1
00:00:03,160 --> 00:00:08,520
Over the course of the 20th century,
classical music went through
a dramatic revolution.

2
00:00:13,040 --> 00:00:16,400
Composers abandoned
conventional rules of music.

3
00:00:16,400 --> 00:00:19,080
Tunes were out, abstraction was in.

4
00:00:20,560 --> 00:00:22,760
It was a very extreme time in music.

5
00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:28,240
Composers felt they had
to say something very radical

6
00:00:28,240 --> 00:00:30,280
to wipe away the past.

7
00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:36,680
As the century progressed,
music was taken to
the very brink of destruction.

8
00:00:37,480 --> 00:00:39,600
Listening to it
makes my head wanna explode.

9
00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:43,400
We're trapped in a theatre of pain.

10
00:00:44,680 --> 00:00:47,520
Where could music go after that

11
00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:54,360
but to crawl from the wreckage
and welcome back melody,
beauty and audiences?

12
00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:57,280
Classical music
sort of lost its way.

13
00:00:57,280 --> 00:01:00,440
But you now see the whole thing
has turned a bit of a full circle.

14
00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:06,440
It was as if the whole
wonderful world of tonality
was given back to me.

15
00:01:06,440 --> 00:01:12,520
I think you can see 20th-century
musical history as a kind of

16
00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:15,600
odyssey and a return home.

17
00:01:15,600 --> 00:01:20,040
Suddenly, this sumptuously rich
sound world emerges,

18
00:01:20,080 --> 00:01:24,280
and it was a sound that
people were drawn to.

19
00:01:24,280 --> 00:01:28,560
This is the story
of the triumph of the tune.

20
00:01:52,280 --> 00:01:56,480
One late summer evening in 1952,
a small crowd of music lovers

21
00:01:56,480 --> 00:02:01,840
gathered in a woodland for a concert
of new work by some of the most
radical composers of the day.

22
00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:08,800
It featured a piece by
40-year-old American John Cage.

23
00:02:10,040 --> 00:02:15,600
The son of an inventor, Cage would
become one of the most inventive
forces in 20th-century music.

24
00:02:17,240 --> 00:02:21,120
And on that night,
he stunned his audience into silence

25
00:02:21,120 --> 00:02:25,440
with one of the most audacious
artistic gestures of all time.

26
00:02:27,640 --> 00:02:31,160
This is the Maverick Concert Hall,

27
00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:36,480
it's a little kind of barn in rural
New York just outside Woodstock.

28
00:02:36,480 --> 00:02:41,320
Since the 1920s it's been a
performance space for classical music

29
00:02:41,320 --> 00:02:44,640
and the famous premiere
that took place here

30
00:02:44,640 --> 00:02:47,560
was John Cage's 4'33"

31
00:02:47,560 --> 00:02:49,960
played by David Tudor.

32
00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:53,880
Tudor came out,
sat down at the piano,

33
00:02:53,880 --> 00:02:57,280
closed the lid over the keys and

34
00:02:57,280 --> 00:02:59,840
stayed that way for
4 minutes and 33 seconds

35
00:02:59,840 --> 00:03:02,600
without ever making a sound.

36
00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:18,640
"I have nothing to say
and I am saying it,"
John Cage famously remarked.

37
00:03:24,920 --> 00:03:27,840
He had a lifelong
fascination with silence.

38
00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:35,720
And his 4½ minutes of "nothing"
has become one of the most infamous
pieces in music history.

39
00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:43,480
Daring, controversial and,
some might say, ridiculous.

40
00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:49,280
In 4'33" you're being asked
to tune into the sounds around you,

41
00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:51,920
to tune into your
environment and to, um,

42
00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:55,280
yeah, to... to understand
the world in a different way.

43
00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:03,120
It's about opening yourself up
to music that is full of emptiness
or full of silence.

44
00:04:07,840 --> 00:04:13,240
It's still so incredibly refreshing
to musical culture and to your own

45
00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:16,000
ears and thinking
about what music is.

46
00:04:21,280 --> 00:04:25,320
Cage was a sort of
happy warrior of the absurd.

47
00:04:25,320 --> 00:04:28,160
It's sort of amusing to me

48
00:04:28,160 --> 00:04:33,000
because there's even highly
respected composers who believe

49
00:04:33,000 --> 00:04:36,280
Cage's silent piece
is the most... the most,

50
00:04:36,280 --> 00:04:39,920
I guess, historically important
work since The Rite Of Spring.

51
00:04:39,920 --> 00:04:43,120
Um... To me, that's like, absurd.

52
00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:46,640
When people would say to Cage,

53
00:04:46,640 --> 00:04:50,240
"Anyone could have done it."
Cage would say, "But they didn't."

54
00:04:52,120 --> 00:04:57,200
In life, as in art, Cage
championed freedom of expression.

55
00:04:57,200 --> 00:05:01,440
He was a Zen Buddhist,
a philosopher and a painter.

56
00:05:04,520 --> 00:05:08,080
His teacher, the father of
modernist music, Arnold Schoenberg,

57
00:05:08,080 --> 00:05:12,760
called him "an inventor of genius".

58
00:05:12,760 --> 00:05:15,680
He restlessly questioned
the sound of music.

59
00:05:15,680 --> 00:05:21,680
He used household screws
and bolts to make pianos
sound metallic and percussive.

60
00:05:23,800 --> 00:05:27,360
In Cage's hands, anything
could become a musical instrument.

61
00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:31,080
Even an amplified cactus.

62
00:05:31,080 --> 00:05:32,960
PIANO-KEY-LIKE SOUND

63
00:05:32,960 --> 00:05:37,640
Cage did have a big influence.
His philosophy, his ideas,
maybe even more than his music.

64
00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:40,880
It really questioned
the orthodoxies of modern music.

65
00:05:40,880 --> 00:05:46,280
People had lived through a decade of
rather dogmatic, rather harsh music.

66
00:05:46,280 --> 00:05:49,160
And there's this... How can I put it?

67
00:05:49,160 --> 00:05:51,240
..rather naive American

68
00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:56,480
with these open ideas, presenting
them in a very unpretentious way,

69
00:05:56,560 --> 00:05:59,800
but very new ideas.
It really challenged people.

70
00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:02,200
Mr Cage is a musician,
he is a composer.

71
00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:06,080
He teaches a course in music
at the New School here in New York.

72
00:06:06,080 --> 00:06:10,360
Mr Cage, if you whisper
your secret to me, we'll show
it to those folks out there.

73
00:06:13,240 --> 00:06:15,200
APPLAUSE

74
00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,040
Well, now that's very interesting
and there must be more.

