Howard Goodall's "Story of Music"

[Peter]

Well I bit the bullet and watched last night and I have to say I wasn't impressed, in fact I couldn't cope with more than 20 minutes so I never even made it to Beethoven! It seemed to me to be simplistic, full of huge generalisations and he would pick an example to back up a point, when dozens of others could have been used to contradict it. Harmony for example in the classical era we were told was basically three chords and Gluck's 'dance of the blessed spirits' was the example here. How then would he analyse Mozart's C minor fantasy that plunges in it's first page through the remotest of keys? Mozart had an amazing harmonic palette that even suggests atonality in the development of symphony no.40 1st movt. Then he talked about the era not reflecting the events of the day and used the French revolution and one of Haydn's London symphonies to back this argument up - what about Mozart and 'The Marriage of Figaro'? Maybe it improved later on but from what I've seen I've decided against my original post and won't be looking for the dvd.

[Michael]

His previous programme (which dealt with the Baroque period) was much better (at least to my unprofessional ears). He dealt with Bach, Handel, Vivaldi et al. in a sensible fashion. However, he seems to have gone adrift in the Classical/Romantic era.

He praised Mozart for keeping his nasty personal feelings under check and implicitly castigated Beethoven for having the temerity to reveal his inner turmoil. No mention at all was made of Beethoven's stupendous compositional technique - without which all the emotional outpourings would be mere noise.

He did praise the funeral march of the "Eroica", but the first movement was described as "clever-clogs" !! Well, it is clever, but much more than that - in fact the whole symphony was the greatest single step forward in the history of music. (But that's only my opinion - and that of millions of music lovers.)

He could not ignore Beethoven's progress and stature but one got the impression that B was second-rate by Mozartian and Schubertian standards.

I did warn yous!

[Peter]

His previous programme (which dealt with the Baroque period) was much better (at least to my unprofessional ears). He dealt with Bach, Handel, Vivaldi et al. in a sensible fashion. However, he seems to have gone adrift in the Classical/Romantic era.

He praised Mozart for keeping his nasty personal feelings under check and implicitly castigated Beethoven for having the temerity to reveal his inner turmoil. No mention at all was made of Beethoven's stupendous compositional technique - without which all the emotional outpourings would be mere noise.

He did praise the funeral march of the "Eroica", but the first movement was described as "clever-clogs" !! Well, it is clever, but much more than that - in fact the whole symphony was the greatest single step forward in the history of music. (But that's only my opinion - and that of millions of music lovers.)

He could not ignore Beethoven's progress and stature but one got the impression that B was second-rate by Mozartian and Schubertian standards.

I did warn yous!

Thanks for that Michael and from your review I'm glad I turned off when I did! I wonder what anyone would actually have learnt about these composers, especially if they were coming to it with little knowledge - we learnt more about Goodall and this is the trouble with most programmes today, they are more about the presenter than the subject - gone are the Attenboroughs and the Patrick Moores.