The Essay

Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 1 of 5.Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.To this day Brahms has a reputation as a rather terse, fearsome personality who wrote dark, serious music. But his tender, intimate chamber music gives a clue to how he behaved behind closed doors and among friends. Pianist and writer Natasha Loges looks at what lies behind Brahms' famously gruff public persona, and discovers his tender, private side. She offers an invitation into Brahms' inner circle: music making at home, coffee and conversation with friends, the food he enjoyed, and the women he flirted with.Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.It's easy for us to recognise, in Stravinsky's first ballet score, portents of the musical revolution that would soon follow. This is music that teeters on the brink of a breakdown in traditional tonality, and points forward to the complex, fractured world of twentieth century art. Did that first Parisian audience of 1910 glimpse such things in The Firebird? Or were they simply seduced by its colourful oriental influences, which were the height of fashion in Europe at the time. People were fascinated by the outlandish, the gothic, the occult; and they gorged themselves on Firebird's exotic pleasures.

Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.Since its revival in the 19th century, Bach's St. Matthew Passion has been hailed as one of the pillars of Western music; universally regarded, and with a powerful influence that reaches into our own time. How differently, then, would his music have fired imaginations in the provincial church-goers of 18th century Leipzig? People whose experience of music was so much more limited than our own, and whose pietist religious sensibilities coloured every aspect of their daily lives.

Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.The delightful charm of Schumann's Scenes from Childhood masks a surprising sophistication which marks them among his most popular pieces. Today, we might prefer to look past his music's sentimentality to plumb its hidden subtleties; Schumann's audience would have revelled in it. In his world, domesticity and gentility were something to be cherished and celebrated. Individual expression, too, was a new credo for all kinds of artistic endeavours; perhaps the listener for whom this music held the deepest meaning was the composer himself.

Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.The Lamentations by Victoria offer modern listeners a window into a Golden Age of sacred harmony, a period when the ethereal harmonies of Renaissance masters seemed to mirror the ageless music of the spheres. Might Victoria's own congregation have detected more human qualities in his music? He lived and worked in Rome, a city rife with evangelical zeal and foul corruption. As a naïve young priest, he was plunged into this swarming, cultural melting-pot with, at its heart, a church that burned with the muscular, newly re-energised faith of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.Haydn's famous Symphony No.100, his "Military Symphony", stands as model of classical elegance. Its famous bugle and percussion effects feel, by modern standards, sophisticated and refined. However, in 1794, war with France was a frightening reality; his first London audiences would have included a good few aristocratic refugees from revolutionary Paris. One contemporary critic remarked: "It is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increase to a climax of hellish sublimity.".

Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. Authors include actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work; Mark Nixon, head of the Beckett International Foundation and journalist and commentator Fintan O'Toole.In this edition, photographer John Minihan, who took some of the best-known black and white portraits of Samuel Beckett, remembers spending time with a playwright who was often a reluctant subject.Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.

Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work, and journalist and commentator Fintan O'Toole.In this edition, opera director Netia Jones explores the relationship between words and music in Samuel Beckett's work.Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.

Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work, and journalist and commentator Fintan O'Toole.In this edition, Beckett expert Dr Mark Nixon talks about editing Echo's Bones, the Beckett short story recently published some 80 years after it was written.Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.

Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work, and Mark Nixon, head of the Beckett International Foundation.In this edition, journalist and commentator, Fintan O'Toole, reflects on themes of mortality and death in Beckett's work.Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.