Who will survive?
In the 20th century, classical music veered off the rails and became ever more distant from its audiences but, argues, composer Howard Goodall, popular music bridged the gap by growing in complexity and sophistication.
Here, now, in the first decade of the 21st century, music is once again becoming something that belongs to everyone – it is at last shaking off the tribal loyalties that throughout the 20th century divided it up into 'popular' and 'classical', or what classical commentators used to call, rather patronisingly, 'light' and 'serious'. The strange thing is that until the beginning of the 20th century no such division really existed. Mozart wrote popular dance music for the Viennese clubs one day, musical comedy the next and a deadly sombre requiem the next. Not surprisingly, the harmonies, rhythms and structures of one bled into the other.
So what happened in the 20th century that was so different to the previous centuries of musical history?
What happened was that concert music – the kind of thing famous composers sat in lonely upstairs rooms writing down – became more and more intellectual, more dissonant, more uncompromising in its modernity and less and less like the familiar sounds the mainstream audience enjoyed. In the early years of the century, classical musicians began dismantling the very building blocks of music itself – keys, notes, harmonies – the lot. Their music became incredibly difficult to understand or identify with, so normal, bright, music-loving adults began to look for their musical satisfaction in a different kind of new music. The gap was filled by a sophisticated, enriched form of popular music: the music of films, musicals and records.
This series takes as its starting point the question, 'What will historians in 200 or 300 years' time think is the real story of 20th century music?' Will they write about Shostakovich's symphonies, Britten's operas or Stravinsky's ballets? Very probably they will, yes, but my guess is that they will see those magnificent orchestral works as being much more related to what went on before (such as the 19th century's Romanticism and Impressionism) than what went after. My hunch is that what will truly amaze them is the extraordinary, unstoppable rise of Western popular music from the 1930s onwards – its incredible diversity, complexity and breadth and the way, as time went on, that it began to absorb almost every other style and sound on the planet.
My journey in this series looks at the influences and talents that shaped this explosion of popular music. I chose Cole Porter because he belongs at the beginning of the story. A composer-lyricist of dazzling skill, he led popular song away from the banal and trite, along with his contemporaries George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers. I chose the great film composer Bernard Herrmann, who revolutionised movie scores in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Then there was Leonard Bernstein, composer of West Side Story, whose rare understanding of so many contemporary styles allowed him to move effortlessly across musical boundaries. But I begin with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, two unlikely lads from Liverpool, who made records that changed music for everyone, forever.
You can find out more about composer Howard Goodall at his website.
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