The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[Serial_Apologist]

By no means!

Identification of certain "iconic" works and musical excerpts divorced from their original meanings with "what people want to listen to" serves to reinforce a false notion of culture as a mere consumable, as opposed to lived experience preserved to benefit future generations.

[LMcD]

Identification of certain "iconic" works and musical excerpts divorced from their original meanings with "what people want to listen to" serves to reinforce a false notion of culture as a mere consumable, as opposed to lived experience preserved to benefit future generations.

This morning's Breakfast 'show' (Petroc's description, not mine) included 'the conclusion of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht'. According to my calculations, we joined this piece at approximately 5.08 a.m.
Those who get irritated - or worse - with this programme might try approaching it as a sort of Musical Dim Sum - a magazine programme that features musical items. Where else would a news story from the Isle of Man prove the perfect introduction to Beethoven's Opus 129?

[french frank]

This morning's Breakfast 'show' (Petroc's description, not mine) included 'the conclusion of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht'. According to my calculations, we joined this piece at approximately 5.08 a.m.
Those who get irritated - or worse - with this programme might try approaching it as a sort of Musical Dim Sum - a magazine programme that features musical items. Where else would a news story from the Isle of Man prove the perfect introduction to Beethoven's Opus 129?

I'll leave it to others to make a joke about Dim Sum

[mopsus]

This morning's Breakfast 'show' (Petroc's description, not mine) included 'the conclusion of Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht'. According to my calculations, we joined this piece at approximately 5.08 a.m.

I suppose they did at least manage a token piece of Second Viennese School. I dimly recall hearing a mature Webern composition a few years ago on Breakfast - no need to worry about over-lengthy pieces with his music.

[smittims]

I find it very frustrating and even, at times, disturbing, to hear only part of a work when I was expecting the whole piece. It's not what Radio3 should be about . I know that William Haley's dictum 'no cuts, no fixed points' applied to the Third Programme, but it's still a lapse in standards.

[Old Grumpy]

5.08am...

Breakfast doesn't start until 0630h, does it?

[Serial_Apologist]

I find it very frustrating and even, at times, disturbing, to hear only part of a work when I was expecting the whole piece. It's not what Radio3 should be about . I know that William Haley's dictum 'no cuts, no fixed points' applied to the Third Programme, but it's still a lapse in standards.

Single movements are bad enough unless the reason for omitting the rest of a work is implicit or explained. Fade-outs are far worse, and I am hearing them on R3 more and more recently, or the announcer talking over - I would rather not have begun listening at all had I known that the end would be cut short, so it must be far worse for anyone for whom the music is new.

[french frank]

I would rather not have begun listening at all had I known that the end would be cut short, so it must be far worse for anyone for whom the music is new.

If they're also new to R3 it may be what they expect - slow honeyed tones introducing the piece once it's already started. Ditto when it's ending. But how does one create a new audience for concert-going and whole symphonies, concertos, chamber works? Go once and then complain about the audience glaring when I'm checking my notifications on my phone or whispering to my friend.

[LMcD]

5.08am...

Breakfast doesn't start until 0630h, does it?

I was merely suggesting that, at this time of year, the point at which we joined the 'Transfigured Night', which was quite near the end, would, have been round about 5 a.m. Had it been broadcast in June or July, starting at the same point, it would have been a few hours earlier (assuming, of course, that one was in in the Northern hemisphere on each occasion).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I find it very frustrating and even, at times, disturbing, to hear only part of a work when I was expecting the whole piece. It's not what Radio3 should be about . I know that William Haley's dictum 'no cuts, no fixed points' applied to the Third Programme, but it's still a lapse in standards.

It started when Radio 3 started mimicking Classic FM. The commercial station had a kind of excuse, because they needed to interrupt the music with adverts. But instead of showing the world how much better the BBC could do, they followed, rather than leading, as they have done so often in recent years.

[french frank]

It started when Radio 3 started mimicking Classic FM. The commercial station had a kind of excuse, because they needed to interrupt the music with adverts. But instead of showing the world how much better the BBC could do, they followed, rather than leading, as they have done so often in recent years.

