Words are not enough

Stravinsky once said that music was powerless to express anything at all. Leaving aside the niceties of whether a rising scale can at least represent something hopeful or aspiring, his music, like so much music, does nonetheless have the capacity to express the spirit of an age. Since this is a much vaguer undertaking than trying to depict a concrete verbal image in sound — like bird song, or a drunken man, or climbing a ladder — it is surprising how successful composers have been at it. Unwittingly successful, I guess, since how would you deliberately set about writing a piece to capture 2009?

I became aware of this while watching some of my favourite television soaps — like The Tudors — or Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man. Such programmes seem to need music to reinforce the world they depict. It is not enough to have costumes and user-friendly history; or Bruno emoting in front of Boltzmann’s statue.