BBC - Howard Goodall's Story of Music (2013) Part 4 Age of Tragedy. 30/03/2013 23:27:49

Howard Goodall traces the story of music from the ancient world to the modern day BBC2 has a late Christmas present for Goodall fans: six hours of him, charting the entire history of how the complex beast we now call music came to be. Every other modern presenter would fly around Europe at licence-payers’ expense to do links in lovely places — not Goodall. He stays in a sparse studio explaining why Protin, Guido of Arezzo and Dunstaple were great innovators and demonstrating triads on his keyboard. He thinks subject matter is more important than presentation. He’s right.

Part 4: Age of Tragedy

The composer examines the middle to late 19th century, exploring the European craze for opera and music that dealt with death and destiny. He suggests that composers were inspired by Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique to write about witches, ghouls, trolls and hellish torment, and that the death of the heroine in Verdi's La Traviata was a comment on the hypocrisies of wider society. Howard also argues that the image of the composer as a misunderstood genius was cemented in the public imagination during this period.

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