The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[Master Jacques]

Yes indeed # Music begins and ends with the human voice . Some recent highlights on R3 - Tomasso singing Cavaradossi, Goerne singing An Die Mond, Callas. Yes some singers develop an “excessive” vibrato with age - but I don’t or didn’t see many turning down tickets for a Callas opera performance . They are often singers who’ve given everything for art - one that often involves very slender women making themselves heard over a 100 piece orchestra like at Jenufa last night . They deserve our thanks not scorn.

Bravo! I raise a Gromit-like eyebrow when people are so deafened by a bit of vibrato, that they can't hear the supreme artistry which often lies underneath.

In addition to which, we should take issue with any implication that somehow vibrato-heavy singing is a recent phenomenon, for men or women no longer in their early twenties, having to bawl over the ultra-loud modern orchestra. You only have to listen to recordings from the early years of the 20th century to disprove that theory; and singers in eighteenth-century London weren't immune from loosening vocal chords either. It's human, happens to all of us, and deserves better than easy mockery.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Unless you are indulging in post-modern irony (and who knows?) that's your problem; though you would be better advised to keep it to yourself. For Radio 3 needs no encouragement to reduce the amount of what you call 'big, vibrato-heavy voices' to very nearly zero as it is. In this, it's as usual following Classic FM, another populist station hamstrung by listener prejudice against good singers and singing (aka 'warbling').

All we get these days in R3 playlist programmes is the odd bit of Pavarotti doing a Neapolitan job, or Baker doing a Sea Song. We've moved a long way downwards and backwards, from the point where the cultivated human voice was considered the height of Western civilisation. I despair.

Yes indeed # Music begins and ends with the human voice . Some recent highlights on R3 - Tomasso singing Cavaradossi, Goerne singing An Die Mond, Callas. Yes some singers develop an “excessive” vibrato with age - but I don’t or didn’t see many turning down tickets for a Callas opera performance . They are often singers who’ve given everything for art - one that often involves very slender women making themselves heard over a 100 piece orchestra like at Jenufa last night . They deserve our thanks not scorn.

[Serial_Apologist]

Unless you are indulging in post-modern irony (and who knows?) that's your problem; though you would be better advised to keep it to yourself. For Radio 3 needs no encouragement to reduce the amount of what you call 'big, vibrato-heavy voices' to very nearly zero as it is. In this, it's as usual following Classic FM, another populist station hamstrung by listener prejudice against good singers and singing (aka 'warbling').

All we get these days in R3 playlist programmes is the odd bit of Pavarotti doing a Neapolitan job, or Baker doing a Sea Song. We've moved a long way downwards and backwards, from the point where the cultivated human voice was considered the height of Western civilisation. I despair.

Nevertheless there has been quite a bit of criticism of what I have come to find to be "excessive" vibrato in some (mainly female) opera, choral and Lied singers - and not just on this forum. Just because some element within the broad span of an under-represented music is open to criticism shouldn't imply betrayal on the part of those making it, any more than the broad "line" against supporting Ukraine that has been demonstrated by much of the Left means that my disagreement, as a stronger-than-ever-by-the-day advocate of socialist solutions to the world's problems, should be silenced or asked to mute myself.

[Master Jacques]

Yes, can we please make that a 24-hr ban? I have zero tolerance for those big, vibrato-heavy voices and invariably have to switch off at the first hint of lied or aria. All you choral singers can stay, though.

Unless you are indulging in post-modern irony (and who knows?) that's your problem; though you would be better advised to keep it to yourself. For Radio 3 needs no encouragement to reduce the amount of what you call 'big, vibrato-heavy voices' to very nearly zero as it is. In this, it's as usual following Classic FM, another populist station hamstrung by listener prejudice against good singers and singing (aka 'warbling').

