TV Review: Sacred Music
11th April 2008
Posted in: Features | Television
Written by: Ali Gledhill
I love BBC4. It is unashamedly high-brow, featuring gameshows about grammar and news that is closer to an academic journal than your average broadsheet. The recent series on Sacred Music has made the label “high-brow” look cheap. I have enjoyed it thoroughly.
Charting the history of Church music from the Plainsong of the 12th Century to the mastery of Bach, Sacred Music has brought a niche subject to a mass audience. The series does not speak down to viewers, but rather leads one along on a story they (certainly I) know very little about. It is unashamedly intellectual, but remains neither pompous or irrelevant.
Throughout the four-part series, which began on Good Friday and ended today, the choral group The Sixteen has been providing examples of the vastly varied kinds of music produced over the centuries. Telling the story through the music is a risky game, but it works wonderfully: the singers are exceptionally talented, and Harry Christophers is remarkable in his enthusiasm for the pieces he performs. Each episode seems to tell a particular story, with the music slowly rising throughout the programme to the end. From the four-voice pieces that featured in the first episode to the powerful organ music of the last, it is obvious just how important this music has been for the world.
But the programme is not merely about music - telling the story of the development of Church music must include the story of the development of the Church, which explains it. From Gregorian monks to Luther’s 95 Theses, Church politics has led to a dramatic change in Church music - indeed, in Palestrina’s era Church music was the main matter for debate in Church politics. By telling the story though the music that made it, Sacred Music has provided an important gatewayfor people who know nothing about the music they may be only faintly familiar with. It is a pity that so few people will have watched the series, although it is encouraging that the Radio Times has featured the programme each week as a “choice”. I hope BBC 4 commissioners continue to make this kind of original, thought-provoking and intellectual programming.
If there is one concern about the series, it was the sometimes iffy camerawork. Anyone watching a programme about 12th Century Church music on BBC 4 on a Friday evening is likely to be able to concentrate for more than three seconds without a change of angle, and would rather focus on a manuscript with a steady camera, not one deliberately shook as if attempting to keep a sugar-high toddler entertained on a Saturday afternoon. This said, the overall quality of the programming was excellent, and certainly the best TV I have seen for a very long time.
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For more information, visit the Sacred Music website.
I too agree that Sacred Music was/is fantasmagorical, even if SR-B (two can play at that game!) can become a little wearing and behave a little strangely when talking to HC, who really deserves his own programme but that might be a R3 thing.