HOWARD GOODALL'S 20TH CENTURY GREATS

[Four films. Tiger Aspect for Channel 4 Television. Transmitted 27th November - 18th December 2004; repeated several times since then]

Produced by David Jeffcock, directed by David Jeffcock and Francis Hanly

The series won a Royal Television Society Award for Education and was nominated for a BAFTA and an International Rose d'Or.

Information about the DVD availaibility of this series may be found by emailing here

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Classical music started the century as the undisputed master of its field. It was recognised (in the West) as the main purveyor of music of emotion, subtlety and innovation. It reached a vast mainstream audience. Gradually this changed. Classical music began a journey into the avant-garde, and abandoned western tonality, the familiar ‘rules’ and practices of music that had served for several centuries.

Whatever the artistic merits of this new approach, there is little doubt that the mainstream audience couldn’t – or didn’t want - to follow it. A vacuum was thus created. Into it stepped an enriched form of popular music, that now began to take over as the principle producer of sophisticated, emotionally and artistically satisfying music that could be understood and enjoyed by an intelligent, mainstream audience. But that’s not to say that this new, enriched popular music was free of innovation. It wasn’t. It not only created new musical forms; it enthusiastically embraced all existing forms of music, be they classical, popular, folk, ‘world’ – or whatever. (The very musical forms the avant-garde were rejecting.) Popular music even embraced the avant-garde!

At the highest level of popular music, the most gifted composers consistently produced music that was at the same time familiar yet strange, a clever and exciting mixture of the old and the new. And the greatest popular composers didn’t just influence other popular composers. They also influenced a new generation of ‘classical’ composers. No doubt composers like Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Schoenberg and the other twentieth century ‘classical’ giants will – rightly - feature in future music histories. But the pivotal story of Twentieth Century music, Howard Goodall believes, is this astonishing, unexpected and unprecedented flowering of popular music. In this new century, the old, damaging division between the two camps – classical and popular – will no longer be an issue. There will just be music, good and bad.

Howard's article about the series for The Daily Telegraph can be found here.

 

1. LENNON/McCARTNEY From a standing start, knowing only a handful of chords between them, John Lennon and Paul McCartney turned themselves into the most influential composers of the late twentieth century. Their music wasn’t just immensely popular. It also proved that traditional western harmony – the main building block of European music – still had plenty to offer. (Even though avant-garde composers had turned their back on it.) By mixing pop and classical techniques, and cross-fertilising them with Indian, and electronic music, The Beatles refreshed and revitalised western harmony. They also transformed the recording studio from a dull box where you recaptured your live sound, into a musical laboratory, of exciting and completely new sounds. This was one of the most crucial advances in the way popular music was to be produced. But Lennon & McCartney didn’t just influence all popular music that followed them. They influenced classical music too. The leading classical composers of our own era have turned back to traditional harmony. More than anyone, Lennon & McCartney prefigured this trend. They showed that the old musical forms could be refashioned and refreshed, to make music that was both exciting and popular, and sophisticated and new. They, more than anyone, saved the western musical tradition from extinction, and gave it a new purpose and a direction. Not bad going for two boys who met at a local church fete and taught themselves their instruments.

Directed by Francis Hanly, Produced by David Jeffcock

What the press have said.....

The Times (The Eye) 27.11.04 Watercooler Channel 4's new series is music to the ears, says Paul Hoggart

How high is your brow, do you reckon? Do you go for Aida, Evita or Eminem? Are you an elitist, a populist or an ironic postmodern cultural relativist? No medium is more plagued by debates about elitism and "dumbing down" than television. Enter Howard Goodall, the composer and natural educator, to cut through these cultural Gordian knots with his new series on music: Howard Goodall's 20th-Century Greats. Goodall's thesis, though he puts it rather more elegantly, is that in the mid-20th century classical composers disappeared up their own semi-quavers. Bored with the great traditions of Western music, they started producing discordant, atonal avant-gardery that nobody actually wanted to hear. It was the popular musicians who took on the mantle of the past, and it is they who will be remembered in 200 years when Stockhausen and co are but footnotes in life's online infopaedia. Of course, he's not talking about Boyzone. Goodall means the exceptional few who were brilliantly inventive and influenced everything that followed, including newer forms of classical music. Kicking off with the Beatles, the series includes Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein and the film score composer Bernard Herrmann. But what makes this series so wonderful is Goodall himself. He is like an inspired evening-class lecturer who is able to communicate the most complex musical concepts with clarity and immediacy. Eleanor Rigby, Night and Day, and West Side Story all borrow techniques from a host of sources, but use them in new and wondrous ways. It will make you hear the works anew.

