Beijing

  • or upstairs in a pub in South Shields.

  • ORCHESTRA PLAYS: "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga

  • # Can't read my Can't read my

  • # No he can't read my poker face

  • # She's got to love nobody. #

  • Whatever music you're into,

  • Monteverdi or Mantovani, Mozart or Motown, Machaut or mash-up,

  • the techniques it relies on didn't happen by accident.

  • Someone, somewhere, thought of them first.

  • Music can make us weep or make us dance.

  • It's reflected the times in which it was written.

  • It has delighted, challenged, comforted and excited us.

  • In this series, I'm tracing the story of music from scratch.

  • To follow it on its miraculous journey, there'll be no need

  • for misleading jargon or fancy labels.

  • Terms like Baroque, Impressionism or Nationalism

  • are best put to one side.

  • Instead, try to imagine how revolutionary and how exhilarating

  • many of the innovations we take for granted today

  • were to people at the time.

  • There are a million ways of telling the story of music. This is mine.

  • MUSIC: "Arrival Of The Queen Of Sheba by Handel

  • The years 1650 to 1750 were an age of invention and rapid innovation.

  • Great discoveries were made in science and in music.

  • Musical structures were transformed in the hands of composers

  • like Handel and Bach.

  • This period also saw the rise and rise of purely instrumental music,

  • and the birth of what became the modern orchestra.

  • It was an age of transition where music blossomed

  • from being a private affair to a public spectacle.

  • Small wonder that the music of this age of invention

  • is still staggeringly popular in our own 21st century,

  • from the shores of Tristan da Cunha, to the concert halls of Beijing.

  • We live in a technological age,

  • so we can identify with what it was like

  • to live in the late 17th century,

  • when innovations were also coming thick and fast.

  • And to understand our music today, we need to go back to a time

  • when many of its now-familiar components simply didn't exist.

  • Imagine a time when leaping from this chord...

  • to this chord...

  • was a painful experience, or from this one...

  • ..to this one...

  • Imagine a time when an oboe and a trumpet

  • struggled to play the same tune together.

  • Imagine a time when no-one thought of stringing together

  • a chain of chords in a pleasing sequence,

  • like the one that begins this song by Keane.

  • HOWARD PLAYS "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane

  • # I walked across an empty land

  • # I knew the pathway Like the back of my hand... #

  • What makes so much of the music we enjoy today

  • sound the way it does is a series of discoveries

  • that burst into life in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

  • Laws governing the use of chords, which chords you could use

  • and what instruments you could play them on all slid into place,

  • like the parts of a magical and intricate machine.

  • People of the period were obsessed with the interplay of cog and wheel,

  • the laws of motion and gravity

  • and the understanding of the dimension of time itself.

  • No wonder it was a period that saw great advances in clock making.

  • Listen to the music of this period and you hear the ticking of clocks,

  • the perfectly calibrated whirring and spinning of cogs,

  • the turning of wheels and the to and fro of pendulums.

  • The most striking thing about this age of invention is how the

  • exhilarating speed of scientific investigation

  • was reflected in constant experiment and innovation in music.

  • In the 100 years between 1650 and 1750,

  • music underwent a massive upgrade.

  • It went from this...

  • ..to this.

  • Though nowadays it includes instruments of all shapes,

  • sizes and types,

  • the orchestra grew from just one leg-of-ham-sized package.

  • A folk fiddle version of the violin had been around for some time,

  • but the more sophisticated type we recognise today

  • began its journey in Italian workshops in the late 16th century,

  • only really coming in to its own as leader of the instrumental pack

  • in the following century.

  • The violin's rise went hand-in-glove

  • with that of the extravagant absolute Kings of France,

  • Louis XIII and XIV, who brought in Italian experts to play

  • for their flamboyant royal ballets.

  • Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a passionate fan of the ballet,

  • even giving himself starring roles in them,

  • no doubt to gasps of Gallic delight from the assembled courtiers.