75
00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:26,960
John Cage liberated music.
I think he was a real visionary.

76
00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:30,520
He was able to ask these
simple questions in such

77
00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:34,680
a brilliant, effortless, elegant way.

78
00:06:34,680 --> 00:06:38,000
Ask the question -
What is music? What is art?

79
00:06:44,560 --> 00:06:45,840
He changed the game.

80
00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:50,120
Cage was unafraid of ridicule.

81
00:06:50,120 --> 00:06:51,960
APPLAUSE

82
00:06:51,960 --> 00:06:56,760
No other modernist composer
would ever have performed
on a prime-time game show.

83
00:06:56,760 --> 00:07:00,080
But he was deadly serious
about his art.

84
00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:08,360
In 1951, he created
one of the most challenging
of all solo piano pieces -

85
00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:11,240
Music Of Changes.

86
00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:19,600
A scattershot tour de force,
its seemingly chaotic

87
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:24,000
random sound is the result
of Cage letting fate
decide the order of the notes,...

88
00:07:25,880 --> 00:07:28,280
..in a kind of compositional
game of chance.

89
00:07:37,440 --> 00:07:42,440
He wanted to surrender control,
any trace

90
00:07:42,440 --> 00:07:45,920
of individual expression.

91
00:07:48,720 --> 00:07:52,880
Cage had these charts that he was
working with as he was composing

92
00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:58,720
Music Of Changes. Charts of sounds,
durations of notes, dynamic levels.

93
00:07:58,720 --> 00:08:04,840
He then made the decision to flip
coins to see what would happen next.

94
00:08:04,840 --> 00:08:08,320
And he had the I Ching,

95
00:08:08,320 --> 00:08:12,400
the Chinese divinatory text,
with him.

96
00:08:12,400 --> 00:08:15,280
And he used it to decide
what should come next.

97
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:19,520
It was actually a very
time-consuming process.

98
00:08:19,520 --> 00:08:22,600
This was not a case of a composer
just throwing up his hands

99
00:08:22,600 --> 00:08:24,880
and splattering notes
across the page.

100
00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:28,400
He was deadly serious about it.

101
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:33,840
Cage is not a very interesting
composer to me because

102
00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:37,120
the music that starts with his

103
00:08:37,120 --> 00:08:42,040
abandoning of a more traditional
way of decision making

104
00:08:42,040 --> 00:08:47,520
and his adoption of chance, most of
that music is unlistenable. And, um,

105
00:08:47,520 --> 00:08:50,720
I think that the
abandonment of decision making,

106
00:08:50,720 --> 00:08:56,080
and the abandonment
of natural intuitive gestures,

107
00:08:56,080 --> 00:08:59,960
renders the music
completely meaningless.

108
00:08:59,960 --> 00:09:05,480
Cage was the main composer
for America to say,

109
00:09:05,480 --> 00:09:08,920
"Let's explore
totally new things here."

110
00:09:08,920 --> 00:09:13,120
"We can blow out the box
and imagine and start again."

111
00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:18,200
That vision,
that uniqueness of idea,

112
00:09:18,200 --> 00:09:24,240
really spawned a whole lineage
of innovation in American music.

113
00:09:30,480 --> 00:09:36,280
In the 1950s, avant-garde music
had been dominated by
hardcore European composers

114
00:09:36,280 --> 00:09:40,960
and the rigid style of
music known as serialism.

115
00:09:40,960 --> 00:09:47,640
But with his free-thinking attitude,
Cage was making America the new
centre of revolution and innovation.

116
00:09:49,880 --> 00:09:54,160
He became a father figure to a whole
generation of American modernists.

117
00:09:54,160 --> 00:09:58,040
First and foremost,
a six-foot tall, 300lb,

118
00:09:58,040 --> 00:10:03,040
wise-cracking giant of a man
by the name of Morton Feldman.

119
00:10:05,320 --> 00:10:07,560
There was a sense with Feldman,

120
00:10:07,560 --> 00:10:10,440
you know, at first, he seemed
a kind of a satellite to Cage.

121
00:10:10,440 --> 00:10:16,720
One of these hangers-on who
were always seen in Cage's company.

122
00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:19,320
And it just took
a little while, I think,

123
00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:24,840
for... for people to perceive the
depth of... of what he was up to.

124
00:10:24,840 --> 00:10:30,600
He was an ambitious man, talkative,
spoke in a thick New York accent.

125
00:10:30,600 --> 00:10:32,760
Just a fantastic personality.

126
00:10:32,760 --> 00:10:35,800
And the contradiction
that people always talk about

127
00:10:35,800 --> 00:10:39,080
is between that rather
rambunctious personality

128
00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:44,520
and the music,
which does seem so otherworldly

129
00:10:44,520 --> 00:10:51,200
and detached
and withdrawn from the street,

130
00:10:51,200 --> 00:10:53,240
from the world of the street.

131
00:10:56,320 --> 00:11:00,840
Feldman strode the pavements
of Manhattan like
a high-fiving colossus.

132
00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:06,040
But beneath the exterior bluster
lurked an inner calm.

133
00:11:09,440 --> 00:11:12,760
In a fast-car culture
of mass consumerism,

134
00:11:12,760 --> 00:11:17,440
he sought to counteract the noise
and din of streets around him

135
00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:20,680
with music that fused
the silences of Cage

136
00:11:20,680 --> 00:11:25,120
with delicate notes
barely louder than a whisper.

137
00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:29,600
Morton Feldman
was a New York composer.

138
00:11:29,600 --> 00:11:35,640
Um, but his music
couldn't be less New York.

139
00:11:35,640 --> 00:11:40,360
It seems to distil all the noise
of the world around us into

140
00:11:40,360 --> 00:11:43,800
a stately, quiet,

141
00:11:43,800 --> 00:11:48,160
highly crafted tapestry of sound.

142
00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:52,920
So quiet, so still.

143
00:11:55,160 --> 00:11:59,840
It's almost like it's making
a kind of quiet sense of the world.

144
00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:14,720
It's a refuge from everything
that American culture valued.

145
00:12:14,720 --> 00:12:17,520
Everything that
seemed superficial and fast

146
00:12:17,520 --> 00:12:22,240
and... and money-driven
and everything.

147
00:12:22,240 --> 00:12:26,680
So you retreat into this
other kind of music that has
a completely different set of values.

148
00:12:30,760 --> 00:12:33,400
With Feldman,
everything was beauteousness.

149
00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:37,040
He took the Cage language,
basically, and made it sensual.

150
00:12:40,080 --> 00:12:44,400
On many occasions, I was in
a room when he was composing.

