Program on at 9 BBC4 about development of classical symphony (Haydn Mozart Beethoven)

Then tomorrow at 7.30 the program I flagged by mistake last week about the historical context of Beethovens Eroi(t)ca.

Hope it is on iplayer for viewing this weekend. I was at orchestra last night playing romantic and 21st centuary music. I had a very unclassical evening!

Husband was reading out loud to me from the Radio Times this a.m and he said Erotica, too. I think he was quite disappointed.

I looked at him sternly and said we wouldn't need to see that because SOME of us were paying attention to Simon Russell Beale last night.

I will have Mrs and mother in law in the room when I watch it. !

Just watched caught up with this - any views? The biggest problem I found was that the sound of the music was far louder than the spoken parts and there was much adjusting of volume!

Mark Elder is a great conductor, but I couldn't help but feel he should stick to it. I don't think he comes across very well being interviewed - whilst he's obviously very enthusiastic about the music, I don't think he conveys this very well in speech.

Overall, I personally found it rather dull, but I'm sure lots of people loved it

Spot on, Seer_Green! OH and I watched the HD version which was shown last night, and really enjoyed it. I liked Mark Elder and enjoyed the music at that volume.

The trouble with this type of programme is that inevitably it's rather a rush through the material, but I did think it was a good overview of how the symphony developed. I'll definitely watch the next episode!

It's on again tonight... I've remembered to set the recorder this time I'll let you know my thoughts...

I got half way through the program (on iplayer) and then went off and did something else. Yes, I did learn a bit about the Symphony, but I still am waiting for that moment when I appreciate Haydn. The reverent attitude displayed by the presenters just made me feel alienated. It's probably me - I simply don't get Classical music. (Romantic, Modern, some Baroque and Opera I can handle).

Haydn 104 symphonies!

Something about the program just inspired me that I should do a little composing..

I think part of the problem is that it's hard to go back in thought to a time before music had fully flowered. We have such a wealth of music available to us. The veneration of Haydn is because he was the first person to think of doing a symphony, and he developed it so far during his lifetime. Trying to imagine how exciting that was for his contemporaries is difficult for us, but if it had never happened we wouldn't have had the later, more amazing symphonies of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Tchaikowsky, etc. Symphonies are probably my very favourite kind of music, so a programme like this which traces them from their earliest beginnings is just great.

I can understand why you prefer Romantic and modern music, but it probably wouldn't have come about in the way it has without people like Haydn and Mozart. Each composer is iinfluenced by those who have gone before. I like Haydn - he was an optimistic soul who didn't suffer the great traumas and depression which some later composers endured, and it shows in his music. Great for cheering you up!

I have managed to catch-up with this.

As ever the challenge is the modern tendency that the BBC et al have of being scared of presentling technical subject matter in a technical way. This tends to result in 'sensationalism' and shallow treatment.

To be fair, this was one of the better ones without a lot of the tedious repetition one sees on documentaries such as Horizon (completely unwatchable).

I'm a fan of Haydn - his orchestral colour and orchestration is so good (have a listen to The Seasons). I do think that the extra colour you get from period instruments helps Haydn.

Beethoven's the one I have trouble with (heresy ). Yes, he wrote some great music. I have trouble with people who think that everything a 'great' composer wrote is 'great' (sorry about the tautology ). I really like the piano trios and the cello sonatas, some of the quartets, but not all of the symphonies (I find John Suchet's sycophancy in that regard irritating). I suspect part of the issue is that some works (e.g. 3, 7 and 9) need really good performers to make them work properly. Beethoven doesn't know how to write for choirs either (probably because of his hearing).

It would have been interesting to cover the issue of performing editions.

It was a big improvement on the usual dross one gets, but I would have liked more detail and what about some actual looking at the notes (anyone remember when BBC music documentaries did musical analysis with the score on the screen? Must have been 1970s ).

- with just about all of what you said! :-)

True...but the risk with that is that it would have become little more than Discovering Music - the TV version. To really give any sense of a journey through such a vast forest, they were inevitably going to get through it pretty damn fast! In my opinion, it was a good 'taster', to encourage people to explore those key works in more detail while giving some sense of historical context to them.