Evening Standard 26.11.04 Saturday Choice Imogen Ridgway 'Hitting the right note': Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats

If you have ever studied for music exams, you may remember an imposing book entitled Rudiments and Theory of Music, a soulless, red-jacketed, black-and-white tome that contained all you ever wanted to know (and plenty more that you really didn't) about harmonies, keys and cadences. Working your way through its dull pages was enough to put you off music for life. Howard Goodall, on the other hand, can explain musical forms entertainingly, informatively and using examples based on songs with which we are all familiar, i.e. the work of The Beatles. Where were you when I needed you 15 years ago, eh, Goodall? (Actually, he was hanging around with Richard Curtis and writing the music for Blackadder, so he is almost forgiven). In this new series, Goodall applies his musical-appreciation talents to those he believes stood out during the last century. After all, your Bachs and your Beethovens are familiar names, but whose music is going to make it into the history books for the years 1900-1999?

Goodall begins with The Beatles, and he's clearly a fan. Either that or an incredibly good actor; when he suggests the Scouse quartet had "a stunning roll call of sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart can match in European musical history", he sounds as though he really believes it. He explains the notes and keys of established Western musical form, before whizzing through a potted history of classical music, ending up in the experimental "let's record the sound of rubbing sandpaper together" period of the Fifties. But as soon as you are thinking "yeah, yeah .... had enough of this" he zooms to the early Sixties and the formulaic nature of pop at the time. No wonder The Beatles' innovative take on familiar Western styles catapulted them to stardom. The rest of the programme looks at the evolution of The Beatles' work, from the four chords of I Saw Her Standing There to the 16 that make up I am the Walrus, while analysing the construction of some of their most memorable songs and examining their musical heritage. Immensely watchable, and really giving a kick up the bottom of the notion that music theory is solely the stuff of impenetrable textbooks.

Sunday Times - Culture Pick of the day Victoria Segal: Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats (C4 7pm)

Hundreds of books about the Beatles are printed every year, covering every detail of their career and their music in far-from-exciting detail. In the face of this mountain of information, finding a new angle from which to tell the Lennon-McCartney story is almost impossible, so it is to the composer Howard Goodall's credit that he makes this documentary so fresh. For Goodall, the work of the Fab Four appeared at a time when the western classical tradition was at its lowest ebb. The public was not ready to listen to the sound of sandpaper blocks or tennis balls being thrown at piano strings, and clung to the old note patterns. So, too, did Lennon and McCartney, reinvigorating the classical traditions by using them in an entirely new context.

Goodall is clearly committed to this argument, unabashed about making grand claims for the writers of Strawberry Fields Forever and Hey Jude. He calls their music "a stunning roll-call of sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart can match in European musical history", which is a pretty excitable billing. Yet Goodall not only explains this theory with a charming erudition, explaining keys, chords and cadences, he also conveys a donnish enthusiasm, breaking into song with nothing but a Bontempi-style organ for accompaniment. Forcing viewers to look at a well-worn subject with a fresh gaze, this is an exemplary documentary.

The Daily Telegraph 29.11.04

..... And at this point I could have continued with children's classics by reviewing BBC 2's opera of The Little Prince on Saturday. Unfortunately, it clashed with Howard Goodall's 20th-Century Greats: Lennon and McCartney (C4). As it turns out, though, choosing the Beatles makes me a person of taste and discrimination. When A Hard Day's Night came out, the music critic of the Times annoyed the establishment by calling Lennon and McCartney the best songwriters since Schubert. On Saturday, Goodall went much further. For him, the Beatles had "a stunning roll call of sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart can match in European musical history". Not only that, but they "almost single-handedly rescued the Western musical system".

Goodall's central argument was that by the 1960s, the avant-garde, with their love of random noises, had virtually destroyed classical music as a popular art form. The Beatles then led a counter revolution which showed musicians of all kinds how many possibilities remained in the supposedly exhausted basics of rhythm, tune and harmony. Within this framework, Goodall supplied richly illuminating analyses of individual songs. Heroically unafraid of getting too technical, he explained - among much else - how Penny Lane manages to sound wistful and celebratory at the same time (because of the chord modulations in the chorus) and why Eleanor Rigby works so well as "an urban version of a tragic ballad in the Dorian mode". (Like many musicians, Goodall seemed slightly more admiring of McCartney than of Lennon). The result was a gripping hour of television which by the end had surely justified its own extravagant claims - even the one about the Beatles being innovators to rank with Beethoven and Wagner.

