STEPHEN FRY - OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

No, no, he's not back from the grave -1 must stop doing this - it's just that, in 1988, the Royal Philharmonic Society decides to premiere the work it had originally commissioned from old Ludwig before he died in 1827. All that existed, before 1988, were a few sketches. In 1988, though, a man called Barry Cooper fills in the gaps and - voila - a brand-new movement of a Beethoven symphony. I don't know if you've heard it, but, well, I'm not sure what I think of it. It's odd to hear something which sounds both unfamiliar yet clearly recognizable. Weird, really.

1988 gone. 1989 now. Sir Michael Tippett premiered his new opera, New Tear, in Houston, Texas; communism more or less collapsed in Eastern Europe; and we lost Vladimir Horowitz and Herbert von Karajan. A year later and America is bereft of two of its greatest twentieth-century composers - Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland. Copland, particularly, did more than any other US composer to give America its voice, and he influenced numerous composers who came after him. You can still hear his legacy in the film composers of today - more of which later. Even on TV, you can't go very far among the schedules without hearing someone who couldn't have existed had it not been for the pioneering work of Copland - he really started from scratch and founded the all-American sound so misused today. I can't watch The West Wing without being reminded of two things: one is Copland-style harmonies and the expansive sounds of the theme tune, which, I think, unless I dreamt it, is written by somebody called Snuffy Walden. The other is, of course, will Donna ever tell Josh?

'ESSAY QUESTION: MOVIE MUSIC - IS IT THE NEW

'd Uke to start with a quick overview. Where is MUSIC? Where is its audience? Is it in crisis? And… Have I told you lately that I love you? Well, if you ask me, Classical music is…

and the audience is HERE. At the risk of labouring my point, let me go a step further. Look around you. You see that thing you can just see miles away on the horizon? Well, that's the audience, way over there. Classical music has, more or less, with a few notable exceptions, lost sight of them -the audience, that is. Or has it?

Well, on the one hand, the modern audience for what we have always called classical music is small, elite and, for the most part, made up of the musical cognoscenti - composers themselves, ardent musical followers of composers, people who colect locomotive numbers, academics, etc. I'm talking about the people who listen to what academics would call 'new' classical music. So, people who would turn up for the premiere of a Luigi Nono piece, or buy Pierre Boulez's Pli Selon Pli, the revised version, on CD. This is, officially, what the 'serious' set see as modern, newly written classical music. To these, I get the feeling people like Tavener-13 aren't really classical music at all, but mere fripperies.

It's as if classical music completely forgot that, well, it was also, at one time, the popular music of the day. True, there has always been change: startling new pieces - shocking even - that left the audience speechless, wanting to take their ball home. Remember Wagner, Beethoven, Bach - they all made audiences reel. Maybe not as often as they made them cheer, but it has always happened. What the avant-garde wave of composers did was, well, was to talk in a language that not so much left people shocked, but left them unaware that it was music in the first place and therefore deserving of a shocked reaction. In the same way that people could wander into an art gallery and not so much be startled by, say, a pile of bricks or a light flashing on and off as actually UNAWARE of it. So music, for a time, failed to even engage its audience. Whether it lost the power to shock or whether it was still shocking, but, like the flashing on and off light, no one even realized, well, it's a moot point. What I think is certain is that by going the way it did, modern classical music did two things. It paved the way for the obligatory backlash, which we'll come to later, but, and possibly more importantly, it allowed a whole tranche of composers, working in a specific and parallel world, to steal a march: to slip in, unnoticed, and claim the title 'the great composers' of today. More importantly, possibly, it allowed them to slip in unnoticed and claim the audience, too. So, who were these masked men and women? The Movie Composers. That's who.

So. Let me run through a brief menu of the people who now, I think, hold the title 'People's Composers' - the movie composers. But for now, allow me to sweep up a few of the corkers that came before.

1985, and the man who wrote the accompaniment to the moving gunsight that followed James Bond writes a gorgeous soundtrack to the Meryl Streep/Robert Redford movie, Out of Africa. The name? fijohn Tavener, a very spiritual British composer, born in 1944, and heavily influenced by Russian Orthodox music. He originally came to prominence on the Beatles' own Apple label. His music is hauntingly beautiful. Harry. John Barry. Then, in 1989… Ennio Morricone adds to his list Dl' great movie scores that include the Oscar-nominated The Mission and Once upon a Time in America with this year's oh-so-lovely noundtrack to Cinema Paradise

1990 and John Barry is back again. The year that saw millions watch, on live TV, the release of Nelson Mandela, sees the release of another Barry classic, the delicious John Dunbar's Theme for Dances with Wolves.

Right, we're up to 1998, the year the frequencies 100 to 102 opened up with classical music, calling itself Classic PM. Bit of a shock, it's got to be said. The man off 'game for a laugh' telling you to bet on 'Battling Beethoven' in the 2.30 at Sandown. But still, it worked. 1993, and the score is John Williams 2, Michael Nyman, 1.

John Williams - Schindler's List. This one is a corker. John Williams couldn't really have been anything else, really, other than a film composer, could he? He has the amazing knack of being able to write the perfect music to match the film. His music always sounds like the film. That may sound obvious, but some composers don't get it, it can just sound grafted on. That's why the theme from Schindler's List SOUNDS black and white, somehow. It's a perfect match for Spielberg's film masterpiece, while something like…

John Williams - Jurassic Park… well, this may sound daft, but I think it sounds like dinosaurs. It's… towering and lofty and epic, with undertones of 'Don't mess with me!' If you know what I mean!

In sharp contrast to John Williams is Michael Nyman, and The Piano. Nyman is a sort of Jack Nicholson of movie composers. By that I don't mean smiling and weird, I mean he always plays himself. A Michael Nyman score is a Michael Nyman score is a Michael Nyman score. As they say in the world of triple-entry bookkeeping. As they say in the world of triple entry book-keeping. As they say in the world of triple entry book-keeping.

Ah, now this is a cute one. 1994. The Channel Tunnel opens, Tony Blair is elected leader of the Labour Party, and playwright/former angry young man John Osborne dies at the age of sixty-five - all as the surprise film hit of the year produces an Oscar for the composer Luis Bacalov,? Postino, or, as it's now known, II Consignio.

1995. An interesting year, I think. Nick Leeson single-handedly brings down Barings Bank, Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa, and John Major wins the Tory leadership challenge -'Oh yes'. I don't know, if only we'd known about Edwina, he might have lasted a lot longer. Also, though, the year of Patrick Doyle, with the Oscar-nominated soundtrack to Sense and Sensibility. A gorgeous score. Also in 1995 we got a taste of things to come. I remember it staying in the Classical Charts for what seemed like months. And long after the film died down, the score was still topping the charts. Yes, it was the start of the uileann pipes craze, namely… James Horner - Braveheart.