It's competing forces, isn't it? Does Radio 3 persuade/coax/train/educate listeners up to its (putative) level of cultural excellence? or does it, itself, get pulled down by the forces of popularism/ratings, bean counters to the level of, at best, 'lowest common denominator'? You'd need to go back more than 30 years to find R3 even attempting the first route, with historically no encouragement from the BBC chiefs.

[LMcD]

It started when Radio 3 started mimicking Classic FM. The commercial station had a kind of excuse, because they needed to interrupt the music with adverts. But instead of showing the world how much better the BBC could do, they followed, rather than leading, as they have done so often in recent years.

It's not just Radio 3, of course. I used to listen regularly to Radio 4's 'Counterpoint', which sadly now seems to have gone (or been told to go) out of its way to attract younger listeners and contestants by including a significant proportion of questions about 'non-classical' music (something which could, I would have thought, safely be left to Ken Bruce or his successor). And Radio 2 no longer seems to be interested in listeners of my age or the sort of music I might like to hear but don't expect other stations to provide.

[gurnemanz]

Does Radio 3 persuade/coax/train/educate listeners up to its (putative) level of cultural excellence?

Oh dear.... I was there in the 60s as a teenager, open to being coaxed into the BBC's wonderful world of cultural excellence, unlike most of my school pals who wouldn't go near Third Prog/R3 with a bargepole. I did listen to it occasionally despite the atrocious medium wave sound, but the truth is that rather than being persuaded and coaxed, I felt as if I was tiptoeing into a highbrow alien world, which I was not going to be part of and which seemed to assume a level of prior knowledge and experience which I did not possess. The presentation style and much of the content was literally a turn-off. Despite this, I persisted, however. I had no musical education and bought Robert Simpson's two-volume Penguin guide to The Symphony (1966 - still got) to vaguely try to drag myself up to their standard of insight, and a bit later started buying Gramophone.

I was learning German at school and remember the thrill of hearing for the first time on R3 Schiller's An die Freude in Beethoven's Ninth. When William Mann, (whose name I had come across as a translator of Goethe's poetry as set by Schubert, Wolf etc), praised the Beatles publicly as successors of Schubert, it was a delight to me and a shock to most of the cultural elite who generally showed lofty distaste for "pop culture". Young people got their music from Radio Luxembourg and pirate stations. Auntie Beeb didn't get around to setting up R1 until 1967, by then too late for me, alas.

R3 may lately have upset some traditionalists by trying to be populist and approachable with some of its programming. If programmes of that type don't appeal to me, I simply don't listen. With any luck there will be a live lunchtime Lieder recital coming up. With a range of broadcasting 24/7 there is always going to be enough to stimulate and entertain. I can't judge if R3 is mimicking Classic FM since I never listen to the latter.

[french frank]

Oh dear.... I was there in the 60s as a teenager, open to being coaxed into the BBC's wonderful world of cultural excellence, unlike most of my school pals who wouldn't go near Third Prog/R3 with a bargepole. I did listen to it occasionally despite the atrocious medium wave sound, but the truth is that rather than being persuaded and coaxed, I felt as if I was tiptoeing into a highbrow alien world, which I was not going to be part of and which seemed to assume a level of prior knowledge and experience which I did not possess. The presentation style and much of the content was literally a turn-off.

I wasn't for an instant implying that R3 should become the Third Programme again. I was wondering what cultural role R3 has if there is now barely a single programme (TTN excepted) which consists entirely of classical music and which has a mission to educate rather than entertain. A station with a small audience is probably mistaken in trying to be all things to all people, a little bit for a wide range of listeners, some wanting classical music, others not.

With a range of broadcasting 24/7 there is always going to be enough to stimulate and entertain. I can't judge if R3 is mimicking Classic FM since I never listen to the latter.

How much is 'enough' to hold on to an audience?

[smittims]

And in any case, there are umpteen other radio channels broadcasting nothing but continuous pop and easy listening ; it isn't something one needs to seek; one can scarcely avoid it . R3 is the only place whore one can (less often than before ) hear complete works of intellectually-stimulating music, drama, poetry, discussion. There is simply no excuse for not doing that all the time .

And there need be no concern about 'too much' of that ; one doesn't have to listen all day. Who was it said 'remember that it is as important to switch off, as to switch on.'?


...wel, it was Sir John Reith, actually.