Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

SPIRES INSPIRE
1*

irst up, a brief overview of and foothold in 1225. Well, the Magna Carta is on its third reprint. Not bad for something with a dull ending and no real plot. In terms of the big names around at the time, on the one hand there's Francis of Assisi, who has a year left to live. On the other hand - definitely on the other hand -there's Mr Khan, or Genghis, to his friends. It's the time of the later Crusades, the Mongol invasion of Russia and papal excommunications galore. In fact, you couldn't move for being excommunicated. You had to so much as invade Scotland and that was it - VUMH! -e x? ommunication.

So, that's just some of the detail of 1225, if you were to run up l lie highest mountain and look around. But what of'the time'? How must it have felt and smelt, if you know what I mean. And how was it, musically speaking? Well, that's why I was banging on about the cathedrals going up all over the place. Let's put ourselves in medieval shoes for a minute.

Cathedrals - two things need to be understood about cathedrals. They're not cheap and they take a bugger of a long time to build. You can't buy them flat-packed with inadequate instructions and one bolt missing. These things are raised across generations. And that gives you a big clue as to who had all the money in 1225. It also gives us a clue as to the state of the music business in 1224. Because cathedrals needed filling not just with people but with music. In 1225, MUSIC was basically a «x-letter word spelt like this: C.H.U.R.C.H - music. Also, to the peasant in the street, it was oral, not unlike herpes simplex, in that it was passed from mouth to mouth. OK, doesn't quite bear up but you know what I mean. True, some written music was creeping in, in places, if you were rich enough. But generally, the norm was still a bunch of blokes, with faces like cows' bottoms, in draughty buildings singing one-note stuff. A bit like folk music today.

And now 'the next big thing'. Well, again, if you were rich enough, you could say the next big thing was 'cotton', which the Spanish had, just this year, started manufacturing. If you weren't rich enough, though - and let's face it, most folk weren't - then 'the next big thing'" was almost certainly a piece of music called 'Sumer is icumen in'. fi Anyone know the collective noun for cathedrals? If not, can I venture floon'? A floon of cathedrals. Sounds fab to me and makes about as much sense as most other collective nouns. I figure collective nouns are much like mountains and polar regions - whoever gets there first can claim them and name them. So. Cathedrals. A floon. Thank you, and VII brook no arguments. fi Stephen Fry breaks the world record for highest number of print mentions EVER of the phrase Hhe next big thing'. Official.