151
00:12:44,400 --> 00:12:50,880
And he sat at the piano
with his big board and table there,

152
00:12:50,880 --> 00:12:54,280
and he would play a chord
and he would say,

153
00:12:54,280 --> 00:12:56,320
"Yeah, I got the chord, I got it."

154
00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:02,600
"Then it comes to me.
Antique cymbal."

155
00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:05,400
"Two piccolos."

156
00:13:06,560 --> 00:13:10,800
And so the pieces were being
composed in the same

157
00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:15,280
very, very slow time stream
in which we perform them.

158
00:13:17,080 --> 00:13:21,200
A very accurate
impression of that space,

159
00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:24,680
that ecstatic beautiful space
in which he was.

160
00:13:47,320 --> 00:13:51,480
Peace. Tranquillity.
A beautiful space.

161
00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:56,440
Feldman's music
soothed the savage beast
that modernist music had become.

162
00:13:59,120 --> 00:14:04,600
His introspective abstract music
had become popular with New York's
thriving artistic community,

163
00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:08,040
especially its abstract
expressionist painters such as

164
00:14:08,040 --> 00:14:11,280
Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

165
00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:18,560
And when Rothko
was commissioned to paint
new works for a chapel in Texas,

166
00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:23,480
Feldman was inspired to write
an accompanying piece
that began as a meditation

167
00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:25,840
but ended up as an elegy.

168
00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:39,880
It was written for these
dark and mysterious paintings
that seem to have

169
00:14:39,880 --> 00:14:44,200
some spiritual intensity that you
couldn't possibly put a name to.

170
00:14:50,120 --> 00:14:54,800
Then Rothko committed suicide.
Feldman was very close to him,

171
00:14:54,800 --> 00:14:58,400
and so the piece
turned into a memorial for him.

172
00:15:01,160 --> 00:15:06,760
Like so many other of Feldman's
pieces, its procession of sounds,

173
00:15:06,760 --> 00:15:12,360
almost at the threshold of hearing,
and that goes on sort of creating

174
00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:14,040
this very powerful atmosphere.

175
00:15:14,040 --> 00:15:16,080
MELODIC VIOLA

176
00:15:20,840 --> 00:15:24,920
Then something very extraordinary
happens in the final minutes.

177
00:15:27,880 --> 00:15:30,320
The viola begins playing
this little melody,

178
00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:34,200
with a sort of a Hebraic flavour,

179
00:15:34,200 --> 00:15:39,240
which actually turns out
to have been composed by
Feldman when he was a teenager

180
00:15:39,240 --> 00:15:41,320
during the Second World War.

181
00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:46,000
And brings up the possibility
that there is

182
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:50,360
another level
of mourning in this piece.

183
00:15:50,360 --> 00:15:55,920
Is it, in some sense,
a memorial for the Holocaust?

184
00:15:59,560 --> 00:16:03,240
It's a piece that,
I think, increasingly

185
00:16:03,240 --> 00:16:07,600
has a very high stature
in the 20th-century repertory.

186
00:16:13,280 --> 00:16:15,360
Feldman's music was hypnotic.

187
00:16:15,360 --> 00:16:19,040
He once described it as
"tripping on chords".

188
00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:22,280
TRIPPY MUSIC

189
00:16:23,760 --> 00:16:29,840
Its trance-like sound
was in tune with an explosive
shift in 1960s American culture,

190
00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:34,440
one that would have
a profound effect on its
home-grown classical music.

191
00:16:39,960 --> 00:16:42,320
Great swathes of America

192
00:16:42,320 --> 00:16:46,360
were becoming far more
European and far more permissive

193
00:16:46,360 --> 00:16:50,160
at that time.
Greenwich Village came to the fore.

194
00:16:50,160 --> 00:16:54,240
And, of course, what New Yorkers
called "The Coast", ie California.

195
00:16:54,240 --> 00:17:00,120
And this is what leads
in the 1960s to the counter culture.

196
00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:03,560
Drugs, Beat poetry
and Eastern philosophies.

197
00:17:03,560 --> 00:17:07,040
Zen, Buddhism,
Taoism and all of those things.

198
00:17:07,040 --> 00:17:11,840
And these were all regarded as
alternative ways to the truth.

199
00:17:14,920 --> 00:17:20,080
Nowhere more summed up
the counterculture
than the city of San Francisco,

200
00:17:20,080 --> 00:17:25,920
where, in 1964, a 29-year-old native
Californian named Terry Riley

201
00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:30,960
took John Cage's ideas of chance and
indeterminacy and gave them a tune.

202
00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:43,600
I was working as
a ragtime piano player at the
Gold Street Saloon in San Francisco.

203
00:17:43,600 --> 00:17:48,840
And one night on the bus driving
into work, I heard the whole thing,

204
00:17:48,840 --> 00:17:53,520
just in my head, just developed,
like, almost the whole piece,
I could see develop.

205
00:17:53,520 --> 00:17:59,040
And so I went home, the next
morning, I wrote, you know, I wrote
the piece, essentially, in a day.

206
00:17:59,040 --> 00:18:03,080
I've hardly changed a thing
since that first inspiration came.

207
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:06,920
And when I showed it to the
first few friends I showed it to,

208
00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:10,600
everybody kind of laughed and
thought it was really a silly idea.

209
00:18:10,600 --> 00:18:12,600
HETEROPHONIC REPETITIVE MUSIC

210
00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:28,320
Riley's breakthrough piece
- In C - is made up
of 53 short musical fragments

211
00:18:28,320 --> 00:18:32,800
to be played by any number of
musicians, for any length of time,

212
00:18:32,800 --> 00:18:36,720
moving from one to
the next as the mood takes them.

213
00:18:36,720 --> 00:18:41,240
The structure of Riley's In C
is so brilliantly simple.

214
00:18:41,240 --> 00:18:44,960
First of all, you can see the entire
musical material on a single page.

215
00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:50,480
The procession through the piece
is a kind of snake
following its own tail.

216
00:18:50,480 --> 00:18:56,480
So the effect is this
sort of glorious unpredictable
and yet predictable polyphony.

217
00:19:02,880 --> 00:19:07,040
The wonderful thing about it
is that In C is absolutely
identifiable as itself.

218
00:19:07,040 --> 00:19:09,080
You can't mistake it
for anything else.

219
00:19:09,080 --> 00:19:12,360
Yet every performance of In C
is vastly different from others

220
00:19:12,360 --> 00:19:15,360
than a performance of Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony to itself.

221
00:19:15,360 --> 00:19:18,560
ABSTRACT VOCALS AND PERCUSSION

222
00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:25,280
I thought that Terry had sort of, er,

223
00:19:25,280 --> 00:19:31,120
given a joyful middle finger
to academic seriousness.