  • The ballets were on a fantastic scale,

  • often performed in palace halls or outdoors,

  • so the bright, edgy sound of the violin was just the ticket

  • to fill the space.

  • In fact, not just one violin, but loads of them.

  • One violin good, 24 violins better.

  • You might have 10 or 12 or even 24 violins playing the same tune.

  • Similarly, when they started adding in larger, deeper-toned models

  • of the violin family, like violas and cellos,

  • they were also grouped together to play the same musical line.

  • This, then, was the beginning of the modern orchestra.

  • The musician in charge of the royal violin band for over 30 years

  • was Jean-Baptiste Lully,

  • who created a thicker, grander ensemble style

  • especially for this beefed-up ensemble.

  • There was another important innovation

  • for which dance was responsible.

  • Louis XIV's long colourful ballets would begin with a self-contained

  • instrumental introduction, or opening,

  • the French word for which is overture.

  • The Italians called it Sinfonia.

  • These overtures were soon borrowed by opera, too.

  • They then began to develop into longer and longer orchestral pieces,

  • eventually becoming the symphony.

  • The symphony's basic structure was also to come from dance.

  • Sections of different dance music, pavannes, sarabandes, gigues etc,

  • began to be gathered together into suites, often in groups of three.

  • That's right, the three-piece suite was actually invented

  • by 17th century musicians.

  • But the idea of linked music at different speeds came to dominate

  • the symphony, and did so until the end of the 19th century.

  • In the late 17th century, another crucial part

  • of the musical tool-kit was put into place.

  • The composer who first introduced many of the innovations

  • that Vivaldi, Bach and Handel built on,

  • and which we now take for granted, was Arcangelo Corelli.

  • Corelli was the first violin virtuoso,

  • and he built on his love of the violin

  • an idea that took off spectacularly.

  • He gathered stringed instruments together into groups

  • and created for them a new form, the concerto.

  • Now, a concerto,

  • where a small group of players alternates with a larger group,

  • makes its impact by contrasting loud and soft passages,

  • like the juxtaposition of light and shade, chiaroscuro, in painting.

  • Corelli's innovation was called the concerto grosso,

  • literally the big concert,

  • and in it he explored the contrast between a small group,

  • just two violins and a cello, called concertino, and a bigger group

  • of everyone else called the ripieno, meaning the stuffing.

  • Every composer in Italy now had a stab at writing concerti grossi.

  • One young Venetian admirer of Corelli

  • was to make the concerto as famous as pizza.

  • His name was Antonio Vivaldi.

  • Vivaldi took the big group, little group idea one step further,

  • casting a charismatic solo violin against the whole ensemble.

  • The solo concerto announced its arrival on the musical stage,

  • with a set of pieces that were to become,

  • in the 20th century, deservedly ubiquitous.

  • Vivaldi's concertos introduced a sense of drama and virtuosity

  • that took his contemporaries' breath away.

  • In effect, he was turning his violinists and cellists into divas,

  • to match the opera stars of the day.

  • What makes Vivaldi's music so exhilarating

  • is its sense of forward momentum.

  • How this was achieved was in itself a giant leap forward.

  • It's all about the movement of chords,

  • and it's one of the most fun things in all music.

  • Whatever you're playing, just having one chord

  • after another in a random succession is not really very appealing.

  • Which is why hardly anyone ever does it.

  • So how do you decide how to string chords together in patterns

  • that don't sound like random twaddle?

  • In the 17th century, by experimenting with chains

  • of certain chords in a sequence, composers stumbled across a concept

  • students of music call harmonic progression,

  • but could just have easily be described as musical gravity.

  • The laws governing actual gravity had been formulated

  • in the late 17th century by Sir Isaac Newton.

  • Just as he revealed the inner workings of the universe,

  • so too musicians, at the same time,

  • worked out the inner gravity of music.

  • They made the important discovery that some chords

  • have an attraction to other chords.

  • So this chord, known to every guitarist as G7,

  • is drawn magnetically towards the chord C.

