1
00:00:08,450 --> 00:00:10,960
Welcome to Big Tent. Live events.

2
00:00:10,960 --> 00:00:17,180
Our new lockdown live online event series from the University of Oxford as part of the humanities cultural programme.

3
00:00:17,180 --> 00:00:22,670
One of the founding stones for the Future. Stephen A. Schwartzmann Centre for the Humanities.

4
00:00:22,670 --> 00:00:26,430
My name is Wes Williams and I'm professor of French Literature here at Oxford.

5
00:00:26,430 --> 00:00:32,510
And I'm also the knowledge exchange champion Torch, the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities.

6
00:00:32,510 --> 00:00:37,860
The Big Tent Live event series is our way of bringing together once a week researchers and students,

7
00:00:37,860 --> 00:00:44,090
performers and practitioners from across the humanities disciplines and indeed from across the world.

8
00:00:44,090 --> 00:00:49,860
We will explore important subjects and ask challenging questions about areas such as the environment,

9
00:00:49,860 --> 00:00:55,350
medical, humanities, ethics and A.I., the public, the private and the common good.

10
00:00:55,350 --> 00:01:02,370
And we will celebrate storytelling, music, performance and identity and also community.

11
00:01:02,370 --> 00:01:09,600
We're bringing you this event programme online to complement social distancing with creative community connexion.

12
00:01:09,600 --> 00:01:14,880
We hope that you're all safe and well during this difficult time. Everyone is welcome in our big tent.

13
00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:20,250
So please make yourself metaphorically as well as literally at home this evening as we explore the work,

14
00:01:20,250 --> 00:01:28,950
the legacy and the questions raised by one of classical music's most popular, but also enigmatic figures whose birthday it happens to be today.

15
00:01:28,950 --> 00:01:38,040
Today, seventh of May marks one hundred 80th anniversary of the birth of Pyotr Ilyich Czajkowski, Russia's most famous 19th century composer.

16
00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:44,210
And as I mentioned, one of those popular classical composers of all places and old times.

17
00:01:44,210 --> 00:01:52,990
To discuss, choke off his life and work, we have with us two experts in the field, Leah Broad and Philip Bullock.

18
00:01:52,990 --> 00:01:55,150
I'll embarrass them both by saying a little more about them.

19
00:01:55,150 --> 00:02:00,070
They work and why we thought it would be good to bring them together this evening before we start.

20
00:02:00,070 --> 00:02:04,300
Before that, I'd like to remind you that if you would like to put forward any questions to us,

21
00:02:04,300 --> 00:02:08,920
because during the event tonight, please put them in the comments box on YouTube.

22
00:02:08,920 --> 00:02:13,810
We encourage you to submit these earliest possible so that we have time to answer as many as possible in the Q&A,

23
00:02:13,810 --> 00:02:18,370
which will follow this additional discussion. In other words, in about half an hour.

24
00:02:18,370 --> 00:02:27,110
Now onto our excellent speakers tonight. It's an honour to host and to welcome Dr. Lee abroad and Professor Philip Bloch.

25
00:02:27,110 --> 00:02:32,530
Live Abroad is a junior research fellow at Christchurch Univ, Oxford University of Oxford.

26
00:02:32,530 --> 00:02:42,490
And a BBC HRC new generation thinker. She specialises in Nordic and British 20th century music and has publications in Music and Letters Journal.

27
00:02:42,490 --> 00:02:46,870
The Royal Musical Association. Tempo Music and the Moving Image.

28
00:02:46,870 --> 00:02:50,070
And 19th Century Music Revue.

29
00:02:50,070 --> 00:02:57,690
Philip Bullock is professor of Russian literature and music at the University of Oxford and fellow and tutor in Russian at Wadham College.

30
00:02:57,690 --> 00:03:03,730
He's also the current director of Torch. And in that role, you will have seen him playing the role that I'm playing today.

31
00:03:03,730 --> 00:03:09,880
His publications include a study of the Russian author Andrei Platonov, and two works focussed on the traveller,

32
00:03:09,880 --> 00:03:17,820
polyglot poet and inspirational friend of some of Europe's leading musicians, from Elga Sebelius and Janacek, namely Rosa.

33
00:03:17,820 --> 00:03:23,770
A new March 1st wrote a new march and Russian music in late 19th and early 20th century England.

34
00:03:23,770 --> 00:03:31,810
And then the correspondence of John, some alias and Rosa New March 19, 06 to 1939.

35
00:03:31,810 --> 00:03:39,130
Phillips most recent study, published in the critical Life series from Reaction Books, is the biography Pyotr Czajkowski.

36
00:03:39,130 --> 00:03:43,250
I think it's clear why we've asked them to come together today to talk.

37
00:03:43,250 --> 00:03:48,700
And this evening lay out and Philip will trace how Czajkowski became such a revered figure.

38
00:03:48,700 --> 00:03:56,200
Ask what it means to to think of him as a Russian composer and more broadly to think

39
00:03:56,200 --> 00:04:01,090
about nationalism and music and explore the challenges of writing musical lives.

40
00:04:01,090 --> 00:04:10,780
Musical biography. So I'll now disappear for your screens for a good while and hand over to Lee to begin the conversation over to Yulia.

41
00:04:10,780 --> 00:04:15,250
Thank you. Thanks, Les. Thank you. And hi, Philip.

42
00:04:15,250 --> 00:04:22,060
It's really good to be with you virtually to have this conversation to celebrate Tchaikovsky's birthday.

43
00:04:22,060 --> 00:04:25,900
So, you know, let's start out with the sort of the broad brush strokes.

44
00:04:25,900 --> 00:04:31,090
Czajkowski is as well, as mentioned, one of the most popular classical composers around.

45
00:04:31,090 --> 00:04:35,710
His pieces are very widely known. He'll always be making it into the classic AFAM Hall of Fame.

46
00:04:35,710 --> 00:04:43,020
So how is it that Tchaikovsky became really the most famous Russian composer of his day?

47
00:04:43,020 --> 00:04:49,680
It's a really good question because really he shouldn't have become a composer at all when he was in 1840.

48
00:04:49,680 --> 00:04:54,570
There was no such profession available in the Russian empire. There was plenty of music making.

49
00:04:54,570 --> 00:05:02,150
There were aristocrats and gentry, gentry families who made music in their houses, in the capitals and in the countryside.

50
00:05:02,150 --> 00:05:07,350
And this bunch of folk music, you couldn't train to be a composer. There weren't any schools or conservatories.

51
00:05:07,350 --> 00:05:10,560
And so Tchaikovsky had a wonderful home education.

52
00:05:10,560 --> 00:05:16,720
He grew up speaking French as well as Russian and was destined for a career in the imperial administration.

53
00:05:16,720 --> 00:05:21,700
And so he goes off to the School of Jurisprudence in Petersburg to try to be a lawyer.

54
00:05:21,700 --> 00:05:23,730
And you might be wondering what changed.

55
00:05:23,730 --> 00:05:32,430
Well, 1859 changed and the establishment of the Russian musical society, which began to put musical life in Russia on a more professional footing.

56
00:05:32,430 --> 00:05:36,300
And along with that came conservatories, first in Pittsburgh and then in Moscow.

57
00:05:36,300 --> 00:05:39,890
And Tchaikovsky went off to study at St. Petersburg Conservatory.

58
00:05:39,890 --> 00:05:45,360
He graduated from it and his first cohort and then went off to become Professor Moscow Conservatory.

59
00:05:45,360 --> 00:05:49,500
And thereafter, he is the central figure in Russian musical life.

60
00:05:49,500 --> 00:05:55,320
He teaches at the Moscow Conservatory, as I said, until 1877 thereafter.

61
00:05:55,320 --> 00:06:01,410
He has important administrative role in lots of the key state institutions when it comes to music making.

62
00:06:01,410 --> 00:06:05,910
And he becomes Russia's court composer. He has a very close relationship with the Romanov dynasty.

63
00:06:05,910 --> 00:06:09,900
He enjoys an imperial pension from making 84, I think.

64
00:06:09,900 --> 00:06:16,800
And he gets commissions for the money and ski theatre. And his works are staged in all of them, the leading ballet and opera houses.

65
00:06:16,800 --> 00:06:23,160
And so he comes to represent Russia musically at the time until his death in 1893.

66
00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:29,610
And indeed, after that, his funeral in 1893 was along with Tolstoy's funeral in 1910,

67
00:06:29,610 --> 00:06:33,210
the biggest public event in the Russian empire witnessed by many.

68
00:06:33,210 --> 00:06:36,270
He was mourned by the whole by whole nation at the time.

69
00:06:36,270 --> 00:06:42,900
And so that's that's really this extraordinary story from a country with no formal musical institutions to one where music was actually central.

70
00:06:42,900 --> 00:06:49,190
And he was the figurehead a little bit, perhaps like some of the stories which shaped Sebelius,

71
00:06:49,190 --> 00:06:53,530
the composer whom you've worked on, and someone who becomes the musical embodiment of his nation.

72
00:06:53,530 --> 00:07:00,640
It's a really key point in its development. Yeah. It must have been quite surreal to be kind of lionised in that way during their lifetime,

73
00:07:00,640 --> 00:07:06,780
because that's not really something that happens to an awful lot of composers. But to achieve that level of fame and certainly, you know,

74
00:07:06,780 --> 00:07:14,820
knowing that everything you write might one day become over by somebody like us must be quite strange feeling.

75
00:07:14,820 --> 00:07:22,720
I think to always be under that kind of level of public scrutiny, really even during his own lifetime,

76
00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:26,780
isn't Tchaikovsky was actually rather a shy person and didn't like the fame

77
00:07:26,780 --> 00:07:31,290
and didn't really like the social obligations that came with his public role.

78
00:07:31,290 --> 00:07:36,090
He was very proud, very patriotic, very keen to be the musical symbol of imperial Russia.

79
00:07:36,090 --> 00:07:43,620
But he didn't like the consequences of that. And he left us about 6000 letters and very extraordinary rich, very literate documents.

80
00:07:43,620 --> 00:07:46,410
And he was always aware that these would be read later.

