River of Music: 12 hrs Non-stop Music: Sunday 30 October

[kernelbogey]

I dearly wish all that interactive **** could be buried deep in the bottom of the river but that isn’t realistic. My point is that it is time Radio3 gave serious thoughts as to how best the station can incorporate this element so that it will help to encourage those who live with the technology to listen to the station, and at the same time, keeping the integrity of the station's high culture status. The River could be seen as a wake-up call (I won’t say ‘if only’ for now).

[french frank]

Was it Britten who objected his music being broadcast on the radio because he thought people would not listen with enough attention, or something to the effect? This was, I suppose when people had survived without such thing as classical music concerts on the radio for all their lives.

I think it (interactive etc.) is here to stay. It is the flow of the river and as such, there is no point in trying to stop it. I prefer to think (after all that fuss I kicked up….) that this River was a summary of the first stage of a new era for radio broadcast and from now on, the new element will be used in more constructive ways.

The music selection on Breakfast or Essential classic may not be terribly exciting for most members on this Forum but I think they offer the listeners who are not so thoroughly informed a lot to discover. As has been pointed out many times on the forum, the problem of Breakfast is its format rather than the music selection. Let’s hope that this Rive has washed off if not all but some of the water that was stagnant for too long.

I'm not quite sure exactly what you're saying, in precise terms. The Britten analogy isn't quite the same since attending live concerts, or buying records, were the only ways to hear the music at all: radio opened it up to everyone, for what was a comparatively small sum and now can be free. So put the music on radio as well as providing live concerts and recordings. Social media are now the 'free option' - so put the social interaction on social media.

I'm not sure why radio itself should become an alternative social medium any more than the concert halls became non-stop, 24-hour concerts. Radio was a separate listening medium.

As far as Radio 3 is concerned, it has been trying to get new/more listeners and has trialled many different methods, none of which have been serious attempts to instil an appreciation of classical music (celebrities, quizzes, cross-station presenters, social media, different sorts of music; and television has had Reality TV shows).

In the BBC's view: You cannot be serious. It's boring and puts off people who don't want 'serious'. Yet when classical music is emphatically the main focus it can be presented to a targeted audience in a way appropriate to that audience: the children's Ten Pieces is a good idea and the children seem to have liked it. Think of buskers too - people gather round them appreciatively if they're playing Pachelbel's Canon and Gigue. A flash mob usually intrigues rather than annoys.

Much of the problem with RW's changes was that they had a targeted audience in mind but the actual audience was quite different and the target audience was seldom listening. And the more a target audience is attracted, the less appealing it is to the original listeners.

[kernelbogey]

In the BBC's view: You cannot be serious. It's boring and puts off people who don't want 'serious'.

Agreed - and as demonstrated in nearly all BBC factual tv programmes - they have to be 'infotainment' (sorry ).

[doversoul1]

french frank pst 422

... radio opened it up to everyone

Britten, and I imagine he wasn’t alone, didn’t think this was a good thing; if music just came out from the radio, people wouldn’t listen seriously. It was then but now we can’t imagine a life without concerts on the radio.

New technologies always worry us, especially in the field of art. What I was trying to say was that all this online activities have been a new toy to Radio3. It has been just doing what others are doing: face book, twitter etc. but if it puts its mind to it, I’m sure it can find a unique way of using the technology to enhance the serious nature of Radio3’s service and to appeal to the original listeners. I don’t think Radio3 has tried it seriously.

For example (though this isn’t at all unique), I’d be very interested in reading the information posted by the listeners about the concerts and the performers of the music broadcast on Through the Night if the activity is properly set up.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

"Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should."

[vinteuil]

"Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should."

... as Chopin thought, pondering the new-fangled invention of the double-escapement action :

The Erard’s claim to fame was that it could make a bigger sound with a lighter touch, thanks to its patented double échappement - that is “double escapement” mechanism – in effect, making the hammer strike the piano string with twice the force that it would a Pleyel. “Light, responsive and powerful” was the Erard’s marketing cry.