  • To put it another way, chord five yearns for chord one,

  • especially when it's corrupted by the 7th note.

  • Here's chord five,

  • and here it is with the corrupting 7th note,

  • and here is where it wants now to go.

  • The same law of magnetism

  • applies to every key family, no matter which one you chose,

  • so A flat 7...

  • ..leads to D flat.

  • B7...

  • leads to E.

  • F7...

  • leads to B flat.

  • And so on.

  • In the 1600s, musicians became obsessed

  • with these laws of attraction.

  • Composers found that stringing sequences of chords together

  • to trigger this attraction drove the music along.

  • A master of this technique was English composer Henry Purcell.

  • Born just around the corner from Westminster Abbey,

  • where he later worked, Purcell survived the plague

  • and the Great Fire of London,

  • so he knew a thing or two about moving on.

  • His music makes creating imaginative chains of chords look effortless.

  • All he needed was a short sequence that repeated itself a number

  • of times and he'd constructed for himself a whole song.

  • In his Evening Hymn, published in 1688,

  • he sets up a simple sequence of chords.

  • This sequence he then repeats five times, followed by a middle bit

  • where he has a second sequence, then he returns to his original chord

  • sequence for another 13 times, to finish the song off.

  • The amazing thing is you don't get bored with the sequence,

  • despite its repetition.

  • That's because Purcell overlays onto it a ravishingly beautiful melody

  • that follows its own meandering path across the top.

  • # Now, now that the sun

  • # Hath veil'd his light

  • # And bid the world good night

  • # To the soft bed

  • # To the soft

  • # The soft bed

  • # My body I dispose

  • # But where

  • # Where shall my soul repose?

  • # Dear, dear God. #

  • Look at this painting by Vermeer, which was finished in 1664.

  • At first sight, the colours appear to be vivid and well-defined.

  • But look closer and we discover that Vermeer creates this effect

  • by layering colour upon colour, each subtly blending into the next.

  • This melding of colours is like the way harmony works in music.

  • Notes are laid on top of each other, to make constantly shifting chords.

  • # ..praise the mercy

  • # That prolongs thy days. #

  • The chord progression in Purcell's Evening Hymn was to pop up

  • in countless other pieces by other composers

  • in the decades that followed.

  • Indeed, composers went back to the same few archetypes time and again.

  • The most popular sequence by far even had its own name,

  • the circle of fifths.

  • This sequence used the seventh note to trigger chord after chord

  • to jump ship from chord five to chord one.

  • On a piano keyboard you could even make a circle of fifths

  • include every note and chord there is, like this.

  • Starting on B, I add the seductive seventh,

  • to take me to E.

  • I add the seventh, to take me to A,

  • and so on.

  • Arriving back where I started on B.

  • A chain of 10 moves like that would be excessive,

  • and, in fact, not possible on the keyboard instruments

  • of Corelli's time.

  • But he, and all his colleagues, would happily string

  • a sequence of three or four or five moves together.

  • Here is the circle of fifths in a Christmas concerto by Corelli.

  • Here's the same thing in a piece by Vivaldi.

  • And again, in Handel.

  • What may surprise you is that the dozen or so

  • favourite chord sequences beloved of composers around 1700,

  • are still the top dozen harmonic sequences

  • mined by composers of all styles today.

  • Here's just one example, a sequence that evolves

  • a downward stepping bass progressing from chord one to chord five.

  • MUSIC: "Air On The G String" by JS Bach

  • MUSIC: "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" by Procul Harum

  • # We skipped the light fandango

  • # Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor... #

  • MUSIC: "Go Now" by The Moody Blues

  • # Go now

  • # Go now, go now

  • # Go now. #

  • MUSIC: "No Woman, No Cry" by Bob Marley

  • # No woman, no cry

  • # No woman, no cry. #

  • MUSIC: "Piano Man" by Billy Joel

  • # Sing us a song You're the piano man

  • # Sing us a song tonight

  • # Well, we're all in the mood For a melody

  • # And you've got us Feelin' all right. #

  • The magic of these evergreen chord sequences wasn't lost on the 17th

  • and 18th century composers who discovered them.