81
00:07:46,410 --> 00:07:52,450
And I think he carefully constructed his persona both in his own life and certainly in the light of posterity.

82
00:07:52,450 --> 00:07:59,590
So how how would you describe Tchaikovsky's personality? Just just do a little a little flavour of who he was as a person.

83
00:07:59,590 --> 00:08:03,630
Gosh, I mean, he he he can be very funny, very bawdy at times.

84
00:08:03,630 --> 00:08:11,640
The recent publication of his letters to his publisher contains a vast amount of profanity, which I think is a shock for a lot of us.

85
00:08:11,640 --> 00:08:18,770
He was very literate. In fact, when he was a young man, it was really thought he might have a literary career rather than a musical one.

86
00:08:18,770 --> 00:08:20,320
He wrote poetry in French, in Russian.

87
00:08:20,320 --> 00:08:31,050
And he's he's a very, very fluid writer who's capable of giving great detail to his personal experiences to describe his inner emotions.

88
00:08:31,050 --> 00:08:34,860
He was very naturally at home in the world. He read George Eliot. He read Dickens.

89
00:08:34,860 --> 00:08:39,830
He read Tolstoy. And just to escape again. Yes. He was a very fluent person.

90
00:08:39,830 --> 00:08:46,560
We also know he was a very loyal friends to his close friends and capable of great personal intimacy.

91
00:08:46,560 --> 00:08:52,260
We also know, of course, that his private life we may come off in due course was something that did give him some anxiety.

92
00:08:52,260 --> 00:09:01,420
And we can we can trace that. He was also a beloved uncle in his family to his nieces, nephews and a very loyal sibling to his number of siblings.

93
00:09:01,420 --> 00:09:09,430
Let us throw a great deal of light on the domestic life of the Russian gentry in the 19th century and useful from that point of view as well.

94
00:09:09,430 --> 00:09:12,750
So he's got these influences coming from all over the place.

95
00:09:12,750 --> 00:09:16,560
Right. You mentioned Dickens, Eliot, Tolstoy, French writers as well.

96
00:09:16,560 --> 00:09:21,360
But he is very much thought of as a Russian composer.

97
00:09:21,360 --> 00:09:26,670
So what does it kind of mean to call Tchaikovsky a Russian composer?

98
00:09:26,670 --> 00:09:36,520
Because that comes with an awful lot of connotations and baggage around nationalism and how that manifests itself in music.

99
00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:37,670
You're quite you're quite right.

100
00:09:37,670 --> 00:09:45,050
He was certainly proud to call himself a Russian composer and felt that he embodied the Russian people, the Russian state.

101
00:09:45,050 --> 00:09:46,450
Often the Russian empire as well.

102
00:09:46,450 --> 00:09:52,790
His close relationship with the imperial family meant that he was very aware of how his music could serve the cause of of Russian culture,

103
00:09:52,790 --> 00:09:58,400
both within the Russian empire itself and internationally, because alongside his renown within Russia,

104
00:09:58,400 --> 00:10:05,090
he was a fame, a famous figure in Europe and North America in his own lifetime.

105
00:10:05,090 --> 00:10:14,420
So for sure, a Russian composer. But I think he was also very sceptical about being a nationalist in many ways.

106
00:10:14,420 --> 00:10:16,520
He trained at the Petersburg Conservatory.

107
00:10:16,520 --> 00:10:23,210
His teacher was Anton Rubinstein, who believed absolutely a messy primacy of the Austrian German symphonic tradition.

108
00:10:23,210 --> 00:10:27,680
And Tchaikovsky inherited many of those assumptions as well. Look at the works he wrote.

109
00:10:27,680 --> 00:10:32,660
He wrote symphonies, string quartettes, piano sonatas, concertos.

110
00:10:32,660 --> 00:10:37,430
He worked in the mainstream Western European films that had been so refined over

111
00:10:37,430 --> 00:10:42,110
the 18th and early 19th century and aligned himself very much with that school.

112
00:10:42,110 --> 00:10:46,220
So it's important to see him as Russian, but in dialogue with European traditions.

113
00:10:46,220 --> 00:10:51,620
He adored Busways music. It did. Mozart's rather sceptical about Volgin.

114
00:10:51,620 --> 00:10:57,140
But he was always up to date with what was going on in Europe. He spent a lot of time in in France.

115
00:10:57,140 --> 00:11:03,530
He conducted throughout Europe and North America. Those were exposed to developments in those countries.

116
00:11:03,530 --> 00:11:10,800
The final thing I think I'd want to say is we want to juxtapose him with the people who really have the reputation for being a nationalist,

117
00:11:10,800 --> 00:11:14,860
says the Mughal cheque, which got a mighty handful. So black.

118
00:11:14,860 --> 00:11:25,080
Yes, but IDM, Mussorgsky, Cooey, Rudzki Kosaka of those people and Tchaikovsky was a times quite close to them, but generally rather sceptical.

119
00:11:25,080 --> 00:11:32,030
He thought they were a bit unruly, badly educated, spontaneous, brilliant and talented, but really not very disciplined.

120
00:11:32,030 --> 00:11:36,470
And he was quite the opposite. He was extraordinarily disciplined, hard working.

121
00:11:36,470 --> 00:11:42,740
And he applied all of the lessons of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and gave him a Russian inflexion.

122
00:11:42,740 --> 00:11:47,630
So I think we have to be careful about what it means to talk about him as a Russian,

123
00:11:47,630 --> 00:11:56,070
because it's a Russian ness that's always in dialogue and shaped by parallels with what's going on in France and Germany.

124
00:11:56,070 --> 00:12:01,460
And I think that was a predicament that many so-called nationalists faced at the time.

125
00:12:01,460 --> 00:12:08,030
Greig in no way. Sebelius in films that they're always positioning themselves Visa v other traditions.

126
00:12:08,030 --> 00:12:12,280
And I think that's that's what the meat mixing makes some very interesting. Absolutely.

127
00:12:12,280 --> 00:12:19,190
No. This sort of sense of working both in their own centre, but kind of sort of perceived as peripheral.

128
00:12:19,190 --> 00:12:21,920
But only when you were in Germany or Austria.

129
00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:27,090
But actually, when you look at them from their own countries, they're the centre and everyone else is looking out.

130
00:12:27,090 --> 00:12:34,340
And suddenly the dynamics have to change quite significantly. So let's take a bit more of an international perspective then.

131
00:12:34,340 --> 00:12:39,710
So how does Czajkowski, as a Russian composer, become so popular in the UK?

132
00:12:39,710 --> 00:12:44,680
Because he really is a very, very popular figure in the UK still.

133
00:12:44,680 --> 00:12:52,880
Yes. And this happened actually in his lifetime after 1877, 1878, when he gives up teaching at the Moscow Conservatory.

134
00:12:52,880 --> 00:12:58,940
He embarks on a peripatetic career, spending large amounts of time in Western Europe, composing, thinking, shopping.

135
00:12:58,940 --> 00:13:05,900
He was quite a dandy who loved going around the Paris stores and buying shirts, ties and providing shoes.

136
00:13:05,900 --> 00:13:09,740
And in these European trips, he often conducts his own works.

137
00:13:09,740 --> 00:13:13,070
And that was a really good calling card for a composer to be had to conduct

138
00:13:13,070 --> 00:13:16,810
your own repertoire to turn up with the schools and play the full symphony,

139
00:13:16,810 --> 00:13:22,560
the Fifth Symphony, the Sixth Symphony, either the Symphonic Works, 1812 Overture,

140
00:13:22,560 --> 00:13:27,170
all of these things was a really good way to get your music known yourself.

141
00:13:27,170 --> 00:13:31,640
He visited England several times. He came first in 1888,

142
00:13:31,640 --> 00:13:36,500
and the most triumphant visit was in 1893 when he was awarded an honorary doctorate from

143
00:13:36,500 --> 00:13:42,110
Cambridge and performed Francesca dreamily with the Cambridge University Orchestra.

144
00:13:42,110 --> 00:13:48,570
It's a rather daunting work now for any orchestra. So imagine that student thinking can go ahead.

145
00:13:48,570 --> 00:13:53,440
Yeah. I hate to think. And he was well-received in Britain.

146
00:13:53,440 --> 00:13:57,550
There was a kind of broader Russum mania at this at this period.

147
00:13:57,550 --> 00:14:04,100
So genius novels, Tolstoy's novels, Dusty the eskies novels were translated and read very enthusiastically.

148
00:14:04,100 --> 00:14:11,360
And we can trace that back to the Crimean War. So after the defeat of Russia in 1855 by by France and Britain,

149
00:14:11,360 --> 00:14:18,440
both France and Britain actually embark on a very long period of trying to get to know that former enemy and also their imperial rival.

150
00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:26,140
Because remember, Russia is a very fast empire whose territories are impinging upon British, India and Persia.

151
00:14:26,140 --> 00:14:30,860
And so Russia becomes an object of fascination and Tchaikovsky's music gets caught up in that.

152
00:14:30,860 --> 00:14:35,170
So he's visiting. He's conducting. There's a broader interest in.

153
00:14:35,170 --> 00:14:40,900
Music and I think we counsels downplay the role of individuals here.

154
00:14:40,900 --> 00:14:46,200
So the conductor of the problems, Henry Wood, was married to a Russian Olga.

155
00:14:46,200 --> 00:14:48,690
And it's a bit reductive to say it was just because of that.

156
00:14:48,690 --> 00:14:54,330
But would love Russian music programme, the loss of this in Queens, school proms, concerts.

157
00:14:54,330 --> 00:15:01,080
And so already from 1897, we see a loss of Tchaikovsky is the most popular Russian composer in the repertoire.

158
00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:08,770
One enough would like to perform there and become popular. And in the first season of the Patriotic Symphony is performed three times alone.

159
00:15:08,770 --> 00:15:15,310
And the Battiste features multiple times in every season for the next decades, along with lots of other works by Tchaikovsky.

160
00:15:15,310 --> 00:15:20,760
There was a Russian light every week in the problems in those early years, and it's really a mania.

