Victoria Lamentations, Stephen Johnson

[jean]

Just spotted this:

Victoria: Lamentations

...The Lamentations by Victoria offer contemporary 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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hyrfw

(Who writes this stuff?)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There was a similar programme last night about Haydn's Military Symphony. It was excellent - a quarter-hour study of the cultural environment in which Haydn wrote, drawing attention to the vogue for the "horrific" in London at the time, and how the "Classical" ideals of restraint, balance etc that we hear today was not at all what Haydn's audiences experienced. SJ at his best ...

... but ...

... it would have made an excellent first part of a Discovering Music devoted thereafter to an analysis of the work.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04hympg

[jean]

There's a whole week of them.

[doversoul1]

(Who writes this stuff?)

What makes you say this? I don’t mean ‘what do you mean?’ but seriously, am I right in assuming that you find this description rather, well, odd? If that is the case, I have been asking the same qestion about the 'stuff' on the R3 website:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?11260-Something-very-odd-about-R3-website

I’ve just listened to yesterday’s programme and this is the description on the website:

Haydn's famous Symphony No.100, his "Military Symphony", stands as model of classical elegance. Its famous bugle and percussion effects feel, by contemporary 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.".

This reads like a sample of cliché. The critic's remark was indeed quoted by SJ but it seems to me that this description is almost entirely irrelevant to what he said in the programme.

Who writes this stuff indeed? And more to the point, what for?

[jean]

...but seriously, am I right in assuming that you find this description rather, well, odd?

I do indeed, and I recollect your comments elsewhere but I couldn't remember which thread they were on.

Let's just see if SJ has anything to say about the ageless music of the spheres.

[DracoM]

It reads like a Reader's Digest promo. That gushingly OTT stuff is what has incrementally diminished and demeaned R3 for the last decade. I just hope that Stephen Johnson / his producer had nothing to do with the penning of it.

[jean]

Let's just see if SJ has anything to say about the ageless music of the spheres.

He didn't, of course.

The stated aim of these talks is to put the music discussed in the social context of its time; what's missing is any detailed discussion of the music itself. SJ did contrast the passionate approach of the Spanish (Victoria himself, St Teresa of Avila) with the cool detachment of the Romans (Palestrina, St Philip Neri) but if you know the music you knew that already - and if you don't, how will you get a handle on it without so much as a single note being played?

[kernelbogey]

Well, regardless of the promotional texts, last night's broadcast, which I fell across by chance, was an excellent example of its form - an essay. There was much in it that I didn't know, and it put Victoria's music in context for me informatively. SJ is an excellent broadcaster.

One thing, for me, to be celebrated, is that this is close to the much missed interval talks.

There's much about the BBC's website that one would wish changed.

I shall go back on iPlayer to Monday's essay.

[Sir Velo]

Wouldn't the title of the thread make mores sense if a colon were to replace the comma?

[kernelbogey]

Wouldn't the title of the thread make mores sense if a colon were to replace the comma?

Depends on your mores.

[jean]

Wouldn't the title of the thread make mores sense if a colon were to replace the comma?

Given that there was no Victoria in the programme, perhaps so. But I didn't know that at the time.

[french frank]

and if you don't, how will you get a handle on it without so much as a single note being played?

Two of the (non-music) speech programmes seem to have been taken over by general discussion of music subjects - The Essay and Petroc's Sunday Feature series (which links up with all the Proms concerts suggesting 'global' interest in Western classical music). Again, though, not a close look at repertoire.

[DracoM]

The entire way through SJ's 'Essay' on the Lamentations, you ready yourself for the musical illustrations. None come.
Why?
Seemed extraordinarily counter-intuitive that he quotes from other written sources, yet the central subject of the essay - the music - and examples from it, whose various qualities he keeps referring to, do not appear.

Totally weird.

[doversoul1]

The entire way through SJ's 'Essay' on the Lamentations, you ready yourself for the musical illustrations. None come.
Why?
Seemed extraordinarily counter-intuitive that he quotes from other written sources, yet the central subject of the essay - the music - and examples from it, whose various qualities he keeps referring to, do not appear.

Totally weird.

Yes, it was most weird. I can’t help suspecting that SJ actually wrote and even recorded this (all five programmes) with musical illustration in mind / planned. You could almost hear in his voice where he was leading the talk up to the music. And as jean says, without music, the programmes make little sense to those who are not thoroughly familiar with the works, which seems to me a complete waste of what could have been a very valuable series.

Is this the BBC’s /Radio 3’s way of shutting us up by saying that ‘We do have programmes that you can’t hear on CFM’?

And as who-writes-the-stuff question, C B-H ‘shared’ the text with the website when she presented the Green Myths Prom. I wonder what this tells. On one Saturday Lunchtime Concert, David Cornett did the same but that was not too surprising, since he continued from reading the news.

Besides, I think such lengthy descriptions as these for 15-minte speech programmes are absurd when we get three lines for most Early Music Show.

Who writes the stuff indeed? Or more to the point, who plans it?

[DracoM]

It's planned??????????????