224
00:19:31,120 --> 00:19:37,720
You know, In C is kind of the
ultimate hippie piece, you know.

225
00:19:37,720 --> 00:19:43,640
Where everybody gets around and they
don't have to be very good. As long
as they can play a few notes

226
00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:46,680
on their instrument
they can be part of it.

227
00:19:46,680 --> 00:19:52,720
There's a joyful quality to it and
it had that infectious beat to it.

228
00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:55,600
It came out of nowhere

229
00:19:55,600 --> 00:20:01,480
and really did signal
a major stylistic shift.

230
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:12,720
Riley's single-page composition
quickly gathered a cult following
among a hip young audience,

231
00:20:12,720 --> 00:20:16,280
for whom the avant-garde
was nothing to be scared of.

232
00:20:18,360 --> 00:20:21,400
In C found its way to
the streets of downtown New York,

233
00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:24,840
where experimental music
was thriving.

234
00:20:27,440 --> 00:20:29,600
Not in the classical world

235
00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:33,360
but in the wild
sonic meltdown of radical jazz.

236
00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:41,000
During that period,
the new directions of jazz

237
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:44,280
was happening. We were hearing
it. You could hear it very easily.

238
00:20:44,280 --> 00:20:49,040
I became very friendly with that
community and I enjoyed the music.

239
00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:51,560
I could embrace it,
embrace it as a listener.

240
00:20:51,560 --> 00:20:57,640
At that point in jazz history,
you have John Coltrane playing

241
00:20:57,640 --> 00:21:01,200
beautiful melodic material,
and sometimes just screaming noise

242
00:21:01,200 --> 00:21:03,520
through the saxophone.

243
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:10,280
Wonderful. Thrilling.
And that was absolutely

244
00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:15,240
revolutionary, especially against
the backdrop in concert music.

245
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:17,520
He was going full tilt
the opposite direction.

246
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:25,560
Inspired by the spontaneity
of free jazz, young composers
such as Steve Reich

247
00:21:25,560 --> 00:21:31,040
and Philip Glass shook up the
highbrow culture of classical music.

248
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:42,480
They took the gradually
shifting patterns and pared-down
language of Terry Riley's In C

249
00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:45,360
and transformed the musical
landscape of America.

250
00:21:46,320 --> 00:21:50,320
Their sound
was insistent, repetitive

251
00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:52,640
and unashamedly harmonious.

252
00:21:52,640 --> 00:21:56,240
And it soon became
known as minimalism.

253
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:58,800
When I first heard minimalism,

254
00:21:58,800 --> 00:22:04,360
it was as if the whole
wonderful world of tonality
was given back to me.

255
00:22:04,360 --> 00:22:10,680
The kinds of things
I love listening to on Top-40 radio
as I drove around in my car.

256
00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:13,960
The things that I loved about
James Brown's music.

257
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:18,000
It was wonderful. It felt like
getting it all back again.

258
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:24,080
When minimalism came along,

259
00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:27,920
it was an intensely
alienating experience

260
00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:31,960
for a lot of listeners
who first encountered it.

261
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:34,840
This was no more to their liking

262
00:22:34,840 --> 00:22:39,120
than the avant-garde music
that had come before.

263
00:22:39,120 --> 00:22:43,120
It had a hard edge,
it was relentless.

264
00:22:43,120 --> 00:22:48,200
It took the form of,
you know, a very simple tonal idea

265
00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:54,720
being repeated again and again
and again until it becomes
a kind of endurance test.

266
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:04,200
Minimalism was fuelled by
the speeding energy of late '60s
and early '70s New York,...

267
00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:09,920
..where pop art and rock music were
collapsing the barriers between

268
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:12,600
popular and serious culture.

269
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:15,880
It was do-it-yourself, in-your-face,

270
00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:19,920
and a rejection of the elitist
culture of modern classical music.

271
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:24,000
The downtown composers,
the minimalists,

272
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:30,320
they kind of rejected
the uptown musical institutions
of the big concert halls,

273
00:23:30,320 --> 00:23:35,880
the opera houses. And it was a kind
of alternative musical subculture.

274
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:38,560
When I go back
and play the music now,

275
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:41,080
I feel the energy of that time.

276
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:46,720
It's in my fingers and it grabs me
and it takes me right back to that,
there's no question about it.

277
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:49,960
The son of a record store owner,

278
00:23:49,960 --> 00:23:54,480
Philip Glass studied classical
composition in New York and Paris.

279
00:23:54,480 --> 00:24:00,320
But with the development of his
radical new sound, came a new
development in classical music.

280
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:04,080
Composers forming bands.

281
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:19,640
I had come back to New York
from being in Paris, I'd lived
there for a number of years.

282
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:24,240
I love Paris
because the French musicians
I knew wouldn't play my music.

283
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,360
They said, "Ce n'est pas la musique."

284
00:24:26,360 --> 00:24:30,280
They would look at it and say,
"We can't play this, it's not music."

285
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:34,400
I went home. I called my friends
who I'd gone to school with,
some of them.

286
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:36,520
And we just went and did it.

287
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:38,800
We weren't even allowed
in the concert halls.

288
00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:41,200
We were finding new audiences.

289
00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:45,480
We did a lot of concerts in lofts
and in galleries and in cafeterias.

290
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:48,200
In all kinds of...
I mean, any place we could.

291
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:52,400
And the artists and dancers
and filmmakers and the poets,

292
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,520
they became our audience,
and we became their audience.

293
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,360
Philip, since his band
was heavily amplified,

294
00:25:05,360 --> 00:25:08,840
and sort of did have the
appearance of a rock concert

295
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:14,720
because it was so loud, people felt
they were in a totally new universe.

296
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:18,800
And what they were hearing
was absolutely new

297
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,520
and that it had
a kind of mythic aura to it.

298
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,360
I learned a lot
from the rock and roll guys.

299
00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:30,760
This is hardcore minimalist, really,
rocking and rolling minimalist music.

300
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:35,600
And it was loud and it was fierce
and it made a very big impression.

301
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:42,920
When I wrote in the music
the instructions for the players,

302
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:45,160
I just wrote "fast and loud".

303
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:49,040
That's what... That's...
I mean, that's very very simple.

304
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,040
No, and then the repetitive goes...
it goes without saying.

305
00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:57,800
I had wonderful headline
reviews in those days.

306
00:25:57,800 --> 00:26:03,040
One of my favourite ones was,
I think it was the Daily News or
maybe it was The Post in New York,

307
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:06,480
and the headline was,
"Glass invents new sonic torture."