161
00:15:20,760 --> 00:15:27,300
And his music is pretty ubiquitous. And whilst lots of people love this and it's very popular with paying audiences, Codal,

162
00:15:27,300 --> 00:15:34,120
the British composers get very grumpy because they're really keen to see their work at the problems and instead hears this sort of upstart,

163
00:15:34,120 --> 00:15:39,190
beardie Russian with his hot-Headed music who's sort of swaying the heads of

164
00:15:39,190 --> 00:15:43,080
impressionable audiences with all of this rather exotic new fangled music,

165
00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:54,210
at least for the story of British composers throughout the 20th century, just being slightly annoyed that somebody else's music is being played well.

166
00:15:54,210 --> 00:16:02,680
So let's come to the people who then haven't been celebrating Tchaikovsky quite as enthusiastically, as you mentioned before, about his sexuality.

167
00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:10,630
And this has been a somewhat contentious issue. So how has his sexuality shaped Czajkowski, its reception?

168
00:16:10,630 --> 00:16:15,460
Yes. Well, I think the important thing is a lifetime it was acknowledged and his own social circles,

169
00:16:15,460 --> 00:16:22,000
it was an open secret amongst the Russian artistic intelligentsia, cultural world and indeed the imperial family.

170
00:16:22,000 --> 00:16:29,980
One of the remarkable things about 19th century Russia is quite how many of the Grand Dukes of the Roman dynasty

171
00:16:29,980 --> 00:16:37,390
were themselves gay by their exclusively or through bisexuality or through being married and having a private life,

172
00:16:37,390 --> 00:16:41,050
which was a homosexual one. Tchaikovsky is certainly part of this.

173
00:16:41,050 --> 00:16:44,860
The gay demi mones of 19th century Russia.

174
00:16:44,860 --> 00:16:54,610
His schoolmates say are pushing a rather fine but minor poet was actually a rather flamboyant out gay man in 19th century Petersburg.

175
00:16:54,610 --> 00:16:59,680
And take us. He's not that he's much more cautious, much more coy about his private life.

176
00:16:59,680 --> 00:17:07,660
But it was it was well-known and it didn't pose any problem for his public reputation in large measure.

177
00:17:07,660 --> 00:17:13,330
And as his music gained popularity in the West, that is not known.

178
00:17:13,330 --> 00:17:17,620
His music appears as Russian music, as Tchaikovsky's music.

179
00:17:17,620 --> 00:17:23,650
But after his death in 1993, rumours do begin to circulate about.

180
00:17:23,650 --> 00:17:27,610
About his private life. And they begin to appear in print in coded form.

181
00:17:27,610 --> 00:17:35,590
People stop talking about it. It's effeminate qualities or it's deviancy or it's perversion or is melancholy.

182
00:17:35,590 --> 00:17:43,850
There's a whole sort of medicalized language of sexuality which begins to surround the critical reception of his music.

183
00:17:43,850 --> 00:17:51,300
And I think we can't underestimate the impact of the Oscar Wilde trials in 1895 in Britain.

184
00:17:51,300 --> 00:18:01,150
And so when Wilde goes on trial and his personal life is revealed in all its glory detail on the pages of the British press,

185
00:18:01,150 --> 00:18:08,480
Tchaikovsky gets sort of his reputation, gets caught up in dance and people begin to rethink his music.

186
00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:18,010
It becomes very, very freighted with a rather critical set of discourses about its perverseness, its decadence, its neurosis.

187
00:18:18,010 --> 00:18:26,020
And that persists throughout the 20th century. It reaches its high point or low points, depending on your taste.

188
00:18:26,020 --> 00:18:36,880
In 1970, when Ken Russell makes his completely extraordinary film, The Music Makers, which is one of those pieces of art, are so bad that good,

189
00:18:36,880 --> 00:18:46,540
which which is, I think, more to do with British fascination with sex lives of composers and artists than anything to do with Tchaikovsky.

190
00:18:46,540 --> 00:18:53,650
So I think we have to separate out Ken Russell from Tchaikovsky here and throughout the 20th century was a lot of negative thinking about Tchaikovsky.

191
00:18:53,650 --> 00:18:58,240
So we put this paradoxical situation in which his music has always been popular.

192
00:18:58,240 --> 00:19:02,350
It's never had a critical down a popular down time with audiences.

193
00:19:02,350 --> 00:19:06,430
It's always been in the repertoire. But in critical terms, it was not liked.

194
00:19:06,430 --> 00:19:17,260
It was not written about it was seen as overblown over romantic, neurotic hyperbole, hyper individualistic and linked to his sexuality.

195
00:19:17,260 --> 00:19:22,620
And it was really only in the late 80s, the 1990s, when we began to rethink a lot of those premises,

196
00:19:22,620 --> 00:19:28,960
know some brilliant foundational work done by American and emigre Russian scholars who told us to hear things in another way.

197
00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:39,420
And it's an ongoing process. It's still rather difficult in contemporary Russia to to raise the importance of talking about Tchaikovsky's sexuality.

198
00:19:39,420 --> 00:19:48,250
Not an appropriate way, not in a reductive way, but just in an open and honest way to acknowledge the fact of his his biography.

199
00:19:48,250 --> 00:19:55,300
And we could perhaps just go back in time to think about the pathetic symphony and why his private life became so actualised.

200
00:19:55,300 --> 00:20:06,250
He performs his wonderful symphony, the Sixth Symphony, the parties he can Petersburg in October 1893, and he dies nine days later of cholera.

201
00:20:06,250 --> 00:20:15,190
And the symphony is retrospectively seen as a as a prophecy of his own death, his own mortality, and then becomes reinterpreted as a suicide note.

202
00:20:15,190 --> 00:20:22,540
There are very spurious claims about what led to his death, none of which really stuck out very much.

203
00:20:22,540 --> 00:20:26,330
And so his his works get reinterpreted in this way.

204
00:20:26,330 --> 00:20:32,900
I find that enormously unhelpful. Which is great for mythmaking and biographies, but it's really not very helpful particularly.

205
00:20:32,900 --> 00:20:33,730
But fortunately,

206
00:20:33,730 --> 00:20:41,830
public have good ears and sensible minds and they know to read the right books and to cut through all the mystery making and the myself wolfie.

207
00:20:41,830 --> 00:20:44,000
I'm thinking more broadly about this.

208
00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:49,930
I think it's interesting to think about Tchaikovsky's reception in the context of late 19th century Europe on Nordic culture.

209
00:20:49,930 --> 00:20:53,740
This is the world of Ipsen and female emancipation.

210
00:20:53,740 --> 00:21:02,200
It's the word of Strindberg and these extraordinary dramas about the sexual drive with people of the psychological underworld of bourgeois society.

211
00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:09,880
Even someone like Derald Sebelius, you know, sort of Boulard, craggy, Finnish masculine modernity is I.

212
00:21:09,880 --> 00:21:10,790
Kinkade's union.

213
00:21:10,790 --> 00:21:19,410
You know, it's much, much better than mine to since this Sunday's Seattle assassination was with intimacy, sexuality, eroticism and privacy.

214
00:21:19,410 --> 00:21:26,460
So I think there's a really. Yeah. And something I think sebaceous is so embroiled within that.

215
00:21:26,460 --> 00:21:31,560
Well, and he's also so heavily influenced by Czajkowski. I mean, the first time I have Vegas is by symphony.

216
00:21:31,560 --> 00:21:36,330
I thought it was a Tchaikovsky piece. I didn't know I was sat there going, like, never heard this Czajkowski before.

217
00:21:36,330 --> 00:21:44,160
What what's going on here? It was Sebelius, but so much sort of wrapped up with all these sort of fantasy Eckler ideas about sexuality.

218
00:21:44,160 --> 00:21:49,140
And those are the pieces that don't necessarily get associated with Sebelius so much anymore.

219
00:21:49,140 --> 00:21:54,810
You know, his songs, some of them are incredibly erotic. His 1913 pantomime, Skyrim ish.

220
00:21:54,810 --> 00:21:58,680
That's very, very rarely performed anymore. But it's it's about sex.

221
00:21:58,680 --> 00:22:04,620
It's considered in its head when it's performed in its own time, incredibly erotic.

222
00:22:04,620 --> 00:22:11,070
It has all these kind of connotations of decadence, exactly the same as you're talking about with Czajkowski.

223
00:22:11,070 --> 00:22:17,400
And then you have the symphonies tend to have a somewhat different reception.

224
00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:21,960
But I think with both of these composers, they have these fascinating lives.

225
00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:28,410
And as you say, it does sometimes get mapped onto the music. And you've written a biography of Czajkowski.

226
00:22:28,410 --> 00:22:35,400
So, you know these sort of pitfalls as much as anyone. But how useful do you find it to talk about biography?

227
00:22:35,400 --> 00:22:40,890
When we talk about music. Gosh, I mean, how long have we got?

228
00:22:40,890 --> 00:22:50,080
Right. So that's the easy question. Oh, that's a softball one that I think actually one of the nicest reviews of my book when it came out,

229
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:56,440
talked about the undertow of scepticism that I had about life, writing and biography when it came to Czajkowski.

230
00:22:56,440 --> 00:23:02,050
And I was really pleased that because I loved writing the book, but I also I struggled.

231
00:23:02,050 --> 00:23:07,150
I began my academic career as a formalist. I wanted to set aside biography, social context.

232
00:23:07,150 --> 00:23:11,410
I was interested in politics in form. And I say this is still strong, possibly,

233
00:23:11,410 --> 00:23:19,010
which is absolutely fascinated by the nuts and bolts of how works of art function as little machines and objects.

234
00:23:19,010 --> 00:23:23,110
I think in writing the life, I was keen to foreground that aspect of Tchaikovsky.

235
00:23:23,110 --> 00:23:29,510
Just the sheer inventive brilliance of the works on the technical level and the legacy that they left for Mahler,

236
00:23:29,510 --> 00:23:35,530
for Sebelius or Elga, for for Stravinsky, for Britain, for a whole host of 20th century.

237
00:23:35,530 --> 00:23:42,610
But you're right, I couldn't get round the life. And I enjoy digging into the life and getting to know a little bit of the personality.

