Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

TWENTIETH CENTURY ROCKS

T

he sun has risen on a slightly damp, overcast morning in 1926. The last four years? Forget them. They were just a dream and they're gone. It is 1926 and let me take a quick cross-section of the musical year. Three pieces from the twelve-month period that brought us Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Fritz Lang's Metropolis and, of course, not forgetting the ever popular hit song, 'I found a millionaire baby in the 5 and 10 cent store.' (Ahhh, they're playing our somewhat unmemorable song again.) From the new Hungary came the forty-four-year-old Zoltan 'Best first name in all music' Kodaly and his Hdryjdnos Suite -1 wouldn't like to tell you what we used to call it at school. I have a certain soft spot for this piece, it being all about one of the biggest liars on the earth, and me having written a book called The Liar. The suite that was formed from Kodaly's opera is a real corker, packed with great tunes as well as some beautiful soundworlds - the sound of the cembalo and the musical portrayal of a ginormous sneeze. In England, the twenty-three- year-old William Walton is premiering his suite, Fa fade, complete with the grand and slightly intimidating Edith Sitwell projecting her poems from behind a curtain. The score comes complete with musical quotes from some diverse sources - there's a bit of Rossini's William Tell in there, and even a bit of'Oh I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside!'-13 Finally, from Poland, 1926 gives birth to the often neglected, yet often staggeringly beautiful, music of Szymanowski, and his setting of the Stabat Mater. Szymanowski came from the disappearing background of Poland's landed gentry, although, when his family estate was ransacked in 1917, he devoted himself to finding the voice of contemporary Polish music. Take a listen to his Stabat Mater, one day, because he succeeded. Three cheers for twentieth-century music. 'Hip hip'… I said'Hip hip'…? Grumpy sods. same stunning piece of music. So! Get real. It's allowed. You CAN think of Torvill and Dean when you hear it, this is a musical snob-free zone, here. Don't you worry. You can even think of lovely Dudley and his rather tall, blonde leading lady, with the… beads. Makes no difference. The music still sounds the same. And again, yes, it is one of those pieces that is played a heck of a lot, these days, now that it has become so popular. But, well, you can't ruin it. It's the sign of a great piece, maybe. Can't sit here hypothesizing, though. Got to get on. Got nearly forty years to cover in the next few paragraphs. Good job I brought a packed lunch.