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First published in the United States of America by Harvard University Press 2008
First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2008
Published in Penguin Books 2009
Copyright © Tim Blanning, 2008
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-141-97645-7
Preface
List of Illustrations
INTRODUCTION
1 STATUS: ‘YOU ARE A GOD-MAN, THE TRUE ARTIST BY GOD’S GRACE’
The Musician as Slave and Servant
Handel, Haydn and the Liberation of the Musician
Mozart, Beethoven and the Perils of the Public Sphere
Rossini, Paganini, Liszt—the Musician as Charismatic Hero
Richard Wagner and the Apotheosis of the Musician
The Triumph of the Musician in the Modern World
2 PURPOSE: ‘MUSIC IS THE MOST ROMANTIC OF ALL THE ARTS’
Louis XIV and the Assertion of Power
Opera and the Representation of Social Status
Bach, Handel and the Worship of God
Concerts and the Public Sphere
The Secularisation of Society, the Sacralisation of Music
The Romantic Revolution
Beethoven as Hero and Genius
Problems with the Public
Wagner and Bayreuth
The Invention of Classical Music
Jazz and Romanticism
Rock and Romanticism
3 PLACES AND SPACES: FROM PALACE TO STADIUM
Churches and Opera Houses
Concerts in Pubs and Palaces
Concert Halls and the Sacralisation of Music
Temples for Music
Two Ways of Elevating Music—Bayreuth and Paris
The Democratisation of Musical Space
Places and Spaces for the Masses
4 TECHNOLOGY: FROM STRADIVARIUS TO STRATOCASTER
Musical Gas and Other Inventions
Pianos for the Middle Classes
Valves, Keys and Saxophones
Recording
Radio and Television
The Electrification of Youth Culture
The Triumph of Technology
5 LIBERATION: NATION, PEOPLE, SEX
National Pride and Prejudice
Rule Britannia? Aux Armes, Citoyens!
Liberation in Italy
Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles
From the Woods and Meadows of Bohemia
A Life for the Tsar
Race and Rebellion
Sex
CONCLUSION
Illustrations
Chronology
Further Reading
Notes
Illustration Credits
Follow Penguin
Tim Blanning is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy. His books include The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802, The French Revolution in Germany, Joseph II and Reform and Revolution in Mainz. His last book, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648–1815 won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize for 2007.
The Triumph Of Music
‘Blanning is a superlative historian … The Triumph of Music is never less than thought-provoking’
Bee Wilson, Sunday Times
‘Fascinating … a very fine book’ Steven Poole, Guardian
‘Entertaining … Blanning tells the story with great verve and an eye for the telling anecdote’
Ivan Hewett, BBC Music Magazine
‘Lively and informative’ Roger Scruton, Standpoint
‘His writings sparkle with the wit and wisdom of a man eager to share his intellectual passions … interesting and provocative’
Daniel Snowman, History Today
Among the many attractions of being a member of the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge is the relative freedom to construct courses as one sees fit. During the past two decades I have taken advantage of this to introduce a musical element into the curriculum by creating courses on music in European society and culture and on Richard Wagner and German history. In the process I have learned a great deal, both from the students and from three colleagues with whom I have worked successively—Derek Beales, Jonathan Steinberg and Chris Clark. I have also benefited immeasurably from the wit and wisdom of Roderick Swanston at the numerous music festivals for which he and I have lectured. It is to these four scholars that this book is dedicated. Each very generously read a first draft of this book and made numerous immensely helpful criticisms.
But I have also incurred a number of other debts, institutionally, to the various libraries in which I have worked over the years, most notably the Seeley Historical Library and the University Library in Cambridge, the music department of the Bibliothèque National in Paris, the Staatsbibliothek in Munich, the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna and the Kunstbibliothek and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. I am also grateful to the numerous societies and other institutions that have given me the opportunity to expose my views on ‘the triumph of music’ to public debate and criticism.
Although so many individuals have helped me in various ways that I cannot thank them all, I do wish to find room for the following: Robert Alexander, Tony Badger, Sally Beales, Mark Berry, Charles Blanning, Susan Boehmer, Ben Buchan, Vicki Cooper, John Deathridge, Linda Fritzinger, Mary Gallacher, Eric Hobsbawm, John Kulka, Gerald Levy, Cecilia Mackay, Arthur Marwick, Kirsty McCluskey, Barry Millington, Sean Milmo, John Mole, Michael O’Brien, Christopher Page, Claire Preston, Martin Randall, Donald Sassoon, Claudia Schneider, Hagen Schulze, Paul Scott, Brendan Simms, David L. Smith, Ian Stevenson, Simon Winder, and Andrew Wylie. Last but not least, my wife, Nicky, has repeatedly sacrificed her own scant leisure time to allow me to get on with the research and the writing. I could not have finished without her invariable love, support and good humour.
