BBC Radio 3 Carol Competition

[rauschwerk]

What is the point of this now? This morning I heard four pieces based on simple melodies with not even a hint of modulation. They could have been penned by any talented 10 year old and the BBC Singers sang them as if on autopilot. I wouldn't vote for any of them.

[DracoM]

What is the point of this now? This morning I heard four pieces based on simple melodies with not even a hint of modulation. They could have been penned by any talented 10 year old and the BBC Singers sang them as if on autopilot. I wouldn't vote for any of them.

Absolutely whack on target.
Painfully empty all round. And as for 'arrangements'...? I weep for any who submitted 'tune lines'.
And, moreover, if you knew that this was to be the fate for your tune line in terms of 'arrangement' [ha!] and performers [more Ha!], I wonder how much that would have deterred, and will deter wannabe carol writers in future years?

Crikey!

[Stanfordian]

What is the point of this now? This morning I heard four pieces based on simple melodies with not even a hint of modulation. They could have been penned by any talented 10 year old and the BBC Singers sang them as if on autopilot. I wouldn't vote for any of them.

I only very rarely listen to R3 these days. This is a programme guaranteed to keep me away.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I have come to the conclusion that writing a Carol is really hard and best left to either Gustav Holst or John Rutter.

[vinteuil]

I have come to the conclusion that writing a Carol is really hard and best left to either Gustav Holst or John Rutter.

... o, I think much better left to Anon


.

[Ein Heldenleben]

... o, I think much better left to Anon


.

Yep - the greatest of them all!

[Vox Humana]

Absolutely whack on target.
Painfully empty all round. And as for 'arrangements'...? I weep for any who submitted 'tune lines'.
And, moreover, if you knew that this was to be the fate for your tune line in terms of 'arrangement' [ha!] and performers [more Ha!], I wonder how much that would have deterred, and will deter wannabe carol writers in future years?

Crikey!

Absolutely. It's impossible to take this competition seriously. It's a complete joke.

[oddoneout]

I think I've heard four of them and none stood out. When the new format was announced there was much criticism on here, and if this is how it is to be in future years then I think I would agree a mistake is being made. If what was being produced was felt to be getting too far away from being a carol in the commonly understood sense then there are other ways of addressing that. However I would just point out that there have been a few little difficulties around music performance this year which may just possibly have also had something to do with it? The alternative - and I accept that many/most on here might feel this should have been done anyway - was to cancel it completely. I wonder what the wider view(ie outside for3) is?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Absolutely whack on target.
Painfully empty all round. And as for 'arrangements'...? I weep for any who submitted 'tune lines'.
And, moreover, if you knew that this was to be the fate for your tune line in terms of 'arrangement' [ha!] and performers [more Ha!], I wonder how much that would have deterred, and will deter wannabe carol writers in future years?

Crikey!

“Next year, the BBC will be hosting a literary competition for which entrants will be required to write only the chapter headings. The rest will be left for someone else to do. No credit will be given to entrants who complete the text themselves.”

[DracoM]

....................

And frankly, if any 'carol writer' came all excited to any choirmaster and proudly said 'hey, do listen ....this is my entry for the BBC Carol Comp.....', I'd take a bet the choirmaster would ask 'did anyone else enter this comp?'

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

....................

And frankly, if any 'carol writer' came all excited to any choirmaster and proudly said 'hey, do listen ....this is my entry for the BBC Carol Comp.....', I'd take a bet the choirmaster would ask 'did anyone else enter this comp?'

Yes. The standard has dropped considerably (which was probably the intention). As I’ve said already, I’ve done much arranging/orchestration of other people’s music, but only because they asked me to; never because the composer had been barred from doing so him/herself.

[jh5speed]

Oh come come, a lot of huffing and puffing here - and the slightest whiff of sour grapes ...

Like many here I was rather put out when the brief changed this year, and yes - the words 'dumbed down' came straight into my mind. But it didn't take me long to realise that writing 'just' a tune was deceptively difficult. With a 'just' a tune, there is nowhere to hide, and no wrapping up in soupy chords, modulations and tricky navigational structures (I bet we've all had a go at that). I think I would have liked the shortlist presented (initially at least) in un-arranged form - then we could've compared their efforts with ours, seeing exactly what the judges saw. Yes, I'm sure that there were many inept/execrable entries, but that doesn't invalidate the principle of the competition, nor does it describe the shortlisted entries. The arrangement and the singing is irrelevant - or it should've been - the problem is that the arrangement is now part of the entry and will be judged on its own merits consciously or unconsciously.

And yes I did enter - it took me 15mins to bash it into Sibelius, but I carried/honed the tune around with me in my head for a couple of weeks prior to that. I was looking forward to a good old toil as in previous years but that wasn't the 2020 brief.

I'd love to have seen what Holst or Rutter would have knocked out given the same spec.

MH

[Vox Humana]

But it didn't take me long to realise that writing 'just' a tune was deceptively difficult.

Of course it is, but it's still a whole lot easier than writing a good melody and a decent setting of it too. The trouble is that, due to successive governments' benighted attitudes to culture, the whole notion of composition has become debased in certain quarters to the point where you don't even have to be musically literate and able to notate it. As far as I'm concerned that's no different to pretending that an essay written in Franglais deserves to be judged as of equal merit to one written in perfect, idiomatic French.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Sorry to be controversial and also to admit I was wrong but the Carol entry they’ve just played by Tim Tricker on Essential Classics is I think really good . I never I thought I would say that. You could hear the words and the BBC singers sang it well.For those who heard the next entry and who have knowledge of these things isn’t part of the difficultly of choral writing making sure that note duration is long enough to make the syllables audible ? Something that say Paul McCartney and Schubert manage to nail..

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Oh come come, a lot of huffing and puffing here - and the slightest whiff of sour grapes ...

And how does "sour grapes" come into it? That would suggest posters have been snubbed by having their entries rejected. There is no "whiff" of that. Not even remotely. It's the concept that's under fire. I do realise the BBC is never wrong, but there's little justification for stifling creativity in this way.