Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

THE PACKAGE HOLIDAY

W

ell, it's 1725 already. My word, doesn't time fly when you roll it up and throw it at somebody. 1725. The year of The Tour Seasons. The year that Peter the Great became less so, in that he died. The year that Bach, in a breathtaking display of foresight, wrote the music for a mobile telephone incoming call alert, although he called it the Anna Majjdalena Notebook.

The year the Italian adventurer and author Casanova was born and, very soon, became the next big thing. But where exacdy ARE we? What age is it now? Who's in, who's out, who's up, who's down? And why DO birds suddenly appear every time YOU are near? Well, let me try and answer some of those questions, starting with the easiest first.

It's no longer the age of Wren - Sir Christopher is now a two-year-old tourist attraction in his beloved St Paul's. It is, though, still the age of one of the greatest double acts in science - Isaac ('gravity') Newton and Edmond ('comet') Halley. It is also, arguably, the time of Congreve, the man who put the 'oration' into 'Restoration comedy', with his deft prose and elegant construction.

It was, too, the age of the Grand Tour. Now I could have coped with this. Ever since the delightfully named French painter, Hyacinth Rigaud, had written a sort of eighteenth-century version of the 'rough guide' to the Grand Tour, everyone had been at it. Composers, artists, even Tsars - Peter the Great had tried it before he croaked, under a pseudonym/ Anyhow, with the Grand Tour came the grand tacky souvenir, naturally. In fact, a whole school of artists grew up, the ' volutin? or panoramists, who fulfilled the demand for memories of Italy by positioning themselves in the major tour resorts and coming up with huge, horizontal horizons of Venice and other places. No doubt each one bore the legend lMia Mamma e andata a Veneziana, e tutto questo que mia apportato e questa bruta maglutta?pf Canaletto is the man remembered now for this sort of stuff, although at the time Francesco Guardi was perhaps more popular.

So, if it was the age of the Grand Tour, what music might have beguiled you had you ventured to Italy? Well, one man you might have come across if you'd got the right room with the right view was Albinoni.