The Guardian 29.11.04 TV review - Sam Wollaston: Absolutely fabulous

Three music programmes today, one very good, the others less so. The good one was Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats (Channel 4, Saturday). Goodall, a composer himself, starts this series not with Stravinsky or Shostakovich, but with a couple of Scousers who, in the 1960s, were, he argues, easily the most important composers in the world - John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Their stunning roll-call of sublime melodies is perhaps only matched by Mozart in European history, he says. Blimey. I love the Beatles, but I didn't realise they were that good. This is not just an argument though, it's a demonstration. Goodall shows us why they're so important. First he does a little crash course in western music. He demonstrates harmony, how chords can push a melody along and give it purpose. The obvious place to do this would be a studio, but that would be dull, so Goodall takes his keyboard, his slightly ropey singing voice and his cojones along to the Liverpool waterfront, where he gives his masterclass not just to the camera, but also to the gulls, the passing tankers and the Mersey ferry. It's wonderful.

Goodall accuses classical music's modernists of abandoning harmony, then credits the Fab Four with rescuing it. First they played the same three chords as everyone else, then they got better, using harmony to create different moods. Goodall demonstrates the chord sequence at the beginning of "I am the Walrus", which creates a shifting unstable landscape, while, as he says, the tune is doing nothing, like a police siren: "I am he is you are he is you are me, and we are all together." That's brilliant. And it's all brilliant. He explains modulation, how it adds power and depth, how Penny Lane's key changes give the feeling of a journey into McCartney's past. He shows us the pentatonic scale, and how Eleanor Rigby borrows from ancient folk music.

He looks at how the Beatles were influenced by Indian music, and even by the modernists that Goodall seems to disapprove of so strongly. This could have felt like a school music class, but Goodall's bounding enthusiasm is totally infectious. The soundtrack isn't bad either. In fact, he's now convinced me it's the most important music in the world, ever.

.......Elton John: An Ivor Novello Tribute (BBC1, Sunday) took place [on the other hand] ..inside the subject's arse. Which is fine, I suppose, as this was supposed to be a celebration of his career. I'm sure Elton deserves his award and everything - though obviously I'd like to have this confirmed by Howard Goodall.

The Independent Review 29.11.04 Thomas Sutcliffe - The weekend's television: Take a pop song and make it better

Arts programmes have conventionally been a timid genre, reluctant to make a statement without a protective qualification at hand. Think how often you hear people introduce a film about "perhaps the greatest" or "arguably the most influential".

So it a pleasant surprise to find that Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats had slammed the escape hatch shut and thrown away the key. Introducing his first programme, about Lennon and McCartney, Goodall declared that in a period when classical music had been at its lowest ebb, "the most important composers in the world were, without doubt, the Beatles". No get-out clause? Nope.

Where qualifications occurred, they only amplified the claim being made. Take his praise of Lennon and McCartney's way with a tune. He talked of "sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart can match in European musical history". And who does that "perhaps" belong to? Mozart, that's who - grudgingly admitted as a potential melodic competitor for the Mersey mop tops. Goodall was settling scores here, of course. "Who will be our equivalents of Bach and Beethoven, Verdi and Wagner?" he asked at the beginning, and this series, which includes programmes about the film composer Bernard Herrmann and the songwriter Cole Porter, offers his answer. Fans of Stockhausen and John Cage won't be setting their videos.

In this first episode, Goodall argued that it was Lennon and McCartney who nursed the tonal tradition in Western music through what he saw as the plague years of the avant-garde, when a new concert might well consist of a man throwing tennis balls into an open grand piano. For Goodall, the rift this created between the audience and composers was a disaster, and he suggested that it was Lennon and McCartney who effectively healed it by smuggling classical techniques into the three-minute pop song. So, "Penny Lane" was unpicked as a textbook use of modulation, "Eleanor Rigby" turned out to be an exercise in the Dorian mode, and "And I Love Her" illustrated Lennon and McCartney's fondness for plagal cadences.

For a musical illiterate, having the songs' workings exposed like this was a double win: you found out what "modulation" is and why "Penny Lane" puts the hair up on the back of your neck when it goes into the bridge, though even an illiterate might have noticed a logical catch. If these things were part of the stock toolbox for classical composers for centuries, then how could Lennon and McCartney be described as "musical innovators on a global scale"? Surely they should have been more accurately described as musical conservatives, preserving the basic components of composition in a place where the enemy would never bother to look. More intriguingly, when Goodall talked of a technique being "hard-wired" into a musical culture, did he really mean it? Do Beatles' songs have the effect they do because we've unconsciously absorbed the tradition, or does the effect create the tradition? You couldn't tell from this, but it didn't matter, because the programme was - literally - an unqualified pleasure. It even survived Goodall's singing - not the finest interpretations of Lennon and McCartney every recorded. Arguably.

Sunday Telegraph (TV Choice) 21.11.04 Howard Goodall's Twentieth Century Greats

Almost everyone loves the Beatles. But why? Because they wrote a lot of catchy songs? That's not good enough. Why were their songs so catchy? Quiet at the back for the composer Howard Goodall's explanation.

