Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS THEN TOO

Ј rrihen' is now - 1826. So who are the mad, bad and dangerous to JL know people of 1826? One is James Fenimore Cooper. He's just written a book all about early Native American cobblers, and he's called it The Last of the Mohicans - you can still see the original last on display at the Museum of Footwear at 27, Rue D'Immelda Marcos, Marseille.© Elsewhere Andre Ampere published his paper 'Electrodynamics' which was, well, basically about dynamics and, basically, how electric they are. Yes, good. Think that's covered it. It was also the same year that Thomas Jefferson died and Russia declared war on Persia. Ooh, Persia! We are getting imaginative.

Au sujet de la musique, on the one in, one out rule, we'd just gained Johann 'The Waltz King' Strauss, and just lost Antonio 'Look, I'm telling you, I never touched him' Salieri. Actually, while we're on the subject of Salieri, can I call a time out? Salieri Time Out.

It's just that, well, I feel more than a little sorry for Salieri. Let me see if I can build a case for the defence of this man who is now forever vilified as the 'the-man-who-we-know-probably-didn't-poison-Mozart-but-nevertheless-let's-say-he-did.' I mean, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Salieri was from Legnago, which is now just a short hoik down the 434 from Verona, but was no doubt then a delightful little village on the banks of the Adige river - a perfect place to nurture musical talent. Salieri was orphaned at fifteen, and then more or less adopted by the well-to-do Mocenigo family. He moved to Vienna, where things seemed to fall into place for him and he became court composer at the age of only twenty-four. He was well regarded as an opera composer - it was one of his that opened the new La Scala opera house, in Milan, in 1776 - and he eventually became Kapellmeister at the Viennese court. OK, so he may have not got on with Mozart, but then Mozart could be a little… what's the word… puerile? One look at his letters tells you that - more bottom references than Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson put together. And Salieri almost certainly didn't poison him. Yes, he had a few digs at him, but then he was probably one of the few people around at the time in a position to realize quite what a genius Mozart was, and that must have been somewhat daunting. So, I guess what I'm saying is…well, look, lay off Salieri, OK? Good. Now. Time in, again.

This was also the year that a rather ill young man by the name of Carl Maria von Weber had travelled to London, to oversee the premiere of his new opera, Oberon. Weber was the head of the German Opera Theatre, in Dresden, and had never been a healthy individual at the best of times. In fact, although he didn't know it, he would never make it back home. Oberon was a big hit with the Covent Garden audiences but Weber himself died just a couple of months later, his successor at Dresden being a name that had yet to make its rather large mark. Richard Wagner! Watch this space/

There were important things afoot in 1826. Back over in Germany, fun times were almost certainly being had by the sixteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn - as befits his name, really/ "

Mendelssohn came from a prosperous family. His granddad, Moses Mendelssohn, was a philosopher, the Plato of his day, and very much revered and his Dad, Kaschpoint Mendelssohn, had his very own bank and, as a boy, Felix and his cousin ATM Mendelssohn, would shun games of doctors and nurses in favour of tellers and bankclerks©. The young composer did, however, have to put up with a great many insults, simply for being Jewish. So much so, in fact, that when his Dad realized that his son was destined for big things, he converted to Protestantism, adding the extra name 'Bartholdy' in a cunning and subtle rebranding exercise that would have made Snickers proud. fi Well, obviously, not THIS space, because this is just the mention of his name. I suppose I should say 'watch the space about forty pages further on\ really, but no one ever says that, do they? fi fi Latin dictionary definition: felix (1) (adj.) happy, (2) (n.) cat'. Felix was the classic 'boy genius' composer - playing piano in public at nine, enrolled in the Berlin Singakademie at ten and home for lunch at twelve. He wasn't yet in his teens before he'd rattled off two operas, several symphonies and the odd string quartet, as well as being able to build, dissemble and then reassemble a fairly complicated Meccano dinosaur. Along with his first pimple, at the age of sixteen, came a work of such vision that it was said not even Mozart had written with such maturity at the same age. The work? It was the overture to Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It really was a remarkable work for a sixteen-year-old - gorgeous orchestral writing, very light-handed and with a maturity beyond its composer's years. Having penned the overture, Mendelssohn stopped. The overture remained unplayed and largely unknown for some sixteen or seventeen years. By then, he was a celebrated and respected composer, the Kapellmeister to the King of Prussia, and boss of the top music academy in Leipzig. It was at this time that the King of Prussia, an ardent fan and supporter, pressed him to look again at the overture he'd written as a youth, and maybe add some more parts, which could act as both a suite and incidental music to the play. Felix duly stumped them up, and stuck them on the end. The extra pieces included a cute little scherzo, and the now famous/infamous 'Wedding March', which, alongside Wagner's 'Bridal March' still to come, has formed the entrance and exit to virtually every wedding ceremony since. Until, that is, the late 1960s onwards, when many folk started to get a little bit more adventurous with their choice of in and out music. Hence, today, a bride can sweep majestically down the aisle, white-knuckling her impoverished father, while the beautiful strains of Bryan Adams's 'Everything I Do, I Do It For You' echoes around the nave, in an ill-advised arrangement for Bontempi organ. Still, that's neither here nor there. Humour me a moment, will you, if I tell you it's 1829.

It's 1829, and here's how things stand. Since Mendelssohn coughed up the overture to A Midsummer's Night's Dream, the world has changed. Not surprising, really. We've lost William Blake and Goya and, indeed, Sir Humphry Davy's lamp has finally been snuffed out. On the world stage, the combined powers of Russia, France and Great Britain have banded together to give Turkey a sort of diplomatic 'clip round the ear', as it were. In fact, and this is true, they literally sent Turkey a note. Honest! True as I'm wearing this shalwar kameez, it's true. They sent Turkey a note. Turkey goes to war with Greece and so three of the world's greatest superpowers at the time get together and SEND IT A NOTE! I say, Turkey, lay off, old chap. There's a good fellow. Something like that. Needless to say, it ends up lining the Sultan of Turkey's wastebin and he carries on regardless. Russia, meanwhile, has won its little spat with Persia, taking Erivan - or Armenia - as the spoils. In Britain, the Duke of Wellington becomes Prime Minister -the boy done well - and London gets a brand-new police force. There've been some jolly good reads in the last three years, too. Dumas wrote Les trots mousquetaires, Tennyson wrote his sequel, Timbuctu - the further adventures of Tim - and the Spectator starts publication. And, leaving the literary world behind us, London's Evening Standard appears for the first time.

In fact, it's a great time for 'firsts', as you might imagine - first everything. The first sulphur matches from John Walker; the first Oxbridge Boat Race, at Henley; the first Webster's Dictionary; and the first real train - George Stephenson had won Ј500 with his new train, the Rocket, at the Rainhill Trials. Elsewhere, another George, this time George Ohm, formulates 'Ohm's Law', which, er, which states that, er, well, it's all about resistance. It's left-handed, I think. Or is that Fleming? Anyway, it's all about resistance. Yes. Er, which I think, it says, is futile. Roughly. Good.