  • Before long, they were able to construct whole sections of music

  • without a melody at all.

  • Once again, it was Vivaldi who set the gold standard.

  • In the opening of one of the concertos in his best-selling

  • collection published in 1711,

  • unashamedly labelled L'estro armonico,

  • the inspiration of harmony, Vivaldi takes us

  • on a gripping suspenseful journey through chords alone.

  • Vivaldi's music was in demand all over Europe,

  • and he often conducted it in person,

  • to great acclaim in the major cities.

  • Indeed, the years from 1600 to 1700 had been completely dominated

  • by Italian taste, expertise, sensuality and flair.

  • Along with Corelli and Vivaldi, practically all the other composers

  • who dominated the 1600s were Italian.

  • What's more, they all had names ending in I.

  • Vivaldi, Corelli, Albinoni, Monteverdi, Cavalli,

  • Bonnoncini, Steffani, Vitali, Manelli,

  • Torelli, Locatelli, Valentini, and the brothers Scarlatti.

  • But then the musical world began to tilt on its axis,

  • and Italy began to be eclipsed in the musical firmament.

  • Vivaldi himself was to become a victim of this redrawing

  • of Europe's musical map.

  • The popularity Vivaldi enjoyed during his middle age did not last,

  • and after living most of his life in Venice, he decided

  • to move to Vienna in his 60s, where he died lonely and impoverished.

  • For the next 200 years, his prolific body of music, including 500

  • concertos and over 40 operas, would stay silent, his career forgotten.

  • Almost.

  • Vivaldi's legacy survived in the somewhat surprising influence

  • he had on two other composers,

  • Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.

  • The centre of gravity of the musical world had moved north,

  • over the Alps, to Germany.

  • From the home of Roman Catholicism,

  • to the well spring of the Reformation.

  • Bach and Handel both learnt from the Italians,

  • especially Corelli and Vivaldi.

  • They also took what they fancied from the French violin bands

  • and proto-orchestras.

  • They incorporated the inventions

  • and technological advances of their time,

  • and created something extraordinary of their own, that grew out of

  • the particular north German Lutheran culture that they were born into.

  • Lutheran congregations were active participants in the church service,

  • with communal hymn singing being given high status.

  • Just as the Reformation swept away the elaborate decoration

  • favoured in Roman Catholic Churches at the time,

  • so too in Protestantism, the music was always in service

  • of the message, making the Gospel radiant, unfussy and clear.

  • A huge amount of what Bach wrote,

  • including virtually all his 300-plus cantatas, and his vast output

  • of organ music, is based one way or another on German Protestant

  • hymn tunes, or chorales.

  • He would weave a tapestry of sound around a hymn,

  • being sung or played slowly through the centre of the work,

  • as he does here in Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude -

  • Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring.

  • # Jesus bleibet meine Freude

  • # Meines Herzens Trost und Saft

  • # Jesus wehret allem Leide

  • # Er ist meines Lebens Kraft. #

  • All Bach's vocal music is focused on one thing,

  • devotion to God in the human form of Jesus of Nazareth.

  • Whatever he does musically, however complex,

  • he does to enhance the meaning of the words.

  • Take this aria from his St John Passions, Zerfliesse Mein Herze.

  • If we deconstruct its opening instrumental phrase,

  • we see that it's a series of exquisite chords,

  • with a gently descending bass line.

  • That's 15 chord changes in about 10 seconds.

  • But when the voice joins in, Bach's harmonies become even more daring,

  • allowing notes to clash against each other in swiftly moving discords.

  • Here are the dissonances tucked into just the first short vocal phrase.

  • The dissonances may be cleverly disguised,

  • but they're still there, because Bach wants to create a feeling,

  • subliminally, of anguish and grief,

  • which is exactly what the words of this aria are trying to convey.

