Classical music, the love of my life

In a dazzling speech that captivated the Royal Philharmonic Society awards on Tuesday, award-winning writer and broadcaster Armando Iannucci argued that we should stop being scared of expressing what great works mean to us

Sunday May 14, 2006
The Observer

I can’t sing, can’t even whistle, and, until recently, couldn’t really say I played an instrument. That last omission officially changed two weeks ago when I received a certificate that said I’d managed to persuade a professional in the room for 10 minutes that I had a tiny grasp of the piano, and had passed my Grade 1. I realise that, of course, when it comes to music, it doesn’t matter how much or how little technical expertise one has. It doesn’t matter if the sum total of your involvement in music is just as a listener, for music transcends any limits on ability, nationality, religion, or language. It is the most magical act of communication.

That word, communication, is what I want to discuss: how we – what I’ll call, the artistic community – communicate with our audience, and how much we let them communicate with us. I’ll concentrate on music, but my thoughts take in the arts generally. I choose music, because, despite my lack of technical expertise, it is the artistic experience I’m most happy with.
Classical music has been, for me, the single most inspiring, most moving, most magical thread running though my whole cultural experience. It’s the art form in whose presence I feel most comfortable, most myself. And it’s probably no accident that when I first embarked on a career in comedy I did it as a producer on radio, playing with sound.

I can trace my love of classical music from the moment, aged 11, I attended my first musical appreciation lesson and the needle of a badly battered record player dropped with a loud thump onto a scratchy recording of Holst’s The Planets. Then I heard sounds that excited me in a way that somehow the recordings of Deep Purple and King Crimson my brothers played never did.

So began my musical career, as a listener. I soon took advantage of a newly opened public library only yards down the road to join their fantastically new and extensive record library. And I eagerly ate up Beethoven, Mahler, then Sibelius, Shostakovich, Bach’s amazing St Matthew Passion, the eccentricities of Berlioz, the purity of Bruckner, the invention of Nielsen. Discovering Radio 3, my encounters expanded. I heard a season of Rubbra symphonies in the early Eighties and have loved his symphonies ever since. I discovered Bartók, Walton, and strange noises, such as Xenakis.

I loved strange noises. I had no notion of what was considered contemporary or old-fashioned, cutting edge, or period. It was all wonderful and new. I wasn’t scared of the avant garde because I had no notion of what an avant garde was.

I realised this a few years ago, taking my son to school. He was eight or nine at the time. A piece of Ligeti was on the radio. Not to put him off with what maybe he would think was a strange, slightly disturbing noise, I tried to draw a simple analogy. ‘Sounds a bit like bees buzzing, doesn’t it?’ I said. He listened for a bit, then said, ‘No, it sounds like a lot of penguins fighting for a fish, and one of them’s just got it.’

He was right – that’s precisely what it sounded like. He was listening much harder than me. And it struck me then that I was worrying about my son being put off classical music by being exposed to something that may have been too difficult.

And that worrying was unneccessary, because labelling the music ‘difficult’ was a very adult way of categorising the music in the first place. He, not knowing much about chromaticism, harmony or serialism, nor anything about theory, had no reason to label what he was hearing as being significantly different from, say, Handel. It was just a very interesting, very alluring, piece of ordered sound. So too, when I first heard Rubbra, was I unaware that his music, along with the music of many English symphonists of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, had been critically banished from the airwaves and concert halls because they were deemed embarrassingly traditional. So I had no idea I wasn’t meant to like it.

Listening to classical music is a journey, not a state, an activity, not a meditation. Music is not a background noise. It’s something you bring into the foreground of your experience, by engaging with it, by doing some work. Only recently have I come to listen properly to Schumann, Haydn and, especially, Bach, and begun to get that sense of rich, deep satisfaction that I first encountered more immediately as an adolescent in Mahler. I’m aware that it’s easy to fall back on quasi-mystical, pretentious language when trying to talk about one’s experience of classical music, but that shouldn’t stop us trying. We don’t talk about music enough. As someone who’s never felt he’s had the technical language at his fingertips, I feel all I can do is talk about it in whatever English I have at my command. I want to emote about how I feel. After a concert, I want to grab people by the lapels and tell them how lucky we are as a species that, out of all the hundreds of billions of us who ever lived, one of us managed to come up with the Goldberg Variations. But I don’t, because that’s not the done thing. So instead I mention that the cafe downstairs does some fabulous chocolate éclairs.

