Musical form

I’M SOMETHING of a musical freak, in that I don’t have a loyalty to any one musical form. In any given week, you might find me listening, say, to Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, and then to the Beatles’ 1967 masterpiece, Sergeant Pepper. At the moment, I’m listening to French pop from the 1960 onwards on internet radio.

If I have to pin myself down, though, to any one musical form, I suppose it has to be jazz. My great musical hero is not Mozart or Beethoven, but Miles Davis – and I make no apology for putting him into the same sentence as the Classical/Romantic masters. To me he’s right up there with them.

But that’s not quite what I want to talk about. Today, I listen to a couple of radio programmes, from which I derive great pleasure. One is about the fascinating relationship of blues singer Billie Holiday and brilliant jazz saxophonist Lester Young. Something about the way these two greats fired off each other to produce work which, really, transcends conventional definitions of musical form. Their recordings together are simply sublime.

The other programme (both on the excellent BBC Radio 4) is the story of two iconic works: Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Both controversial in their day, both – even today – makes purists grind their teeth with disapproval. I don’t know why, but this very fact alone fills me with glee. I’ve always been fascinated by people who push out the boundaries, who, by daring to risk ridicule and disapprobation, force us to re-evaluate our lives and our values, and to challenge us in our complacent sense of what we consider normal. They don’t necessarily make us feel comfortable, but my goodness, how dull would life be without them!