Tim Blanning
Cambridge, May 2008
1. Pietro Domenico Olivero, The Royal Theatre at Turin During a Performance of Arsace, 1740. (Museo Civico, Turin. Photo: The Art Archive.)
2. Anon, View of the Esterháza Palace, eighteenth century. (Photo: akg-images/ullstein bild.)
3. Bernardo Bellotto, Dresden Seen from the Right Bank of the Elbe, 1748. (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing.)
4. Thomas Hudson, George Frideric Handel, 1756. (copyright © National Portrait Gallery, London.)
5. Balthasar Wigand, Joseph Haydn at the Performance of The Creation on 27 March 1808. (Museum der Stadt Wien, Vienna. Photo: The Art Archive/Museum der Stadt Wien/Alfredo Dagli Orti.)
6. Franz Stober, The Funeral Procession of Beethoven on 29 March 1827. (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn. Photo: akg-images/Beethoven-Haus, Bonn.)
7. Josef Danhauser, Franz Liszt at the Piano, 1840. (SMPK, Nationalegalerie, Berlin. Photo: akg-images.)
8. Card for Liebig’s Meat Extract showing Wagner receiving Emperor William I at Bayreuth. (Photo: Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich.)
9. Poster for Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn, Paramount Pictures, 1942. (Photo: The Kobal Collection.)
10. Interior of the Philharmonie, Berlin. (Photo: archivberlin Fotoagentur GmbH/Alamy.)
11. Tony Blair with Noel Gallagher at 10 Downing Street. (Photo: AP/PA Photos.)
12. Sir Elton John sings at Buckingham Palace, 3 June 2002. (Photo: Topfoto/UPPA.)
13. The Rolling Stones in concert, Hanover, July 2006. (Photo: Picture Alliance/DPA.)
14. Leona Lewis performs for the X Factor judges, December 2006. (Photo: Rex Features.)
In modern times, three British monarchs have reigned long enough to celebrate a golden jubilee: George III in 1809, Queen Victoria in 1887 and Elizabeth II in 2002.1 All three marked the occasion with a church service. King George contented himself with a private affair in the chapel at Windsor. Queen Victoria attended a Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, where she heard her late husband’s setting of the ‘Te Deum’ and another of his compositions, the anthem ‘Gotha.’ The present queen went to St. Paul’s Cathedral for a similar event, albeit without the prince consort’s music, and was told by the arch bishop of Canterbury that ‘unlike so much in the modern world, this relationship, the one between Sovereign and people, has grown stronger and deeper with the passage of time’. For these three monarchs—heads of the Church of England and devout Christians all—the religious service may well have marked the highpoint of the jubilee celebration. For the subjects of George and Victoria, however, it was more likely the ox roasts, free beer and fireworks that went down best.
Plenty of food and drink were consumed in 2002 also, but for the majority of Queen Elizabeth’s subjects the climax was the great openair pop concert held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace on Monday, 3 June. Although the limited space meant that only the 12,500 people who had been successful in a ballot could attend, a million more watched it on giant screens in the Mall and the royal parks, while another 20 million in the United Kingdom and more than 200 million worldwide watched it on television. A hundred thousand copies of the CD were sold within a week, and untold millions more have watched the concert on DVD since. Together with the classical concert (Prom at the Palace) staged the previous Saturday, the Party at the Palace (as the event was officially known) gave the jubilee a public impact greater than any previous royal occasion.
Party at the Palace—the Queen’s Jubilee Concert, 3 June 2002.
The DVD revealed many good moments: an Atomic Kitten constantly threatening to pop out of her dress without ever quite succeeding; the once satanic Ozzy Osbourne, former lead singer of Black Sabbath, growling ‘God Save the Queen’ as he left the stage after performing his anthem ‘Paranoid’; the comely Rachel Stevens looking somewhat nonplussed when seized by Cliff Richard during their performance of ‘Move It’—just to mention three. Undoubtedly the highlight, however, was the concert’s opening, with Brian May playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on the roof of Buckingham Palace. Although the Queen herself perhaps did not make the fullest possible use of the opportunities presented by the event—she arrived shortly before the end sporting ear plugs and was visibly unamused by the proceedings—most commentators concluded that it had been a mighty public relations coup. Even self-confessed republicans were impressed.
Typical was the reaction of the columnist India Knight, who was in Ireland on the evening of the concert:
I idly switched on the television while I ran a bath. The first thing I thought, with a sort of kick of excitement around the stomach, was: ‘Oh my goodness, how fabulous is this?’ The second thing was: ‘It’s Brian May and his horrible hair playing the guitar on the roof of Buckingham Palace, ergo it can’t be fabulous, ergo I need to get a grip, sharpish.’ I was supposed to go to the pub, but watched the concert instead, mesmerised—the same grandad-friendly concert I had been sniggering about for weeks: Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul McCartney, the remaining members of Queen, the exact opposite of cool. And yet it was fantastic. More fantastic still was the sight of one million people waving their flags and roaring their approval: every time the camera panned to them. I felt choked.