From the title of this series one might guess it's an I Love 20th-Century Music - style countdown programme (such as tonight's The Ultimate Film, also on Channel 4). But this is basically about music theory; it contains the line 'the raising of the sixth semitone' and expressions such as 'plagal cadence' and 'distinctly pentatonic feel'. Don't be put off by the fact that, unless you have studied a musical instrument, much of Goodall's analysis may go over your head. What does make it in is interesting enough. His argument is that the composers of the 1950s abandoned the classic techniques of western music, and so made classical music obscure and unpopular. It took the Beatles to reclaim the harmonies of Bach and Mozart, and in doing so, to bring about 'the dramatic comeback of the western musical system. They began the process of healing the damaging rift between popular and classical music', says Goodall. Certainly sounds better than 'they wrote catchy songs'.

[List of contributing musicians to this programme: Titles music written and performed by Howard Goodall, with the Purcell School String Quartet (Soojin Han, Sophie Lockett, Daniel Palmizio, Colin Alexander); Boulez piano sonata played by Lawon Lee from the Purcell School; Handel, Mozart, Brahms and Philip Glass excerpts played by students of The Royal Academy of Music; Bach Double Violin Concerto played by students of The Lady Eleanor Holles School.]

2. COLE PORTER was the most gifted of a richly talented generation of composers who transformed popular music in the 1920s and 30s. It had started the century, for the most part, bland, patronising and trite, the gauche, poor relation of classical music. Cole Porter, more than anyone, made it musically, and lyrically sophisticated, emotionally satisfying and subtle. Remarkably, not only did he write some of the best music ever, but was also one of the greatest lyricists in the English language. Cole Porter began his career at a pivotal moment in the history of music. Classical music, after several centuries as the undisputed master of the field, had decided to embark on a journey into dissonant, harsh, complex music that the mainstream audience couldn’t follow, far less enjoy. A vacuum was thus created and popular music seized the chance to take over classical music’s former role as the main provider of intelligent, sophisticated music for the general listener. No one did this with greater effect than Cole Porter. Classically-trained, he could have made a career in ‘art music’. Instead he chose to write in the popular field. His classical background was of great significance, though, because he enriched popular music precisely by using the sophisticated techniques of classical music. But he used them so cleverly that the pop audience didn’t find anything outside or beyond its taste. No other popular composer wrote more songs in a minor key, for example. Porter brilliantly squared the circle, writing worldwide, enduring hits that can stand comparison with the romantic songs of any composer – whether ‘classical’ or ‘popular’ - from any age. From I Get A Kick Out Of You to Love For Sale, from Anything Goes to Let’s Do It, Night & Day to Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye, in Porter’s hands the popular song came of age, and the history of music in the twentieth century was to undergo a sea change.

Directed & produced by David Jeffcock

Press comments....

Sunday Times 28.11.04 You're the top Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats: Cole Porter (C4 7pm)

After last week's excellent examination of the Beatles, this exemplary series continues with an analysis of the songs of Cole Porter. Goodall is engaging and erudite, happily taking the side of popular music and pointing out how ill-served it is by the self-professed guardians of the highbrow. He chooses Porter's Night and Day over Schumann's Die Lotosblume in answer to charges of plagiarism and reveals how Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, despite hitting a chord with millions of people during the second world war, has been excluded from serious studies of 20th-century music. He's the tops, he's the Colosseum - and, yes, Porter's pretty fantastic, too.

Sunday Telegraph (Television Choice) 27.11.04 Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats

The sophisticated, intricate melodies and lyrics of Cole Porter's songs get a deserved tribute from the engaging, tousle-haired composer of the themes from Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley. Even if you've always known (or conversely, don't care) about the rising repetition in 'Anything Goes' or the semitone sequences of 'Let's Do It', there's much to enjoy. Delovely.

Evening Standard 3.12.04: Ceri Thomas. Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats

Just how did pop music kick classical into the shadows in the last century? Howard Goodall reckons the whole process wouldn't have even started if it wasn't for one man: Cole Porter. Welding the sophistication of classical music on to the cool rhythms of jazz, and then boiling it all down into instantly hummable melodies that worked on the Broadway stage as well as on the silver screen weren't easy, but, as Goodall explains, Porter was a master. As this entertaining boogie through the main events of Porter's life goes on, Goodall weaves in an explanation of how the forms and patterns that the composer used still permeate almost every piece of pop being written today. And yes, that does include the likes of Westlife and Blue...

Spellbinding stuff, even if you're a musical muppet like me.