Yes, I agree. I just find it disappointing that the BBC doesn't feel able to provide programmes (arts, sciences etc) that treats the audience as intelligent - everything has to be "accessible".

It was a good introduction. The kind of detail that would have added is that Haydn wrote three symphonies titled: morning, noon, and night. They played an extract of 'morning' and showed the mural of the sunrise and failed to point out that it was called 'morning' and that the symphonies take their names from three murals in that room

But the programme was about the development of the symphony. How would detail like that have added anything? Had it been a programme about Haydn symphonies alone, you might have expected it.

It's "Beethoven and Beyond" tomorrow, though I'll be catching it on Friday on BBC HD, as I'm out on Thursdays. Looking forward to the later Beethoven symphonies and whatever else they show. There are four programmes in the series, so not sure how far they'll be going this week.

Looks like Tchaikowsky will be prominent tonight, from seeing trailers for it. I imagine Brahms will get some cover as well. But maybe Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann before that.

Has just started on BBC4. Actually looks to be late Beethoven, Berlioz and Schubert to start with.

Perhaps you were a week ahead of yourself again? Looking forward to watching tomorrow.

Yeah, we even got the Liszt Symphonic Poems as well. Next week is going to be a good chunk of Brahms.
No mention of Mendelssohn and Schumann yet either. I guess Tchaik might get in next week too.

I watched the latest instalment tonight, as Children in Need took over the usual Friday slot. Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, Sibelius, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. (They interviewed a Russian conductor (who spoke in Russian) and we really don't pronounce Tchaikovsky correctly!) No Mendelssohn, though; I guess he wasn't ground-breaking enough.

We have progressed to a modern orchestra now (the BBC Sym) and the brass was really noticeable. I hadn't quite realised how feeble the earlier brass sections were until the trombones and horns appeared in full force this week. Interesting that the symphony nearly died out after Beethoven, because composers felt he had pushed the genre to its limit. There's a gap of about 50 years after Beethoven's 9th before anyone composed another. Also interesting that outside Germany and the Austria-Hungarian empire there were no proper symphony halls until the 1890s, when symphonies suddenly began to catch on in the US and UK.

I think it's the last episode next week.

errm, not quite true - the story was highly abridged, in several respects.

Liverpool alone had the Philharmonic, founded in 1840. St. George's Hall was built in part as a concert venue and that's early C19th.

The original Philharmonic Hall was built in 1849. I don't know London well enough to know what the situation was there.

There was a lot of symphonic writing going on, I suspect they decided there was no significant change until the nationalists get going c.1870 onwards (so e.g. no Mendelssohn or Schumann)

Thanks, Tenor Viol. It just goes to show that you can't believe everything you hear on the TV!

I think these programmes often exaggerate the position to make a point, and they were trying to say that the German speaking peoples almost had a monopoly on symphonies before the late 19th century. Similarly, there probably weren't nearly as many concert halls outside Austria/Germany as inside it, but obviously there were some. Nice to see your picture of the Liverpool Philharmonic; I don't know Liverpool at all - must pay a visit some time.

Hi - the pic is St. Georges Hall which is a fine Georgian building from early C19th. It has a very fine organ as well as the large concert hall. There is a smaller room used for chamber concerts too. The Philharmonic Hall is an Art Deco building:

Philharmonic Hall

What I found more interesting than construction of new halls (whenever that might have been) was the comment that audiences used to relish hearing NEW WORKS.

If only the masses were so enlightened nowadays. The endless repeats of concert programmes, radio broadcasts and CD releases is tedious.

But the new works in the 19th and early 20th century were on the whole melodic and easy to listen to (I exempt things like Rite of Spring, which caused mass protests at the time they were written). So much of today's output sounds pretty dreadful to the average person, though I'm sure it's very clever and appreciated by other lovers of contemporary music. I think you'll find melodic composers like John Williams (film is the modern opera/ballet) and Karl Jenkins are quite popular - it's the atonal and minimalist stuff which isn't.