Her story was published under the title: ‘So Help Me, I’m a Patriot’.2 If that seems a little impressionistic, one could add the more hard-headed response of Hans Petri, the managing director of Opus Arte, the company responsible for marketing the DVD, who found himself overwhelmed by orders from would-be distributors: ‘When they saw that picture of Brian May on the roof of the palace, they just all went through the roof’, he said.3 For once, the application of the overworked adjective ‘iconic’ to Brian’s performance seems justified.
The event attracted a great deal of attention, of course, but none of the millions of words that flowed—so far as I can tell, at least—tried to place it in its historical context, apart from the occasional brief reference to the two previous royal jubilees (or three, if Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee of 1897 is included). This book will show how the concert was the culmination of three centuries of musical development. Of course other occasions could have been chosen, but the Prom and Party at the Palace serve very well as a starting point, because present on those two June evenings were at least four of the five essential ingredients that have fused to ensure the triumph of music (and which the five chapters that follow will take up in turn).
Brian May performs ‘God Save the Queen’ at the opening of the Jubilee Concert, 3 June 2002. ‘Brian May’s hair should instantly be declared a national monument’ proclaimed The Daily Mirror.
First was the elevated status of the musician. No group of comparably famous and rich creative artists working in fields other than music could have been assembled. Almost everyone who appeared was a household name, several were knights or dames, and most were very rich. The Sunday Times ‘rich list’ included Sir Paul McCartney with a fortune of £760m, Sir Elton John with £170m, Sir Tom Jones with £150m, Ozzy Osbourne with £100m, Brian May with £55m, Roger Taylor with £50m, John Deacon with £50m, Sir Cliff Richard with £40m (almost certainly a serious underestimate), Annie Lennox with £30m, and so on. How things have changed since 1781, when Mozart was literally booted out of the service of the archbishop of Salzburg ‘with a kick to my arse’.
In addition to the status of the performers, the place and the space for this occasion were also significant. The address may have been Buckingham Palace, but access was not controlled by the owner-occupier. This was a public event, less a concert than an al fresco party, as the audience got into the swing of things and gradually became participants rather than spectators. Moreover, the space was not bounded by the palace walls but spilled out into the surrounding boulevards and parks to become a mass phenomenon. And this was made possible only by technology, especially by the amplification of sound and the transmission of images. Without them, not even Tom Jones would have been audible and visible to more than a few hundred people. With them, even the softly singing, self-effacing Corrs could be heard and seen by tens of millions. As we shall see, place, space and technology worked together to take music out of the palace and into the public sphere.
The messages that were broadcast from the stage were various but not incoherent. Without too much of a stretch of the imagination, they could be gathered under a single umbrella labelled ‘liberation’, whether it was for women (Annie Lennox and ‘Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves’), the young (Queen’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’), ethnic minorities (Paul McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’, Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’), gays (Sir Elton John’s ‘I Want Love’), lovers (Bryan Adams’ ‘Everything I Do’), or the elderly (Sir Cliff Richard’s contributions).
The only aspect of the concert that appeared to be at odds with music’s triumphant progress relates to its purpose. As a royal celebration it looked to have much in common with the great festivals of the Habsburg or Bourbon monarchs, where the purpose of music was to represent the power of the patron. The expressive capacity that has allowed music, over the course of four centuries, to leapfrog the other arts to pole position may not have been obvious in the 2002 festivities: Emma Bunton cooing her way through ‘Baby Love’ or Tom Jones belting out ‘Sex Bomb’ was very much at the commercial end of the spectrum. Yet the performances of, among others, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’ and Paul McCartney’s extracts from The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and White Album were sufficient reminders of music’s ability to operate at a higher level by diving deeper into the human psyche and expressing what is found there in a way that has universal appeal.4 Indeed, as more than one journalist pointed out, it was not clear who was being honoured most—the Queen, or the kings and queens of pop.
Status, purpose, places and spaces, technology, and liberation—these are the five categories I will explore to explain music’s march to cultural supremacy. What follows is an exercise in social, cultural and political history, not musicology—no technical knowledge of music is required. It is not intended to be a history of music and is necessarily selective in the illustrations that have been chosen. Apologies are offered in advance to fans of, say, Puccini (a very sensitive group) or the Sex Pistols (ditto) for not giving their heroes more attention. Although I have placed heavy emphasis on the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because that was when many of the great changes occurred, every chapter concludes with a section bringing the story up to the present day. A date chart at the end provides a chronological thread and places musical events in their general historical context.
Advancing a simple thesis always carries with it the dangers of reductionism. I am well aware that all the phenomena I discuss also had an impact on other branches of the creative arts, but I shall argue that music benefited most.
This book is dedicated to all those students and colleagues with whom I have worked in Cambridge and elsewhere, especially Derek Beales, Jonathan Steinberg, Chris Clark and Roderick Swanston