Well you with free thinking now though and welcome to the Royal Institution in the heart of London's Mayfair for a special edition of free thinking where as part of the 2800 freeze London art fair we're discussing how museums can make connections relevant to today's audiences we'd like to explore how that meeting the challenges presented by below belies the digital world so I'm joined by 3 distinguished museum directors all ideally positioned to answer those questions Michael government is director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art scene Hogg is director of the consist or she's Museum in Vienna and Hartley Fisher is director of the British Museum here in London I'd like to start by getting a sense of you various The United Nations Michael intending to you one of the key facts that we should know about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA life Angeles County Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the western United States and we have collections of art from all time and place but we are also one of the youngest museums of our kind in fact Lakme I was younger than I am it was only founded on its location as a separate art museum in 1965 compared 286-5765 or whatever it would be in Europe and so there's both a breath of interests across all media like a lot of big museums we have everything from paintings and sculpture to forks and spoons and movies so it's very broad but it has a particular attitude that's quite contemporary given it so young founded in our time and I think the other thing to think about it is that it it really has its its position on the in the western United States as part of the Pacific so we're very conscious of our programs focusing sometimes on lap. America and Asia and taking that different point of view art history to being good as yours is Museum in Vienna very well in great European institution give us a bit of context around what you do when you vision. At the considerations museum is the largest museum in Austria $1006.00 repeated B.C.M. And goes back to the collections of the Hapsburg family so the collections state back beginning from the Middle Ages and stop around 1900 so we're really an old masters museum and we collect everything from Greek and Roman Egyptian art paintings can scum arms an arm a musical instruments carry chains so it's really the widest picture of what was collected in Europe at the time and we were located on 7 different locations in Vienna one outpost in the very western part of Austria and we're the largest museum of federal Museum in Vienna but we're the only one which doesn't collect modern and contemporary art so this is really a very specific characteristics and this of course is one of the key points how do we connect to our audiences who tend to come from the modern and from the contemporary art and how can we tell them how can we connect how can we find or put them to the emotion that all art has been contemporary stage as being contemporary as a great that we can follow up and how we perhaps make that bridge. Collections and go after the past and present it as we want to how big this is the cultural equivalent of one of the shows we get to show institution so pitch us the British Museum never heard of it. Well it's 2000000 years of contemporary art. I mean it's true on both counts I'd say because it spans the history of human kind where there's more than 8000000 objects from the earliest artifacts we know to things that were created today and it covers the whole globe and all oceans with its collections and it was created in $753.00 by through an act of parliament to be an encyclopedia collection to reflect the world the cultures of the world to be accessible for everyone for your charge and that's striking it's in the preamble of the British Museum act of $753.00 it is meant to do experiments to bring together different disciplines that work together in this museum to create new knowledge all these aspects are extremely important for for this museum which is the number one tourist attraction in the U.K. It is of course located in Bloomsbury it has bought 6000000 visitors a year 75 percent of which are coming from abroad but it's extremely active across the country working with institutions big and small through all regions and nations with loans with permanent loans with exhibitions during exhibitions with skill sharing training and so forth and it works globally the museum is active on all continents with research projects exhibition projects collaborative projects again with training and skill sharing So it's really a global hub at the center of London reaching out across the nation with absolutely unequalled collections and a lot of excitement. A lot of you are very proud of the institutions that you always have challenges and one of the things I wanted to. Today was the way that museums it's changing the challenges they face so it's like to ask you what you felt when you came into the. Great museums What did you feel needs to happen what was your vision for dealing with its. Well I don't know about challenges as much as opportunities the museums are amazing things today I think we our museum we've tried to position as a center of a metropolis L.A. Is a big place it has many centers but the idea was to create a place where anybody can come and some of their identity is there because their collections are so diverse and I think the biggest opportunity for me in L.A. Was to enlarge audiences because compared to 8000000. LACMA had a very small attendance and we were now it's over a 1000000 and we're continuing to grow but we're continuing to diversify those audiences and in fact L.A. Doesn't have a huge tourist economy but it has a diverse local public and I think that idea of the diversity of the global