I’m always amazed by how quietly people leave a concert hall, or if they talk to each other, it’s chatter about if they can remember where they’ve parked the car, or wasn’t the soprano wearing a nice dress. I think this is because what music does to us is such a private thing, we feel it’s not quite right to voice it.

There’s no way anyone is ever going to fully ‘know’ music, but I do think there’s now an obligation to allow as many people as possible to know as much about it as they can. That’s not the same as saying that music could become more accessible through marketing gimmicks. That’s’ why I’m always suspicious of any concert that puts other things in the way of the music, fireworks, laser displays, as if scared that the music by itself will not be enough.

Nor does it mean the classical music industry has to sart talking awkwardly in the language of the street, going on about how Beethoven was a crazy guy, and Wagner made ‘action movies’. It’s not that at all. But it’s about developing a language that talks to the audience aware of their intelligence and appetite, but also recognising that they will have questions that need answering.

It was when I first started going to live concerts I realised that seeing a piece of music performed live was the best single explanation of what it was about. It didn’t need words or footnotes. My fondest musical memories are of live concerts, of seeing and hearing Belshazzar’s Feast for the first time at a Glasgow prom, and being overwhelmed by the violence and energy of Walton’s music. Of seeing what The Rite of Spring looked like, not just what it sounded like. But outside the concert hall I feel there is a greater and greater appetite for verbal communication about music. As traditional music teaching in schools diminishes, the language is taken away, but the feeling is still there. People want to have proper grown-up conversations about why music matters, about why the arts matter.

That’s why I think it’s necessary to have an emotional debate about music as well as an intellectual one. Music is a dialogue between the heart and the head. Too often, though, a review will concentrate on how well a piece is played, but not on why that piece deserves to be played in the first place.

We need to wake up to the fact that people are now asking basic questions. Why are we musical? Why did people write symphonies? Why do we have the string quartet? They seem child-like, these questions, but they’re there to provide us with the opportunity to enthuse and explain and demonstrate the answers we first stumbled upon in our musical journey and which encouraged us to make that journey in the first place. Figure out our answers to those questions, and it will help us tackle some more simple, yet more terrifying, questions: why should the state spend money on the arts, why do we have opera and why is it so expensive, why should we have so many orchestras in London?

Just as I think any performer tries to perform music as if for the first time, with all that energy and excitement that comes from discovering a new piece – maybe trying to recreate the memory of falling in love with a piece when hearing it first as a child – and just as people regularly say of a brilliant conductor that they seem to conduct as if recreating the energy an audience must have felt when the piece was first played decades, even centuries, before, so too I think we need to communicate our knowledge with the passion we first encountered as children.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I find I can’t listen to Mozart. I don’t dislike him, I’m just unmoved by him. I realise I’m in a minority and I’m intrigued as to why this is. I broadcast a Radio 3 interval talk about this a few months ago, and the controller, Roger Wright, rather mischievously scheduled it in the middle of a live relay of The Marriage of Figaro. I received the biggest response to anything I’ve ever done. Buckets of letters and emails. None of them hostile. One or two confessing they agreed with me. But many more patiently, movingly, explaining why they loved Mozart.

I think we should at all times keep trying to ask and to answer the most basic of questions about music, about the arts. What are they there for?

For me they’re not there for any other reason than to remind us that, no matter where we are, whether we’re learned, in prison, poor, successful, alone or average, our material circumstances are not all that we have, that we can see beyond ourselves, that we’re human and are therefore dignified. That’s my answer. I’m sure each of you has a different one. I just wish we all had more opportunities to express them.

Actually, I prefer the response given by my examiner at my Grade 1 piano exam. He looked at me and said, ‘Are you the candidate?’ And, when I said yes, said, ‘Well, good for you!” I think that more than anything else sums up my musical journey so far.

· This is an edited version of the speech.

Contemporary classic
The Back Half
Nicholas Kenyon
Monday 1st May 2006

The gloom merchants keep predicting the demise of the classical music industry. But, as the 112th Proms programme is launched, the season’s controller Nicholas Kenyon argues that the sector is still vital, innovative – and flourishing  

Classical music has been through seismic changes in recent times, with many questioning whether the classical recording industry can survive in the age of downloads and the internet. However, the good news is that live music and major events are flourishing more than ever.

The ways of delivering music to listeners have been transformed, and this has created some casualties. The areas of the music industry that did not anticipate how the rise of the internet would affect global rights have been caught on the hop by technological developments. But the gloom merchants who wrote, on the appearance of EMI’s much-lauded Tristan und Isolde with Plácido Domingo last year, that they would eat their hats if another complete opera ever appeared on CD have been forced to do just that. Last month, for example, an obscure Vivaldi opera, never before recorded, turned up in two new complete recordings.

