The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[Serial_Apologist]

I was very disappointed that we were denied an Elgar orchestration of Bach by some "conservatives" this morning (Mohr-Pietsch even read out some of the ringleaders of this roll of shame). Not that I have anything against the "original"; just that bowing to audience pressure in this way sets a very worrying precedent. Personally I see nothing controversial in an orchestration (not least because Bach was a prolific transcriber), but even there were, surely Radio 3 would be the right place to broadcast it.
As a child, I grew up on the Radio 3 diet at a time when the programming was adventurous and free from the gimmicks such as the classical charts. It was an important part of my musical education.

Hi fugophile

I'm in the same position re R3's educative importance, nay indispensability. I fret to wonder where on earth young people who aren't going in for formal study will get their in-depth knowledge about music from. We can't be everywhere!

[Frances_iom]

I'm in the same position re R3's educative importance, nay indispensability. I fret to wonder where on earth young people who aren't going in for formal study will get their in-depth knowledge about music from. We can't be everywhere!

Within less than a generation I suspect Classical music will be little better than marginally more attractive than Anglo-Saxon poetry to most - ie totally unknown and of little or no consequence tho sometimes the ideas may surface in unexpected situations.

[kernelbogey]

[...] bowing to audience pressure in this way sets a very worrying precedent....

She didn't read out my text asking her not to fade small chunks of music in and out when trailing the third hour of the progrmme just before the eight o'clock news!

Radio 3 would be the right place to broadcast it.

[Bax-of-Delights]

And today it's "stupid question day"!

OK, here's one:

At what point in your career, S M-P, do you think you might wake up and think I'm not serving up this tripe any more?

[Frances_iom]

And today it's "stupid question day"!

OK, here's one:

At what point in your career, S M-P, do you think you might wake up and think I'm not serving up this tripe any more?

I believe the answer is along the lines "laughing all the way to the bank" - she has a well paid job, dj's are not usually paid to think nor to be role models

[french frank]

I believe the answer is along the lines "laughing all the way to the bank" - she has a well paid job, dj's are not usually paid to think nor to be role models

Well, strictly speaking, a lot of people are serving up 'tripe' like this because millions more want to hear it on the radio. Oh, yes they do!

The difference is that Radio 3 management want more of these millions to be listening to Radio 3, so the cunning plan is to serve up what works a treat throughout the radio world. And the argument is that it's what 'listeners' really, really appreciate but because the Trust carried out a review and reported [direct, word for word, quote coming up]: ‘our research shows that some listeners feel that Radio 3 can sound slightly heavy and inaccessible at times’.

Cue to give Radio 3 a makeover. And incidentally, part of the 'research' consisted of asking listeners who didn't listen to Radio 3 and 'to whom classical music did not necessarily appeal' to listen to selected programmes - there is evidence that one of them was Discovering Music - and say what they thought of them. Inevitably - some might say - some of them found it a bit heavy going.

Which gets us back to the strategy which management has fooled a foolish Trust into accepting. Cui bono? Who is guilty?

[salymap]

Look at today's Breakfast menu on the R3 page. It's like being served a bowl of mashed kippers, muesli,over-ripe fruit and sour milk. The leaps from one piece to the next are the most vertiginous ever.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Just as messy a shambles as the website then, with its half-finished and then repeated playlists. Just how does the website manager manage to keep his/her job or does the chaos and mess just reflect the standards of the Controller?

Just how many more times are we going to get 'I was Glad'? I wish I'd monitored that piece this year, I believe it has been broadcast around 20-30 times in 2012 so far already, around the same as 'Jupiter'!

[Serial_Apologist]

'I was Glad'

And I'm not so happy these days with it either.

[Black Swan]

Oh come on, we got Liberace this morning on Breakfast. Breakfast on 3 makes Grimmy on Radio 1 sound like an Oxford Don. Come on stupid question of the day, Why do we even give R3 Breakfast a listen. I don't know but am listening less and less and less.

John

[JFLL]

... the Trust carried out a review and reported [direct, word for word, quote coming up]: ‘our research shows that some listeners feel that Radio 3 can sound slightly heavy and inaccessible at times’.

I might arouse the wrath of a certain Valkyrie by saying this, but what's 'inaccessible' about any radio programme? Don't you just buy a radio, switch it on and listen to it? I mean, to listen to it you don't have to fork out £5000, join an exclusive club, be an Old Etonian, earn a million a year, climb Mount Everest, run a four-minute mile or have to do anything that might properly speaking be called 'inaccessible' to the ordinary person (except, maybe, concentrate). Slippery use of language again. 'Inaccessible' has been twisted to mean 'not necessarily immediately pleasing', quite a different thing, surely? And anyway a lot of mainstream classical music is 'heavy and inaccessible' in that sense -- much of Mahler, say, or even Beethoven's 9th the first time you hear it. If you really wanted to get rid of 'inaccessibility' in the new sense, you'd have to ban quite a lot of the actual music which is the staple fare of R3. The trick they seem to be trying is to wrap up this sometimes unavoidably 'inaccessible' fare in increasingly 'accessible' packaging, a sort of con-trick in my view, because in the end you've still got an hour or more of Mahlerian Angst to sit through.

[french frank]

I've just looked at today's Breakfast playlist. I don't think I've ever seen one more closely resembling Classic FM's, particularly if you work upwards from the bottom, including:

1812
Che gelida manina
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Gershwin, Love Walked In (played by B Grosvenor, so all right - it says here)
I was glad
Academic Festival Ov
Gershwin, Begin the beguine (Liberace)
One movt from Mzt PC 23
Va pensiero (Carlo Rizi [sic] conducting)
Hummel, Trumpet concerto (one bit)
Bit of Haydn Wood
Bit of F Kreisler
Bit of Bach

and finally ...
The Ritual Fire Dance

All good stuff, mark you

[Andrew Slater]

There's a programme on R4 next Monday afternoon on a related subject:

16:00 Duration, Duration, Duration (b01n0xpq)

We expect pop songs on the radio to last three-and-a-half
minutes, TV programmes thirty (or multiples thereof),
commercial breaks to be three minutes made up of thirty
second ads, and films on average to run for ninety-five
minutes. Grace Dent gets a Radio 4 standard 27 minutes and
30 seconds to find out how duration has always shaped
popular culture.......

[Northender]

Very occasionally, I tune into Radio 3 on Sunday mornings while waiting for 'Broadcasting House' to start on Radio 4. One of Breakfast's few remaining redeeming features was that at least it didn't include bleeding chunks torn from Vivaldi concerti. But lo and behold, this morning it was a case of 'Anybody for a bassoon concerto ...just a teeny-weeny bit?' Ah well...at least we got to hear the whole movement

[teamsaint]

There's a programme on R4 next Monday afternoon on a related subject:

16:00 Duration, Duration, Duration (b01n0xpq)

the (very) approx 40 minute duration of many(romantic) Symphonies and rock/pop albums is interesting. In the case of albums, maybe determined by LP technology...but perhaps there is more to this...