collections and the diversity of metropolis like Los Angeles really goes together and to the Contemporary and the past you know all culture is always living there where everything we have is living in the present and that's the idea to make those collections live in the in the present that's a big opportunity so it's not something that you could know well I hadn't 5 just like to take I don't know did you come up with a sleeve of different setting different cavity it's our own museum is now a days is a big tourist attractions well so the tourists they come for the collections they come to see that the famous sprite will stay come to see the Titian they see the chilling any This is why to coming but we need to attract the locals and we need to make them aware that life is here life is in the museum and there is not one day where you wait all the along now this is the day I mean we have to charge and you know it's a different situation from yours or even in the U.K. So we had to invent be inventive as far as the ticketing system goes so you know money is not the point that makes you not going to the museum but that's not the main point you do you worry about that you know I mean that's the only way we can kind of have a budget other way because the federal museum will receive a certain fixed sum of money every year since 20 years so basically we're losing money and that is it's not enough to pay staff so we have to find other ways and I think this is a good challenge for us to create new programs and I always think it's should not be the money that makes you not do things that makes you kind of lean back or be frustrated or something you kind of take this as a challenge. And heartbreak when you came from a German museum background had the British Museum. The one museum the one that causes you most joy and most of Tara because that we use the museum perhaps increasing its means something that a bit old a bit of day it looks like a museum thing well I've got to got tangled with this idea well distinguished colleague of mine called that place house of wonders and a visitor from Africa called it a house of spirits. So you can call it it has many names and they all pertinent I think when it comes to challenges I think for us at the museum the most important challenge is to reach out to bring people into the museum to engage them to have them and gauge with the objects with culture with. The interconnectedness of culture and to make that a vital experience for their life and I think that that's what we're most into That's what I feel the colleagues at the British Museum are most passionate about they are there for the public which is that job again to talk about it would be unfair as we go along and change behavior patterns expectations are just off the back of what you've said I think a different job I feel differently about 2018 and beyond that I felt maybe when I came into this profession or a few years ago I think the awareness of who you work for who does this museum exist for is much more acute and much stronger today you know we have to create public good for the widest possible audience for people from all walks of life young and old and. To make them understand that this is theirs and this is a place of opportunity as much as he said it's a place where you have the chance to be bowled over by something which you did not expect or to study a city's flee if you're more into that or to wonder about and drift and just chance upon things that suddenly reveal something essential for you. So we work with schools we work with communities and make the greatest effort to make this museum relevant and then coming to the British Museum that's another challenge I realised very quickly that we will have to renovate the museum and that we have to on the basis of what the museum has achieved over the last 15 years and the immigrant is is a key figure in working with the colleagues at the B.M. To reinvent the Encyclopedic museum we have to tell new stories we have to be much more aware of what you know that attracts attention and the messages we have to get across so let's turn now to the rise in a number of private museums and their impact like I think you were involved in setting one up on quite a scale in Shanghai what would you expect to bring to what you do. Well a lot of people talk about the differences between private museums or in public museums but most public museums began as private museums personal collections even the biggest museums we know are often assemblies of private collections and it's interesting that in China right now the fast growing I mean dozens and dozens of museums in big cities being made and a lot of them by single individuals in this case in China it was booty tech but interestingly he wanted his museum to be the public museum meaning what does that mean and means it has sources of support from all around and there is a difference between a private museum that answers for a time to an individual or a family. Royalty and a museum that answers to the public through. Account it has accountability and I think that's kind of the question because for example we're public museum we are accountable to the diverse public of the county in a way that a you know a private patron is not but there's always been a back and forth and I think it's a very symbiotic relationship as Tell me a little bit about any Shanghai. That involves So Shanghai has decided that it's going to become it already is one of the great cultural cities of the world and they're going to grow that's what museums and they decided to do that by encouraging private individuals who had collections to set up museums especially on the West Bund along the river south and a gentleman booty tech is one of those who has his own collection and is funded