238
00:23:42,610 --> 00:23:49,420
And I think I felt a great importance of telling the story truthfully, accurately, in a non sensational way.

239
00:23:49,420 --> 00:23:58,630
And I'm not feeling that I wanted to overdo it. But also not feeling that I should be shy about talking about the complexity of his personal life.

240
00:23:58,630 --> 00:24:03,580
We have to admit that this is a composer who married very rashly and unwisely in

241
00:24:03,580 --> 00:24:08,560
order to silence some of the brewing public discussion of his personal life,

242
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:12,100
who left his life very quickly, abandoned her, no less,

243
00:24:12,100 --> 00:24:19,540
paid her substantial alimony for the rest of the rest of his life and who left out his private life.

244
00:24:19,540 --> 00:24:32,130
Like many well-born, aristocratic, wealthy gay men in the 19th century, through the sex trade, by visiting sex workers in Paris and Vienna.

245
00:24:32,130 --> 00:24:40,360
And what needs to be upfront about that? ASMs and to talk about the past also because talking about the past is also about talking about the presence.

246
00:24:40,360 --> 00:24:44,770
And this is a subject that is still controversial in some circles and in some countries.

247
00:24:44,770 --> 00:24:47,650
And I think it's important to lay that down.

248
00:24:47,650 --> 00:24:56,230
But to go back to question the balance of biography for understanding the music itself, then I think I remain in many ways a bit of a sceptic.

249
00:24:56,230 --> 00:24:59,950
And here is where we really need Tchaikovsky in the room to have an argument with me,

250
00:24:59,950 --> 00:25:06,470
because he really did actually feel the music was about the outpouring of emotion, that music was about character, it's about personality.

251
00:25:06,470 --> 00:25:11,810
It was strongly linked to what he felt, what he had experienced.

252
00:25:11,810 --> 00:25:18,250
So we I might differ from the subjects of my biography in my own take here.

253
00:25:18,250 --> 00:25:22,480
But I think we do have to be cautious just because of the complexity of the compositional process.

254
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:24,220
It's one thing to have an idea.

255
00:25:24,220 --> 00:25:31,090
It's another thing to work it out, to sit down and then orchestrate it and then correct the proofs and then to see it's into performance.

256
00:25:31,090 --> 00:25:36,250
I think there's a very long gestation for these works and they may often have a biographical impetus,

257
00:25:36,250 --> 00:25:42,670
but the actual process, when the creative mind takes over the technical skill,

258
00:25:42,670 --> 00:25:47,830
Tchaikovsky's extraordinary technical facility that he had learnt as a student at the Petersberg Conservatoire,

259
00:25:47,830 --> 00:25:50,140
honed as a professor at the Moscow Conservatoire,

260
00:25:50,140 --> 00:25:55,600
where he taught generations of students the same things that he'd learnt and that he learnt by listening to other works.

261
00:25:55,600 --> 00:26:04,090
That, for me, is a really fascinating question of how biography is turned by some extraordinary alchemy of creativity into something

262
00:26:04,090 --> 00:26:10,720
which has its own life and leaves its imprint on the imagination of its listeners and its later interpreters.

263
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:15,910
So I'm I'm cautious and sceptical, but I think that's never a bad thing for a scholar.

264
00:26:15,910 --> 00:26:23,860
The aim to be right. And also, when you say, you know, compose compositions, that outpouring of emotion,

265
00:26:23,860 --> 00:26:28,930
there's a big difference between talking about emotional connexion and emotional

266
00:26:28,930 --> 00:26:33,730
conveyance in a piece compared to this is a piece about what happened last Thursday.

267
00:26:33,730 --> 00:26:42,740
This is the emotion I was feeling at the time and reading very directly connecting life events through, you know, somebody whose child has just died.

268
00:26:42,740 --> 00:26:43,660
Therefore,

269
00:26:43,660 --> 00:26:53,040
they were terribly sad because competition can be a number of things that doesn't necessarily have to be a sort of directly correlated thing.

270
00:26:53,040 --> 00:27:01,870
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And a concrete example would be an opera like you're gaining in you again, which he writes in 1877 78,

271
00:27:01,870 --> 00:27:07,600
set against the backdrop of his disastrous marriage, and he reads the story biographically.

272
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:14,680
So in an outline that the novel on which the opera is based and novels by Alexander Pushkin involves

273
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:22,720
a young heroine who meets you again and pulls out her love for him in an unguarded letter,

274
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:27,100
and he spends her advances and regrets it for the rest of his life.

275
00:27:27,100 --> 00:27:32,020
And it's easy to see that as a biographical autobiographical key, because at this moment,

276
00:27:32,020 --> 00:27:38,180
Tchaikovsky received a letter from Antonina Moluccas, a young students and.

277
00:27:38,180 --> 00:27:44,900
He didn't want to behave like the fictional the Nagan did, so rather than turning down and saying we can't marry Ms.

278
00:27:44,900 --> 00:27:52,490
Don't send outpourings of emotion to men you've never met before, he decided to marry her so we can read it biographically.

279
00:27:52,490 --> 00:27:59,510
But for me, the most brilliant part of the new and other bits, Czajkowski, Czajkowski, is something that isn't him.

280
00:27:59,510 --> 00:28:04,340
So there's a whole plot in which Tatiana goes off and marries dreaming.

281
00:28:04,340 --> 00:28:10,580
There's a fat general who has no life in Pushkin's novel other than just to be a plot device.

282
00:28:10,580 --> 00:28:13,340
And what happens in opera? Greyman is invented as a character.

283
00:28:13,340 --> 00:28:20,180
He has the most beautiful aria in which he sings of the redeeming potential of love in the life of an individual.

284
00:28:20,180 --> 00:28:28,030
Greyman in the opera is an older man, a battle war general who's who is suddenly rejuvenated by meeting this beautiful young woman,

285
00:28:28,030 --> 00:28:34,130
a society whose deaths a great, charming individual, a great moral force in his life.

286
00:28:34,130 --> 00:28:39,860
And Tchaikovsky pulls into this music. Emotions that he himself probably never felt.

287
00:28:39,860 --> 00:28:42,600
But that doesn't mean the emotions aren't real.

288
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:48,890
And that, for me, is as if the alchemy of music to make us feel things that we ourselves have never felt.

289
00:28:48,890 --> 00:28:54,480
And that space is where artists can go to imagine things that they themselves have never left through.

290
00:28:54,480 --> 00:29:00,500
And I suppose that that's for me, the real interest in the biography is to use it as a key to understand certain things,

291
00:29:00,500 --> 00:29:08,480
but then to go to those spaces and a composer, a writer's output which are wholly imaginative, wholly inventive, wholly speculative,

292
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:13,370
and the strange way in which sometimes works of art feels so much more real than real life itself.

293
00:29:13,370 --> 00:29:18,230
And I think probably Tchaikovsky, I might have found some common ground in that view.

294
00:29:18,230 --> 00:29:23,660
So for you, which are the Czajkowski pieces that really rip you?

295
00:29:23,660 --> 00:29:29,750
What? What's your thought of listening left for Czajkowski work?

296
00:29:29,750 --> 00:29:38,120
Gosh. Well, because what a responsibility. I can shake the whole affects of of of our viewers out there.

297
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:44,870
Well, I adore and again, I go back to it time and time again and sometimes I worry anew.

298
00:29:44,870 --> 00:29:49,430
Must perhaps feel the same when you're working on a work piece of music that you love.

299
00:29:49,430 --> 00:29:56,090
Will working on it, writing about analysing, destroy some of the magic, will it take the charm away?

300
00:29:56,090 --> 00:30:01,580
And in fact, the number of times I've gone away and written about it or thought about it,

301
00:30:01,580 --> 00:30:10,670
I've constantly found new things delighting the light, delightful things, all quirks or corners that I've never seen before.

302
00:30:10,670 --> 00:30:20,660
And I think that's a gorgeous entry point into the sincerity of Tchaikovsky's world, the intimacy and emotional truth that's there.

303
00:30:20,660 --> 00:30:26,160
But probably I should use this opportunity to try and get people away from the Hall of Fame and

304
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:30,920
what they're likely to listen to and to know and to advocate for the things they don't know.

305
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:37,920
So for me, the revelation last year was being asked to do a proms talk about the second symphony,

306
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:43,760
the little Russian, which is a magical work, which I knew too little.

307
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:50,150
Even having written the book, a work which is the very opposite of emotionally intense,

308
00:30:50,150 --> 00:30:57,740
pathological, neurotic, emotionally lacerating Czajkowski, it's formally ambitious.

309
00:30:57,740 --> 00:31:03,110
It's dance like radiant and sunlit.

310
00:31:03,110 --> 00:31:08,900
It's a kind of neoclassical work long before neoclassicism sort of hit the musical world.

311
00:31:08,900 --> 00:31:17,630
So I think that will work. I'd really advocate, advocate for I think the string quartettes are masterpieces.

312
00:31:17,630 --> 00:31:23,240
If you think of Russian string quartettes, you probably think of the 20th century and Shostakovich.

313
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:27,020
So I'd suggest the three three string quartettes.

314
00:31:27,020 --> 00:31:36,710
Extraordinary creative insights into his inner world in the 18 seventies. The thing I probably would say most of all, though, is other songs.

315
00:31:36,710 --> 00:31:41,990
And again, you know, with Sebelius, we don't know those songs enough. They are that gorgeous.

316
00:31:41,990 --> 00:31:49,100
I began my work on Tchaikovsky by writing about his songs because I came into him by to thinking about poetry and the poets like he said.

317
00:31:49,100 --> 00:31:52,550
So I. There are multiple hundreds. Some very famous none.

318
00:31:52,550 --> 00:31:58,640
But The Lonely Heart is a repertoire piece and always has been. But there are one hundred more that people could dip into.

319
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:05,630
And if people might see that as inspiration to Lonesome Russian to read not just Tolstoy and Dusty, Dusty and insignia,

320
00:32:05,630 --> 00:32:13,630
but some Pushkin and some of them, some Alexia Tolstoy and some of the 19th century poets Finnessey Fiete, then.