  • # Zerfliesse, mein Herze

  • # In Fluten der Zaehren. #

  • If Bach's aim in his choral music is to move and inspire,

  • in his instrumental music, he wants to dazzle.

  • He's the undisputed master of all time of the musical technique

  • of counterpoint, the interweaving of different tunes.

  • And the quintessential Bachian form of counterpoint was the fugue.

  • A fugue, which means flight in Italian,

  • is a complicated form of canon, or round.

  • So here is a round that any child in late 17th century London

  • would have known only too well.

  • # London's burning, London's burning

  • # Fetch the engine, fetch the engine

  • # Fire, fire! Fire, fire!

  • # Pour on water, pour on water. #

  • In a canon or round, the same tune is sung by different groups

  • at different points,

  • allowing each new entry to fit on top of the others.

  • A fugue is essentially a more complicated version,

  • with multiple lines, some coming in backwards,

  • or in reverse or upside down.

  • If this sounds freakishly clever,

  • something Einstein might have done in a physics seminar,

  • well, Bach is the closest thing music has to Einstein,

  • who, by the way, was a massive fan of Bach.

  • Let's look at a fugue by Bach that shows him at his Einstein-like best.

  • First of all, we have the basic theme.

  • It would be too easy just to have this theme repeated

  • and played on top of itself, so brainbox Bach

  • has it super-imposed in a number of other ways.

  • One option is to have it play at double speed,

  • and starting on a different note.

  • Not bad, except that he manages two other tricks at the same time.

  • One of them is to turn it upside down,

  • known in the trade as the inverted version, also at double speed.

  • And another is to play it at half the speed,

  • that is, twice as slow as the original.

  • There are four main voices or parts in this fugue,

  • and as it progresses, all of the above techniques cascade over

  • each other, upside down, reversed, speeded up,

  • slowed down and played at different positions on the keyboard.

  • It is a miraculous musical jigsaw.

  • Now composing something as complex as this structure,

  • you'd think would be hard enough when you've got it all laid out

  • in front of you on the page, like a graph.

  • But here's an amazing thing.

  • Bach could improvise fugues like this at the keyboard.

  • From just one fragment of tune, Bach has built an edifice

  • of seven minutes of contrapuntal invention.

  • Bach's mastery of counterpoint wasn't about solving crossword

  • puzzles or cracking enigmatic codes for the sake of it.

  • He believed what he was doing was the musical embodiment of God's

  • master plan for humankind, a recognition of the intricate

  • mathematical beauty of the natural order as ordained by the Almighty.

  • The towering achievements of Bach's career are his settings

  • of the trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

  • CHOIR SINGS "St Matthew Passion" by Bach

  • At the climax of this monumental opening of The Passion,

  • with two adult choirs and a double-sized orchestra

  • already in full sway, he introduces a new, majestically slower tune,

  • on top of the entire structure.

  • Like a phalanx of trumpets announcing the arrival

  • of a mighty ruler, it's a children's choir singing a hymn chorale,

  • O Lamm Gottes, Unschuldig - O innocent lamb of God.

  • In these Passions, Bach employs all the techniques we've encountered

  • in this survey of the music of the 17th and early 18th centuries.

  • Vivaldi's concerto style with large and small forces,

  • juxtaposed in a musical chiaroscuro.

  • Fugal counterpoint, vast choral effects,

  • musical gravity driving harmonic progressions

  • of which the circle of fifths is but one,

  • dance rhythm patterns and a string-led orchestra made of members

  • of the violin family joining forces with woodwind and brass instruments.

  • The St Matthew Passion, well over three hours of it,

  • is a supreme example of how the musical innovations

  • worked out in the preceding 100 years could be brought to bear

  • on a work of epic size, and powerful emotion.

  • But there's one other invention made in this period

  • we haven't yet looked at, and it's the most important appliance

  • of musical science of them all.