his own museum in collaboration with Development Corporation and there are a number of others he's become ill recently and from the beginning had hoped that his museum would grow into something so he's proposed a partnership with LACMA so that we would take our skills in operating a public museum start to raise money from money sources program collaboratively share collections and try to berth something that's between a private museum and a government museum and just $71.00 that will be called it's called the use museum right now why use the it doesn't have a new name yet but it is being as it's being advanced in this collaborative way now and what's exciting it's also a bridge between across the Pacific between Los Angeles and Shanghai you know the growth in Asia is so spectacular in terms of museums artists education I mean there's a new museum in Singapore Hong Kong is building a museum is happening in Shanghai and even in Beijing there's a private museum that's becoming a public museum the Olin center so it's very exciting what's going on in Asia and it really is a globe of museums now working together so I mean do you think the rise if private means is this changing economy Cheney museum well and if so what would the impact be on something like Iran. Probably it is some kind of a rivalry in some ways because when you have a private museum then you have one single owner who says you know he's probably very strict in gives you the strategies in and whereas with federal museums you know you have few have different had 3 different persons ministries to report to the governance is a different kind of governance but on the other hand the public museums all streets full of federal museums and very good museums and so we just have to stay relevant and to attract the audience is and for us for example we work with with artists because we since we don't collect and even if if they for example at this wonderful exhibition the shape of time but we also asked like Peter Deutsch and carry chains marshal to to respond to some of our Renaissance paintings they would never become part of our museum but you know memory now they are part of a museum they they connect and and also the visitors the especially the younger people come they still have this vision in mind and they remember the new aspects that they saw when they now come and look at our old art for example a kind of rivalry Hartwick Do you recognise that invigorating or threat. I'd say and inspiring diversification of office being diplomatic. But you know I've always worked in public institutions but of course very often unpublishable us with private museums and why should we not there are challenges and the big private museum there's so many different private museums you know from small to very big can of course attract a lot of visitors in a place and somewhat cannibalize that situation but then museums are there for the long run and after some time. You leave a note and I think. 2000 years. Well the challenge I mean the challenge push is public museums also to improve their offer and the quality of their work but it works just. To get a couple of specifics if anyone had them as we go along what would we see well let me give you 2 examples one is in Switzerland in Boston where I started work at the beautiful confusing which is prides itself to be the oldest art collection public art collection of the world opening in $16981.00 and in the ninety's the. Opened on the outskirts of the city became very successful and the concert museum had to think about which has by far the most important collection of old masters and also modern and contemporary how to step up its offer how to do more attractive exhibitions and how did I go to those 2 years and I start for a bit of luck try to start from. The big and you do feel a little. Private draw if but if they know why don't we just hung out having to factor it yeah but if you want to see Holbein's dead Christ if you want to see the most beautiful collection of Cuba start if you want to see the great American Masters like Rothko and Bonnie Newman Well then you better go to the concert music and you have it all in one place so I think these things add up to an absolutely fascinating office in this small place of a 150000 inhabitants you know they have one of the greatest densities of museums I think in the world and then the other example is Paris. We have the the the huge fantastic great institution the news in us in the madame in the sort of poppy do who's always stayed in this on top and we do it's much too small they have a huge collection and here comes the from the still very tall brilliant building perfectly executed and of course with great means and they do shows with those 2 most famous Russian collections of Modern Art and they get hundreds of thousands of visitors. Yes that is a challenge but you know when you go to Paris you always check what is in the movie doing what is salted to be doing it's a fantastic makes I would say too though there's we've seen the rise of private museums extraordinary wealth converted to art and public assets that happen forever I don't think you can have a start date to that but there is a difference there's accountability but I would say maybe it's not as much fun either that there's a quality of the big public museum that may be the big miss that can't be done by one person and I'd like to argue also for the collective to do things together so you take away so it's hard to make decisions of a lot of people are in charge but it's also more exciting it's that sense of community coming together to do something together so when we think about our building projects that's kind of what it is it's like it takes a village it happens to be L.A. County of $10000000.00 people but there's this sense