321
00:32:13,630 --> 00:32:19,610
Then I will be more than happy reboarded and Tchaikovsky would too. So yeah, that would be my top tip.

322
00:32:19,610 --> 00:32:24,350
All right. Well, I mean, I think that's a perfect point to Segway, to questions, actually,

323
00:32:24,350 --> 00:32:33,020
because I think we can end on listening recommendations and maybe some of our viewers will have to listen to some of those pieces themselves.

324
00:32:33,020 --> 00:32:38,620
Who knows? I doubt that one. I think when you are talking about the near.

325
00:32:38,620 --> 00:32:48,260
Influences the that aid the female. Oh, I love that piece so incredibly, it's such a good piece.

326
00:32:48,260 --> 00:32:54,730
Really? Yes. Yes. I mean, we think of Sebelius and Tchaikovsky as these Russian composers, this Finnish composers,

327
00:32:54,730 --> 00:33:00,980
these northern voices full of long summer days and short, dark, miserable winters.

328
00:33:00,980 --> 00:33:03,430
But in fact, they both love this city. They both love the.

329
00:33:03,430 --> 00:33:09,220
Tchaikovsky's favourite opera was Carmen and Sebelius composed the Second Symphony in Italy.

330
00:33:09,220 --> 00:33:14,190
And I think I think the southernness, the lights, the joy of both countries in the region.

331
00:33:14,190 --> 00:33:18,790
So we we better we better let him in. I mean, I'm here.

332
00:33:18,790 --> 00:33:24,490
I'm here. I don't want to interrupt, but there are actually a lot of terrific questions emerging here,

333
00:33:24,490 --> 00:33:28,400
some of which, as we've discovered over the last four weeks, actually,

334
00:33:28,400 --> 00:33:33,730
you've already answered as you go along that this sort of symbiotic thing in the aether that tells

335
00:33:33,730 --> 00:33:37,870
people what you either what you're going to say or tells you what they're going to say in tone.

336
00:33:37,870 --> 00:33:41,210
I wanted to start with a very practical one, which is how we got the date. Right.

337
00:33:41,210 --> 00:33:46,870
Apparently, April the 25th is another candidate for Tchaikovsky's birthday.

338
00:33:46,870 --> 00:33:54,010
Very good. This is to do with a glitch in the calendar. So until 1917, Russia used the Julian calendar, which was in the 19th century.

339
00:33:54,010 --> 00:34:01,060
Twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar and in the end, the twenty twenty century, thirteen days.

340
00:34:01,060 --> 00:34:06,140
So we have to celebrate all Russian events in two ways. And we called new style and old style.

341
00:34:06,140 --> 00:34:12,280
And Russians knew how to double date all their letters. But it causes a real headache when when doing Russian history in Russian events.

342
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:15,970
And I have to say, I had a qualm when I realised I was up for this thing.

343
00:34:15,970 --> 00:34:20,650
Am I right about the birth date? But, you know, like the queen. He gets to. Very good.

344
00:34:20,650 --> 00:34:27,820
OK. We've had quite early on. A little good luck and many thanks from the Tchaikovsky Society in Germany.

345
00:34:27,820 --> 00:34:35,980
And I thought that might lead us to think it good part of a good deal of what you were talking about with Tchaikovsky's reputation abroad.

346
00:34:35,980 --> 00:34:40,540
And I wondered about Germany in particular, whether there's a story to tell there,

347
00:34:40,540 --> 00:34:49,750
which either intersects with sort of layers of understanding of Czajkowski being taken up by other composers over the course of the late 19th,

348
00:34:49,750 --> 00:34:54,310
20th century or and or, you know, up to you to decide which one to go with.

349
00:34:54,310 --> 00:34:57,130
The notion of decadent music, which was Tchaikovsky,

350
00:34:57,130 --> 00:35:03,460
one of the decadent composers at the point of National Socialist kind of description of that or I mean, do to.

351
00:35:03,460 --> 00:35:09,750
Which of those would you like to think about Tchaikovsky in Germany as opposed to, let's say, in England?

352
00:35:09,750 --> 00:35:19,270
Yeah, it's a terrific question and greetings to my esteemed colleagues from the Tchaikovsky because Shaft and any others interested in this question.

353
00:35:19,270 --> 00:35:23,290
Tchaikovsky spends a lot of time in Germany and in Austria conducting and travelling.

354
00:35:23,290 --> 00:35:28,600
He comeback's in Berlin, in Leipzig, in Vienna, in Hamburg.

355
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:33,850
He has a rather testy relationship with some German composers. He meets Brahms, but there's not much love lost between them.

356
00:35:33,850 --> 00:35:42,850
And he admires Brahms, his technique, but he thinks he's a little bit soulless and lacking in human warmth.

357
00:35:42,850 --> 00:35:48,490
I could use a mix. So the premiere as a violin concerto in Vienna is infamous.

358
00:35:48,490 --> 00:35:56,020
I think that's a work of southern Italian charm with his gorgeous second movement of Russian folk song intonations.

359
00:35:56,020 --> 00:36:02,980
And it's balanced and proportionate. Yet Hanslick, he was the leading critic in Vienna, said This is music that stinks.

360
00:36:02,980 --> 00:36:13,090
And we can see there the emergence of this deck, this discourse of decadence that was already sort of beginning to gain some traction in the cities.

361
00:36:13,090 --> 00:36:20,620
And the paradox. He's he's a Russian composer who's trained in the German style by Rubinstein,

362
00:36:20,620 --> 00:36:26,770
who appreciates form and structure and who's interested in Beethoven, who reveres Mozart, above all.

363
00:36:26,770 --> 00:36:36,230
And yet whose music is often heard prejudicially as archetypal Russian, primitively Russian by on reflective unattentive German German critics.

364
00:36:36,230 --> 00:36:38,620
And there's just one more interesting anecdote,

365
00:36:38,620 --> 00:36:44,110
is that when he goes to Hamburg and forms that he is a really interesting encounter with German critic who says

366
00:36:44,110 --> 00:36:49,090
you need to come and spend some time in Germany and then you'll really like to be a really good composer.

367
00:36:49,090 --> 00:36:50,500
And what does he do?

368
00:36:50,500 --> 00:37:00,220
He writes The Fifth Symphony and the Fifth Symphony is the most well proportioned, balanced, structured, well-behaved of all of the symphonies.

369
00:37:00,220 --> 00:37:06,070
It's full of nods to Beethoven, full of echoes, I hear of Brahms as music.

370
00:37:06,070 --> 00:37:10,930
And he dedicated it to this German critic and commentator as a sort of, well,

371
00:37:10,930 --> 00:37:16,120
I can out German you, but I can leave it sort of the Russian soul, if you like.

372
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:21,050
And one last loss is that there are some extraordinary performances by foot Vengo

373
00:37:21,050 --> 00:37:26,560
in the 30s of Tchaikovsky's music banging this period of National Socialism.

374
00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:28,460
And they are extraordinary, lacerating,

375
00:37:28,460 --> 00:37:37,300
intense things that there's a really interesting question to unpack that I'm not the person to do about Tchaikovsky under National Socialism.

376
00:37:37,300 --> 00:37:41,690
So. It's a finding my interlocutor for that question.

377
00:37:41,690 --> 00:37:46,510
But there's a sort of similar story with Sebelius in a way that I was gonna ask you how long in those centres.

378
00:37:46,510 --> 00:37:52,300
That then always being seen as an outsider was being seen as somehow national or foreign or from elsewhere.

379
00:37:52,300 --> 00:37:55,960
Yeah. And, you know, at the start of subagencies career, you know,

380
00:37:55,960 --> 00:38:00,880
he was a Finnish nationalist and he was very much involved with the Finnish nationalist movement.

381
00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:05,860
But that's really in the sort of late 19th, very early 20th century.

382
00:38:05,860 --> 00:38:13,990
And then by the sort of first in 1910 onwards, he's really starting to be a bit frustrated by this nationalist label.

383
00:38:13,990 --> 00:38:18,400
And he sort of expresses himself quite a bit of frustration that he feels that it's

384
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:22,870
kind of holding him back and he wants to be seen as this international composer.

385
00:38:22,870 --> 00:38:26,680
He's also a composer who has a very chequered history in the Third Reich.

386
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:31,450
He's incredibly popular. Hitler brought him a medal, which he doesn't go on doesn't go and get.

387
00:38:31,450 --> 00:38:39,550
But nonetheless, I think has an incredibly powerful impact on how he's received throughout the rest of the 20th century.

388
00:38:39,550 --> 00:38:46,420
The music critic Theodore Adorno writes this really vitriolic piece of writing

389
00:38:46,420 --> 00:38:51,040
about Sebelius and how he's just an incredibly sort of damaging composer.

390
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:59,080
And this comes out of the context that he's being very celebrated in the Third Reich so that I can definitely

391
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:05,440
impacts on the way that Sebelius is sort of thought about and what happens to his sort of popularity,

392
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:10,410
certainly in critical terms in the UK after the Second World War.

393
00:39:10,410 --> 00:39:16,450
Thank you. I'm going back to the Russian question one last time.

394
00:39:16,450 --> 00:39:23,200
One of the listeners asked, what do you think Sebelius authority Czajkowski would have made of the current situation?

395
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:28,660
I don't know whether the question means lockdown or what they mean in contemporary Russia.

396
00:39:28,660 --> 00:39:33,440
Again, perhaps one of you could take a look at that and the other one could take contemporary Russia out.

397
00:39:33,440 --> 00:39:37,540
What would you. In fact, there's quite a few. What would you do now?

398
00:39:37,540 --> 00:39:43,810
Questions. And the first one would be, how would he respond to the current situation?

399
00:39:43,810 --> 00:39:51,390
Gosh, who knows, it's a really, really tricky one. Certainly, Tchaikovsky's music is a is quite a problematic topic in contemporary Russia.

400
00:39:51,390 --> 00:39:53,740
But for those who don't know, several years ago,

401
00:39:53,740 --> 00:40:04,300
the Russian parliament passed legislation outlawing the propaganda of non-traditional family relations at widely referred to as the anti-gay law.