Which explained both the Erard’s runaway popularity…and Chopin’s ambivalence. A former student wrote in his diary, “…on the resistant kind of piano, it is impossible to obtain the finer nuances of movement in the wrist and forearm, each finger moving in isolation. I experienced this nuance playing at the home of Chopin on his beautiful [Pleyel] piano with a touch so like that of the Viennese instruments. He calls it a ‘perfidious traitor.’ What came out perfectly on my solid and robust Erard became brusque and ugly on Chopin’s piano. He found it dangerous to use for too long an instrument with a beautiful sound, such as the Erard. He said that those instruments destroy the touch: ‘It makes no difference whether you tap the keys lightly or strike them more forcefully: the sound is always beautiful and the ear asks for nothing more, for it is under the spell of the full, rich sound.’

[doversoul1]

"Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should."

No, but there are times in life when you have to accept that something is not avoidable. Then the best thing is to try make the best of it.

I don’t believe I am saying this but the technology is here to stay and it does have infinite potentials if used creatively and appropriately (e.g. iPlayer and the time dots). Only, Radio3 has been mostly aping the populists’ way of using it.

[french frank]

Agreed - and as demonstrated in nearly all BBC factual tv programmes - they have to be 'infotainment' (sorry ).

Even, sometimes, infantainment …

[french frank]

No, but there are times in life when you have to accept that something is not avoidable. Then the best thing is to try make the best of it.

How do you tell that you've reached that time?

I don’t believe I am saying this but the technology is here to stay and it does have infinite potentials if used creatively and appropriately (e.g. iPlayer and the time dots). Only, Radio3 has been mostly aping the populists’ way of using it.

That I don't (completely) disagree with. I don't think anyone here, at all, has an objection to Radio 3 using social media. It's using it as airtime fillers that is questionable. If people are texting, tweeting and emailing they have access to Radio 3 online. The exchanges between presenters and listeners are seldom of general/any interest to those who are preferring to just listen (regardless of whether they could participate if they wanted to), so let those who want to chat, including presenters, chat among themselves.

Radio 3 had this idea of forming a uniform 'Radio 3 family', presenters chatting away happily with listeners. It's a family which excludes listeners who find this particular (95% shallow) add-on so unwelcome that they stop listening.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

No, but there are times in life when you have to accept that something is not avoidable. Then the best thing is to try make the best of it.

I don’t believe I am saying this but the technology is here to stay and it does have infinite potentials if used creatively and appropriately (e.g. iPlayer and the time dots). Only, Radio3 has been mostly aping the populists’ way of using it.

The fact that the technology is there is not the issue. Invitations from presenters to use the technology in the way they do - that's the problem.

[ahinton]

... as Chopin thought, pondering the new-fangled invention of the double-escapement action :

The Erard’s claim to fame was that it could make a bigger sound with a lighter touch, thanks to its patented double échappement - that is “double escapement” mechanism – in effect, making the hammer strike the piano string with twice the force that it would a Pleyel. “Light, responsive and powerful” was the Erard’s marketing cry.

Which explained both the Erard’s runaway popularity…and Chopin’s ambivalence. A former student wrote in his diary, “…on the resistant kind of piano, it is impossible to obtain the finer nuances of movement in the wrist and forearm, each finger moving in isolation. I experienced this nuance playing at the home of Chopin on his beautiful [Pleyel] piano with a touch so like that of the Viennese instruments. He calls it a ‘perfidious traitor.’ What came out perfectly on my solid and robust Erard became brusque and ugly on Chopin’s piano. He found it dangerous to use for too long an instrument with a beautiful sound, such as the Erard. He said that those instruments destroy the touch: ‘It makes no difference whether you tap the keys lightly or strike them more forcefully: the sound is always beautiful and the ear asks for nothing more, for it is under the spell of the full, rich sound.’

Wrong thread, surely?(!)...

[ahinton]

Even, sometimes, infantainment …

!!! Interesting then, perhaps, that the word "infotilistic" just doesn't cut it whereas...

[doversoul1]

How do you tell that you've reached that time?

I don’t know… I think I'll just know, maybe as hindsight and I may realise that I have moved on. At least I think I have done that on this thread and I now have quite a different view on the matter.