  • It could be, in fact, the single most important development

  • in all western music.

  • It was called Equal Temperament, and this is how it worked.

  • On a modern, equal tempered keyboard I can play in any,

  • or all of the available 12 key families to my heart's content,

  • so I can play this...

  • HE PLAYS "Ain't Misbehavin'" by Fats Waller

  • ..in the key that Fats Waller played it in the 1930s, E flat,

  • or in the key of G.

  • Or C.

  • Or, for that matter, F#.

  • Moving from key family to key family like that - the posh name

  • is modulation - on one instrument

  • is what Equal Temperament made possible.

  • It also made it possible for lots of different instruments

  • to play in tune with each other,

  • which, believe it or not, they couldn't easily do before.

  • So it's worth finding out how this happened.

  • Looking again at our piano layout, we see that if we find the note C,

  • for example, it occurs eight times from bottom to top of the keyboard.

  • We also notice that there are 12 other notes between each of the Cs.

  • This is the thing.

  • As it happens, in western music there are in fact at least 19

  • sub-divisions between one C and another, not 12.

  • This is what they sound like.

  • For some instruments,

  • playing all these squashed-together notes wasn't an issue.

  • Cellos, say, are flexible, because you can change a note

  • by sliding your finger by tiny degrees along the string.

  • But instruments like the trumpet and piano can't play them,

  • because their mechanical valves, buttons, tabs and keys are fixed.

  • It's like the difference between this swannee whistle,

  • with its flexible pitch...

  • ..and this recorder, with its fixed pitch.

  • What Equal Temperament did was effectively to abolish

  • seven of the 19 sub-divisions, and create a standardised 12

  • that would swallow up the other little notes.

  • So what used to be the two separate notes, F# and G flat,

  • became one all-purpose note that accommodated both.

  • B#, even though it still gets written out in music,

  • got gobbled up as a separate entity by the note C, and so on.

  • In their natural state, the notes of the octave are not evenly spaced.

  • What Equal Temperament did

  • was to equalise the distance between notes.

  • Thanks to this compromise, you could now jump from chord to chord

  • as often as you liked.

  • The new system of tempering, or tuning, worked.

  • Indeed, it was JS Bach himself who, in around 1722,

  • presented the most conclusive evidence that it worked.

  • He composed two books of pieces to be played in all the new

  • 12 standardised keys, both major and minor.

  • He even called the books The Well-Tempered Clavier, or keyboard.

  • What followed Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier were 300 years in which

  • instruments and our ears were calibrated to Equal Temperament.

  • One reason the traditional music of say, Indonesia, sounds exotic

  • and mysterious to western ears,

  • is because it uses a different system of tuning.

  • Traditional music apart, though,

  • Equal Temperament has now been adopted all over the globe.

  • It's hard to exaggerate the importance of the arrival

  • and triumph of Equal Temperament

  • as a standard across the industrialised world.

  • Like the adoption of the Greenwich Meridian, which made everyone

  • perceive the map and their place in the world differently,

  • Equal Temperament altered the mindset

  • of everyone who enjoyed music.

  • The modern population of the world now hears all music

  • through the filter, some would say distortion, of Equal Temperament.

  • Everyone alive now has a different idea of what sounds "in tune",

  • or "off key", to everyone alive in, say, 1600,

  • before Equal Temperament became the norm.

  • Towards the end of his life,

  • Bach was involved in another new invention that was, in the next

  • century, to be the emperor and empress of the whole world of music.

  • The piano.

  • What we now call simply the piano was invented in around 1700,

  • by a Florentine instrument builder and restorer,

  • called Bartolomeo Cristofori.

  • The unique selling point of the new instrument,

  • making it different from all the previous harpsichords,

  • clavichords, spinets and virginals that went before it,

  • was its ability to play soft and loud,

  • or in Italian, piano e il forte.

  • The harpsichord plucked its strings, and so no matter what pressure

  • you exerted on the keys, the notes always came out the same volume.