Trouble is, 'melodic' and 'easy to listen to' are highly subjective terms. Something like La Mer or Billy The Kid would probably have sounded either meaningless or horrific to early 19th-century audiences. (Also, the infamous reaction to the Rite was at least as much to the choreography as to the music.)

Not quite true. A lot of new music at the time was confusing and disorienting to contemporary audiences (as is generally the case with much contemporary art). Why should it all be easy? Isn't that what pop music is for? Music we find melodic today with a couple of hundred years of hindsight did indeed cause a certain outrage. But at least people went to find out. I think broadcasting and recording bears quite a lot of the blame. We have the luxury today (which I'm not suggesting we should give up) of being able to listen to whatever we want, whenever we want. When your only possibility to hear music was live you grabbed every opportunity. Now, if you look at programming for "the average" symphony orchestra year on year, it's actually a fairly narrow choice. Of course people have every right not to want to experience something new. Sometimes I hear a piece which does nothing for me, though in general when I go to a concert of (or containing) new music I'm normally pleasantly surprised.

Actually I think you'll find minimalism is in fact pretty popular and sells well.

Plus, most of John Williams' "inspiration" (I'll try to keep it polite) comes from twentieth-century composers such as Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Stravinsky. (And the Star Wars theme is a straight rip-off of Korngold...)

Edit: another observation....violin concertos coming in from exile. The Berg and Stravinsky have started to appear on programmes as part of the standard repertoire only in the last couple of decades. Schoenberg's languished neglected until Hilary Hahn decided to tackle it. It really does seem to take a long time for some musical 'dialects' to become familiar to audiences, but when they do they're just as popular as their 'listenable' equivalents.

But by then they're not new works, are they? The music of Verdi and Puccini was the pop music of that day - easy listening, lovely melodies which people could quickly pick up. It's fashionable to disparage music which people actually enjoy at first hearing - Lloyd Webber, Einaudi, John Williams, John Rutter etc - in favour of "clever" compositions which take a lot of getting used to, but it's good to have both types. As for John Williams being inspired by Stravinsky, etc, no doubt you are correct; however, all composers are inspired by those who went before, so it's hardly a surprise.

It's good that you enjoy contemporary music and modern art, but "the masses" will always need a few decades to adjust to these things. I can't imagine ever being impressed by Tracy Emin's unmade bed, but one never knows...

I don't decry them - each of them has a very saleable product that many composers would envy - but I enjoy only a small fraction of each at first or any hearing.

Sure, but the music of Beethoven certainly wasn't - not the Eroica, the fifth, or the Grosse Fuge. The only way to demonstrate that most 19th century music was "melodic and easy to listen to" is to overlook that which wasn't, and was controversial at the time, but which has often proved to be the most enduring and influential.

Deeply disappointed with the last episode.

To quote Beale, on Shostakovich 9: "Certainly the war is the last event that seems to have demanded a symphonic response".

More a convenient way of wrapping things up with another 9th than anything resembling truth, given that his 10th was in the traditional four-movement form directly after the death of Stalin, and he had five more left in him.

Spot on comment; I felt pretty much the same.

There was too much to cover in one programme. I didn't notice any mention of Prokofiev or Stravinsky, and Vaughan Williams' 4th and 6th would have cast a very different light on his musical personality and his response to WW1.

I enjoyed last nights episode (I am a particular fan of Shostokovich), but yes there was too much to get through, and it could easily have been split into two episodes. I was rather curious they spent some time on his 9th, for a me a relatively lightweight work, whereas to me his 10th and 11th are his two finest Symphonies.
I enjoyed the Sibelius bit because in the mid 70s, whilst on business in Finland, my agent there took me to his house 'Ainola' , and its location was such it enabled me to greater understand his music. His 2nd and 5th are my favourites in Symphonic terms.
I too was surpised no mention of Prokofiev or Nielsen. (unless I dozed off temporarily)

Shall be watching tonight and will add my comments later.

I don't have much musical knowledge, just know which symphonies I enjoy listening to, so had hoped that these programmes would be a good guide to what musicians thought of as key works in the development of the symphony. owainsutton, you sound very knowledgeable and evidently disagree with much of what the programme makers have said. If you have time I'd love to hear what you think are the key works, and why. Or perhaps I should ask for a good book on the subject for Christmas - do you have any suggestions?