[List of contributing musicians for this programme: Stephanie O'Brien and members of the Purcell School jazz department performed Love for Sale and I get a kick out of you. Tom Randle sang Night & Day. Sarah Lambie of the Lady Eleanor Holles School sang Dowland's Flow my Tears. Tasha Johnson of the Arts Educational School Tring Park sang Goodbye Little Dream, Goodbye and All through the night. Simon Butteris, Bruce Graham and Peter Nulloy of the Carl Rosa Company performed from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado, Simon Butteris also sang Everybody Loves a Chicken. Cyrille de France and Oriola Islami danced part of Porter's ballet Within the Quota, choreographed by Leah Hausman. Danielle Jordan and Michael White danced at the Rivoli Ballroom and Edwardians Unlimited provided the theatre audience at Wimbledon Theatre. Drummers from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff drummed at Ogmore Castle.]

3. BERNARD HERRMANN wrote some of the most famous film music of the twentieth century, from Citizen Kane to The Day The Earth Stood Still, Fahrenheit 451 to Taxi Driver. He is best known for his scores for Alfred Hitchcock, in particular the masterpieces Vertigo and Psycho. Herrmann completely transformed film music, dragging it out of its reliance on the sounds and textures of nineteenth century Vienna and into the modern age. Realising that each film is a one-off, and experimenting with new recording techniques and instruments, he completely re-wrote the rule book. Herrmann brought the orchestra up to date with imaginative and unprecedented musical textures and effects – his use of purely electronic instruments predate those of the classical pioneers Karlheinz Stockhausen & Edgar Varese. He used these new sounds to score a series of landmark films, from science fiction to horror to suspense. In doing so, Herrmann not only weaned the film audience off the Romantic music it was most familiar with. He introduced many of the most ‘difficult’ elements of mid twentieth century music to a mass audience, who accepted dissonance and even atonality because Herrmann cleverly adapted them to the needs of the drama. Psycho is not only the most imitated and admired film music ever. Its harsh, screaming dissonance was the very sort of music audiences had been turning their back on in concert halls. Thanks to Herrmann, they lapped it up, now in a popular form. Bernard Herrmann was consistently, brilliantly inventive, and he influenced every film composer who came after him. But he also influenced classical concert music. In his works are the seeds of the modern musical movement of ‘minimalism.’ Herrmann himself was ambivalent about his film success. He never received the respect he craved in the classical world. But he did more than anyone else to broaden the musical tastes of the public. Not in the concert hall, but in the crucible of the twentieth century’s own most important art form – cinema.

Directed by Francis Hanly, produced by David Jeffcock

Press comments....

Sunday Times 5.12.04 Pick of the Week:

This superb look at 20th-century music has made a late entry for best factual series of the year. This week, Goodall examines the work of the great film composer Bernard Herrmann, the man who made a generation prefer baths to showers with his terrifying stabbing score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. He also wrote unforgettabl;e music for Vertigo, Citizen Kane and Taxi Driver, changing soundtracks forever. Goodall effortlessly communicates the techniques used by Herrmann, invoking Bartok and Schoenberg and explaining serialism and minimalism. He also combines a campaigning zeal with his erudition, attacking the classical music establishment for ignoring Herrmann's work and pointing out that his early endeavours with electronic music in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still predated the 'official' first experiments of Stockhausen and Varese.

The Observer 5.12.04 Mike Mackinnon; Pick of the Week:

Goodall's exemplary series continues with a profile of Bernard Herrmann, the composer of the most famous film music of the 20th century. Best known for his scores for the director Alfred Hitchcock, in particular the masterpieces Vertigo and Psycho, Herrmann also wrote the music for Orson Welles's controversial radio play The War of the Worlds, as well as Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Fahrenheit 451 and Taxi Driver. In all, he composed some 50 original film scores over the course of his career, during which he became renowned as a master of psychological and emotional intensity, expressed in bold, dark compositions, often shot through with a palpable sense of foreboding. Thus he was the ideal choice when Hitchcock was seeking someone to communicate suspense. Goodall explains how Herrmann completely transformed film music by dragging it away from the sounds of 19th-century Vienna and into the modern age. Recommended.

David Butcher, The Radio Times 11.12.04:

“There's a lot of music on TV tonight, but if you don't fancy the talent-show tussles of The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing or indeed BBC1s Can't Sing, Singers, try this wonderful film instead. It's the third of Howard Goodall's series on giants of 20th-century music and looks at film composer Bernard Herrmann, creator of memorable scores for Psycho, Vertigo, Citizen Kane and Taxi Driver. Many of us will have shivered along to Herrmann’s music, but Goodall believes he’s shamefully unrecognised, and makes a strong case that Herrmann not only reinvented film music, but changed the course of classical music as a whole. Some presenters would just tell us as much, or get interviewees to offer back-up, but not Goodall. Score by score, he explains Herrmann’s techniques: how he achieved a neurotic sound by making the strings play without vibrato, for instance, or how he toyed with little musical nuggets in the Psycho score to suggest madness (and lay the foundation of minimalism in the process.) The argument is easy to follow because Goodall explains things so elegantly, and illustrates his points with a keyboard and orchestra. Very few arts programmes this good are getting across why great works are great, but Goodall is a natural.”