What the public is telling us is that it wants to experience great music in fresh ways, and gain access to it by the most convenient means. This was the message of the stunning success of Radio 3’s free downloads of the Beethoven symphonies last year, an offer taken up about 1.4 million times worldwide. There is a huge appetite for more of this sort of material to be delivered in the easiest and most innovative ways possible. The Radio 3 initiative showed just what power broadcasting continues to have in leading the way towards novel methods of consumption. With the launch on 10 April of the Warner Classics commercial classical music downloading site, and the continued existence of sites run by companies such as Chandos and Naxos, this brave (and remarkably cheap) new world is slowly but surely becoming a reality.

The real problem for classical music is that no one expects it to change, because it is steeped in tradition and is too often associated exclusively with the past. Yet it changes continually, both in character and in content. New music, so often thought of as esoteric and unappealing, has never been more varied in style and substance than now.

At the BBC Proms, the repertory that the audience responds to and most enjoys alters in ways that can be surprising. It will astonish no one that Mozart will be prominent this summer in his 250th anniversary year, but who would have predicted a couple of decades ago that Shostakovich, whose centenary it is this year, would turn out to be one of the most communicative and indispensable of 20th-century composers?

The big Shostakovich symphonies will feature strongly in our programme this year. They speak with huge power to the present generation, drawing audiences as did, say, Tchaikovsky a generation ago. Shostakovich’s work, born of a period of immense political repression and acute personal struggle, seems to sum up the 20th century far more potently than the intellectual constructions of the modernists who at one moment seemed poised to carry our musical traditions forward.

Brahms and Beethoven are still staples of the Proms diet, for their mixture of emotional appeal and structural coherence speaks across time. Currently, however, composers with bigger, more expansive Romantic structures are emerging into the limelight. Both Bruckner, who played the organ at the Royal Albert Hall, and Mahler, whose intensely emotional response to the pressures of the times has been one of the great discoveries of our generation, are popular with contemporary audiences.

Because of the existence of recording and broadcasting, the Proms repertory has grown in ways that could never have been imagined a century ago. When Henry Wood first conducted the concerts back in 1895 at the Queen’s Hall in Langham Place (next to where Broadcasting House now stands) he aimed to bring the excitement of orchestral music to a public weaned on worthy choral work and uplifting oratorio. He drew in the very latest novelties by Richard Strauss and Dvorak, both of whom were still alive, and Tchaikovsky, who had died only two years earlier. Wood then became bolder, introducing Debussy, Sibelius and Schoenberg. “Stick to it!” he exhorted his players as they struggled with Schoenberg’s brand-new Five Orchestral Pieces in 1912. “This is nothing like what you will have to play in 25 years’ time!”

Since then, there has been a century and more of new music. It has taken us all the way to the dizzying stylistic diversity of Harrison Birtwistle, John Tavener, Arvo Pärt and Elliott Carter. There has also been a huge revival of early music, which has transformed our understanding of the music of the past. So, today at the Proms, we face an enjoyably daunting challenge in trying to represent the best of this repertory in performances of the highest distinction. However, a summer season can inevitably only show the tip of the musical iceberg.

The past decade of the Proms has coincided with extraordinary technological and musical changes. On the largest scale, big screens have made possible the explosion of Proms in the Park around the country, all linked by television and radio into a communal celebration of music-making. On the smallest, daunted by the size of the Albert Hall for some material, we introduced a Proms chamber-music season. This has grown, and last year it moved to the splendidly renovated Cadogan Hall near Sloane Square, which has quickly become part of the Proms family.

It would be too easy for an institution such as the Proms to rest on its laurels, content to re-engage the world’s greatest orchestras in an annual display of exceptional talent. Of course, that is a vital part of our mission. This year we will promote some of the best ensembles playing the most adventurous music: the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle, the Philadelphia Orchestra with Christoph Eschenbach, the Pittsburgh Symphony with Andrew Davis, and many more.

Yet we also want the festival to move and to reflect some of those changes in the world of classical music. Above all, we want it to be committed to youth and the next generation of talent. Young audiences have always been a feature of the Proms; now we want to encourage young performers, too. Youth orchestras are a regular feature, from this country and from continental Europe, but last year teenagers from around the country were able to come and play alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This year, we have an ambitious vocal project for singers of all ages and skills, who will work with the charismatic Orlando Gough and his group The Shout in a pair of concerts.