308
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:17,080
But minimalism wasn't simply
classical music swapping
its tuxedo for a leather jacket.

309
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:20,840
It marked a seismic shift in the
listenability of modern music.

310
00:26:20,840 --> 00:26:23,760
Composers such as
Glass and Reich broke free

311
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:27,640
from the straitjacket of
12-tone and serialist composition

312
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,480
that had dominated
the classical avant-garde.

313
00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:36,320
A music utterly lacking
in minimalism's simple harmonies
and steady rhythms.

314
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:38,760
DRUMMING

315
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:44,160
Classical music
finally got its groove back.

316
00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:53,800
I think it fell to my generation
not to do something...

317
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:57,160
Not to make a revolution,
but to return to normalcy.

318
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:01,240
I had to write 12-tone music,
everyone had to write 12 tone music.

319
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,200
This is back
in the late '50s, early '60s.

320
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:07,240
There's no way you're going to
tap your foot to any of that.

321
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:11,280
And it's considered naive
to even think that way.

322
00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:14,600
What I'm saying is, is that

323
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:18,280
to eliminate the basics of
the music that you find in jazz,

324
00:27:18,280 --> 00:27:20,800
that you find
in West African drumming,

325
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,120
that you find
in music for centuries,...

326
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:28,320
..pulsation, regular pulsation,

327
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,280
is to ignore something
which people crave.

328
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:52,720
What Reich is doing is...

329
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:55,560
Is that he wants to
find a way of getting

330
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:59,600
rhythm and pulse back into
Western contemporary music.

331
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:05,400
Drumming is built
on one rhythm that's extended
for, you know, 80, 90 minutes.

332
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:12,240
It's absolutely about finding
the extraordinary richness of
the very simplest things of music.

333
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:19,320
But it also has an infectiousness.

334
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:24,600
The same thing repeated
but slightly different.

335
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:28,080
It changes your sense of perception,
your sense of time passing

336
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:30,520
it changes your way of hearing.

337
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,960
You get taken to another place.
Nothing wrong there.

338
00:28:46,920 --> 00:28:49,000
By the end of the 1970s,

339
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:54,520
minimalist composers had taken a
vast new audience to another place.

340
00:28:54,520 --> 00:29:00,360
Selling records in quantities
unheard of in serious modern music.

341
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,640
But not everyone was digging it.

342
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:10,480
Where many heard
a blissful return to tonality,

343
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:12,760
others wondered, quite literally,

344
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:14,640
where it was going.

345
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:22,840
Well, I feel minimal.

346
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,040
If you... If you...

347
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:30,200
If you have a piece
which is based on a single chord,

348
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:34,520
after a while, you say,
"Yes, now I know."

349
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:38,160
Can you go further?
And it does not go further.

350
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:44,920
Minimalism doesn't have nice tunes.

351
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:50,320
Pure minimalism is almost
anti-melodic, and it's also extremely
static and it's meant to induce,

352
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:52,160
I'd say, a sense of trance.

353
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:55,640
I wouldn't call it tonal at all.

354
00:29:55,640 --> 00:30:00,240
Because tonality involves concepts
of cadence, concepts of motions,

355
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:02,320
that are missing from this music.

356
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,800
Intentionally missing
from the music.

357
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:13,600
Minimalism was very controversial
when it first arrived.

358
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:21,640
You know, some of it really was
kind of mind-numbingly repetitive.

359
00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:25,280
I can't bear to hear some
of the classic pieces of minimalism.

360
00:30:25,280 --> 00:30:28,840
I just, you know,
I look to see where the exit is.

361
00:30:28,840 --> 00:30:35,760
But it was... There was something
vibrant and thrilling about it.

362
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:41,480
I mean, I liked the minimalists

363
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:45,000
right off the bat. I think what made

364
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:47,840
people the craziest about
the minimalists is that

365
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:51,040
they made music on their own
that people wanted to listen to

366
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:53,920
and would pay cash money
to have on an LP in their house.

367
00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:58,600
Right? Which is, like,
kind of amazing, right?

368
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:03,320
It shouldn't be amazing but, I think,
in 1979, it was kind of amazing.

369
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:10,320
I think that the reason people
criticise minimalism is because

370
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:16,120
it's popular. So if somebody who
doesn't really know that much about
classical music likes Philip Glass,

371
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:19,240
well, they must not
really know what's good

372
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,840
and Philip Glass
must not be a good composer.

373
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:26,000
But I totally disagree
with that correlation.

374
00:31:41,880 --> 00:31:46,720
As minimalism conquered America, in
Europe its reception was more muted.

375
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:50,960
The hardcore modernists
of serial music

376
00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:54,640
were suspicious of its
reliance on the old taboo of melody.

377
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:01,640
But minimalism did have
one remarkable
and perhaps surprising impact.

378
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:07,640
In the Estonian capital of Tallinn,
it entered the realm of the sacred.

379
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:14,560
It influenced a composer whose
music combined the pattern and
repetition of the minimalists

380
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:19,640
with the silences of Cage
and the stillness of Feldman.

381
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:38,040
I would say, for me,
Arvo Part is the most important
living European composer.

382
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,000
His music strikes me as just,
you know,

383
00:32:42,000 --> 00:32:47,000
extremely, emotionally,
profoundly honest moving music.

384
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,080
Overpoweringly beautiful.

385
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:52,760
The craftsmanship, the honesty

386
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:57,480
and the authentic religious
conviction that these pieces embody

387
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:01,640
are, in a sense,
a tonic in our generation.

388
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:07,360
But Part's tonic was born
from extreme circumstances.

389
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:14,480
In Soviet-occupied Estonia, where he
studied at the Tallinn Conservatory,

390
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:18,320
religious faith was a bigger taboo
than any modernist musical movement.

391
00:33:20,800 --> 00:33:24,400
By turning to sacred composition
in the late 1960s,

392
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:27,040
he was risking his life for his art.

393
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:30,560
It was a very hard time.

394
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:37,000
Terror and fear reigned
in that country.

395
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:45,200
And every individual's
life was in danger.

396
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:49,400
But those who followed
their own voices

397
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,120
ended up in prison.

398
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:57,720
I had always been seeking the way

399
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:02,880
to a new kind of music
which could nourish my soul.

400
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:08,320
And yet, it was shamelessly
explained to us

401
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:13,480
in those totalitarian
atheistic countries that,

402
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:19,480
of course, there were
once great composers -

403
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:25,960
Bach, Mozart, Schubert,
but they all had the same failing.

404
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,640
They were religious.

405
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,880
They were devout.

406
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:42,840
When his early pieces
were banned by Soviet censors,

407
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:45,480
Part stopped writing
music altogether.

