Focusing in a little further still, on Russia, in fact, we find Peter Tchaikovsky, writing up his diary. He has had to go to some rather elaborate lengths to hide his sexuality, although some say his periods of heavy drinking were more simply symptomatic of a generally tormented soul. His journals contain many cryptic references to something he terms 'Sensation Z' - his homosexuality - so, set in the Russia of the 1880s, it's not surprising that his inspiration had, for most of the last seven years, all but dried up. 1888, then, must have seemed like a fantastic year for Tchaik - no doubt he underlined it in red and looked back on it with a smile. It was the year he got back on course. It was the year of his Fifth Symphony.
There's something about fifth symphonies, don't you think? Mahler. Beethoven. Shostakovich? And, here and now, or rather there and then, Tchaikovsky. To me, this beautiful 'Circle of Fifths', to purloin a phrase, is more than enough to keep me going on a desert island. While I would miss other music if I didn't have it, to have this happy band of brothers would certainly fill a mass of different spots, musically speaking.
Tchaikovsky's is probably the easiest, in a way, out of the bunch. It has one minor problem attached to it, though. Someone, somewhere - own up, whoever it was - once taught me slightly rude words to virtually every movement and, ever since, I haven't been able to get them out of my head. Occasionally, if you can't shake them, it can get the better of you and spoil the entire thing. I remember sitting in on an open rehearsal of it once, and fully expecting the conductor, when he stopped and started the band, to say things like, 'OK, let's go from three bars after the Key to the Shithouse… everybody got three bars after "Shithouse"? Good. AND…' Strangely enough, he didn't.
Tchaik 5 - as I'm reliably told it is known in music orchestral circles - is, to me, absolutely glorious. Of course, if you were the critic of the Musical Courier at the British premiere, it was 'a disappointment… a farce… musical padding… commonplace to a degree!' I think he also went on to add that the Beatles were crap, too. Still -you can't win them all. Now, though, let me leave 'Tchaik 5' behind, and, by way of a quick aside, have a look at what it means to be 'romantic' in 1888. What I mean is, what is everybody writing? What does it all sound like? Does it all add up? Well? Follow me as I take a quick cross-section of the Romantic tree in 1888.
A QUICK CROSS-SECTION OF THE ROMANTIC TREE IN 1888
orry if that title looks poncy - and it does - but all I mean is, ?
Romanticism - is it something that you can hear? Is everyone doing the same thing, more or less, give or take the odd smoking jacket? Well, the quick answer is…
… 'No.'
Wow, pretty easy, this musicology lark, isn't it? Right. Move on, I think. OK, go on then. Let me go into a bit more detail. J» Answer: the Financial Times crossword.
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? be honest, romanticism is like that bit just before the end of a Spike Milligan sketch from his «2.series. You know the bit? The bit - and he used to do it virtually every week - the bit where it has all got gradually sillier and sillier? The bit just before the bit where everybody started edging forwards, chanting, 'What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do now?' Not the 'What are we gonna do now?' bit, the bit before. Am I making myself clear? Well, that bit, THAT'S the Romantic period in 1888. Why?
Well, because everyone is doing their own thing. Just as the Spike scene got sillier and sillier, so the period was getting 'romanticer and romanticer' and there are about thirty different recognizable versions of 'romantic' going on at once. It's fast approaching the point at which people, real composers, will start edging forwards, saying, 'What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do now?' They'd call it the 'modern' period for two reasons: (a) it sounded a whole lot better than the 'What are we gonna do now?' period, and (b) Spike hadn't been invented yet. So they plumped for 'modern' instead. For now, though, it's 'very late on romantic', a sort of trad jazz 'last time round', with everyone doing their own thing, but more or less within the same guidelines.
A quick glance around and there really is a lot to take in. Erik Satie was twenty-eight in 1888, having been born into a composing family in Honfleur. As a composer, he is probably the most apt person to be mentioned in the following breath to Spike Milligan, in that his portfolio of pieces on his death would include works such as Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear and Limp Preludes for a DqЈf. He was a piano player in the smoky cafes of Montmartre, who would go on, via his friendship with Debussy, to become a classic, idiosyncratic French composer, but in 1888, he stumped up his Trois Gymnopedies, three delightful pieces which seem to have a certain Mona Lisa smile about them.
Equally French, but nowhere near as barking as Satie, was Gabriel Faure, then forty-three. Faure is more or less the complete opposite of Satie - if you can have an opposite to someone - in that his music was refined, finished, not at all light (in the sense of 'pear-shaped pieces') -and had a somewhat 'classical' air about it, although he is definitely a romantic, when all's said and done. He had been taught by the composer Saint-Saens for the last seventeen years and had held a long succession of small organist posts for most of his working life - a pattern that would continue until he got the 'top gig' at La Madeleine in 1896. In 1888, though, he came up with his Requiem. It is not a Requiem in the way Verdi wrote a Requiem, or Berlioz wrote a Requiem - it's more… more a 'Requiem that would suit Betty's Tea Rooms in Harrogate'. It's a Requiem with its little finger raised, politely. Occasionally, it does try and summon up some of the darkness of its subject matter, but always does it very cordially, as if it had been impeccably brought up. Musically, it even tries to apologize afterwards. That said, it is still a small, chocolatey chunk of heaven, and is one of my favourite works. Faure is often referred to as a 'French Elgar', and, while I think that's complete bollocks, I can see why people say it. The Requiem's appearance, in 1888, coincided, sadly, with the death of Faure's mother.
Turning back to Russia, 1888 also yielded a piece called Scheherazade by the forty-four-year-old Rimsky- 'If you're not going to finish that, can I have it?' Korsakov. An ex-naval officer, he was brought up in the country, basted in folk songs. He wrote his first symphony while still in the navy, before going on to be one-fifth of the Mighty Handful, or Mighty Five, a group of ardendy nationalist Russian composers. His major work of 1888 was his symphonic poem, based on tales from The Arabian Nights. It's a beautiful piece, full of stories and people, with both the Sultan and Scheherazade herself being portrayed as themes in the music.