There is a realisation now that classical music is not limited by old certainties, nor does it simply appeal to a committed audience that listens to nothing else. Classical music is flourishing because, partly thanks to its availability and familiarity through film, on TV and even as muzak, it reaches a far wider cross-section of the music-listening public. These are audiences that are not composed exclusively of classical music fans. They mix genres and styles in their listening, and may just as likely choose to go to a restaurant or the cinema as decide to go to a concert.

Clearly this is a huge challenge in marketing (as one guru put it: “If no one is coming to your concert, nothing will stop them”). It should be a fiercer spur to the industry to be flexible and approach- able, and to make potential audiences feel that classical music is for them. At the Proms, thanks to the continual support of the BBC, we can keep ticket prices low. We have the unique informality of the promming areas on the arena floor or up in the gallery, where audiences can come in for £5 and stand (or lie down, or whatever they wish) in order to encounter great music. On any level, it’s a bargain.

But it is more than a bargain: it’s a list-ening situation which, time and again, orchestras and conductors tell us has created one of the best audiences in the world. Prom audiences are open to challenge, not afraid of new and difficult work, informal, concentrated and supremely appreciative. When Henry Wood and his colleagues created that standing space on the floor of the Queen’s Hall a century ago, turning the social conventions of classical concert-going on their head, he could scarcely have imagined what an impact it would still have more than a hundred years later.

We no longer smoke in the Proms, and the music doesn’t include cornet solos and operatic medleys. But in an astonishing number of ways, the vision of the Proms remains completely in tune with what Wood and his colleagues aimed for. We want to lead the way in showing that classical music is vigorous, energetic and open to change. That is what this coming season, as ever, will be about.

The BBC Proms run at the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 from 14 July to 9 September. The Proms Guide is available by calling 0870 241 5490, or from all good booksellers

(뉴욕=연합뉴스) 이래운 특파원 = 한국이 낳은 세계적인 비디오 아티스트 백남준씨가 29일(현지시간) 미국에서 숨졌다. 향년 74세.

백씨는 이날 저녁 8시께 플로리다주 마이애미의 아파트에서 부인 시게코 쿠보다씨 및 간호사가 지켜보는 가운데 조용히 숨을 거뒀다고 가족들이 전했다.

백씨의 조카인 켄 하쿠다씨는 이날 연합뉴스와 전화통화에서 백씨 별세 사실을 전하고 “장례식은 수일후 뉴욕 맨해튼 메디슨 애비뉴의 프랭크 켐벨 장례식장에서 거행될 예정”이라고 말했다.

하쿠다씨는 백씨의 사인에 대해 `자연적 원인(natural causes)’이라고 말했다.

지난 1932년 서울에서 태어난 백씨는 일본 도쿄대학의 미학문학부와 독일 뮌헨의 루드비히막시밀리안대학교에서 공부한뒤 유럽과 미국을 중심으로 전위적이고 실험적인 예술활동을 벌였다.

1960년 `피아노포르테를 위한 연습곡’을 발표할 당시 그는 무대 아래로 뛰어내려가 넥타이를 자르는 등 관객에 대한 행위를 무대 밖으로까지 넓히는, 당시로선 파격적인 모습을 보이기도 했다.

특히 1963년 독일에서 첫 개인전을 열어 비디오 예술의 창시자로 세계 미술계의 주목을 받은데 이어 1969년 미국에서 샬롯데 무어맨과 공연을 하면서 비디오 아트를 예술 장르로 편입시킨 선구자라는 평을 듣기 시작했다.

이어 1984년에는 파리와 뉴욕을 통신위성으로 연결하는 `굿모닝 미스터 오웰’을 기획, 지휘하기도 했다.

백씨는 1996년 뇌졸중으로 쓰러져 몸의 왼쪽 신경이 마비됐음에도 불구, 독일 비디오조각전(1997), 바젤국제아트페어(스위스 바젤, 1997), 98서울판화미술제(예술의전당 미술관, 1998), 40년 회고전(미 캘리포니아 산타바바라 박물관, 2000) 등 왕성한 활동을 계속했다.

이런 활동의 결과 1996년 10월 독일`포쿠스’지가 선정한 ‘올해의 100대 예술가’ 중에 들었고, 1997년 8월에는 독일 경제월간지 `카피탈’이 선정한 ‘세계의 작가 100인’ 가운데 8위에 오르기도 했다.

현대예술과 비디오를 접목시키는 데 기여한 공로로 ’98년도 교토상’, 한국과 독일의 문화교류에 기여한 공로로 ‘괴테메달’을 받았고, 2000년엔 금관문화훈장도 받았다.

lrw@yna.co.kr