All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 The Age of Discovery

    • January 26, 2013
    • BBC Two

    In this episode, Goodall charts the development of the oldest intact form of music, the 'Gregorian' chant. He reveals how medieval musicians built up the basic elements of music until the explosion of secular folk music outside of the church between 1000 and 1600 AD transformed the world of harmony, rhythm and tone. Goodall reveals how, with the development of ever more sophisticated instruments, it was possible for Monteverdi to write the first successful opera in 1607.

  • S01E02 The Age of Invention

    • February 2, 2013
    • BBC Two

    Howard Goodall looks at the extraordinarily fertile musical period between 1650 and 1750, in which many of the musical innovations we take for granted today were invented. The orchestra; the overture, which led, ultimately, to the symphony; satisfying chord sequences, which gave music a forward momentum; modern tuning, which, for the first time, allowed composers to move from one key to any other they chose, and for different instruments to easily play together; the concerto, the oratorio, and, not least, the piano.

  • S01E03 The Age of Elegance & Sensibility

    • February 10, 2013
    • BBC Two

    The composer examines the age of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin. This period from 1750 to 1850 saw composers going from being paid, liveried servants of princes and archbishops to working as freelancers required to appeal to a new, middle-class audience. The era also saw tremendous social upheaval, including the American, French and Industrial revolutions, but until around the turn of the 19th century, the music that was being written bore little relevance to the tumultuous changes in society.

  • S01E04 The Age of Tragedy

    • February 16, 2013
    • BBC Two

    In the fourth part, composer Howard Goodall examines the music of the middle to late 19th century, in which a craze for operas and music that dealt with death and destiny swept Europe. Inspired by Berlioz and his Symphonie Fantastique, music written about witches, ghouls, trolls and hellish torment became the norm. Even Italian opera succumbed to the death and destiny obsession, with Verdi's La Traviata. The tragic death of its heroine was also a comment on the hypocrisies of the wider society. The composer who was the most influential figure of the mid 19th century was the cosmopolitan Hungarian-born Franz Liszt. Little wonder that he wrote pieces about two of the mythical figures that obsessed the composers of the period - Faust, the superior, brooding intellectual who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for esoteric knowledge and earthly pleasures, and Prometheus, who is punished for all eternity by Zeus for giving mankind the gift of fire. The age of the Superman was around the corner. And the image of the composer as a moody, misunderstood genius, apart from other men, was cemented in the pulic imagination. One of Liszt's many innovations was music that seemingly 'sampled' the folk music of his native land. In the second half of the 19th century, this 'Ethnic Heritage' musical movement gathered pace. But what we hear, in Liszt, Brahms and Dvorak, is rarely genuine peasant forms. Although in Dvorak's New World Symphony, we do seem to hear a borrowed American-Indian tune, which caused great controversy. This was music for a middle class audience, with exotic flavourings. The composer Liszt most influenced, though, not least in terms of musical nationalism, was his own son in law, Richard Wagner. Wagner reinvented opera, and introduced into it darker, more unstable harmonies, that were to change the music that followed him - derived, ultimately, from experiments already made by Liszt. Wagner's operas are a towering achievement. But they had a dark sid

  • S01E05 The Age of Rebellion

    • February 23, 2013
    • BBC Two

    In the fifth episode, composer Howard Goodall looks at the period when modernism in music arrived, and when the birth of recorded sound changed the way music was heard, played, and sold, forever. The death of Richard Wagner in 1883 led, not to a series of pseudo-Wagners, but to a series of developments that in many ways were in opposition to his monumental ambitions. In France the uncluttered and 'chillaxed' music of Gabriel Faure, Erik Satie and others was like a long hot lazy afternoon. The symphonies of Gustav Mahler invited all forms of music, including Jewish folk music into their generous embrace. Elsewhere folk music was beginning to make an impact on musical form and texture. The self-taught Mussorgsky actually sounded Russian - unlike Tchaikovsky, the most famous Russian composer of the day! When Mussorgsky's music came to the Paris World Fair in 1889 it astonished non-Russian composers, especially Claude Debussy. He was also greatly influenced by the music of Java, also showcased at the World Fair. These influences from abroad were to change mainstream music and prefigure what we'd now call 'World Music'. And when Diaghilev and Stravinsky collaborated on a series of ballets, the results - also using Russian folk forms, with revolutionary rhythms attached - astonished, terrified and scandalised the audience in equal measure, in works like the ground-breaking Rite of Spring. So too the extraordinary dissonant and erotic operas of Richard Strauss, especially Salome. Modern music had begun. But meanwhile another crucial building block of modern music was sliding into place. More than anything recording brought the music of America - particularly the folk idioms of African Americans, Chinese, and Irish and Scottish labourers into the mainstream as the blues, ragtime and then jazz developed, and then swept the planet. Classical music - for a time - retreated into a golden summer of nostalgia, exemplified by the enduring appeal of Elgar's Enigma Variatio

  • S01E06 The Popular Age

    • March 2, 2013
    • BBC Two

    In the sixth and final episode, composer Howard Goodall looks at the popular age - the last hundred years in music.

Additional Specials

  • SPECIAL 0x1 Learning Zone Part 1

    • March 27, 2013
    • BBC Two

    A special reversion of Howard Goodall's Story of Music that provides a unique resource for schools across the UK. In the first hour of the series that traces the story of music from 32,000 BC to present day, composer Howard Goodall looks back at the very first faltering steps humankind took towards making music. Today music is available everywhere, at the press of a button. A thousand years ago it was an eerie whisper in a desert of silence. And yet music has always been a crucial part of human existence. In The Age of Discovery, Howard Goodall charts the development of many of the techniques musicians now take for granted. The arrival of a workable form of musical notation, the introduction of new note combinations and the development of more sophisticated musical instruments all gave music a much needed shot in the arm. In The Age of Invention, Howard Goodall looks at the extraordinarily fertile musical period between 1650 and 1750. In an age when Newton put in place the basic laws of science, musicians did the same thing in music. Then something arrived that was to change music profoundly, the arrival of the audience. In The Age of Elegance and Sensibility, Howard Goodall explores an era - from 1750 to 1850 - in which the composers went from being the paid, liveried servants of princes and archbishops to working as freelancers, who, most of all, needed to appeal to a new middle-class audience. In this era, the symphony was born, an abstract art form more than 120 years before the concept became fashionable in visual art.

  • SPECIAL 0x2 Learning Zone Part 2

    • BBC Two