402
00:40:04,300 --> 00:40:11,860
And that means that it's impossible to talk about homosexuality in an open, informed and scholarly way.

403
00:40:11,860 --> 00:40:15,400
Technically, in contexts which minors. So under 18.

404
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:22,550
But it's put a real lid on the whole public discussion and adds to this discourse, which sees homosexuals.

405
00:40:22,550 --> 00:40:32,770
She's going to Western imports, a kind of disease of capitalist societies out there whilst Russia defends traditions of marriage,

406
00:40:32,770 --> 00:40:43,810
religion and the old fashioned norms. You could imagine that your country's most celebrated musical icon becomes a really, really difficult question.

407
00:40:43,810 --> 00:40:52,780
First attempt to make a film about his life that have stalled because of the inability to come up with a public discourse of talking about this.

408
00:40:52,780 --> 00:40:55,900
So heaven as what he would what he would say.

409
00:40:55,900 --> 00:41:02,880
Now, on the other hand, I think we should think seriously about how he negotiated his relationship with the imperial family in the 19th century.

410
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:11,080
Tchaikovsky was not a political liberal. He was a bit of a political naive and a bit of an idealist and not very worldly when it came to politics.

411
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:14,500
But he helped knobbed with members of the Imperial Family.

412
00:41:14,500 --> 00:41:19,660
He happily took an imperial. He took commissions from the Imperial Opera Houses.

413
00:41:19,660 --> 00:41:26,740
He was not on the side of the political radicals who were lobbying in the late 19th century for reform.

414
00:41:26,740 --> 00:41:32,080
And whilst he became a beneficiary of the autocracy, the imperial system,

415
00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:37,180
we have to remember that the second half of the 19th century was one which witnessed the assassination of Alexander,

416
00:41:37,180 --> 00:41:40,300
the second in 1881, the year after Tchaikovsky's death.

417
00:41:40,300 --> 00:41:47,350
It would witness the assassination of Alexander, the third, the age of political radicalism was then he was he was not on that side of things.

418
00:41:47,350 --> 00:41:54,550
So it's a really interesting counterfactual because this was a man who negotiated a tricky personal life with a repressive,

419
00:41:54,550 --> 00:42:03,070
autocratic, autocratic political regime. So, you know, making you will lock down then later that you want to play a kind of factual lockdown.

420
00:42:03,070 --> 00:42:08,900
What would he suddenly find? I don't know about Czajkowski, but Sebelius would have been having a whisky.

421
00:42:08,900 --> 00:42:13,060
Absolutely. If we haven't stopped drinking all.

422
00:42:13,060 --> 00:42:18,400
I did want to come in and say one of the things that's prepared me for lockdown is having read a lot of 19th century Russian literature,

423
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:26,140
all of which takes place on Country Estates Month. The only way to get anywhere is on a carriage, which gets stuck in the ruts.

424
00:42:26,140 --> 00:42:33,520
And so, you know, scholars of Russian literature quite used to existential boredom and long amounts of time trapped in in at home.

425
00:42:33,520 --> 00:42:39,460
So I think Chekhov is an extremely good preparation for waiting for something to happen.

426
00:42:39,460 --> 00:42:43,360
Perhaps one more question about the contemporary context of Tchaikovsky's life.

427
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:50,290
And before we then move on to a range of questions about now in the future. You've talked both of you,

428
00:42:50,290 --> 00:42:57,790
about the question of his sexuality and the degree to which actually what might seem surprise to some people that perhaps

429
00:42:57,790 --> 00:43:06,090
there was a greater degree of being out and being open in that particular moment in the 19th century than there is today.

430
00:43:06,090 --> 00:43:11,800
And we don't just have a progression. We're all getting free our story, because that doesn't work as well.

431
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:15,940
But I wondered about that or a number of questions have wondered about the status

432
00:43:15,940 --> 00:43:20,710
of women in the Czajkowski story because one can focus on his relations with men.

433
00:43:20,710 --> 00:43:26,130
But there were also important women in his life. And indeed.

434
00:43:26,130 --> 00:43:35,710
Yeah. Could you talk a bit about the women in take off his life and maybe also the degree to which they might have had some role,

435
00:43:35,710 --> 00:43:42,510
some power in his creative life, not just his personal life? Yeah, gosh, terrific question.

436
00:43:42,510 --> 00:43:51,570
We've completely failed to mention in our discussion the pivotal figure of Nagios to fund Mack the great woman in coasties life.

437
00:43:51,570 --> 00:44:01,410
So as we've already mentioned, he he makes this rash decision to marry and leaves his wife very quickly and is faced with this real

438
00:44:01,410 --> 00:44:06,540
predicament of what to do because he's no longer earning an income as a professor at the Moscow Conservatory.

439
00:44:06,540 --> 00:44:12,060
He's an independent artist. He's struggling to pay the financial costs and into his wife, into his wife, Sara,

440
00:44:12,060 --> 00:44:19,290
into his life walks now for MEC, except she doesn't because they never meet.

441
00:44:19,290 --> 00:44:26,700
She offers to give him an annual income which will free him of the obligation to teach.

442
00:44:26,700 --> 00:44:31,350
She underwrites many of his expenses. She pays for concerts in Paris of his works.

443
00:44:31,350 --> 00:44:36,970
She is his patron and sponsor almost until the end of his life.

444
00:44:36,970 --> 00:44:46,200
And their relationship is played out in a very rich set of long, intense and very emotionally open.

445
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:49,980
Says that they share over their long relationship.

446
00:44:49,980 --> 00:44:55,860
And they they bump into each other a couple of times by accident and scuttle off embarrassed.

447
00:44:55,860 --> 00:45:01,590
And the intimacy of the letters is conditioned by the lack of a personal relationship.

448
00:45:01,590 --> 00:45:10,140
Fascinating relationship. And on his side, because it allows an intimacy that I don't think he actually has with any other person in his life.

449
00:45:10,140 --> 00:45:17,950
He's very fluent as a writer. He's good with words. And the freedom of long letters, I think, is something he enjoys.

450
00:45:17,950 --> 00:45:25,530
Did he ever enjoys with any other person in his life, much like he could be good company, a relaxed individual.

451
00:45:25,530 --> 00:45:33,650
And she, too, I think, likes the intimacy with a creative artist.

452
00:45:33,650 --> 00:45:41,200
And she could construct an idealised image of him through letters, just as he could present the version of himself that he wanted her to see.

453
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:47,470
So testicle relationship on a very central one emotionally to them, to them both.

454
00:45:47,470 --> 00:45:51,920
And it's an extreme form of patronage because very often patrons want that patronage to be made public.

455
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:59,530
So in a of of perhaps converting financial capital into social status and social capital.

456
00:45:59,530 --> 00:46:04,140
But this is a private patronage that a very few number of people know about.

457
00:46:04,140 --> 00:46:14,230
And it's one of the documents that gives us most detail about Tchaikovsky's working practises, his aesthetic views, his political views.

458
00:46:14,230 --> 00:46:18,910
He is entirely silent about the details, his private life with her.

459
00:46:18,910 --> 00:46:25,900
Probably not justice for me. Right. Well, but he never talks intimately about.

460
00:46:25,900 --> 00:46:29,710
About that. But that was very well them for them both. OK.

461
00:46:29,710 --> 00:46:33,400
Thank you. Again, it's always interesting to discover in history what, if you like,

462
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:41,680
what roles women could find themselves in relation to artistic practise and clearly amuses one patron at another.

463
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:47,650
And I'm wondering whether Lear with Scibelli, if there's a set of untold stories there as well.

464
00:46:47,650 --> 00:46:50,920
Always is the story. I mean, I'm asking from ignorance.

465
00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:58,420
Here is the story of Sebelius, his relationship to Muse's patrons, other women in his artistic practise already known.

466
00:46:58,420 --> 00:47:05,830
Clear. So the big figure in Sebelius is life is his wife.

467
00:47:05,830 --> 00:47:15,870
I know. And I mean without her. We wouldn't have Sebelius, honestly, she keeps him from himself.

468
00:47:15,870 --> 00:47:20,340
He would have gone off the rails so many times, I think. Had it not been for her.

469
00:47:20,340 --> 00:47:26,640
And it's her who sort of like keeps kerbing his alcoholism. She puts up with an awful lot, honestly.

470
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:31,710
But between the two of them, they obviously she Sebelius cared about her immensely.

471
00:47:31,710 --> 00:47:38,040
They had a very loving relationship and certainly sort of for the time.

472
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:42,180
You know, she a very companion, a companion.

473
00:47:42,180 --> 00:47:48,330
You can't say that word today. Come on now, Beau. Well, you know what I read.

474
00:47:48,330 --> 00:47:51,070
And I think. But what's particularly interesting.

475
00:47:51,070 --> 00:47:59,360
So women very often tend to get written out of the story because they are sometimes working in the background as patrons.

476
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:00,600
So Paul met, for example.

477
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:09,900
I mean, she as you say, he she gives him Czajkowski the salary, which is so important for Czajkowski to actually be able to write.

478
00:48:09,900 --> 00:48:14,490
And then I think we shouldn't also forget the particulars. We come into the 20th century.

479
00:48:14,490 --> 00:48:23,580
There are awful lot of women in creative roles themselves. Yes. You know, thinking of any number of British composers in the early 20th century,

480
00:48:23,580 --> 00:48:29,850
we've got Rebecca Clark matter how boring or within you can sort of list them endlessly.

481
00:48:29,850 --> 00:48:37,570
The women really have been brought back to my roles in the kind of creative life of the early 20th century.

482
00:48:37,570 --> 00:48:43,120
Leaping back in there to reinforce that if we write our history of music entirely through composers,

483
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:48,790
we are going to struggle until a certain moment in history to find many women in that story.

484
00:48:48,790 --> 00:48:57,760
If we rethink music as a form of social practise and think about its audiences and its actors and singers, we get a much more intrusive history.

485
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:04,580
And in Tchaikovsky's case, the plot for a new decade was suggested to him by a singer, Loverro Schuyler, who said, Why didn't you read this novel?

