The Making of Music

Series 2

 

Episode 7

Fakes and Mystics

 

In the intoxicated waves of this ocean of bliss is felt the approach of the final act, the act of union between the male creator and the woman world.

 

 

What plans I have, what plans?
You know I have lights in Promethius. Lights. It's a poem of fire, I will play it for you.
Here the hall has change in lights: now they glow, now they turn into tongues of flame.
Listen to how this music is really fire.

 

 

I am God.
I will ignite your imagination with the delight of my promise.
I will bedeck you in the excellence of my dreams.
I will vail the sky of your wishes with the sparkling stars of my creation.
I wish to bring about the endless soaring of creative activity which my art will bring.

 

 

Episode 11

The End of the Hapsburgs

 

Collecting folk music is not easy: one should search for them among the simplest and poorest people,

inhabiting regions as far removed from the Iron Horse as possible, if the object is to find the purest forms, as yet undistorted by city influence.

 

 

Episode 16

Into the Past

 

The numbers of people who consume music is of interest to impresarios but it is of no interest to me.

The mass adds nothing to art.

It cannot raise the level and the artist who aims consciously at mass appeal can do so only by lowering his own level.

The soul of each individual who listens to my music is important to me, not the mass feeling of the group.

 

 

Episode 17

Music for the Masses

 

I am firmly convinced that a big battle over new music will start in the next few years, the signs are already there.

The need will be to prove whether or not the music of our day, including my own, is capable of survival.

I, of course, believe firmly in it; but I also believe that the reproaches made against most of modern music are all too well deserved.

 

 

Episode 18

Cinema

 

The cinema has finished me off.

Because I am somewhat sensitive, when I arrive home, the cinema music is still ringing in my ears and the dreadful heroe is still appearing before my eyes.

As a result, I'm unable to fall asleep for ages. I finally get to sleep but not earlier than 4 or 5 a.m. So in the morning I get up very late and in a foul mood.

All sorts of ugly thoughts creep into my head, such as that I've sold my soul to ... for a hundred and thirty four rubles or that I've become a movie pianist.

By then it's time to dash off to the conservatoire. And after that, I come home, have lunch and fly off to the splendid palace.

 

 

Episode 19

Stalin

 

Every detail of the behaviour of the boy, the duck, the little bird, the cat and the wolf sounds new.

One wonders whether elements of the new soviet symphonic spirit cannot be detected here, liberated now from the intellectual self-analysis,

along with all subjective interpretations of reality.

 

 

Episode 24

The Modernists

 

By so doing, the separation between the domains will be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories

and the composer will be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement,

as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism.

 

 

Special Episode

Thursday 17th October 2007

 

Happy birthday to Matthew Macfadyen!

 

 

Episode 28

The Impact of Technology

 

We actually have three dimensions in music: horizontal, vertical and dynamic swelling or decreasing.

I shall add a fourth: sound projection, that feeling that sound is leaving us with no hope of being reflected back,

a feeling akin to that aroused by beams of light set forth by a powerful searchlight,

for the ear as well as for the eye, that sense of projection, a journey into space.

 

 

Episode 29

A Time of Plenty

 

I have discovered that it is enough when a single note is beautifully played. This one note or a silent beat or a moment of silents comforts me.

I work with very few elements, with one voice, two voices. I build with primitive materials, with a triad, with one specific tonality.

The three notes of a triad are like bells and that is why I call it tintinnabulation.

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