The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[kernelbogey]

This outrage was my morning greeting from R3 as I woke up and switched on my bedside radio. I immediately changed input to a streamed internet station.

I complained to the programme and was rather surprised to get a reply within the hour.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

When the pop world had R1 2 and 6 to go at why do we have to have so much dumped on R3? I particular why is Lizzie’s disconnected, disjointed, generally unpleasant music not on 6, rather than 3, always so unsubtly plugged on her Saturday Weekend Breakfast programme? Much of the late evening R3 agenda would be more appropriately be on R6!

[french frank]

When the pop world had R1 2 and 6 to go at why do we have to have so much dumped on R3? I particular why is Lizzie’s disconnected, disjointed, generally unpleasant music not on 6, rather than 3, always so unsubtly plugged on her Saturday Weekend Breakfast programme? Much of the late evening R3 agenda would be more appropriately be on R6!

Because 6Music is now doing very well for audience. The R3 strategy is to persuade 6Music fans to listen to R3 - and no one has bothered to explain why 6Music fans would prefer to listen to R3 than 6Music. But 'celebrity presenters' (aka 'talent') are considered the pull: EA fans will follow her over to R3, even if R3 listeners run away.

The BBC doesn't care much, and R3 just wants MORE LISTENERS. They don't have to be listening to classical music (or jazz or world music). The strategy turns off classical music listeners but doesn't develop a new audience for it either. The 'broad (= more 'diverse') audience' comes to R3 for the broad range of music.

"Things can only get better" - or worse, depending on what you want to listen to.

[cloughie]

Because 6Music is now doing very well for audience. The R3 strategy is to persuade 6Music fans to listen to R3 - and no one has bothered to explain why 6Music fans would prefer to listen to R3 than 6Music. But 'celebrity presenters' (aka 'talent') are considered the pull: EA fans will follow her over to R3, even if R3 listeners run away.

The BBC doesn't care much, and R3 just wants MORE LISTENERS. They don't have to be listening to classical music (or jazz or world music). The strategy turns off classical music listeners but doesn't develop a new audience for it either. The 'broad (= more 'diverse') audience' comes to R3 for the broad range of music.

"Things can only get better" - or worse, depending on what you want to listen to.

WORSE for sure! Why do we bother Fawlty?

[french frank]

WORSE for sure! Why do we bother Fawlty?

From yesterday, I was picking throught the playlist (usual mix of Nielsen, Juliette Greco, Fauré, Jacques Brel &c) and thought I'd check on the music of Carmel Smickersgill - a name not familiar to me. I was intrigued to find her piece Leaving on YouTube, and even more intrigued to find her record company describing her as an "Emerging modern classical/outsider pop artist". I wonder what the word "classical" is supposed to mean? No longer is all music just "music" but anything can be described as "classical". In other words, the word means nothing at all. Is that a good thing?

[Serial_Apologist]

From yesterday, I was picking throught the playlist (usual mix of Nielsen, Juliette Greco, Fauré, Jacques Brel &c) and thought I'd check on the music of Carmel Smickersgill - a name not familiar to me. I was intrigued to find her piece Leaving on YouTube, and even more intrigued to find her record company describing her as an "Emerging modern classical/outsider pop artist". I wonder what the word "classical" is supposed to mean? No longer is all music just "music" but anything can be described as "classical". In other words, the word means nothing at all. Is that a good thing?

Were Carmel to be described as "a classic" rather than "classical", which really does seem to be stretching a definition's usefulness, she would still have had to be around for a while to be described as a "classic" - or have one of her productions so described.

[kernelbogey]

I wonder what the word "classical" is supposed to mean? No longer is all music just "music" but anything can be described as "classical". In other words, the word means nothing at all. Is that a good thing?

'When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean....'

If the music includes (say) drum and bass then it's not classical, it's rock or pop or jazz.... If it doesn't then maybe it's 'classical'.

Something about key & key changes, rhythm, subject matter (if there are words)...?

Or maybe just where you put this in the shop/website.

[Ein Heldenleben]

'When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean....'

If the music includes (say) drum and bass then it's not classical, it's rock or pop or jazz.... If it doesn't then maybe it's 'classical'.

Something about key & key changes, rhythm, subject matter (if there are words)...?

Or maybe just where you put this in the shop/website.

