‘THE Pursuit of Happiness’ is the ninth episode of Sir Kenneth Clark‘s landmark 1969 BBC documentary series Civilisation. You can read my fuller introduction to this extraordinary accomplishment – which involved an 80,00-mile journey, visiting 13 countries and 17 locations and resulted in 200,000 feet of film – and to Part 1 of the series here. Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here, Part 6 is here, Part 7 here and Part 8 here. Huw Weldon, then director of BBC Television, said of the series: ‘I believe it’s the first magnum opus attempted and realised in terms of TV. It is truly a great series, a major work’. Indeed it is.
The scene is set for this episode by Handel’s Concerti grossi, Op 3, a wonderful opening to Clark’s exploration of the art, music, and architecture of the 18th century and of yet another (upbeat) change of cultural mood and two shining achievements, one in music and one in architecture. He contrasts the stately grandeur of France with the inventive, enchanting emergence of what is known as the Rococo style. Music though was the more important. From Bach to Mozart it expressed, Clark opines, the deepest feelings and thoughts of the time. In both Bach’s music and Balthasar Neumann’s architecture he sees expressions of reason and sublime joy, that link to the era’s philosophical shift towards individual fulfilment and the American founders’ ideals of liberty, equality, natural rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness), limited government, constitutionalism, and republicanism.
How tragic that these long-lasting values of individual freedom, self-governance through consent, and necessary checks and balances to protect against tyranny have, this century, been so forgotten and abused by the corrupt and ill-educated zealots we have ruling us.
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