Signature Tune: The Path of The Beloved from the Suite Rakastava (Op14), Sibelius
This
is Classical Break, on Somer Valley FM. Today’s programme consists of music
from the 1965 feature film, The Agony and The Ecstasy.
This Hollywood epic, Directed by Carol Reed and starring Charlton Heston, and
Rex Harrison, Diane Cilento and Aldofo Celi, may seem an odd place in which to find
music for a classical music-slot, but in fact the score of the main part of the
picture, by Alex North and Alexander Courage, is a fascinating attempt to meld
music of the renaissance with a Respighi-like pictorialism that suits fully a
cinemascope keeping, the vivid colours and vibrant imagery of a film from the
mid-‘60s.
Alex
North was the second most nominated film composer In Hollywood and received an
honorary award In recognition of his brilliant artistry. He provided music for films As various as Spartacus, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, A
Streetcar Named Desire, Dragonslayer and Good Morning Vietnam.
He
was nominated for an Oscar for The Agony
and The Ecstasy in 1966. In this
film, location-work and studio-shot scenes are beautifully lit, a world of rich
vestures and palaces, glinting armour and weaponry, bright banners and
desolate, smoking scenes of military defeat, all captured in their gentility
and horror. In dark interior scenes of chapel and tavern or in front of the vibrant,
living frescoes of art and theocratic politics, there glowers the gaunt, paint-spattered
figure of Michelangelo Buonarotti – the driven artist forced by Papal commission
to break the habit of a lifetime and paint a ceiling with ‘appropriate designs’. The warrior-Pope, Julius the 2nd suffers,
too: “Michelangelo, when will you make an
end!” - “When I am finished!” and
there is a danger that between showing that the Pope is driven also, in his
case, to hold together the Catholic Church in a country of duchies and Europe
beyond, and that Michelangelo has to suffer and be impossible with authority to
paint like one inspired, the film earns another title, “The Mahogany and The Hickory - Or How The Sistine Chapel Gained A
Ceiling (In The End)”.
Nevertheless,
there is the score, in whose brilliance and half-tones the story of
transcendent Art is most truly told through the use of Romantic organ and
bells, brash handling of brass and side-drums, bucolic, courtly and agonized
use of woodwind in weak register, moments of veil-like expectancy or surge at height
and plod de profundis of strings. Snatches from mediaeval pipe-music, a martial
galliard here, pastiche of consort- or choral music there, a Shostakovich-like
angularity and lacerating implacability of line, chantlike melody and
chromaticism that both hark back to Cesar Franck through the Gregorian
Respighi; leading motives to represent characters or states of mind are also
heard, a common thing in film-scores: with an incredibly wide range of musical
influences, Alex North and his assistant, Alexander Courage, wrote a
masterpiece expressive of the suffering and isolation of the true artist. Here is the first cue: a scene in a
precipitous marble quarry, The Mountains
of Carrara.
Track One: The Mountains of Carrara
The
second cue accompanies pastoral scenes (two piping oboes – oboes d’amour – and cor anglais in imitational piffero style) suddenly broken in on by skirmish: relentlessly rhythmical cavalry pursue
infantry into a maize-crop – slaughter ensues; by far the most of the music occurs
to denote victory - the leader of the cavalry is soon revealed to be Julius the
2nd as he takes off his helmet and assumes his calot and white mantle. Here occurs the in fact anachronistic reference
to a galliard, ‘La Bataille’, from
the Danserye of Tielman Susato.
The Warrior-Pope.
Track Two: The Warrior Pope
The
Florentine family, the Medici, have been Buonarotti’s longest-serving patrons.
Cardinal Giovanni de Medici and the Contessina De Medici, his sister, have won Buonarotti
a commission to build Julius’s tomb; now, the Pope wishes the artist to paint
images of the twelve apostles on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Buonarotti
is a sculptor, and has scruples... So the adventure begins. The Medicis – a pastiche consort
flute-and-strings number written by Alexander Courage - the flute closely attended
by imitational figures.
Track Three: The Medici
In
deep, brooding music, combining the Gregorian influence with that of what sounds
like the Fifth Symphony slow movement of Shostakovich, work begins on scaffolding
high in the vaults of the roof of the decayed chapel: The Sketch
of The Apostles. New plaster is
smoothed on. Outlines are laid. Paint is
applied...
Track Four: The Sketch of The Apostles
The
Artist is dissatisfied with his commission. The faces of ordinary persons make
the best faces for Apostles; nothing formal will do. Sketch Destroyed accompanies strokes of an adze and a flung bucket
of red paint...
