Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

PASS THE PURCELL
I

^ngland. 1689. (Cue that sort of stirring yet scene-setting music.Jthat you get in a classic black-and-white, Sunday afternoon movie. The music dies.) There's been a bit of a reshuffle, as it were.

Cromwell, the Lord Protector, as he ended up, is long buried. Let's hope he was dead. All in all, though, thank goodness - I mean, ghastly haircuts.

Charles II also came and went. A bit like when we went from the 1960s to the 1970s: out went the roundheads, and in came the long, flowing locks. (Wonder if they wore flares?) The capital has more or less fully recovered from both the Great Plague - which killed off some 70,000 people, give or take a stiff- and the Great Fire. And so to music, where there is now a bunch of great composers, carrying on the good work in the current big thing, opera, and none more so than England's finest, Henry Purcell.

Much like Lully in France, Purcell was composer to the King's private band, as well as being organist at Westminster Abbey. In historical terms, Purcell is a bit of a mystery man. Very little is known Ј This genuine Louis XIVpiece of original slang has been authenticated from the only surviving manuscript»/Thesee et ses gateaux de fer -'Tbesie and his buns of steel' ©. fi fi Charles-Valentin Alkan, a couple of centuries later, allegedly reached up to retrieve a book from a top shelf and was killed by his falling bookcase. about him. In fact, so little that I've had to make some of the next bit up, see if you can tell which.

Now some thirty years old, his rise to musical stardom had been more or less meteoric.

He was merely the bellows pumper on the organ at fifteen and yet composer to the King at eighteen. By the time he was twenty, he was the best-known composer in England. And his favourite colour was purple.© Well, sorry, but there's not much else we know about him. Let's see.

He wrote a variety of different music, from lascivious rugby songs to music for Royal State occasions. (See, that bit's true.)

What else? Well, he wrote music for three different monarchs: Charles II, James II and Queen Mary. Mm, right, well, he once wrote a fantasy based on a single note. And he had a pet rabbit called Keith.©

Damn, sorry. Anyway, as I say, there's very little of his real life that we know anything about.

Back to 1689, and the thirty-year-old Purcell unveils his latest creation - Dido and Aeneas. It's a superb addition to the blossoming opera genre, and it shows Purcell's ability to set words as being second to none. It contains one particular lament that is not just the high and low point of the opera, musically and emotionally, it is also all set over the same repeated set of notes in the low parts. It's called a 'ground bass', and is intended to be repeated, over and over again, with the tune and occasionally the harmony changing above it. Purcell's use of this is inspired. In comes this gorgeous, painfully sad aria sung by one of the opera's leads, Dido. She is sort of saying… 'I want to thank you, for giving me the best years of my life - remember me.' Now that's what I call a case of history repeating itself.

If you ever see it on the bill, then go see it. What can I say? It's just fab. It might have been written some 313 years ago, but it's still one of the most moving pieces of music ever. And, of course, beloved, particularly, of schoolchildren, because Purcell sets the words so that they pause just at the right point to embarrass the music teacher: 'When I am laid… am laid in earth.' Cue fits of giggles from the back. 'OK, stop that, stop that, everyone, or I'm keeping you #//back.'

Anyway, can't stay here, musing over Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. I've got people to meet, music to hear, wars to watch people being dismembered in.

Here's a bracing thought. Despite the fact that we've only just gone past Purcell's 'When I am laid in earth', let me tell you: Bach is already four years of age, as is Handel. Despite their genius, though, we're not going to hear much out of them both for a good while yet. Lully has, by now, popped his clogs - almost literally, sadly for him. But what of the 'age', as it were. What is it 'the age' of? CiD

W

ell, how about 'The Age of Wren'? Christopher Wren is around and still building. Remember, it's only just over twenty years since the Great Fire, and, although the powers-that-be didn't go for his plan for a complete rebuild, he has nevertheless enjoyed a bit of a boom time. His legacy, as it were, will all have been built over the next thirty years or so - St Michael's, Cornhill; St Bride's, Fleet Street; the Sheldonian Theatre; the Ashmolean Museum; and, of course, due to be finished in a mere… twenty-one years, the big one: St Paul's itself. Running the country now are William and Mary, and the full list of their subjects runs to some 5 million names, compared to say about 58 million today.

But, if you wanted to, you could focus in for a moment. It's also the age of a man called Johann Pachelbel. Now Pachelbel, despite sounding like the cheese from a child's lunchbox, was a composer from Nuremberg. He had a few minor jobs as… well, you know, organist of St Stephen's, Vienna, court composer to the Duchy of Wigan©, that sort of thing. But he merits his place in the history books for three reasons. First, Bach liked him. Well, to be fair, Bach would, wouldn't he? He's only four right now, and could no doubt do little more than smile and dribble on him. But give him time and Bach would draw a great deal of influence from Mr Pachelbel.

Secondly, Pachelbel pioneered some musical stuff that we now more or less take for granted. Symbolism, for example, he invented ih.H. Well, more or less, with a prevailing wind, he did. He started doing things like minor key music means sad. (If you want to think of something minor key, think, say, the theme from Schindler's List.) And, consequently, major key music (try, say, Peter's theme from Peter and ilw Wolf) means happy. Sounds more or less obvious, now, of course, but, just like Everest, somebody had to get there first. Pachelbel even paved the way for Vincent Price, by deciding that the diminished seventh chord (think… well, Vincent Price, really) means evil. So, next time you watch the classic Masque of the Red Death, why not flick the mute on the remote control with your toe and lovingly whisper in your loved one's ear, 'Ah, yes, the broken diminished seventh, as pioneered by the seventeenth-century Teutonic music of the great Johann Pachelbel. Pass the Doritos, will you, love?'