  • Cristofori's invention, instead of plucking the strings,

  • tapped them with a gentle hammer, tipped with deer skin,

  • and the harder you hit the key, the harder the hammer hit the string,

  • resulting potentially in different levels of volume for every note.

  • A friend of Bach's, Gottfried Silbermann, began

  • manufacturing pianos, and although Bach played on a few prototypes

  • and even advised on their design, he didn't seem that impressed.

  • Ironically, it was Bach's son, Johann Christian, living in London,

  • who was to become the champion of the new instrument,

  • 30 or so years later.

  • Thus paving the way for the young Mozart

  • and others to follow his lead.

  • By the time this early piano piece was written,

  • believe it or not, the music of Johann Christian's father, the great

  • Johann Sebastian Bach, had already started to fall out of favour.

  • For 100 years after his death, in 1750, Bach was a forgotten,

  • unperformed composer,

  • until Mendelssohn drew attention to his genius in the 19th century.

  • If Bach had written operas rather than church music, it might

  • have been a different story.

  • Opera composers have always been accorded more respect

  • and fame than church composers.

  • Luckily for his great contemporary, Handel, opera was his thing,

  • at least to start with.

  • Handel and Bach were born just 80 miles

  • and four weeks apart in 1685, but never met.

  • Whilst Bach stayed firmly rooted his whole life in his native

  • North Germany, Handel was more the adventurer and entrepreneur.

  • In his long career, he took full advantage of the many technical

  • and stylistic advances in music that swept across Europe

  • in the early 1700s.

  • And there's one other big thing that had changed by 1750.

  • The arrival of you, the audience.

  • And you, we, made a massive difference to the future of music.

  • Before the arrival of a paying public, with its own preferences

  • and appetites, music had depended on the whims of cardinals or princes.

  • Now, commercial opera houses and concert halls

  • opened their doors to anyone who had the price of a ticket.

  • It was this new and fickle audience that Handel quickly learnt to serve.

  • Though he spent some of his youth in Italy, Handel wrote

  • most of his masterpieces after moving to London in 1710.

  • MUSIC: Giulio Cesare in Egitto - Aria - Al Lampo Dell'armi

  • Handel had two reasons for coming to London.

  • One was that his former boss in Germany had become

  • King George I, in 1714.

  • The King and his successor, George II,

  • commissioned music for royal pageants from Handel,

  • including still famous works, like Zadok The Priest,

  • the Water Music and Music For The Royal Fireworks.

  • Handel also settled in London because it was

  • already on its way to becoming the biggest and richest city in Europe.

  • The rapidly rising middle class had money to spend on music,

  • and for a while, they were swept up

  • in a Europe-wide craze for Italian opera.

  • The use today of Italian terms like aria, libretto, prima donna

  • and diva began at that time.

  • Handel wrote 39 operas, in Italian, for the London stage.

  • In London, though, the Italian opera boom was short lived.

  • Its death knell was sounded by a home-grown work,

  • The Beggar's Opera, produced in 1728.

  • The black musical comedy of Polly Peachum, Jenny Diver

  • and MacHeath, and the underworld of Soho, was a full-on

  • parody of the posh folks' mania for Italian opera.

  • It was a huge, long-running success.

  • It didn't do Handel any favours, though.

  • His earnestly serious Italian-style operas

  • now seemed out of sync with the public mood.

  • Casting around for something else to do, he found an unlikely,

  • unwitting ally in the shape of the Pope.

  • As well as banning women from singing in church,

  • the Vatican in the early 17th century had from time to time

  • forbidden opera, which the Pope thought was too damned rude.

  • The result was the rise of the oratorio, a kind of opera

  • that didn't have costumes, or women, or lewd plots, or comedy or scenery.

  • The singers didn't have to act anything out,

  • they just stood there and sang.

  • Oratorios were originally performed in church,

  • and they drew their subject matter from the Old Testament.

  • And no-one could object to that.