486
00:49:04,580 --> 00:49:08,050
To make a great opera? And he worked very closely with singers.

487
00:49:08,050 --> 00:49:14,320
All the roles and his operas and his operas are all centred around strong, imaginative, powerful women.

488
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:19,630
And they're not just fictional creations. They aren't the result of his relationships with the leading divas in the Russian theatre.

489
00:49:19,630 --> 00:49:26,710
And here I should give full credit to my graduate student, Maggie Furnier, who's writing on Russian operas in particular about this.

490
00:49:26,710 --> 00:49:28,420
So that's that's not my title.

491
00:49:28,420 --> 00:49:36,070
Again, in I sort of biography of The Life of Something, one of the recent forms of biography up in the biography of a book,

492
00:49:36,070 --> 00:49:40,180
let's say, or the biography of a particular piece of music or a particular opera,

493
00:49:40,180 --> 00:49:46,150
precisely in order to enable us to not just think about the man involved or the or the sort of authorial creator,

494
00:49:46,150 --> 00:49:50,980
but the many ways in which a piece of work, a piece of art comes into being.

495
00:49:50,980 --> 00:50:00,310
And it's just paint. I don't to think the last 10 minutes or so, I tend to think about maybe one last question about the original content,

496
00:50:00,310 --> 00:50:07,480
which has to do with this collaboration question. We've talked about Jeffco key in relation to his private life.

497
00:50:07,480 --> 00:50:13,540
One question to ask. Was he ever embroiled in what you might call an artistic feud, if you like,

498
00:50:13,540 --> 00:50:18,820
separable from the private life with other composers, artists, writers and so on?

499
00:50:18,820 --> 00:50:25,480
Will he ever do? Yeah. Did he make his his way through arguing in the way that we know some people do?

500
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:29,830
Oh, great question, actually. Not not very much.

501
00:50:29,830 --> 00:50:32,500
He was for a good part of his early career.

502
00:50:32,500 --> 00:50:39,100
Also a music critic, which he did largely to earn money because he earned a pittance as a as a young faculty member at the Moscow Conservatory.

503
00:50:39,100 --> 00:50:43,290
And he was also a total spendthrift and profligate. So he he needed income.

504
00:50:43,290 --> 00:50:47,930
And those are very interesting about musical life in Moscow in 1861, in 70s.

505
00:50:47,930 --> 00:50:50,950
Tell as much about his views.

506
00:50:50,950 --> 00:50:58,600
We know that privately he has some quite sharp views about the nationalist composers, as I've mentioned in his correspondence with John Mack.

507
00:50:58,600 --> 00:51:04,630
He expresses some really quite top views about them. But in correspondence with them, he tended to be much more supportive.

508
00:51:04,630 --> 00:51:11,980
And in fact, he often went into print to support his will, not enemies, but people who he disagreed with when they were in trouble.

509
00:51:11,980 --> 00:51:16,840
He is a great one for using his cultural capital, too,

510
00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:23,500
as a form of patronage to use the weight of his name to defend the arts and Russian music at a time of their emergence.

511
00:51:23,500 --> 00:51:25,360
They are still on quite fragile footing.

512
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:31,780
I think great diplomats and politician who understands that sort of doing a dirty deed in public might make a good copy,

513
00:51:31,780 --> 00:51:35,560
but it's not really going to get you the institutional support you need from the Imperial Exchequer.

514
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:43,650
So I can't think of that. He's too much of a tactful society figure and a good operator actually behind the scenes.

515
00:51:43,650 --> 00:51:50,380
But maybe I'm overlooking something. I've got to kind of I wouldn't go back to the birthday question for a moment.

516
00:51:50,380 --> 00:51:56,650
And just because it's a very nice question to come in, which is how would Czajkowski have celebrated his own birthday?

517
00:51:56,650 --> 00:52:03,760
Would it have been cake? Would have been someone rebelliousness whisky? What would he have wanted for his own birthday?

518
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:07,720
What might we offer him as a present? Great question.

519
00:52:07,720 --> 00:52:13,840
I mean, the celebrations I know about tend to be from when he's on the summer estates.

520
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:21,280
His sister Sasha had married. You have diabetes and they lived on the estate of coming across a large amount of the time.

521
00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:25,570
And he loved spending time with his nieces and nephews, particularly his young nephew,

522
00:52:25,570 --> 00:52:30,850
Vladimir Bob, who then plays a very important role in the party since then, much later on.

523
00:52:30,850 --> 00:52:32,290
He loved playing whist.

524
00:52:32,290 --> 00:52:41,980
He his diaries give brilliant accounts of of gin rummy and drinking tea and hanging out on the country estate, playing the piano.

525
00:52:41,980 --> 00:52:45,790
So I think that's probably what he would have wanted to do, was spend it with him.

526
00:52:45,790 --> 00:52:52,450
He loved his extended family and his siblings. And I think I don't think he would have welcomed the society party and champagne and speeches.

527
00:52:52,450 --> 00:52:58,550
He was really very sorry about all of that. So my hint is cake and tea and some of that on the side.

528
00:52:58,550 --> 00:53:04,380
OK. And I don't want to overdo Sebelius was gloominess. Would he have would he have celebrated his birthday?

529
00:53:04,380 --> 00:53:08,110
And if so, how? Depends if it's early in his life.

530
00:53:08,110 --> 00:53:12,190
Absolutely. But as he hits his fifties, he's like, but they don't exist.

531
00:53:12,190 --> 00:53:14,500
I'm not getting older anyway. No, no, no, it's okay.

532
00:53:14,500 --> 00:53:20,770
He I think he is very flattered by that sort of big attention that he increasingly gets throughout his life.

533
00:53:20,770 --> 00:53:26,240
But probably he just wanted a quiet birthday by the end of it all, I suspect.

534
00:53:26,240 --> 00:53:31,330
Okay. There's also a number of questions coming in, clearly from musicians.

535
00:53:31,330 --> 00:53:36,260
And we should spend a little time thinking about the music itself, perhaps from a completely.

536
00:53:36,260 --> 00:53:41,570
I'm going to be one person asks, could you say something about his compositional technique?

537
00:53:41,570 --> 00:53:50,570
Take off in particular, perhaps to use a woodwind? And what what makes him interesting from that point of view that's open to either of you?

538
00:53:50,570 --> 00:53:57,050
What a preposterous delay at some point. Who's a bona fide a musicologist?

539
00:53:57,050 --> 00:54:01,010
Really important questions. I think the the the view has changed.

540
00:54:01,010 --> 00:54:01,790
So for a long time,

541
00:54:01,790 --> 00:54:09,260
Tchaikovsky was deemed as someone who was trying to write in these Western European forms and give them a kind of Russian inflexion, but failing.

542
00:54:09,260 --> 00:54:10,390
So those are important.

543
00:54:10,390 --> 00:54:19,130
20TH century music historian called Dollhouse, who very much treats Sebelius, is at Tchaikovsky's orchestral practise in this way.

544
00:54:19,130 --> 00:54:23,660
Too much repetition, too much a tendency to take a theme repeated.

545
00:54:23,660 --> 00:54:30,740
It's a very it's a little bit and then move up a tone and padding because was also very aware of padding.

546
00:54:30,740 --> 00:54:35,340
He writes in a correspondence with a colleague about his tendency to what he calls hopefully Serzh.

547
00:54:35,340 --> 00:54:45,130
And I think for a long time, musicologists were wedded to a kind of very basic Vinen vision of what was good musical for mutant satiric development.

548
00:54:45,130 --> 00:54:50,390
So that was sort of enhanced by all that sort of Schoenberg and 20th century stuff.

549
00:54:50,390 --> 00:54:57,830
I think we now much more responsive to other ways of making musical form, about repetition, about block, about structure.

550
00:54:57,830 --> 00:55:01,700
We've learnt to hear see Stravinsky's really crucial in this points.

551
00:55:01,700 --> 00:55:06,260
I'm thinking of Stravinsky as having learnt from from from from Tchaikovsky in this regard.

552
00:55:06,260 --> 00:55:13,280
So I now think we hear that kind of heterogeneous sounds of Tchaikovsky in a much more positive light.

553
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:18,860
I also love his intrusion of incongruous material into the symphonic form.

554
00:55:18,860 --> 00:55:26,060
I love that. That's what Mahler does when you listen to moderate sort of folk tunes, Zindler Dance's waltzes,

555
00:55:26,060 --> 00:55:30,980
brass band music, all colliding and shaking up in a in an upper blended form.

556
00:55:30,980 --> 00:55:39,140
And he always did that. And he was really good at taking us from waltzes to fake motifs to Sylvan moods.

557
00:55:39,140 --> 00:55:44,510
And I think he was the progenitor of that. That very sort of digested is the wrong word.

558
00:55:44,510 --> 00:55:50,930
But it's a very deliberate juxtaposition of incongruity, which I hear is a sort of harbinger of modernity, woodwinds.

559
00:55:50,930 --> 00:55:55,340
Absolutely. I'm a ex oboist, so I'm really glad of that question.

560
00:55:55,340 --> 00:56:00,740
He was an expert orchestrator and he would always have that instant correspondence with conductors.

561
00:56:00,740 --> 00:56:06,470
And they say, you can't write like that. It's too high. You can't play pianissimo above the Stav on the core Anglais at this point.

562
00:56:06,470 --> 00:56:10,400
And then a week later, they'd say, You'll write the play. I got it right. And it really works.

563
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:14,300
So he often knew his orchestra better because he studied Berlioz.

564
00:56:14,300 --> 00:56:18,830
You studied Schubert. He studied Bognor. He studied the schools of composers.

565
00:56:18,830 --> 00:56:24,650
I think translated much of what he saw and heard. And so that's a great question. Leo, you're the you're the real expert.

566
00:56:24,650 --> 00:56:31,250
I don't know about that. No, I was just thinking when you were talking about the way that Tchaikovsky kind of interjects

567
00:56:31,250 --> 00:56:35,360
with this material in the symphonic structure and you maybe think how important,

568
00:56:35,360 --> 00:56:38,990
how important programmatic system is to Czajkowski. Right.