I didn't disagree with all that much, just the conclusion. They seemed too eager to neatly round off the series, and this was done at the expense of some of Shostakovich's best work. After Stalin died, his sense of relief and (comparitive) freedom enabled him to return to a more traditional symphony structure in the 10th, which is also where his monogram 'DSCH' (D - E flat - C - B, E flat and B being 'Es' and 'H' in German) first appeared. He started using this as a way of indicating the most personal struggles in his music.

His 11th is a great piece to introduce people to classical music, because it's the closest to 'film music'. The 13th is his most openly rebellious, setting poetry which would have gotten him and the poet killed under Stalin. The last two are very dark, haunted by the prospect of death. All definitely worth hearing, all very different from anything touched on in the programme.

Sure, I fully appreciate that it's impossible to give a meaningful representation of even one composer in an hour, let alone a whole century, and I don't have a problem with them only having one Russian and one Nordic composer, thus being able to introduce them in a bit more depth than if they'd added others. I'm glad they included Ives.

I'm not sure about particular books, but a lot of Wikipedia articles on this stuff can be very informative and quite readable (the ones on Shostakovich's symphonies are excellent, for instance). Radio 3's Discovering Music is another wonderful way of getting under the skin of individual pieces.

Thanks for your comments, owain. I've now watched the last episode. The programme has tried throughout to show the effect on composers of the times they were living through, and unsurprisingly the two world wars and nationalism dominated tonight.

It was interesting that they focussed on composers like Ives, Vaughn Williams, Elgar and Sibelius, who tried to create a characteristic sound for their nation. I expect Prokoviev and Stravinsky were omitted because they felt Shostakovich was the best Russian example of this. The Leningrad Symphony and the 9th, written to celebrate the end of the war, were the obvious ones to choose from a historical perspective.

I think they concluded the series as they did because of the dramatic value of the destruction of Germany in 1945, which parallelled the end of German/Austrian domination in classical music. The impression was that as Western Europe was freed from German dominance, so too the symphony had at last fully escaped from Germanic influence. Whether or not that is 100% correct I couldn't say, but from an artistic point of view I thought it made a good ending.

I've really enjoyed the series and feel it's taught me quite a lot about the evolution of the symphony. I've particularly valued Mark Elder's contributions, which have made me want to listen to lots more symphonies.

Should anyone be interested, as a follow up to this, last Saturday on Radio 3 Music Matters was a discussion on "The Symphony since 1945". Still available on iPlayer.

I'll try to find time for this. I believe Peter Maxwell Davies has written at least 8 symphonies, none of which I've ever heard performed. Somehow, contemporary symphony composers don't seem to have a great following - or perhaps that's just my perception of it..

I suspect that this is because for a big chunk of the C20th serialism and atonality was in vogue with composers and not in vogue with listeners. I know some people like this style of music, but it's a bit 'hair shirt' for me.... For me, most music written during this period lost its ability to communicate with a general audience and only to its own 'cognoscenti'. To me, it then fails the basic test of art: its ability to communicate.

I don't decry complexity or subtlety of meaning, and I'm not per se against "spikeiness" in the music either, but if I need a Ph.D and a 400 page book to understand apiece of music, then it's failed...

I'll go and hide now.

No need to hide, and no need for a book. Sit and listen to a piece of Webern, resisting all preconceptions. His music consists of tiny crystals of beauty in the form of sound.

In any case, the majority of 20th century composers were not serialists, and I'd suggest the vast majority were not atonal, either. Take anything from Britten's Cello Symphony through to the slightly incogrous populist appeal of Gorecki's third (even if you've never heard of him, you've almost certainly heard at least parts of it, but his second is better), there's a whole world of tonal and accessable music out there.

Webern died in 1945 though, so is perhaps easier to listen to than some of the post-1945 composers. I agree that some of Gorecki is very listenable, and Penderecki repented of his earlier atonality and now writes tonal stuff. However, there's no denying that some contemporary composers are more interested in experimenting with sound than creating anything the layman will find appealing.