  • So when Handel's luck with opera ran out,

  • he turned to English language oratorio instead.

  • It was an inspired move.

  • # Jehovah crown'd with glory bright... #

  • Handel's first ever oratorio in English, Esther,

  • was performed in 1732.

  • It was put on, not in a church, but in a West End theatre.

  • Handel wrote 16 more oratorios,

  • nearly all based on stories from the Old Testament, all seen in theatres.

  • In these works, Handel took elements from Italian operas,

  • oratorios and concertos, added in the Lutheran Church music style

  • and grafted them on to the local English choral tradition,

  • aiming to seduce an audience eager for musical excitement.

  • He succeeded triumphantly. Hallelujah.

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah

  • # For the lord God omnipotent reigneth

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # For the lord God omnipotent reigneth... #

  • Handel brilliantly brought together, in a wholly accessible way,

  • all the musical idioms of the previous 50 years.

  • Dramatic and stirring choruses, full-on crowd pleasers, moving and

  • tuneful solos borrowed from a style that opera had made popular, and an

  • orchestral bedrock owing a debt of gratitude, once again, to Vivaldi.

  • # And He shall reign for ever and ever... #

  • What's more, Handel's oratorios were richly allegorical stories

  • with plenty of emotional impact, but without

  • the need for histrionic over-acting, to embarrass the English.

  • # King of kings for ever and ever, hallelujah, hallelujah... #

  • And what an audience thought was now important, Handel's oratorios,

  • though based on religious stories,

  • were essentially commercial productions,

  • mounted in theatres, not churches, aimed at a paying public.

  • Unlike the St Matthew or St John Passions of Bach,

  • which were aimed at a congregation who

  • would have attended church anyway, Handel was trying deliberately

  • to court public taste, which he did, with bells on.

  • # And lord of lords for ever and ever, hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # King of kings... #

  • There was one other key and topical element in Handel's close

  • relationship with his audience, patriotism.

  • His 45 years in London coincided with Britain's rise to

  • the status of world power, and her growing wealth and military

  • success found their celebration in Handel's patriotic choruses,

  • in which God and King were more or less

  • interchangeable objects of praise.

  • # King of kings and lord of lords

  • # King of kings and lord of lords

  • # And He shall reign for ever and ever

  • # For ever and ever

  • # For ever and ever

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Hallelujah, hallelujah

  • # Halle-lu-jah. #

  • Music showed it could become the collective voice of nationhood.

  • This, for good and for ill,

  • has been an important function of music ever since.

  • Handel donated all the earnings from his Messiah

  • and most of his considerable estate to an orphanage,

  • The Foundling Hospital, gestures which give us

  • a clue as to the quality that enriches every note of his music -

  • compassion.

  • One of his final oratorios, Solomon,

  • contains towards its end an aria for the Queen of Sheba.

  • Now, she is bidding farewell to her lover King Solomon,

  • whom she'll never see again as he returns to Jerusalem.

  • The aria, Will The Sun Forget To Streak, is no hysterical

  • outburst of operatic tragedy, nor is it a plaint of sentimental,

  • self-indulgent misery,

  • it's the voice of rueful acceptance, as if the

  • centuries have melted away, and left us with a simple, humane message.

  • Time doesn't stand still,

  • so cherish every moment of joy and beauty with gratitude.

  • The Queen of Sheba knew she would never encounter

  • a man of Solomon's wisdom again.

  • It's debatable whether music has every surpassed the creative

  • ingenuity and spiritual candour of the masterpieces

  • of Bach and Handel either.

  • In the next programme -

  • the profound moral dimension that Bach

  • and Handel embedded in music gives way to the pleasure principle.

  • In the era of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven,

  • the composer stopped being a servant and became a kind of God, game on.

  • MUSIC: "The Marriage Of Figaro" - Overture - by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  • Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

'Music, one of the most dazzling fruits of human civilisation,

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BBC Howard Goodalls Story of Music. Part 2 of 6: The Age of Invention

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