Track Five: Sketch Destroyed
Having
fled and been pursued into the mountains of Carrara, Buonarotti has a vision of
God and Adam in the clouds at dawn... There is a growling sonority to the quiet
grandeur that, mollified, becomes alternately ethereal and more full-throated
and ends terse, staggering, brazen and percussive...
Genesis!
Track Six: Genesis
Having
successfully presented plans to the literally embattled pope... there follows The Return to The Sistine Chapel. Now, more
than 300 figures must be painted, including seven OT prophets, five sybils,
nine stories from Genesis, portraits of the great figures in Christ’s lineage
and four scenes from the OT.
Track Seven: The Sistine Chapel
All
begins with the quietly anxious cue, Painting!
Track Eight: Painting
Hours
of working to all hours with toxic paint inches from his face, lack of rest and
forgetting meals, and the necessity of shouting or sighing, “When I am finished,” or disputing aesthetics and morals with cardinals brought
in to witness progress, lead to The Agony,
as Buonarotti working on alone at night by the light of a candle-stub suffers
loss of sight, attempts to move down the scaffolding, falls clutching onto a
rope and is swiftly let down onto the floor of the chapel, unconscious and in a
fever. The music follows this quickly growing disaster with highly effective
use of instrumentation, the growling bassoon particularly sinister.
Track Nine: The Agony
Michelangelo
recovers in the care of the Contessina de Medici. This is another of Alexander
Courage’s contribution, another consort-piece, like a pavane. Michelangelo’s Recovery.
Track Ten: Michelangelo’s Recovery
Again,
haunted by the Susato Galliard, the
Pope returns to Rome in brassy triumph. Festivity In St Peter’s Square.
Track Eleven: Festivity In St Peter’s Square
In
the evening, Julius visits the recuperating Michelangelo to release him from his
contract... Raphael may complete the ceiling...
Julius In The Garden.
Track Twelve: Julius In The Garden
Back
at work... This time, progress is suddenly suspended as Michelangelo arrives in
the chapel to discover workmen are dismantling the scaffolding...
Track Thirteen: Back To St Peter’s
The
Pope and Michelangelo have come to a parting of the ways over the Pope’s desire
to show the ceiling half-finished. Julius must go to war again – his enemies in
Italy regrouping and victorious – without knowing if he will live to return or
be able to see the ceiling completed. Brazenness is moderate in the music, the
imploring strings bringing a feeling of pathos above side-drums and
intermittent low brass.
Woodwind
and low brass prefigure the next cue.
The War.
Track Fourteen: The War
Michelangelo
seeks reconciliation with Julius on the battlefield... Julius’ military defeat
inspires some of the best moments of the entire score – jagged, hollow horn, trombone
and muted trumpet fanfares of desolation; the imploring tone returns in strings,
answered by the implacability of deep-toned brass and woodwind.
Track Fifteen: The Battlefield
To brief, bright fanfares, the grievously-wounded Julius creates a new cardinal for a fee
sufficient to permit Michelangelo to complete the ceiling... Michelangelo
returns to work, and the tattered remnants of the pontiff’s army are portrayed on
their blood and dust-stained horse and cart-borne journey to Rome. New Cardinal.
Track Sixteen: New Cardinal
Back
in Rome, Julius, though reacquainted with the wonderful ceiling, soon lies close
to death: only to be angered into rising from his bed by Michelangelo, who proposes
to return to Florence with the ceiling incomplete!
The
Pope’s allies in Europe have gathered and defeated his enemies. The official
soundtrack CD takes up the story with a mass celebrating victory and the
completion of the ceiling... The finish has been hard-earned.
Track Seventeen: Michelangelo’s Magnificent Achievement
– and Finale
In
an affecting final scene, after the congregation and church staff have left,
Julius tells Michelangelo what the ceiling means to him. Commissioning it may be what he is remembered
for; before the Seat of Judgement, he will present it as something to be placed
in the balance; it may shorten his time in Purgatory. Asked what he has learned, the artist says, “That I am not alone.” He refuses a
further commission for an altar-piece fresco of The Judgement: he was promised that he could go back to his
interrupted work on the tomb; Julius admits that there is need of the tomb. They part: Michelangelo is left to watch the
Pope’s faltering progress from the body of the chapel. To Work My Son.
This
was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s
programme was written by Mike Burrows. We hope you enjoyed it and that you will
join us again soon. Goodbye!
Track Eighteen: To Work, My Son
