… or in this case the completely wrong music. To explain:

I was tired last night, and so spent the evening gawping at the TV. There wasn’t much on, but I did take a look on BBC4 at “Rome: A History of the Eternal City”. (Another repeat from many years ago). It was, as the name suggests, a history of Rome and inevitably the Vatican state and the Roman Catholic Church featured quite strongly. It was pretty standard TV history fare.

But just as the presenter was discussing St. Peter’s Basilica I heard the faint strains of familiar music in the background. After a few moments I identified it as part of Scheherazade, a symphonic suite written by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888, and one that I took quite a shine to when I was a boy. It’s based on the medieval story, ‘The 1001 Nights’ (or The Arabian Nights), in which the heroine – Scheherazade – tells her new husband stories to keep him interested in her, so he doesn’t have her executed the following morning. (The husband in question was Shahryar, a fictional Persian king whose 1st wife had been unfaithful to him and he had decided to execute each of his subsequent brides after their wedding night so they didn’t get the chance to do the same).

So why is this the wrong music? Well firstly, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was a member of the Russian Orthodox church, and relations between the Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church have often not been particularly, err, ‘Christian’ in nature. Secondly, the music is far from Italian or even European, having a very middle eastern flavour, and thirdly, medieval Persia was an Islamic state, and so Shahryar and Scheherazade would both have been Muslims anyway.

OK, I’m being a bit nerdy here, but it does matter – music has always reflected its historical setting and getting it right can wonderfully enhance the experience. It’s a shame they get it wrong so often. For example, I recall the Kate Blanchett film, ‘Elizabeth’, concludes with Mozart’s Requiem, written 188 years after her death! I’m sure there must be some Italian or European music that would have been more appropriate!