of the collective that I think is very exciting the diversity of it which a private museum as jewel like as it can be can't have in terms of that collective energy so you're going to you know it's a convening power and I think the audience feels that it's exciting we keep touching on only watching says and one thing I would just love to ask this is something that just being you know in this point this changing landscape is so shifting already and share when you come to. Us and explain it to you to yourselves you know what your number is it doing do you think that audiences now have fundamentally different expectations because they are able to talk to around hotfix seems to think that's great this is a very lively ecology we just heard from Michael that it's place where you can gather you can convene perhaps I think it's changed the way I would insist behave and I think this is probably the biggest change that museums and cultural institutions had to face over the past decade a decade that the audience is that different now there. Expectations are different they are global visitors they've seen everything they always have better examples they want to have the perfect infrastructure a museum should be at like a place to be they want to have to perfect coffee houses in restaurants they want to be entertained by exacting botch the information has to be very accessible also the information has to be very differentiated there is no one language that we address our audiences as it used to be and the times of the teachers stands in front and says this is it what it is this is what it is and I know and you better accepted but that takes us into a really interesting area I'd like to turn to next and that's interpretation and particularly we interpret saying labeling and how we deal with change the. Different social mores and I'm thinking there securely not only but perhaps we could just go straight for one of the most important subjects which is problematic pieces potentially problematic pieces trigger warnings that sort of thing you would like to to kind of venture into the you read it what have you changed if you have changed anything you do about that and more reactive societies and I think that's the exciting moment that Sabina's just mention that these changes have brought about a few times to diversification of experience. And we have to answer to that we have to come up with something new and that makes us explore our collections in a different way. That goes for what you offer when people come through the door what do you tell them about the objects and how do you make them engage in the how do you make these objects or the group of objects or the fact that you have under one roof so many cultures how do you make that meaningful How do you chart a path through one room or through the whole place that sounds like if anything that sounds like that's like a marketing opportunity you know you lot of marketing open of course it's always also marketing opportunity basically it's about how do you create a sense and meaning within a museum because these objects and capsule 8 whole life but how do you get that across you know what I'm hoping that's not what people are probably on your case about when they are annoyed about something reacting to some of this language people come through the door for you know if I sit on the information desk in the British Museum and people come up you know I can see the expectation in their eyes and they are there for something special you know sometimes you know exactly what I want to see if you want to go to the present to stone or to the I'm rather to the leaves but quite frequently they don't but they just know that they're in for something really special. To do that again and to have him come back to that but I think the single truth ideas perhaps a little bit tension a bit more of a problem or a challenge am I right I think I think that the label is one of the most problematic aspects of all of museums and I think it's going to be increasingly recognized as such for many many reasons so yes supposedly if you have a work that's made recently you can have an artist when it was made and maybe the medium but think about it later. A really problematic one there's the issue of languages do you expect an artist's name at the top are to your museum most things don't have artist names so it's already biased in that way how was the object acquired How did it end up at the museum that's a whole story in itself and who owns that object who owned it who will own it who speaks for that object and I think that's coming up again and again as we see our public and social media create awareness we had works by Seagal We recently exhibited that we're actually influenced by Native American cultures and there were questions raised with that appropriation was he stealing images that were actually not supposed to be in public sacred images or is that the way popular culture works so why did you do it that's a great example because culture and appropriation it's just such a bank subject I mean did you think I'm going to grab this and have a big debate about it or you should try to have the whole ring do you think where we're always open I mean with the 1st thing is who do we talk to how can we communicate will write letters will have meetings we had a show of the old culture and there was it was contested what we wrote on the wall text we've had to change while text sometimes admitting that there were maybe omissions that could be clearer we've had to stand firm because people were challenging us on facts that there was no reason to say anything other than we said but we've convened a town hall to have a discussion about the what the wall label or the tech should say so it's exciting and I predict that that is