But I did say he was in the history books for three reasons and here comes the third. For some inexplicable reason, despite the no-doubt hundreds of chorales, fugues and motets he wrote, he is, sadly, a one-hit wonder. The Joe Dolce 'What'sa-matter-you, HEY' of Nuremberg, the seventeenth-century St Winifred's School Choir. His one hit takes the form of a canon in the key of D. After years of research, scholars have proven, too, that it's for this reason that he gave it the name of 'Canon in D'. It is still a favourite today and is frequentiy given a rebirth in some TV commercial or other, making it the biggest thing that was going to happen to Nuremberg till someone at the back of a rally in 1938 shouted, 'Speak up!' Now, a brief round-up, if I may. TAXI! ? amp; H ? f course, you couldn't actually get a black cab back then, but, to be fair, sedan chairs were all the rage. They still wouldn't take you south of the river, but they did at least make you a little more mobile and they didn't cost too much. I could do with one right now, in fact, to take me to the… C18. Let's see, where is C18 on my map… Ah. Here. C18…the eighteenth century, here it is, just past Fulharn.

What else is popular in the brand, spanking new, 'should auld acquaintance be forgot', crisp, shiny eighteenth century? Well, sad to say, war hasn't gone out of fashion. Never will, I suppose. The current one is the War of the Spanish Succession. I guess who succeeded in Spain was a fairly crucial point because you got some major heavyweights battling it out. In the blue corner, you've got Britain, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark. In the red corner, there's France, Bavaria and, not surprisingly, Spain. It was Louis XIV who started it, when he was looking round for a present for his grandson. Presumably they'd sold out of Beanie Babies, because Louis decided to give him Spain. To be fair, it might not have been totally Louis's fault - maybe they'd positioned it far too temptingly at the checkout, and it was an impulse buy. Who knows? Anyway, it all caused a bit of a hoohah, I can tell you - fisticuffs, name calling, the lot. By the end of it - and I'm talking, what, 1714 here - Britain was better off to the tune of Gibraltar, Minorca and Nova Scotia, while Austria had ended up with Belgium, Milan and Naples. Was it all worth it? I wonder. Personally, I'd have made them just spud for it. You know… 'Five potato, six potato, seven potato, MORE. Yeah… I get Spain!'

Other stuff of interest? Well, Captain Kidd has been hanged for piracy, back in 1701. What else? Oh yes, TAXES. Taxes, yes. If you thought we were bedevilled with taxes now, then just imagine what it was like back then. Taxes were the new rock and roll. So popular, it seemed as if there was a prize for the silliest thing you could introduce a tax on and still get away with it. There's the Salt Tax in England, obviously, as well as the Window Tax, which I think they should bring back for modern architects only. In Berlin, they came up with an Unmarried Woman's Tax. Nice! But the winner, and my personal favourite, has got to be Russia, which in around 1750 introduced a Beard Tax. What a great idea. Never did like getting too close to a man with a beard. Unless, of course, it was long and white and attached to a red man with knee-length black boots, as he hands over a Gameboy or an Action Man. But less about my parties.

Other news. The Mary, of William and Mary, has now died, and so, as Richmal Crompton would have said, it was just William, who no doubt went through not only a period of mourning, but also a period of handing out cards saying 'William' with the 'and Mary' crossed out, while his new ones came from the printers. Queen Anne, she of the unfortunately shaped legs, has also been and gone, and now we have George I. The recendy created Bank of England seems to be doing well, as is the Duke of Marlborough, or… The Butcher, as they call him. Pleasant. But for now, let's get on to some of the music of this time, and, in fact, to the big two, who really did dominate the age. Bach and Handel.

Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Frideric Handel were both born in 1685 - the year Judge Jeffries' Bloody Assizes dealt a gory blow for James II after the Monmouth Rebellion. Bach was born in a small place called Eisenach some 200 kilometres north-east of Frankfurt. His was a musical family and at an early age he would obsessively transcribe music scores for his own personal education. After a spell in a youth choir, he got the first of various organ jobs, at Arnstadt. From then on, in a career that lasted till he was sixty-five at Mulhausen, Weimar and Leipzig, Bach wrote acres of superb music. Despite most of it being devoted to the greater glory of God, he did have a few small weaknesses. Coffee was one. At that time, coffee was seen as almost a dangerous narcotic, but Bach indulged his caffeine passion to such an extent that he even wrote a piece of music about it/

Another was numerology. Bach was convinced certain numbers were significant. If you give all the letters a numerical value pertaining to their position in the alphabet (so A = 1,? = 2, etc) then, as far as Bach was concerned, his second name added up to 14 (i.e. B2 + Al + C3 + H8 = 14). And so 14 became very significant for him, and he would write cantatas where the main tune had just 14 notes. One choral prelude, 'Wenn wir in hochsten Noten sein', has exactly 166 notes, which, if you care to add it up, is the numerical value of his full name. Look: