Educational Media Reviews Online

The writer and presenter of this series, British composer and pianist Howard Goodall, explains elements of mainly Western European art music history with wit, charm, and a high "enough" degree of accuracy in these engaging tapes. Five focal points, each influential for later musical development, are explored in chronological order of inception: notation, opera, equal temperament, the piano, recording technology. Filmed "on location" in various world cities, using some archival footage, a lot of outdoor, and a minimum of "talking head," shots, the series has a British emphasis without distorting history. Goodall demonstrates many of his points at a keyboard (organ, harpsichord, and piano) and his commentaries reveal good humored good taste. Accessible to non-music majors as well as musicians who might be expert in only some of the subjects covered, these programs would serve as good introductions or supplements for a general music library.

Notation: The Thin Red Line, David Jeffcock, director.
Imagining a world of wholly aural literature helps in appreciating the importance of written music for the development of thoughtful composition (indeed, for the entire notion of "composer") and musical dissemination and preservation. This well-edited film, illustrated with early music manuscripts (some of which anchored notes on the page with a single red line representing the note F) as well as contemporary computer notation programs, makes the thousand-year story of the creation and revision of the Western music writing system exciting to contemplate. Especially welcome are frequent examples of scores scrolling by while their notes are performed.

The Birth and Life of Opera, Rupert Edwards, director.
Here opera's 400-year-old history is surveyed with an eye to the politics of music drama: opera as revolutionary agent, social commentary, tool (or banned art) of tyrants. This program both tries to do too much and neglects too much, but it is still worthwhile. From the Florentine Camarata to contemporary staging of Verdi in Shanghai, Italy's primacy in the "birth and life" of opera is emphasized, but the political theme is also explored from the patronage of Italian Doges through Beethoven's prison-based "rescue opera" Fidelio to John Adams's explanation of his motivation in writing Nixon in China.

Equal Temperament, Justine Kershaw, director.
An introduction to the physics of music, this program aims to explain the origins of the modern system of tuning keyboard instruments and its consequence. Overtones, scales and harmony are discussed, with due credit to Pythagorus for his discoveries of how tones relate to each other but with rather more definite facts about the English composer Dunstable given than most scholars would sanction. A disappointing oversimplified version of the role Bach's 48 preludes and fugues played in the "invention" of equal temperament is balanced by demonstrations of how this tuning enables keyboard pieces to be played in all keys.

The Piano: King of Instruments, Alex Marengo, director.
This exceptional review of the piano's 300-year-old history convincingly demonstrates why it deserves to be crowned "king" of musical instruments. Goodall is by turns relaxed and respectful, delighted and awed by the material he presents: the piano's ancestors, composers who reveled in its early characteristics (Mozart, Schubert), moved its development along (Beethoven), and expanded its repertoire in the 19th and 20th centuries, from Chopin through Debussy, Joplin, and jazz performers and composers. The piano's role in amateur music-making is also explored.

Recorded Sound: The Dream Becomes a Reality, David Jeffcock, director.
This excellent program traces the history of recording technology and its impact on classical music: Caruso as superstar, the phonograph as replacement for the parlor piano, music as commodity, recordings as vehicles for broadening repertoire ("early music" is familiar to most people because of records), risk-reduction by performers because the ears of the audience have been pre-conditioned by the perfection of recordings, the influence of "field recordings" on art music composers, digital sampling and its use in the music of Steve Reich, especially in his important chamber work Different Trains, probably North America's most effective and moving 20th-century musical response to the European Jewish Holocaust.