just going to be an increasing area of contested discussion over the coming decades of it do you recognise the context I mean there is no such thing as a perfect label you know not only the size of the net this but also the content and then also I think there's a difference. Between the permanent collections and the special exhibitions because with the special exhibitions you have a clear focus you have a topic and you know why you have those loans or why you have to those those objects in this context but for the permanent collection where we now realize that we there is no single view on that but many many many aspects and many ways to read it in many ways to to see correct mistakes in it so for the permanent collection it will be and it has become increasingly difficult I would say and for us for for I'm going to say centrist but for decades always our curators wrote the labels and now we're shifting more towards the people from the Education Department because they tend to use different language they are used to formulating easier sentences easier to understand and still convey the same information and things like this probably will change and you know the label that's fine and the bait is wonderful but it's not only taking place within the museum you know we have we have 4000000 objects and on the Internet we have 12000000 uses a year 30 percent of those who use a website go to see objects on the website so you know the whole experience is much more diversified than just talking you know going there and looking at a label reading it on that's the wonderful job which I think with digital you have so many more means to bring in other voices there because in a museum like the British Museum it's very much also about who is the master of the narrative the must be separate How do we bring in the knowledge the experience of communities whose objects museum how do we make them and culture others so I think with digital think of what you can do. With digital you can you know give visitors the opportunity to chop their own cause asking their own questions if you have the right up they can experience the collection in a totally new way they are not asked as that applies now going marbles. Well you know the the argument was. Full of questions and. Don't you agree. Because they are such a rich and historically such a layered phenomenon so you can tell a lot of stories about the Parthenon where it comes from how it came into being who did it who used it who forgot about it you know why did this temple become a church for as long as it had been a Greek temple and then it became a mosque who blew it up why was it blow up how did things end in the British Museum as Michael said that's these questions of where do things come from how did they travel through time and through space it's just that sounds quite sort of genteel You can't have a lot of people say well you could just foreground the argument the argument about where they should be and you know it sort of your job comes with an unspoken contractual right and you just get to be also that there's some of it so I so have changed just the way what you think about the rights and wrongs of the case but maybe in this argument about labeling and how we present dog when you cannot change anything about that and you think Well think about what visitors to the British Museum see the debate is out there it's right there in front of them when they come into the pit the room where you see the the yoga mobiles the Parthenon sculptures So the museum picks this up very actively and says well we have different views and I think that's what you have to do go to our skin in the Australian them out of the . Context of living so close to each other and social gets moving to and fro historically do you have anything like this saying to Wagner and about things that have ended up in the consist or them from different parts of your history well of course there was the case about the Jewish collections that had to be refuted after the Washington loss so we had 2 courses where we take every individual object and. And we always said any object that doesn't belong to the museum should not be in the museum we should give it back to who have it belongs but also we have we have other discussions as well not in the consist of actions museum but he now is the graphic museum the famous makes the Confederate at dress also known as the pin Nacho which really is a big big case and there has never been an official request to give it back to make sicko but it was closely connected to the political situation and so we said as long as we don't work on this we will always have to problems than what we did and it was obvious that it needed some conservation work so we set up a bi national project one Austrian one makes a can for everything and so every step we did the research the conservation work and also the chick with the this after conservation was finished and the object could travel was a decision based on a national project I think we were quite proud of this how we could move on forward may I just think there's a because it's you know these issues are so problematic cultural that your money they don't all have answers boundaries change nations change they are still around but it is frustrating and I know from my personal experience the frustration of those questions of ownership and all of that and the problematic which seems insoluble has driven me to be interested in the present you know the judge because if we if we can't have a temple we'll just make one so Chris burden's urban light that sits in the front of black. Is our temple or barber got a rest monumental bureau is our steel A or bike lives or is stone is our you know our skin I think there's a there's that sort of joy and thinking about the museum