Sunday Telegraph 5/12/04

"He wrote the scores to Psycho, Taxi Driver and Citizen Kane, but Bernard Herrmann's 'towering achievements' have been 'overlooked, sidelined and ignored' according to Howard Goodall. This brilliant musical dissection of his work (with Psycho at its centrepiece) illuminates and convinces throughout. For a lecture conducted by one man and his keybiard, it's a surprise treat."

Now that's what I call music: Mark Lawson Monday December 13, 2004 The Guardian

Rowan Atkinson's stage-show in the late 80s was not his most successful venture - suffering a notably vicious New York Times notice - but, paradoxically, it turns out to have been a formidable academy for talent. It's like discovering that the Titanic disaster created three champion Olympic swimmers.

The co-writer, Richard Curtis, is now Britain's most recognisable scriptwriter; the acting sidekick, Angus Deayton, graduated to become one of television's highest-paid presenters; and now the composer for the show, Howard Goodall, has established himself as the David Attenborough of classical music.

Goodall claims two hours of television this weekend across two channels for his personable but rigorous notes on music: on Saturday, he concludes his Channel 4 series Howard Goodall's Twentieth Century Greats with an essay on Leonard Bernstein and, the following night, hosts an authored documentary for The South Bank Show on music teaching in schools.

The SBS project is a response to a television film made six years ago in which Sir Simon Rattle lamented the silencing of music teaching in British schools. Beginning - inevitably but sweetly - with the Purcell School Orchestra playing Lloyd Webber's Variations On a Theme of Paganini (also known as Herald to Melvyn), Goodall offers his own variations on Rattle's 1998 conclusions.

The shift in tone is so great that it's as if a piece by Schoenberg has been transposed into Puccini: where Rattle was rattled, Goodall can find only good. He stands in a hard hat on building sites where new musical schools are being built, while banners dash across the screen revealing that £60m a year of new government money has gone into music teaching or that six times as many teachers are in training. In classrooms across the nation, Goodall finds bright-eyed children tackling Shostakovich or knocking out their own string quartets.

After about half an hour of this, there were horns sounding loudly in my head. While it is hard to argue that music teaching in schools has improved, the political dissonance of Rattle's film seemed to have been entirely replaced by New Labour harmony. This is worrying - especially as the editor of the South Bank Show is Lord Bragg, a Labour peer - but, after the overture of blowing trumpets for Blairism, the film gets much tougher.

Goodall raises the possibility that the new state cash for music teaching is more interested in brass-bands playing Hollywood theme tunes than teaching classical tradition. There are other, even harder points he could have explored - such as parents in some state schools being pressured to buy expensive instruments from the school's commercial partner - but this is a typically passionate and informative film in which the presenter demonstrates his eye for a quirky statistic: such as the fact that there are 44 dedicated choir schools in Britain, 43 more than in Italy.

But the problem is that the South Bank Show documentary leaves you thinking that the solution to music education in Britain is a mass cloning programme so that every child can have Howard Goodall as a personal tutor.

His Channel 4 series Twentieth Century Greats is an even more impressive piece of intelligent storytelling than his previous four series for 4: Organ Works, Choir Works, Big Bangs and Great Dates.

The first strength of the series is the eclectic selection. No television executive listing a quartet of 20th-century musical figures for documentaries would have come up with Goodall's odd squad of Cole Porter, Lennon & McCartney, Bernard Herrmann and Leonard Bernstein. The Herrmann film was a perfect example of Goodall's ability to make a complicated argument both tightly and brightly. The best model for television arts programmes is sports coverage: what's needed is an Alan Hansen or John McEnroe who can explain why the performer made the moves he did. Goodall is that person, always able to tell us the score.

Almost ignoring the life - there was just one reference to Herrmann being "sad, resentful, paranoid" - he brilliantly dismantles the work, explaining how the soundtracks for the Hitchcock movies were influenced by Bartok, a now little-known instrument played by Lenin and by the decision, on Psycho, to drop the brass and woodwind sections completely and make the strings use their mutes.

The difference between musical composition and television film-making is that there's no tradition in the latter of standing up and applauding at the end. But, with Goodall, you feel that you want to.

