BBC2
Saturday, 26th?January 2013. 9.30 pm
A?camera, a screen and a piano, those are all the tools a good teacher needs to teach music. Or so the great Howard Goodall thinks anyway. His Story of Music sets out to be another clear BBC Documentary, covering from the Stone Age of Music to Opera?s birth.
There are a million ways of telling the story of music?, as Howard Goodall says, and this complete documentary is certainly his. Perhaps there really is nobody better?to talk about music?than a man who has won awards for his work as a broadcaster and composer of choral music, stage musicals, film and TV scores. He?says at the start that music is a mirror of the time when it was written, so if we know about music, we will know at least half about history.
Howard Goodall drives us on a six-episodes tour?from the beginning of music, in the Stone Age, to the birth of Claudio Monteverdi?s opera, back in the Baroque period. When lyrics and rhythms were hard to remember, Goodall tells us?about the first monks? and nuns? work, which was about writing down several times the same melody just to remember it. We barely have instruments left from that period, every score is missing. Shame on us!
All along the documentary, we learn about the history of music, without even noticing it. The show presents us with a peculiar mix of ancient and up-to-date images which are backed on a current chorus of voices, increasing in number as we move along different important scenes of music.
He does not miss a single detail, summing up centuries in just 60 minutes. Goodall makes travel back in time possible, from Egypt or Greece to Spain or Italy, key places in music?s development. You almost feel like you were there. You really do not have to be into music to enjoy being taught some basics about this big issue. It becomes even easier when he plays the piano, playing some of the most known songs as he explains each discovery in the wide world of music.
Goodall tries to be hip. He contrasts 21stCentury clips and artists like Bruno Mars or Lady Gaga with the first Christian?s origin songs. He?even makes a stave with some snacks, before sharing who Guido D?Arezzo and Perotin were and how important their contribution has been to musical language.
This graphic documentary supplements Goodall?s speech with amazing images from the environments where music was born: Alhambra?s gardens, the Greek Parthenon, Christian churches, gargoyles. Indeed, it makes you want to travel. It is not just music, which manipulates our emotions, landscapes play their role too.
That lead us to the final part of this BBC masterpiece, the birth of Claudio Monteverdi?s opera, a fusion of music and theatre, one of the most complete genres.?With or without the assumption that we have five episodes left to know everything about music, this documentary ends?letting us know that this little story does not finish here.
Source: http://caledonianblogs.net/aej/2013/02/06/howard-goodalls-history-of-music-review/
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