as a place and you all work with artists not just of showing the path but of commissioning work because part of the reason we're here is not just a. Show culture it's to make culture make it happen one subject I would like to talk about sponsorship we've touched on ethical considerations we've been discussing believing in who wins the power of narrative but if you really want up to the minute ethical rabble sponsorship is the place that often breaks out how do you deal with that I'm sure you are very rigorous in what you do for your sponsors but let's look at protests objections and get in the audience and perhaps the public critical more aware what you make of that. Museum is a place especially big museums like these museums of different speeds and different ways of going ahead it's not May all of one piece. And there are opportunities and possibilities to accommodate this as you common date you open up debate you let it happen and you invited in which is what the British Museum has done and you've done that before I think we did the city an exhibition on free thinking and there were some protests there against B.P. Is a sponsor and it's business but the process was allowed in the courtyard of the museum itself if I remember correctly yes but it's also inside the museum and you know as long as that protest respects the presence of visitors and does what a museum allows us what to do what a museum has to do is to say Be open to the public and have them encounter the works that's fine the museum with its offer. Transforms means into opportunities for visitors that's a job with a lot of due diligence obviously but when you're going into one of those big. Exhibitions we know that there is going to be pushback about some of the the content or indeed about the sponsorship I think this is actually this jacket to hit jeopardy person is jeopardy for your museum you know the museum wouldn't exist without sponsorship and as Michael said we are all in a way collections of collections because once a ship is also those people who collect and then donate or leave their collections to the public and that's at the heart of it and then you need it to support to do exhibitions to work with kids to reach out to communities all this is co-founded or perhaps even entirely funded through philanthropy so museum all of our museums cannot do without this are you comfortable about the role of sponsors Well yes I mean I fully agree we couldn't work we couldn't offer any any of our programs 60 patients whatever we do without without funding without sponsors and I think it's just important to have a. Sponsorship so you don't rely on one single sponsor Yeah I mean. From Pharaoh's forward any large wealthy patrons if you look closely you can there are a lot of issues but the good thing is maybe those resources were passing through to other causes it's of course it's always problematic but we live in this capitalist society that's part of the deal and I think the mean is that about diversifying those sponsors so it is a community of lots of people it's not one or one patron and I think that's remarkable about the big museums that we collect from all sources and what and the basis for this is is respect. I've never in all my professional life had a case of into feelings with contents of presentation because upstream you agree on what you want to do together and you settled the rules by which this is happening and that got you very good at that like most buzy I'm face controversy but we've become very good used in the old days you know in the United States Philip Morris would sponsor a show and you had to have cigarettes. I remember that but that's not so true anymore I think we've developed with time a way of working that is respectful in all directions what about the function of museums as agents of soft power let's just go. Through with him I mean we like to think he sees true I think museums sectors go quite good it telling a story about itself our governments are very keen to hit us but many places they all invest in. Thinking about what is coming on stream at some point soon the big exhibitions in China. Where you are Michael in charge of most government in the British Museum going to Tehran might be another example I know these are in already repressive places this is so I think I'll get to Michael 1st because he's going to be OK You know the exchange of cultural idea. Is so important all the time I think more so in times of stress and tension what's more important than understanding what's underneath our cultural identities our nations our questions our differences and it's hard to say anything embeds that as well as art and culture and so exchange is paramount always I think it really is important and your quick questions about soft as you can see and talk to go only. Well you know learn how to work in complicated circumstances that's what the museum does that reaches out globally and works in very different environments and. And make a difference let me give you one example we last year we opened show India in the world in Mumbai that we developed together with the C.S. M.B.A.'s museum in Mumbai fabulous place with great colleagues and after some years of co-operation we we asked them what would you like to do next and they said we want to do a show on India and the world. And what happened is that they brought together everything that was needed to cover Indian culture 5000 years including prehistory and the British Museum attitude was needed to create the global context that had never happened before in India and many people saw it was all over the Internet and it made a big difference and it allowed the museum to address questions of national identity in history which are not so easily debated now. Well I mean with with some some places