 

4. LEONARD BERNSTEIN was the composer who, more than anyone else in the twentieth century, embodied the trend we now call ‘cross-over.’ A brilliant musician and conductor, he wrote in the ‘classical’ style, but also wrote some of the best known ‘popular’ music of the century, from On The Town to West Side Story. In mid century, this was a bold step – you were expected to choose between the two styles, and they were seen as poles apart. Bernstein never accepted this – to him good music was good music – but he was forced to veer wildly between writing for the supposed opposites of popular and classical taste. But he was always trying to join the dots between the two. At first it seemed as if the answer was to introduce jazz, pop and dance styles into classical music. But in 1957 he came at the conundrum from a different direction and finally squared the circle. West Side Story had all the pizzazz and popular appeal of the Broadway musical – although with a contemporary, hard-hitting subject. But the great advance was that the fun and energy of the musical was underpinned with the subtlety and shape of classical music – specifically opera. It was a hit with great songs – Tonight, Somewhere, Maria – but also with an emotional and artistic subtlety new to the musical, derived from the best music of the past. Here was a hint as to the future direction of music, a way to get the best of both worlds. But not only did West Side Story revitalise the musical. By incorporating Latin American rhythms - most famously in America - Bernstein pointed the way forward for the most important musical trend of our own time – fusion. But for Bernstein ‘fusion’ wasn’t only about mixing new musical colours merely for effect. It had a religious and political purpose too. For him music could and should reflect all the world’s communities, nations and creeds. By his own mixing of European classical, pop and Latin styles, Bernstein may have prefigured the next important phase in the music of our own time – the fusion of Western and Asian styles.

Directed & produced by David Jeffcock

 

Press comments...

Radio Times 18.12.04 TODAY'S CHOICES: MUSIC - David Butcher: Howard Goodall's Twentieth Century Greats

This too-brief series winds up with a celebration of West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein. Goodall argues (with his usual gusto) that Bernstein's habit of pilfering and mixing different styles - jazz, classical, Latin - make him a key figure in modern music, "the musical gatekeeper of America's 20th century", as he puts it.

The trouble is, Goodall's ringing phrases and musical clips are so impressive he could almost persuade me that Paper Lace were unsung geniuses. At times you want to interrupt him with a "Hang on, Howard ...." but his argument rolls on and it's hard not to roll with it. There's a wonderful section of the programme where he sets a simple scene (a man walks into a bar and has an argument), first as an opera and then as a musical, to illustrate the difference.

It's clever, fun and makes a fairly abstruse point very neatly. For gems like this, you have to admire Goodall and hope he makes more of these films soon.

Sunday Telegraph 12.12.04 Television Choice BJW Programme of the day: Howard Goodall's Twentieth Century Greats C4 7.20 - 8.20

A brilliant series concludes in triumphant fashion, looking at Leonard Bernstein, the man who, more than anyone else, brought together divergent musical styles to create a whole that was even greater than the sum of its parts: Goodall believes the closing minutes of the first act of West Side Story are one of the great achievements of 20th-century music. The work under scrutiny - On the Town, West Side Story - is inevitably familiar, but Goodall's elucidation of what makes them great is revelatory.

Recurring riffs and ideas are picked out and pulled apart, revealing precisely the cross-fertilisation of opera and Broadway musicals that makes West Side Story so powerful - you get to see the ingredients, learn the recipe and sample the final, delicious dish. As so many recent bungled attempts at arts programming have proved there's a very thin line between high-brow, low-brow and continually furrowed brow. But here that line is never crossed. Goodall is plainly a music-lover as much as an expert, showing how Bernstein crossed codes to fuse the classical with the popular in a way that had never been done before. And if you look at today's music, a mishmash of styles, cultures and influences, his legacy is clear.

Sunday Times 12.12.04 American Beauty Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats: Leonard Bernstein

Full of accessible erudition, great visual jokes and elegant phrases, this study of Leonard Bernstein, described during this documentary as "the musical gatekeeper of America's 20th century", is another fine programme in this series. In a style that is happily reminiscent of Matthew Colling, the amiable composer and presenter Howard Goodall analyses Bernstein's "promiscuous eclecticism", examing how he fused operatic and stage musical conventions in West Side Story and how Tonight represented "the precise moment in the 20th century where popular and serious culture clashed". Goodall also has a go at Oklahoma! which should trigger excitable choruses of debate among fans of musical theatre.

Time Out 15-22 December TV Guide: Pick of the day

Goodall rounds off his accessible series with a look at the work of composer Leonard Bernstein, whose use of Latin rhythms in West Side Story broke new ground. Using Bernstein's work as a starting point for an exploration of the history of fusion, he manages to make his apparent diversions entertaining and relevant. Of particular amusement is the pub scene shot and scored for the programme, perfectly illustrating the difference between opera and musicals.

The Daily Telegraph TV & Radio 18.12.04 Pick of the Day by Gerard O'Donovan

Howard Goodall's 20th-Century Greats Leonard Bernsteain already qualifies for a place in the pantheon of musical greats but it is in his legacy as a composer - and of West Side Story in particular - that Goodall's most interested. In the last of this wonderfully engaging series, he shows how all the great currents of 20th-century music came together in the work of the "supremely talented" Bernstein. Goodall fans shouldn't miss tomorrow's South Bank Show.