All we get these days in R3 playlist programmes is the odd bit of Pavarotti doing a Neapolitan job, or Baker doing a Sea Song. We've moved a long way downwards and backwards, from the point where the cultivated human voice was considered the height of Western civilisation. I despair.

[smittims]

Oh dear . This is starting to sound like the letters John Drummond received when he was Controller , Radio 3.:

'What Radio 3 needs is a 90-minute organ recitel every day'.

'Please ban all chamber music'.

etc.

[esmondo]

there should be a prohibition on warbling

Yes, can we please make that a 24-hr ban? I have zero tolerance for those big, vibrato-heavy voices and invariably have to switch off at the first hint of lied or aria. All you choral singers can stay, though.

[LMcD]

I could never listen to Jazz in the morning. It would be like having spicy food and whisky for breakfast. I always think of Jazz as an evening thing.

I suspect it's part of a Cunning Plan whereby every Radio 3 programme is required to trail as many other programmes as possible in as many different ways as possible.

[smittims]

I could never listen to Jazz in the morning. It would be like having spicy food and whisky for breakfast. I always think of Jazz as an evening thing.

[Sir Velo]

Is there a ban on harpsichord music before 9am? Whenever there is keyboard (not organ) music on Bach Before Seven, it seems to be piano, usually Angela Hewitt or Glenn Gould if someone is feeling nostalgic.
I suspect it is just lazy programming. There are a lot of good young French harpsichord players about - not so many from UK, at least as far as I have heard on the radio.

Not just French of course! Francesco Corti (Italian) is top dollar as is Andreas Staier. For my money, the harpsichord is one of the few instruments I want to hear before 9am, particularly in a Scarlatti sonata. I certainly think there should be a prohibition on warbling at that hour. Like alcohol, it should be consigned to after lunch and preferably the evening.

[Beresford]

Is there a ban on harpsichord music before 9am? Whenever there is keyboard (not organ) music on Bach Before Seven, it seems to be piano, usually Angela Hewitt or Glenn Gould if someone is feeling nostalgic.
I suspect it is just lazy programming. There are a lot of good young French harpsichord players about - not so many from UK, at least as far as I have heard on the radio.

[LMcD]

I tried Saturday Breakfast for an hour or so and drifted in and out of sleep. The music selection was not bad - Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco was new to me - but I found E C's voice sometimes perilously close to her predecessor's nursery-teacher condescension.

I've just bought a 6-CD set by Concerto Köln, and the first disc features music by Dall'Abaco, of whom I hadn't heard until a couple of days ago.

[kernelbogey]

I tried Saturday Breakfast for an hour or so and drifted in and out of sleep. The music selection was not bad - Evaristo Felice Dall'Abaco was new to me - but I found E C's voice sometimes perilously close to her predecessor's nursery-teacher condescension.

[vinteuil]

Some languages have no separate words for blue and green. Somehow in general conversation people got by.

... and in Ancient Greek no word for blue at all.

.

[french frank]

But that was in the days when what today is called classical music was just 'music', as in Grove's Dictionary of Music, the Oxford Companion to Music, The Royal College of Music, the Observer's Book of Music

In linguistics it's called colexification. 'Malo I would rather be, Malo in an apple tree, Malo than a naughty boy, Malo in diversity.' Some languages have no separate words for blue and green. Somehow in general conversation people got by.

[smittims]

I was brought up to understand that the 'classical era' was 1750-1828 (i.e. between the baroque and the romantic). But that was in the days when what today is called classical music was just 'music', as in Grove's Dictionary of Music, the Oxford Companion to Music, The Royal College of Music, the Observer's Book of Music (five shillings: I learnt a lot from that) . None of these concerned themselves with Jazz, folk, musicals, barbershop harmony,etc. In the same way British postage stamps were the only ones without the named of the country. It was the other musics that had to be named .

A long time ago I read that several African languages have no word for 'music'. It is so much an integrated part of life that it doesn't need to be separately-described. i think there's a lesson for us there, somehow.