we have had long term collaboration's like like they are on the run we have been you know over over the years and despite the politics we've also worked very well together with certain countries museum in Africa with China we are a little bit reserved I have to say because we had the feeling that we put in so much resource and so much time and so less comes comes back in every time a new person's new responsibilities in everything in which is felt for example our museum which is too small for that we just we just didn't want to don't want to see waste resources but we would use our resources in better in other places rather But you know I can't let you go with that question is always on my mind when I go around you it's situations where museums have such wonderful treasures and this is of course hypothetical before anyone brings in the place if you were going to take one of your items. Were to pay. Me and I work from their music. I don't know if you have you know. Oh you know I take. It you know how could I think I'd take a little stone which is big like this pebble carved around 8000 B.C. . Found in Palestine. And it shows for the 1st time ever in sculpture 2 people making love. Hard that it. Does several that they really really just started that's going. To be it's going to require hard for you to write because that would have you got that might indicate with that difficult to choose but I'd probably choose one of one of our every stitch it's from the baroque times where we have one figure it's a Phoenix it's a bird and it's still full of it's so vital and so lively and it's made of this organic material it's just unique this nothing else in the world Michael what's going on I'd like to steal Michael eyes or $340.00 time bolder and take it home and . That would be a nice place now I don't it's impossible I would I would like to take some things from there museums as well I think we all have that covered this quality about the museums other museums we see too we have to take an answer just as soon as I get a wall big enough to hang it on. Well that brings us to the end of this special freethinking freeze debate many thanks to all my guests have been hard hard freak Fisher and my garden and also to everyone here they were an institution don't forget that one of our discussions are available to download as art and ideas podcast for now that's for me good bye. To 50. 3 thinking was presented by and Macao void the producer was talk while MacLeod had just a quick reminder that some are and I want to hear a concert recorded earlier this week at St George's Bristol the 12 ensemble with the viola player Maxime reason off the program includes Tansey Davies work residuum and Benjamin Britten is like criminal That's at half past 7. Good evening and welcome to after dark restaurant Still to come a celebration of 10 years of the camera Klang concert series with a special mix tape and tomorrow nights in music planet as a road trip Paraguayan. This week in the essay The astronomer and science writer Dr Stuart Clark is exploring the music of the sphere is the idea that the planets creates a divine sound as they move through the cosmos but after almost 2000 years the theory was starting to fall apart. In the middle of the 15th century Europe was waking from its slumber as a new spirit of creativity spread through the people. It began in Italy perhaps as the result of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks This caused an influx of migrant scholars who brought with them manuscripts and knowledge that had been hidden away from Millennium one of these ideas was the music of the spheres originally proposed by Python in the 6th century B.C. This was a grand organizing principle a forerunner if you like to the laws of physics. He proposed that the distances of the planets were determined by the same mathematical ratios that gave consonant musical intervals the 6th century A.D. Philosopher boy thius had reason this cosmic music was inaudible to humans yet resonated with nature to give the seasons those who read these ideas were intrigued but also skeptical for the Renascence was a changing world. It was starting to place higher value on observational and experimental proof than the classical realm from which to originated and this newfound rigor was driving both music and astronomy into crisis. His manuscript had been a summation of ancient music theory when it found its way to the printing press in 1491 almost 900 years after being written it was like a reboot suddenly music theorists were back in the 6th century B.C. With Python accuracy discovered that the perfect 4th the perfect 5th and the octave were produced by dividing a string according to simple fractions to Python a chorus these were the only truly consonant musical intervals and he dismissed all others as dissonance by the Renascence a clear rift had opened between the composers and the theoreticians because the makers of music had followed their ears and were freely using the supposedly dissonant intervals of thirds and sixes to great consonant effect there was another problem to tuning. To find the notes of a scale by stacking perfect fifths on top of one another to produce a sequence of 12 notes each separated by a semitone this is the crime at excuse and it's a glorious canvas of sounds from which to build music. Western diatonic harmony from classical to pop jazz to rock is still based on this scale with the major and minor keys being subsets of these 12 notes but also shown that the octave was produced by precisely Harding a strings length and he constructing a scale out of fifths he could never produce a perfect octave He landed about a quarter tone off giving a terrible sounding dissonance this was called the PI Thackeray and comma for anyone who