The Saturday Times: The Eye 18.12.04 TV CHOICE Howard Goodall's 20th Century Greats

In the last part of this superlative series, Howard Goodall turns his attention to Leonard Bernstein and, in particular, West Side Story, which he describes as the most important work for the musical stage of the 20th century. Goodall gives an inspired demonstration of the difference between opera and the musical, and he explains how Bernstein fused different musical styles and snuck in operatic tricks such as over-layering and a subliminal use of the tritone to incorporate layers of richness and complexity.

 

About the whole series....

Howard Goodall's Channel 4 series on 20th-century music was a triumph of intelligent televison. It worked because it was driven by a powerful polemic by David Herman, Prospect Magazine

After a terrible year Channel 4 ended 2004 on three high notes: the start of David Starkey's ambitious history of the British monarchy: Green Wing the most original British comedy series of the year: and the outstanding factual series of 2004 Twentieth Century Greats, presented by Howard Goodall.

Goodall's series was rightly acclaimed by critics when it was shown just before Christmas. But the critics failed to notice precisely why it stood out from the bland culture of current British arts television. First, Twentieth Century Greats was driven by a powerful polemic. The great story of 20th-century music, argued Goodall, was the rise and rise of popular music - not the trite stuff of pre-1920's Tin Pan Alley or, for that matter, of most pop music of the last 20 years, but a new and sophisticated popular music which drew on other forms such as folk, classical and electronic and which, in turn, fed new developments in classical music. At the moment in the mid-20th century when classical music was disappearing down a cul-de-sac and wilfully cutting itself off from mainstream audiences, popular music was filling the vacuum left by the avant garde. Instead of Schoenberg or Stockhausen, Goodall brought an unlikely pantheon of popular songwriters and film composers centre stage.

This is a fascinating argument and forms part of a larger polemic against modernism. What is particularly interesting though is how unusual it is to find such a bold thesis about the arts in television today. The best arts series have always had a simple, polemical idea (think of John Berger and Mike Dibb's Ways of Seeing or Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New) This is what also distinguishes early Arena and the first series of The Late Show from others (Omnibus, Saturday Review, or today, Imagine and The Culture Show. Goodall's programmes took a big idea and ran with it.

The series was risky in other ways. It is hard to imagine Channel 4 executives whooping for joy at the thought of a programme on film composer Bernard Herrmann, or even Cole Porter and Leonard Bernstein. If the subjects were risky, the tone was even more daring. Most arts programmes fall back on a mix of biography ("Arthur, tell us about Marilyn one more time"), celebrity-fixation and a strangely bland kind of criticism. Goodall ditched all this. There was a little biographical background but for the most part he used technical musical analysis a critical language of harmony, tonality, chord modulations and Dorian modes.

Take the third programme, on Bernard Herrmann, one of the great film composers, who wrote the soundtracks for Citizen Kane, Vertigo and Taxi Driver. Goodall explained how Herrmann broke with the dominant tradition of film score writing - European, lush and romantic - first, in his early films, by seeking a more American sound in the influence of Charles Ives and then, especially in his relationship with Hitchcock, by making more radical changes, using unexpected techniques and instruments, reinventing the sound of the string section by cutting the violin vibrato and using an attacking string sound, reducing melodies down to a few edgy chords in a manner derived from Bartok and which would, in turn, influence minimalism. None of this was particularly easy or accessible. It required thought.

Throughout the series Goodall talked about bridging the divide between the popular and avant garde. But in the process he did something far more original. He tried to bridge the growing divide between two cultures in Britain between a culture which uses rigorous critical analysis and is increasingly confined to universities and small magazines, and a culture of promotion and hype, the world of the Sunday books pages and theatre and film reviews.

Most critics described Goodall's series as entertaining and informative. In fact, he was sometimes hard to follow, and used a vocabulary unfamiliar to non-specialists. He got away with it because of his conviction that this was the way to address his subject and because of the quality of the filmmaking.

Here Goodall was helped by his two producers, David Jeffcock and Francis Hanly. None of the reviewers mentioned either producer. Television critics are still in a stone age where presenters appear to make their own programmes. Jeffcock (who also worked on Howard Goodall's Big Bangs and Great Dates) and Hanly are two of the best arts producers of their generation, and they brought a distinctive visual humour and style to all the programmes, using archive in rich and inventive ways, making knowing cinematic references and constantly ringing the changes so that the programmes never felt visually stuck. They, in turn, were working with two of the best television cameramen in Britain, Colin Case and Steve Plant.

This blend of polemic, technical analysis and visual style gave Goodall's series its flair. It was intelligent and at the same time a pleasure to watch. Put together with Goodall's previous series for Channel 4 and his recent South Bank Show, it constitutes an important body of work, one of the landmarks of British arts television.