408
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:52,000
Gradually re-emerging in the late
1970s with a spartan chiming sound

409
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:55,400
intended to convey pure
religious emotion.

410
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:00,280
Arvo Part's story
is an amazing story about

411
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:05,200
a career that starts off
as a real kind of musical and
political even religious protest.

412
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:11,520
And then, after a period of
reflection, he finds the music,
he calls it tintinnabulation.

413
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,560
That, for him,
was a really important epiphany.

414
00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:20,080
And what he found in this,
what he calls tintinnabulation,
is something that, on the surface,

415
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:24,880
is something that seems familiar.
And yet, the way it moves

416
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,560
is incredibly systematic,
the way he actually puts
one chord with the other.

417
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:34,840
And the rules that he asks
of the collections of notes
that we're familiar with,

418
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:38,520
are extremely rigorous
and austere and ascetic.

419
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:48,440
But if you listen to it,
it has an objectivity
and a stillness and a serenity.

420
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:54,160
And, yeah, a love
that is very profound, I think.

421
00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:49,680
I think, for Arvo Part, minimalism

422
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:54,880
actually became a way to create

423
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:57,480
an emotional environment
with the listener.

424
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:10,760
I think, for Arvo Part,
for whom God is so important

425
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:13,520
and for whom
religion is so important,

426
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:18,320
um, music has that ability

427
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,960
to build that connection.
We all feel that.

428
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:26,960
You know, I can... I can imagine
how that issue for Arvo Part,

429
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:31,040
of how to get emotionality back,
you know, after modernism,

430
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:34,480
was the primary issue of his life.

431
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:48,520
Within years, a strain of
stripped-down devotional music

432
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:52,160
exemplified by Part, came to be
known as "holy minimalism."

433
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:56,600
and struck a chord
with a worldwide audience.

434
00:37:58,240 --> 00:38:01,240
But, like the American
minimalism of Glass and Reich,

435
00:38:01,240 --> 00:38:06,760
this unprecedented commercial
success divided opinion
in the world of classical music.

436
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,440
Was it purely due to
its easy-on-the-ear nature?

437
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:15,480
Or was it indicative of modern music
finally regaining its soul?

438
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:23,360
Arvo Part's music was a sound
that people were drawn to.

439
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:29,880
And, suddenly, these Arvo Part
records were selling hundreds
of thousands of copies.

440
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:35,640
And some people have said that this
was sort of a superficial phenomenon

441
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:39,920
of bourgeois people wanting to
acquire a patina of spirituality.

442
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,360
And, sure,
that could be true in some cases.

443
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:46,560
But there's also, I think there's...
there's a deeper longing,

444
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:51,120
yearning there in this culture,

445
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:55,400
which is starved for sacred images.

446
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:58,720
And Part answers that need.

447
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:09,360
I think it's also true to say
that the 20th century,

448
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:12,600
particularly in the last part
of the 20th century,

449
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:19,720
has had more effort to produce a
sacred music than the 19th century.

450
00:39:19,720 --> 00:39:23,360
I mean, you have
people like Stravinsky,

451
00:39:23,360 --> 00:39:27,400
you have people like Arvo Part,
you have people, I suppose, like me.

452
00:39:29,240 --> 00:39:33,480
I mean, all in search
of a spiritual vision of some kind.

453
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:41,240
Born in London in 1944,

454
00:39:41,240 --> 00:39:46,040
John Tavener became a boy wonder
of 1960s British music.

455
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:51,360
The first classical composer to be
signed to the Beatles' record label.

456
00:39:54,520 --> 00:39:57,880
Right from the start,
his music had a religious leaning.

457
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:03,880
His breakthrough work, The Whale,
was the biblical story of Jonah
and the whale told in a modernist

458
00:40:03,880 --> 00:40:05,840
experimental style.

459
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:14,520
I had suddenly been introduced
to modernism and I listened
to Boulez, I listened to Stockhausen.

460
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:16,560
And was very excited by it.

461
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:21,240
But it's not something now, towards
the end of my life, that I can see

462
00:40:21,240 --> 00:40:24,280
was a productive path for art.

463
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:26,520
I don't love
the torment in the music.

464
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,360
I don't really want
to remember anything

465
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,520
that shows the ugliness
of the human condition.

466
00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,360
We see it all the time,
for God's sake, we don't need it.

467
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:38,080
We need to be...
We need to be lifted.

468
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:56,800
John Tavener specifically
became interested
in the Greek Orthodox faith.

469
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:03,640
Was inspired by the chants,
by the music of that church.

470
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:08,160
He was incorporating that
kind of bell-like simplicity

471
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:10,800
into all of his music.

472
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:15,840
And every piece of music
became a kind of devotional act.

473
00:41:17,400 --> 00:41:23,120
In his 1987 piece, The Protecting
Veil, Tavener said that he was

474
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:27,240
"trying to capture
some of the almost cosmic power
of the Mother of God."

475
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:34,160
And though its contemplative
ecstatic conviction might seem out
of step with the late-20th century,

476
00:41:34,160 --> 00:41:38,320
it made this modern-day mystic
a household name.

477
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:46,360
I don't understand the success
or otherwise of my music,
I never understand it.

478
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:51,840
I think what inspired
The Protecting Veil was the
concept of the eternal feminine.

479
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,560
That is what people
perhaps long for, the tender,

480
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:59,960
the compassionate,
the loving, and beauty also

481
00:41:59,960 --> 00:42:04,000
is a bit missing in 20th-century art
and 20th-century music.

482
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:13,080
I was at the first performance
of John Tavener's Protecting Veil.

483
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:18,040
It's a very very slow, very long

484
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:22,320
very expressive
pared-down minimal cello concerto.

485
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:28,200
With the orchestra providing kind
of shimmering bell-like harmonies.

486
00:42:28,200 --> 00:42:33,520
It was in 1988, it was at
the height of the Thatcher '80s.

487
00:42:34,720 --> 00:42:40,560
I think it's interesting
that that piece came to
enormous popularity at that time.

488
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:53,800
I guess, one view is just that
people latched onto this pure

489
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:56,640
spiritual simplicity of this music

490
00:42:56,640 --> 00:43:01,360
as a counterpart to the brash
culture of Thatcher's Britain.

491
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:05,160
More than any modern composer,

492
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:09,400
Tavener's music has seeped
into the public consciousness.

493
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:14,680
His choral works have become
staples of religious worship.

494
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:20,000
And when his 1993 piece,
Song For Athene,

495
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:23,040
was performed at the funeral
of Diana, Princess of Wales,

496
00:43:23,040 --> 00:43:27,080
it was heard by a global audience
of over 750 million.