actually played a musical instrument it was a nightmare it was impossible to play in different keys because the Python kept cropping up the railing the melody Fortunately the book and its championing of Python Korean ideas wasn't the only one that survived the dark ages. In 1564 elements of harmony by the 4th century B.C. Philosopher our stocks in US was translated into Latin for the 1st time our stocks Innes argued that the ear should be the final arbiter of musical tuning not some abstract system that made sense theoretically they're not in practice he discussed the possibility of dividing the octave into 12 equal steps. One of its greatest advocates was Galilei or a nascent lutenist and composer who was set on reforming music and taking it back to its classical roots. He rejected the rich harmonies of cliff and he that had appeared in the middle ages and as part of the frontline Camerata Arts Movement he helped originate the musical style of Monody which attempted to restore single melodic lines as they believed dominated classical Greek music but he wasn't dogmatic about his adherence to classical theory he rejected the idea that mathematical ratios with the essence of music instead he said they related to the materials the strings and pipes that produced music by breaking this link he could then champion the ideas of our stocks and us and advocate for the practical tuning system that we take for granted today equal temperament. Galilei demonstrated how versatile the tuning was by composing lute music that highlighted its ability to change keys. And it wasn't any music that he was open to reforming throughout history music had been linked to astronomy by the music of the spheres if you change music theory you changed astronomy as well according to classical thinking the earth was stationary at the center of everything with the celestial objects moving uniformly in orbit around us but observations of the night sky suggested that was wrong no planet moves uniformly they slow down they speed up they double back on themselves something wasn't right the solution had been proposed in the classical world but rather like the way the answer to the PI Thackery in tuning problem had been lost for more than a 1000 years so 2 had this different astronomy. It was simply that the sun was the center of everything not the earth the Greek philosopher for the last had proposed this arrangement in the 5th century B.C. But the idea didn't catch on it languished until it was reborn in $1543.00 in Poland here astronomer mathematician Nicholas Copernicus pointed out that if Earth were in orbit around the sun when we overtake another planet it would appear to backtrack briefly in the sky these planetary loop de loops are nothing but an optical illusion that happens because of changes in perspective Copernicus wrote this idea in his book called on the revolutions of the celestial spheres and Legend has it that he was handed the 1st copy on his deathbed It's often said that he feared retribution from the church for removing the earth from the center of creation but I think it much more likely that his reticence to go public was because he couldn't prove his ideas mathematically whatever his reason for the delay posthumous copies of the book found their way across Europe and in 5066 Italian choirmaster just Cephas Alino bought signed and dated a copy of the 1st edition so Lena's student who's been chained so get a lay and it seems highly likely that this is how he learnt of the new astronomy and this is of prime historical importance because Galileo's son was Galileo who would go on to fight his famous battle with the Catholic Church over the sun being the center of the universe but for Vincenza Galilei the new astronomy meant a new way to interpret the music of the spheres in his 1580 dialogue on ancient and modern music he compares the notes in an octave to the planets in the night sky. And while he doesn't specifically mention Copernicus he implicitly uses the idea of a sun centered cosmos he wrote like the many lines drawn from the center of a circle to the circumference which all gaze back at the center every musical interval in the octave sees itself as if in a mirror like the planets do in the sun here he seems to be drawing an analogy between the way the various notes in a scale all pull back to the root note of the key and the way the sun pulls the planets including Earth into orbits but Galilei stopped short of suggesting which actual notes apply in his planetary arrangement so it's hard to know whether he meant the music of the spheres literally or metaphorically. But one thing is clear by they were nice aunts people were looking at old ideas more critically Yet even as the cracks began to appear the idea of music as the organizing principle of nature remains far too deeply rooted to be simply abandoned. Music based on PI Fabrice's theory of the music of the spheres and in Dr Stuart Clark's 4th essay The original music was composed and performed by Carolyn Eden and the producer was Richard Halling him tomorrow in his final essay Stuart will be arguing that music is still vital in our understanding of the universe. Welcome to after dark here on B.B.C. Radio 3 our late zone for stimulating conversation and adventurous music I'm Chris Barrow tomorrow night we celebrate 20 years of the foil young poets of the Year award the essay concludes as the music of the spheres is abandoned and we're off on a road trip to Paragon. Don't forget tomorrow evening's Radio 3 in concert the program includes Tansey Davies work residuum and Benjamin Britain's lycra May That's at past 7. But now the time is 11 o'clock so that's how things over to Verity sharp Hello and welcome to Late junction. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were. Were.