Oh yes there is, and by talking of a 'layman', you're the one making implications about how composers see themselves.

Sure, composers experiment with sound. In the 18th century, it was arguments about how to tune organs and harpsichords. In the early 20th century, some of the questions were about whether harmony should have a priority over timbre or duration. Both are very theoretical arguments if you get into them in any detail - if you dislike maths, you really don't want to investigate baroque tuning systems.

On the other hand, some composers are fascinated with creating new sounds from existing instruments and existing combinations of instruments. An automatic assumption that modern composers are somehow anti-audience is hurting you as much as anyone else, because it stops you listening in a way they did to Haydn's latest symphony.

Edit: Go and listen to Webern. Seriously. Keep focussed on one piece, stick with it, and question your preconceptions when they arise. (Sure, he died in 1945, but before his time!)

He who pays the piper... In Haydn's day, the payer was some rich patron who liked music. If people like Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, etc had produced music which was not fairly easy listening, the patron would quickly have taken his custom elsewhere. It was a luxury for these composers to be able to write the music they really wanted to, and often the chance came only after they had made their reputations writing what ordinary people wanted to hear. People like Liszt were The Beatles of their era and their music was enjoyable.

It became normal practice in the later 20th century for pieces to be commissioned not by "ordinary" patrons, but by those in the music world who liked what were to them exciting different sounds and who had Arts funding at their disposal. Fortunately for contemporary composers, with the global village home to 7 billion people, there are enough musicians worldwide who like more experimental music to give it a bit of an audience. However, it is definitely an acquired taste for most of us ordinary mortals, and I don't see that it is at all comparable with Haydn. I still struggle to enjoy Schoenberg, though I know he is supposed to be terribly influential, and there's so much beautiful music to listen to that I don't often bother with the more challenging things.

Is it really accurate to describe the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy or the Catholic church as 'ordinary' patrons? Isn't it just a pre-20th century example of state subsidy?

I suppose I have a bit of a blind spot with that idea of "understanding". To be honest, my overriding thought when listening to music is not "do I understand this" but "do I like the sound of this". I would have enormous difficulty doing any kind of meaningful analysis of any piece. Of course it's then just a matter of taste and much as I like a good tune to whistle I can also be swept away by the sort of amorphous soundfield created by some "modern" composers.


Though Britten did dabble in the dark art of the tone row (as in Turning of the Screw).


I'm often amazed by the similarities between contemporary and early music rather than the differences. There are some stunning tonal effects in baroque and renaissance music which must have had audiences of the day arguing on their equivalent of the www.

A case in point. A great romantic composer and a great serial composer. I love both equally. The Langamer Satz and the Six Bagatelles for String Quartet are long standing favourites of mine.


Musicians yes. But you need audiences too and that is a huge problem for anyone choosing to write symphonies now. Many composers will write without a commission but getting works staged is hugely expensive. Hence the large number of small contemporary ensembles.

True, but more as symbolism than anything else. Shostakovich did the same in one of his late quartets.

Britten was certainly sympathetic to the Second Viennese School, and even tried to study with Berg, but was prevented by RCM staff.

I've sung some Gorecki, Paart and other contemproary composers. I've sung a fair amount of Britten and some Maxwell Davies.

Having been associated in a non-musical capacity with a cathedral for quite a while (70s/80s/90s) I've heard quite a lot of modern organ and choral music. Some Messaien is interesting - it's all very clever - and that (I think) is the problem. It's not universally awful, but quite a lot it seems to me is just self-indulgent and incomprehensible. Can't abide Gorecki's 3rd and I don't understand why it became so popular, Classic FM notwithstanding...

All of us will find some music, from any era, incompehensible, in as much as "I don't see the appeal of it at all". You're quite right to discriminate, after listening attentively.

Try Gorecki 2. Much better than 3, in my opinion, and totally brutal in its impact rather than slow story-telling.

Indeed. A music teacher I had was mad keen on Schutz and I simply couldn't see the appeal, being heavily into Berio, Ligeti and Lutoslawski at the time. Through regular exposure to many genres and periods my taste has, over many years, become much wider.