497
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:41,520
There is an audience
which adores this music.

498
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:44,360
The difficulty and danger
with this music, of course,

499
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:49,040
is that it's then used
in comparison to other music
from the 20th century.

500
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:52,120
Because, in some ways,
it is easier to understand.

501
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:57,560
I can understand more easily
what John Tavener
is attempting to achieve

502
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:02,640
in a piece which is simple harmonic
blocks in a line over the top,

503
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:05,680
than I can
in a piece by Stockhausen.

504
00:44:07,720 --> 00:44:11,800
But that doesn't mean that we
shouldn't try to find the answers

505
00:44:11,800 --> 00:44:13,800
to that more challenging music.

506
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:23,160
Modern classical music had finally
ceased to alienate its audience.

507
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,400
But that didn't mean
the avant-garde was left for dead.

508
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:35,640
Back in Paris,
the city where Claude Debussy
first threw open the floodgates

509
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,640
for a century
of musical reinvention,

510
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:42,400
an underground bunker
had been forged.

511
00:44:43,240 --> 00:44:45,920
A scientific laboratory

512
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:50,640
equipped to blast music from the end
of the 20th century into the 21st.

513
00:44:53,640 --> 00:45:00,000
This was the Institut de Recherche
et Coordination Acoustique/Musique.

514
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:07,200
Better known by its
sci-fi abbreviation IRCAM.

515
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:13,560
When IRCAM was established
in the 1970s, to some extent,

516
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:19,640
it was a way of
re-establishing Paris
as a centre of contemporary music.

517
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:25,440
It was a utopian ideal
of a place where composers

518
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:27,960
and technicians

519
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:34,280
and allied thinkers could experiment
with new technical possibilities.

520
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:37,160
It was very simple.
It was to make a Bauhaus for music.

521
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:41,520
And what was going on in Germany
in the '20s, for painters,
architects, designers.

522
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:43,640
The idea, I think,
was to do that for music.

523
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:47,040
To find new musical tools to
refresh the musical language.

524
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:49,320
It's been a very important phenomenon

525
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:51,680
in the last 30-40 years of music.

526
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:58,800
IRCAM was the brainchild of one of
the giants of 20th-century modernism,

527
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:01,840
the French composer Pierre Boulez.

528
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:06,200
After 30 years at the frontline
of the musical avant-garde,

529
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,480
he'd become switched on
to a new musical tool.

530
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:20,560
I was soon enough to recognise
the importance of the technology,

531
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:22,600
computer technology.

532
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:26,280
That was at the very beginning,
in '75 already.

533
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:32,000
And I organised IRCAM
around this new technology.

534
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:36,840
And I said I would like
to conceive a big studio

535
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:40,840
that people can stay there,
experiment freely.

536
00:46:43,720 --> 00:46:48,600
I was invited by Pierre Boulez
to come to IRCAM and to work on

537
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:53,240
what were entirely new machines,
computers for music.
Such a thing hadn't existed before.

538
00:46:53,240 --> 00:46:55,520
And to see what
one could make from them.

539
00:46:55,520 --> 00:47:01,160
I found the dry cold
mechanical sound of most
of what I heard coming out of them,

540
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:03,280
er, uninteresting musically.

541
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:05,720
And my challenge,
the one I set myself,

542
00:47:05,720 --> 00:47:08,880
was somehow to try
to make these tools sing.

543
00:47:08,880 --> 00:47:11,520
SPEAKS FRENCH

544
00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:16,280
A musical prodigy,
George Benjamin had a long
association with music in Paris,

545
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:21,880
having studied there aged 14 with
the great composer Olivier Messiaen.

546
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:22,920
APPLAUSE

547
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:26,120
The work he created
at IRCAM, Antara,

548
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:29,640
fused the white heat
of computer technology

549
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:32,640
with the very ancient sound
of traditional instruments.

550
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:42,760
George Benjamin has always been a
composer who's fascinated by sound.

551
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:49,560
But he ended up being
most influenced by some sounds
that he heard outside of IRCAM.

552
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:56,040
The buskers, the Peruvian panpipe
players who were there every day.

553
00:47:56,040 --> 00:48:02,600
He recorded the sounds
of their panpipes and treated them
on the computers of IRCAM.

554
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:07,600
And made sounds which were
integrated into a live orchestra.

555
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:24,400
People were mystified by it at first
because, in the '70s and the '80s,

556
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:29,000
electronic pieces had
lots of very sort of
extrovert metallic sound effects,

557
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:33,240
and lots and lots of drones
and a bit Star Wars like.

558
00:48:33,240 --> 00:48:38,200
In terms, not the music,
but in terms of sometimes
some of the sort of sound effects.

559
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:43,360
My ambition was
that you wouldn't hear

560
00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:46,000
there were plugs involved,
it would sound natural.

561
00:49:02,880 --> 00:49:07,280
The electronic advances of IRCAM
offered late-20th-century music

562
00:49:07,280 --> 00:49:10,560
an almost limitless potential
for new sounds and instrumentation.

563
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,520
But classical music
didn't take a trip into outer space.

564
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:22,320
Technology was a resource,
not a revolution.

565
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:25,600
There was life in the old dog yet.

566
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:31,600
Wagner was asked, "What's the best
way to proceed as a composer?"

567
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:34,480
His answer was,
"Make new. Do something new."

568
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:43,240
When I was studying to be a composer
in the '70s, there was an idea that,
"Can anything be music?"

569
00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:50,000
Music hesitated on the edge
of that for quite some time.

570
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,680
In the end, composers
have gone back to instruments,

571
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:56,920
sometimes involving technologies
of computers, electronics.

572
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,200
But, in the end,
the mystery of blocks of wood

573
00:49:59,200 --> 00:50:02,120
and these little bits of metal,
the flutes and violins,

574
00:50:02,120 --> 00:50:05,920
the mystery of them survives
and continues to thrive.

575
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:17,800
I find that
a rather beautiful thing.

576
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:31,560
For much of the 20th century,
modern music had sought
to wipe away its past.

577
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:36,560
Each new revolutionary movement
a rejection of the one before.

578
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:43,000
By the '80s and '90s,
no new movement
had emerged since minimalism.

579
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:47,040
And modernism in the arts
had given way to postmodernism.

580
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:52,720
Music, like culture, became a
pick-and-mix smorgasbord of styles.

581
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:58,000
Where the past and the present,
as in the music of John Adams,

582
00:50:58,000 --> 00:51:00,200
were harmonically reconciled.

583
00:51:10,040 --> 00:51:14,720
I think I'm one of the first kind of
post-stylistic composers, you know.