Thing is there are plenty of classical pieces that have a drum and bass .
It’s more to do with classical “forms “ - the symphony, sonata form , opera, art song etc. Problem is these forms have broken down and absorbed music from other traditions - look at some of Tippett’s symphonies. Is Gershwin’s An American In Paris a classical piece ? Yes but it doesn’t feel “classical” in the same way a Haydn symphony does. It’s a sequence of Broadway / jazz tunes with little of the organised tonal structure of Haydn . Does that mean it’s not classical ? Possibly . Does it matter ?

[kernelbogey]

You say 'classical', I say 'baroque': let's call the whole thing off.

[french frank]

Thing is there are plenty of classical pieces that have a drum and bass .
It’s more to do with classical “forms “ - the symphony, sonata form , opera, art song etc. Problem is these forms have broken down and absorbed music from other traditions - look at some of Tippett’s symphonies. Is Gershwin’s An American In Paris a classical piece ? Yes but it doesn’t feel “classical” in the same way a Haydn symphony does. It’s a sequence of Broadway / jazz tunes with little of the organised tonal structure of Haydn . Does that mean it’s not classical ? Possibly . Does it matter ?

Well, to me 'classical' is a historical term which refers (essentially) to music composed - arbitrarily, there is no precise date - before WW2. It has a narrow, fairly indisputable, dating which corresponds to the time post-baroque and pre-romantic. But for people who are 'classical music fans' the vast bulk was composed before 1945. That leaves plenty of room for grey areas and exceptions. If one talks of 'modern classical' it seems to me to be a fairly meaningless term if it can include contemporary electronica, film music, anything contemporary which isn't 'pop, emerging classical pop artists' &c &c.

It’s more to do with classical “forms “ - the symphony, sonata form , opera, art song etc. Problem is these forms have broken down and absorbed music from other traditions

I would say it's as much to do with composers as forms. Yes, that breaks down when you get composers who write symphonies and film music. But it just reinforces the firmness of the 'historical' definition. The more modern you get the more definitions are hard to agree on. But no one disagrees that Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were 'classical' composers, in the strict or wider sense. And this is what people usually mean when they talk about classical music.

PS I think the modern form is 'drum 'n' bass' and I can't think of an indisputably classical work that includes that.

[kernelbogey]

PS I think the modern form is 'drum 'n' bass' and I can't think of an indisputably classical work that includes that.

Didn't Wolfgang redo K550 in a drum 'n' bass version...?

I agree with Frenchie's definition(s) of 'classical' in, as it were, an academic sense; but people whose main tastes lie elsewhere seem to use the term in a much more indiscriminate way. I have rarely listened to Night Tracks et al but I'd guess some of that music would by some be called classical.

For a time a few years back I tried saying 'I mostly listen to serious music', but of course that didn't work, largely because it sounds patronising (which was not my intention): I was merely trying to define my taste as being largely outside pop, rock, jazz et al.

[Hanners]

This outrage was my morning greeting from R3 as I woke up and switched on my bedside radio. I immediately changed input to a streamed internet station.

This was a so-called ‘Written Trail’ when we build script round a musical or verbal clip. The music duration was probably something like 50” - as it would be in a ‘built’ trail where the whole package is prerecorded. So the clip of Bruckner 9 was no different to the musical background in any ‘built’ trail. It’s not a ‘new’ low however you view it. To me it seems a bit extreme to change channels because of a brief trail. If that trail gets anyone to listen to the concert who wouldn’t otherwise have done so, and then maybe introduces them to Bruckner, then surely it will have done the job it’s meant to do…

[french frank]

If that trail gets anyone to listen to the concert who wouldn’t otherwise have done so, and then maybe introduces them to Bruckner, then surely it will have done the job it’s meant to do…

We have heard such a defence from the BBC before. What there seems no way of knowing is how many people listen to the Bruckner as a result of the trail versus how many are highly irritated?

But the BBC has said before now that if people are annoyed by programme trails it means they have noticed them and therefore the trail 'will have done the job it’s meant to do… '

[oddoneout]

You say 'classical', I say 'baroque': let's call the whole thing off.

Or broke as an american relative has it.

[Historian]

This was a so-called ‘Written Trail’ when we build script round a musical or verbal clip. The music duration was probably something like 50” - as it would be in a ‘built’ trail where the whole package is prerecorded. So the clip of Bruckner 9 was no different to the musical background in any ‘built’ trail. It’s not a ‘new’ low however you view it. To me it seems a bit extreme to change channels because of a brief trail. If that trail gets anyone to listen to the concert who wouldn’t otherwise have done so, and then maybe introduces them to Bruckner, then surely it will have done the job it’s meant to do…

Irrespective of whether one agrees with it, many thanks for the explanation and welcome to the forum.