569
00:56:38,990 --> 00:56:43,610
He writes his gorgeous programatic pieces. He's a ballet composer.

570
00:56:43,610 --> 00:56:52,820
And one of the sort of techniques that you have to have as a theatrical composer is being able to change direction, change mood incredibly quickly.

571
00:56:52,820 --> 00:56:58,430
And he's so good at bringing that into his symphonies or otherwise unpragmatic works.

572
00:56:58,430 --> 00:57:06,890
OK, I'm the ignoramus there. What's programatic music? Programmatic music is music that has a.

573
00:57:06,890 --> 00:57:17,600
An idea that is associated with it. It doesn't even necessarily have to be a particular poem or sort of storyline, but it has an associated idea.

574
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:24,020
The idea match is changes over time, but it has a particular idea.

575
00:57:24,020 --> 00:57:25,200
Usually a title.

576
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:32,720
I think I'm interested in that phrase because again, one of the question isn't that we've used in this discussion the notion of the alchemy of music.

577
00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:37,460
And it seemed to me you might but programatic over here and alchemy over there as opposites.

578
00:57:37,460 --> 00:57:43,310
But you're suggesting that maybe they needn't be, that that alchemy can happen through the programatic.

579
00:57:43,310 --> 00:57:47,180
Is that right? If not, let's go.

580
00:57:47,180 --> 00:57:53,840
I think a programme is never a reductive key to a work. There are some works which have a sort of programme to them.

581
00:57:53,840 --> 00:58:00,020
So Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. You're kind of invited to hear the warring of the Montagues in the capital.

582
00:58:00,020 --> 00:58:04,090
You're invited to a Friar Lawrence praying Francesca Emeny.

583
00:58:04,090 --> 00:58:06,500
We were invited to hear the writhing souls in hell,

584
00:58:06,500 --> 00:58:12,470
but it doesn't get you very far as a musical listener to the programme is a kind of key into the room.

585
00:58:12,470 --> 00:58:17,750
But what you do and how you move around it, how the performer interprets it is is really crucial.

586
00:58:17,750 --> 00:58:18,920
And then there are hidden programmes.

587
00:58:18,920 --> 00:58:26,840
We know that there were programmatic inspirations to the fools, the face of the six sixpences, but we can't deduce them retrospectively.

588
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:30,350
And even if we could. It doesn't stop you hearing it in a new way.

589
00:58:30,350 --> 00:58:37,250
So the alchemy is the compositional one, but it's also our interpretive alchemy that we can bring to the life performance.

590
00:58:37,250 --> 00:58:42,570
Well, no. I was just gonna say it definitely doesn't even have to be prescribed by a composer of this programme.

591
00:58:42,570 --> 00:58:47,020
That's right, because it's a very long history of hearing narratively, sceptically.

592
00:58:47,020 --> 00:58:55,510
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, for example, has been heard in terms of kind of like a battle between different forces, sort of ideas about fate.

593
00:58:55,510 --> 00:59:02,840
And that's very much a kind of a programmatic reading, reading a narrative, reading a poem, reading meaning really into a work of music.

594
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:06,740
And I think that's so important to why we care about music at all.

595
00:59:06,740 --> 00:59:11,840
It makes us feel things that makes us want to be sort of wrapped up in a story of a composition.

596
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:18,490
Thank you. We're nearly running out of time, but I just want two more quick questions about kind of the now, if you like.

597
00:59:18,490 --> 00:59:23,950
So Sasha on Twitter from New York, I think says it's sort of a now, but it's a recent.

598
00:59:23,950 --> 00:59:30,160
Now, why was Czajkowski music looked down on in the 20th century? There was that moment when it was sort of.

599
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:34,840
Why was that? And do you think that that's Norbury remain?

600
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:39,040
Or do we not need to worry about that snobbery anymore?

601
00:59:39,040 --> 00:59:46,510
That might be more of a question for Lear insofar as your work on 20th century stuff, but we can start with Philip and then moved Labourites.

602
00:59:46,510 --> 00:59:52,360
I think it was his excessive popularity with audiences. I mean, it was suspect in the eyes of serious critics.

603
00:59:52,360 --> 00:59:57,510
And there's a whole discourse in the 20th century of it. All right. My music and I don't care if you listen to it or not.

604
00:59:57,510 --> 01:00:03,250
So that goes back to the concepts that Schoenberg organised in Vienna, which was deliberately scandalous and provocative.

605
01:00:03,250 --> 01:00:09,220
And plenty of other people said that. And he gets sort of associated with a middlebrow mass culture.

606
01:00:09,220 --> 01:00:13,300
Hollywood soundtracks Rahmah the same fate. Absolutely.

607
01:00:13,300 --> 01:00:20,260
Brief encounter is the worst thing that happened to Rachmaninoff's music. And I think we've learnt to be less worried by that.

608
01:00:20,260 --> 01:00:23,890
I think musicologists have learnt to be happier with kind of dirty listening,

609
01:00:23,890 --> 01:00:31,060
which allows us to hear the narrative and programme and to hear both imaginatively and, you know, your phrase, the music itself.

610
01:00:31,060 --> 01:00:36,410
You get rapped over the knuckles by a first year of music. You technically never allowed to say that in music, yet you stay up.

611
01:00:36,410 --> 01:00:40,000
I think it is that question of the middlebrow, but I'm really upset.

612
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:50,140
Context, extra contextual listening, dirty listening, imaginative listening and running with that as an absolutely respectable academic practise.

613
01:00:50,140 --> 01:00:56,150
I mean, there. No, I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't really be writing if I didn't enjoy this.

614
01:00:56,150 --> 01:01:01,400
I like that as a phrase, though, right? I might call a paper dirty lipstick.

615
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:09,330
But I think. Yeah, absolutely. There is this sort of discussions around sort of modern music and this idea of, you know,

616
01:01:09,330 --> 01:01:15,590
it being sort of important to write very difficult music that's hard to come to.

617
01:01:15,590 --> 01:01:20,320
And kind of coming back to what I was saying about the previous and the way he's received in the Third Reich.

618
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:26,650
I don't think we should underestimate the importance of the Second World War and kind of popular music as it's seen,

619
01:01:26,650 --> 01:01:33,310
and the sort of appropriations of particular composers in post-war narratives about modern music,

620
01:01:33,310 --> 01:01:40,360
because it almost becomes a moral imperative to write difficult music that can't be appropriated for mass use.

621
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:46,600
And so composers who are very popular, like Czajkowski, sort of catch the brunt of that.

622
01:01:46,600 --> 01:01:50,200
I think we've moved on in those sort of ways of thinking.

623
01:01:50,200 --> 01:01:59,050
I think Philip's absolutely right. Personally, I do love to write about composers whose music is very popular.

624
01:01:59,050 --> 01:02:05,260
So personally, I think I think I'm not too bothered about the snobbery now, but I love to analyse the snobbery.

625
01:02:05,260 --> 01:02:05,530
OK.

626
01:02:05,530 --> 01:02:12,840
Last question then, which I follow very nicely from what you've just been saying there, which is it's the last of our counterfactuals, if you like.

627
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:21,530
If you were around for his birthday now, which contemporary composer you think he would be most happy listening to?

628
01:02:21,530 --> 01:02:28,470
Who which contemporary composer writing now, which Witkowski enjoy the music of?

629
01:02:28,470 --> 01:02:33,230
For me to go first, Philip, for you. Yeah. While Philip Hammond is, you've got a good answer.

630
01:02:33,230 --> 01:02:38,660
Brent Khattab a KOVA because her instrumentation is luscious.

631
01:02:38,660 --> 01:02:49,520
It is just absolutely sumptuous. If you don't know how Concerto for Cello and Orchestra drop everything you do, you listen to this piece of music.

632
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:57,140
The second movement breaks my heart. And that is, I think, something I hear a little Czajkowski kind of influences.

633
01:02:57,140 --> 01:03:02,020
And it's I would 100 percent go for it to bring Tabaco back. Thank you.

634
01:03:02,020 --> 01:03:06,860
Philip, you want to add to that or should we riffing off our earlier conversations as well?

635
01:03:06,860 --> 01:03:09,120
I'm thinking of a composer from the European notes.

636
01:03:09,120 --> 01:03:16,810
He was fascinating by celebrity and spectra, illness and love and its emotions and a great opera composer.

637
01:03:16,810 --> 01:03:24,260
But symphonic silence there has to be Gaia Saariaho. So that brings us back to Finland, where everything begins.

638
01:03:24,260 --> 01:03:32,990
Thank you. I yeah, I think we should wrap up now because we've hit on sort of two minutes past six mark.

639
01:03:32,990 --> 01:03:38,970
But I'd like to thank our two brilliant because Philip and Lear for a wonderful session this evening

640
01:03:38,970 --> 01:03:43,910
and a big thank you to to all the viewers at home for watching your comments and questions on YouTube,

641
01:03:43,910 --> 01:03:47,540
on Twitter and so on. So one more time. Thank you, Philip.

642
01:03:47,540 --> 01:03:51,050
Thank you, Liane. Thank you everyone else.

643
01:03:51,050 --> 01:03:55,670
Please join us for next week's Big Tent Live event, this time on Wednesday.

644
01:03:55,670 --> 01:04:02,120
So change your diaries. Change the clock. Not by the Gregorian or Julian calendar, but to a Wednesday.

645
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:10,280
Wednesday, 13th of May at five p.m., where we'll be in discussion with the author Marza Mangosta Motza as part of our Women's Week theme.

646
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:15,410
Next week, we'll be in conversation discussing extraordinary book, The Shadow King,

647
01:04:15,410 --> 01:04:20,090
which is an exploration of female power and what it means to be a woman at war.

648
01:04:20,090 --> 01:04:21,710
We hope you'll be able to join us again.

649
01:04:21,710 --> 01:04:29,570
Then you have all given your time, your thoughts, your questions and your engagement as we come together online again.

650
01:04:29,570 --> 01:04:36,830
This series would also not be possible without the support, as it were, backstage from so many people, including the torch team.

651
01:04:36,830 --> 01:04:55,092
But once again, thank you, everyone, for joining us. And goodbye for now.