584
00:51:14,720 --> 00:51:17,840
I was deeply influenced
by minimalism at the beginning.

585
00:51:17,840 --> 00:51:22,360
But I was also influenced
by everything from, you know,

586
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:25,760
Beethoven piano sonatas
to Jimi Hendrix.

587
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:29,240
You know, I'm, I guess, a Romantic.

588
00:51:29,240 --> 00:51:33,600
I want to be able
to make music that had

589
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:36,240
highs and lows
like a Mahler symphony.

590
00:51:36,240 --> 00:51:40,920
Um, so right from the start,
I was already pushing the envelope.

591
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:44,800
And, as some critics said of me,
I was already

592
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:49,320
corrupting, you know,
a wonderful new style.

593
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:54,080
So that was... That was, you know...
I took some beating.

594
00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:03,560
John Adams took this idea
of extreme minimalism in music

595
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:05,680
and kind of melded it

596
00:52:05,680 --> 00:52:09,600
with the great tradition
of Western classical music.

597
00:52:09,600 --> 00:52:12,160
So you hear Schoenberg,

598
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:14,320
you hear Brahms and Beethoven,

599
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:17,240
and you hear
the musical theatre tradition,

600
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:23,160
the American songbook,
it's a kind of postmodern view.

601
00:52:23,160 --> 00:52:27,240
But it's the view of someone who

602
00:52:27,240 --> 00:52:31,680
has looked at this music, has looked
at all the things that have gone on

603
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:34,520
in the last 100 years,
I suppose, of music,

604
00:52:34,520 --> 00:52:38,600
and has said, "I'm gonna
create a music for our times."

605
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:53,040
What he's done with,
particularly these great operas

606
00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:56,560
that he's written
in the last 30 years or so,

607
00:52:56,560 --> 00:53:00,320
Nixon In China,
The Death Of Klinghoffer,

608
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:06,000
he's provided ways that
we can express the big events
of the 20th century in music.

609
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:20,960
It's the kind of vision that Verdi
might have had, the sort of realism

610
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:25,920
of expressing historical events
through opera.

611
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:31,000
But I don't think there's another
composer who's doing that thing

612
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:35,440
on such a grand scale and with
such mastery as John Adams is.

613
00:53:44,160 --> 00:53:50,080
And so, after 100 years of rule
breaking, bloody-minded complexity,

614
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:54,640
space-age noise and the battle
between beauty and brutality,

615
00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:57,560
classical music is alive and well.

616
00:53:57,560 --> 00:54:01,080
Symphonies, chamber music, opera,

617
00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:05,120
they all stood up to
a century of torment and unrest

618
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:08,200
and survived
a journey to hell and back again.

619
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:14,880
I think you can see
20th-century musical history

620
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:18,320
as a kind of odyssey
and a return home.

621
00:54:21,760 --> 00:54:25,840
Similarly, there were a lot of
people who were relieved to find

622
00:54:25,840 --> 00:54:28,560
that composers
of the late-20th century,

623
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:32,760
Steve Reich, Arvo Pert, John Adams,

624
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:37,360
were embracing tonality again,
you know, finally.

625
00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:42,360
You know, we've returned home
after this long wandering.

626
00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:46,640
But then, once you're home,
you may want to go out again.

627
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:50,160
And you find, you know,
a lot of the music worlds,

628
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:54,880
like the world of humanity is,

629
00:54:54,880 --> 00:55:00,200
is one of many languages,
and they coexist.

630
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:07,000
In the early-21st century,

631
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:10,520
the whole audience
for classical music has changed.

632
00:55:10,520 --> 00:55:14,680
When the modernist revolution
was first unleashed,

633
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:18,680
it shocked the bourgeois elite
in the world's most
reverential concert halls.

634
00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:24,040
Today, it might just as likely
be heard at a music festival

635
00:55:24,040 --> 00:55:26,000
or even in a South London car park.

636
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:33,080
And with the benefit of age,
it may even, finally,
have lost its power to shock.

637
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:42,880
During the '50s, certainly
when I was a music student,

638
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:47,840
one could hear the pitter-patter
of little feet as soon as there
was a new piece in the programme.

639
00:55:47,840 --> 00:55:51,960
And they were just... They
were beating a path out the door.

640
00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:57,440
Um, and I think that, you know,
in a time now when John Adams
has been around for quite a while,

641
00:55:57,440 --> 00:56:02,120
Phil Glass and Arvo Part
have been around for a while,
I've been around for a while,

642
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:05,800
my concerts are filled with
blue-haired ladies in the old sense

643
00:56:05,800 --> 00:56:08,160
and blue-haired ladies
in the new sense.

644
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:11,040
And I think
that's the way it should be.

645
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:14,480
I'd say, for the last 20 years,
we're living in a situation

646
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:20,120
where a lot of young people are
very interested in what's going on
in music. They go to concerts,

647
00:56:20,120 --> 00:56:22,600
they steal all the recordings
that they like.

648
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:24,280
LAUGHS

649
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:27,040
They download
all the recordings that they like.

650
00:56:27,040 --> 00:56:30,400
And there is an audience and the
audience is making itself known.

651
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:41,520
Where are we now?
We've had so many revolutions

652
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:46,400
and interesting experiments
and new resources brought into music,

653
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:49,800
we hardly need
to invent anything new.

654
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:52,280
It's all there.

655
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:57,880
What we're all hoping for
is Mozart, I guess.

656
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:05,080
The 20th century
has accelerated shifts and movement

657
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:08,560
in every form of culture,
society, technology.

658
00:57:08,560 --> 00:57:10,520
So that everything
is happening faster,

659
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:13,160
at a faster rate than it ever has.

660
00:57:13,160 --> 00:57:16,680
Which leads to the question of what
will happen in the next 100 years.

661
00:57:16,680 --> 00:57:22,480
That's the most intriguing question,
I think, for what we sort of
loosely call classical music.

662
00:57:23,680 --> 00:57:28,840
The movement from Schoenberg
through to where we are now,
and particularly

663
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:34,160
actually those hills in the middle,
is the most extraordinary journey,

664
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:39,120
the most intense quick
accelerated, er, movement

665
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:44,520
that has exploded out into the most
extraordinary strands of music.

666
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:48,120
I don't think anyone could have
feasibly imagined that would happen.

667
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,440
To find out more about
20th-century composers,

668
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:08,880
and for details of
a year-long festival of events

669
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:13,320
celebrating a century of revolution
in music, art and culture,

670
00:58:13,320 --> 00:58:17,240
go to bbc.co.uk/soundandthefury

671
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:20,240
and follow the links
to The Open University.

672
00:58:21,480 --> 00:58:23,440
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd