The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[oddoneout]

I had all sorts of music going on when I was in Labour

Didn't realise Miss B-H was an MP as well...
Her article needs a thread to itself I suspect.

[french frank]

Typos in previous, caused by righteous indignation, now corrected - but still in evidence in cloughie's quote. Apologies for making inadvertent errors

[french frank]

Didn't realise Miss B-H was an MP as well...
Her article needs a thread to itself I suspect.

It may have done at the time.

[ahinton]

If anything should set anyone against Ms B-H's 'inclusive style' : http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...s-9387557.html

I'd guess this was a deliberately well-timed article to coincide with good listening figures for Breakfast ('Figures released this week, showed that the breakfast show has added 130,000 new listeners since the arrival of Ms Burton-Hill'). Garbage. Nothing has been said here about the most recent quarter's figures released last week. Breakfast had one of its worst figures ever, so clearly Ms B-H has not been getting her full share of the broadcasts. Presumably.

What grates is the air she exudes in articles like this that she is some sort of expert gently nurturing timid new listeners so that they can share her passion for classical music. Coming from someone who twice in the same programme got the name of one of the 20th c.' most revered pianists and, yes, don't forget, confused Arthur Butterworth,'killed in the First World War' before playing a piece by George Butterworth, again, twice …

If that constitutes an 'attack' , then she should think twice about attacking the 'gatekeepers of some mystical classical high culture' and publicly creating straw men of these gatekeepers wanting nothing to change and calling for a Breakfast programme with 'a 45-minute piece followed by a long exegesis about it'. That is an abuse of her privileged position in having a platform for her personal views and promoting herself.

I couldn't agree more with all that you say here.

"Classical music", we are constantly being told, has an "image problem"? If so, how has it acquired it? As its not inherent in the music itself, it has gained it at the hands of agenda driven people who have sought to foist such an image on it in order to serve their own cynical ends. The CB-H approach to presentation (and not only hers, of course, as we know here) seems to me to be a direct consequence of all these accusations about "image problem", "élitism" and the rest. Having been raised in a music-free zone and discovering music for myself when approaching the age of 12, I can honestly say that my love of and need for music arose quite simply and solely as a consequence of chancing upon it at that time and, in the years that followed, I was never made to feel that it was for a select group of people only because the music itself never sounded as though it was or could be any such thing. Who are these alleged "gatekeepers of some mystical classical high culture" in any case? She doesn't identify them, of course - nor does she try to explain how they maintain their alleged positions.

Of course people should be encouraged to listen to music with which they might otherwise be entirely unfamiliar and, to the extent that CB-H believes that and favours a climate of unfettered "inclusivity", I'm with her all the way; the problem is that the kinds of cheap-as-chips frothy inconsequentialities the she and her kind provide, along with the equally inconsequential and irrelevant listener tweets/texts/emails/calls that seem to have to go with that territory, are far more likely either to discourage bona fide seekers after fresh musical experiences or (worse still) convey the impression that this sort of thing is a vital constituent of such experiences or (worse still again) both. "There should be no barriers to classical music...I don't think you have to have credentials just to hear it and feel it and respond to it...what you need is ears and heart and soul", she declares, breathelessly, no doubt, as though those listeneing to her or reading what she's reported as having said on the subject could never have worked that out for themselves.

What price "inclusivity" in any case when gaffes of the Michelangeli and Butterworth kind appear to be presented as though an acceptable part of it?

As to the nonsense about "people...rushing around and getting the kids to school" not being "the moment to have a 45-minute piece followed by a long exegesis about it", has it not occured to CB-H not only that many R3 listeners do not fall into such an age group and that not all who do have children in any case but also that parents who fail to get their kids to school before the latter part of Breakfast are doing those kids a disservice by curtailing an hour or two of their daily education?

The moment anyone says "I'm passionate about..." these days my ears glaze over; that said, what gives her (or anyone else) the divine right to "let people know they don't have to come with a music degree to listen to Radio 3" when there's no evidence that anyone ever suggested such an absurd idea?

Readers are assured that "(her) chatty style has won a new audience yet infuriated classical music purists"; now there's a half-truth if ever I encountered one! It infuriates me, too and doubtless many others of similar mind, not just "classical music purists", whatever and whoever they might be.

At least the "when I was in Labour" bit (note the capitalisation), though doubtless a journo typo, at least provides some relief in that most people who listen to her inane chatter on air would probably not have guessed her to be a Corbyn supporter (can I say that with impunity, FF, or will you get the red pen out?).

She's apparently also a novelist; not having read her literary works, I cannot help but wonder if they are likewise plagued with inaccuracies and noisy empty-headedness?

Whilst the notion that a woman's proper rôle in life is to stay at home and raise the children has mercifully long since been duly discredited, I might be prepared to consider making an exception for this particular example...

[antongould]

She's off your Christmas card list then ff?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If anything should set anyone against Ms B-H's 'inclusive style' : http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...s-9387557.html

In my teens, I would look forward to Alan Keith's Your 100 Best Tunes on a Sunday Evening. It was my favourite programme of the week. But I did listen to Radio 3 (then in William Glock's more challenging times) at every available opportunity. Had it been wall-to-wall Alan Keith, I would have become bored and would have learnt very little. Does this sound familiar?

If that constitutes an 'attack' , then she should think twice about attacking the 'gatekeepers of some mystical classical high culture' and publicly creating straw men of these gatekeepers wanting nothing to change and calling for a Breakfast programme with 'a 45-minute piece followed by a long exegesis about it'. That is an abuse of her privileged position in having a platform for her personal views and promoting herself.

It's becoming increasingly evident that it's "all about her" and the arguments lack any real substance. If you are losing an argument, you have a choice - admit it, smile and move on; or become nasty and insult your opponent, as often happens in politics.

In this case, it's "snobs" and "elitists".

The moment anyone says "I'm passionate about..." these days my ears glaze over; that said, what gives her (or anyone else) the divine right to "let people know they don't have to come with a music degree to listen to Radio 3" when there's no evidence that anyone ever suggested such an absurd idea?

Indeed. I listened to Radio 3 (or its predecessors) with relish before I even contemplated a music degree, against a 60s background of popular music that was sweeping the world.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Ah, the playlists are not just 'curated' but 'curated from the heart'

A very pleasing idiom that I'm sure we'll all now adopt

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Ah, the playlists are not just 'curated' but 'curated from the heart'

Perhaps they should be curated from the heart and published in the Radio Times. Then we'd know when to tune in.

[Bryn]

Ah, the playlists are not just 'curated' but 'curated from the heart'

A very pleasing idiom that I'm sure we'll all now adopt

A bit like this forum then.

[Nick Armstrong]

Ah, the playlists are not just 'curated' but 'curated from the heart'

Also plays, apparently. At the weekend, one read (and avoided) this:

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

Drama on 3, Curated by Mark Ravenhill

Episode 1 of 3

by Caryl Churchill.

First performed in 1976, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire focuses on the millennial movements that erupted during the English civil war in the 1640s. At the heart of the play is an edited dramatisation of The Putney Debates of 1647. The radical Levellers argue for liberty and universal suffrage while the military establishment stands for security and property as the basis for electoral eligibility.

This production of Light Shining in Buckinghamshire was directed by Mark Ravenhill, and was originally part of a season of dramas curated by Mark for Drama on 3.

Historical adviser to the production: Jacob Field.

As the young folk still say: LOL

[Stanfordian]

S11

She got it wrong I want 55 minute pieces but I'll accept a brief exegesis. Actually C B-H makes KD sound good!

Hiya Cloughie,

You mean KD with the great legs. If anyone disputed that K 'Great Legs' D was not an actress then watch her on Strictly Come Dancing.

[Richard Tarleton]

CB-H's article demonstrates all too plainly that she doesn't have a clue who the existing (previous, ex-) audience for Radio 3 are (were) - the stuff about not having to have a music degree to listen to R3 is a straw man of a particularly nasty sort. ff knows what I'm talking about here. Looking no further than this forum, the proportion of regular forumites with music degrees is probably rather small.

There is not a snowball in hell's chance of my returning to Breakfast - she has lost me, an R3 listener of nearly 50 years standing and amateur music lover , as she has lost many others. I now listen exclusively to Today before 0900.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Perhaps they should be curated from the heart and published in the Radio Times. Then we'd know when to tune in.

EA, as you should know by now, this is NOT the place for sensible, customer-focused suggestions that might actually increase R3's audience

[Padraig]

She's off your Christmas card list then ff?

I would say so, anton, and I can almost hear the deletions from other adjoining lists being clicked.

Is yours a Santa or an angel?

[ahinton]

You mean KD with the great legs. If anyone disputed that K 'Great Legs' D was not an actress then watch her on Strictly Come Dancing.

I have no idea what KD's legs are like (but presume that she possesses the usual tally of two thereof), nor would I pronounce upon her prowess or otherwise as a actor but, since her legs are not obviously visible on R3 when she's presenting and she was presumably not contracted to present programmes on that channel on the grounds of the quality either of said limbs or her acting ability, it all sounds rather like smoke and mirrors to me; to cloughie's remark that "CB-H makes KD sound good" I can only respond that this is not so because CB-H sounds like CB-H and KD like KD without a scrap of help (or hindrance) one from t'other.