Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[cloughie]

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... is Wurm here worm or dragon?

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I’m sure anton will enlighten you - he should be an expert on the Lambton Worm!

[Ein Heldenleben]

We badly need a Schiller expert here ..I thought from #3868 Wurm was serpent as in Garden of Eden ...

[gurnemanz]

We badly need a Schiller expert here ..I thought from #3868 Wurm was serpent as in Garden of Eden ...

I did study Schiller about 99 years ago but don't claim expertise. Wurm must be serpent as Frances pointed out in 3868. The Schiller Institute translation you gave: "To the worm were given blisses .." strikes me as not idiomatic since we don't use the word "worm" in that context in English.

As far as I recall, Wagner only ever uses "Wurm" for dragon but this is not the usual word, which would be "Drache".

Off at a tangent. There's a common idiom: "Da ist der Wurm drin" (there's a worm in it) which is applied to a project which is dodgy and doomed from the start. I can't think of any current endeavours this might apply to.

[vinteuil]

Off at a tangent. There's a common idiom: "Da ist der Wurm drin" (there's a worm in it) which is applied to a project which is dodgy and doomed from the start. I can't think of any current endeavours this might apply to.

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[muzzer]

I don’t often listen, but was this morning’s abomination of a mashup of two James Bond themes played by IS typical of EC these days? I could picture John Barry turning in the orchestra pit of the cinema in Hull where his father played the organ (if I remember correctly).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I don’t often listen, but was this morning’s abomination of a mashup of two James Bond themes played by IS typical of EC these days? I could picture John Barry turning in the orchestra pit of the cinema in Hull where his father played the organ (if I remember correctly).

I agree. It was dreadful, as was the Harry Potter example, predictable changed from 6/8 to 4/4 time.

[CGR]

I don’t often listen, but was this morning’s abomination of a mashup of two James Bond themes played by IS typical of EC these days? I could picture John Barry turning in the orchestra pit of the cinema in Hull where his father played the organ (if I remember correctly).

Yep. I was driving along and tuned in for a listen. I soon tuned back to R4.

Dreadful musical mush. Very Radio 2.5

[Serial_Apologist]

I just managed to catch the ending of the final piece on this morning's programme a moment ago. Not recognising it I took the music to be some interlude from one of Strauss's late operas. In fact it was a beautiful arrangement by Schoenberg, almost French Impressionistic in spirit and feel, believe it or not, of Max Reger's Romantic Suite Op 125: none of the stuffiness so often wrongly ascribed to either composer. For those that missed it, here's a link to youtube for the first movement - the entire work lasts about half an hour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQiB3kn4CM4

[ardcarp]

A reasonably sensible mix on Christmas Morning's EC. I was slightly worried about St Thomas Leipzig's Jauchzet Frohlocket from the Christmas Oratorio...a recent recording apparently. The orchestra started off at a suitably cracking pace, but the boys' choir seemed to rush even faster, leading to a most uncomfortable feel. I'm surprised that got past the record producer. Luckily our equilibrium was restored by playing New College Oxford's CD (who sing all of Part 1 on an old-ish BBC Music Magazine release along with fabulous soloists).

[antongould]

A badly formatted summary of the most played composers on EC in 2019

Thus RVW was played 59 times these pieces totalling 8 hours and 39 seconds putting him in joint 16th place (in terms of number of pieces) with Elgar …….

The average duration of the pieces listed is 6 minutes 55 seconds …...



Composer Count TotTime Pos
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 235 29:39:24 1
Franz Schubert 187 23:04:41 2
Johann Sebastian Bach 175 18:49:53 3
Ludwig van Beethoven 164 22:33:23 4
George Frideric Handel 122 12:52:51 5
Joseph Haydn 120 14:38:04 6
Antonín Dvořák 117 14:46:14 7
Claude Debussy 111 11:02:35 8
Frédéric Chopin 110 10:13:26 9
Johannes Brahms 102 11:53:57 10
Antonio Vivaldi 95 12:03:23 11
Felix Mendelssohn 88 11:05:51 12
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 81 10:33:16 13
Maurice Ravel 75 9:37:27 14
Camille Saint‐Saëns 69 9:21:27 15
Edward Elgar 59 7:22:50 16
Ralph Vaughan Williams 59 8:00:39 16
Richard Strauss 57 7:20:01 18
Sergey Rachmaninov 57 7:12:40 18
Benjamin Britten 56 3:37:13 20
Jean Sibelius 54 7:17:54 21
Dmitry Shostakovich 54 6:45:41 21
Sergei Prokofiev 50 5:19:34 23
Edvard Grieg 48 5:05:08 24
Gustav Holst 47 5:13:43 25
Robert Schumann 46 5:47:16 26
George Gershwin 42 5:49:04 27
Henry Purcell 42 3:14:25 27
Igor Stravinsky 42 4:53:36 27
William Byrd 41 3:12:20 30
Franz Liszt 38 4:52:41 31
Hector Berlioz 38 5:22:10 31
Gabriel Fauré 36 3:12:27 33
Malcolm Arnold 36 2:49:12 33
Francis Poulenc 35 3:40:12 35
Domenico Scarlatti 34 2:33:24 36
Richard Wagner 34 4:32:45 36
Aaron Copland 32 3:56:57 38
Claudio Monteverdi 32 2:58:31 38
Gioachino Rossini 32 4:09:32 38
Giuseppe Verdi 29 2:45:04 41
Jean‐Philippe Rameau 29 2:26:51 41
Leos Janáček 29 3:12:57 41
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 28 3:51:31 44
Ottorino Respighi 28 3:19:49 44
Leonard Bernstein 27 2:08:56 46
Clara Schumann 26 2:43:12 47
Giovanni Gabrieli 26 1:46:33 47
John Dowland 26 1:38:50 47
Philip Glass 26 2:30:19 47
Carl Maria von Weber 25 3:17:52 51
Georg Philipp Telemann 25 3:01:46 51
Béla Bartók 24 2:53:56 53
Gerald Finzi 24 3:12:20 53
Gustav Mahler 24 3:25:02 53
Isaac Albéniz 23 2:01:37 56
Carl Nielsen 22 2:35:45 57
Louise Farrenc 22 2:37:12 57
William Walton 22 2:17:26 57
Giacomo Puccini 21 1:46:09 60
Bedrich Smetana 20 3:22:10 61
Georges Bizet 20 2:19:46 61
Alexander Glazunov 19 2:56:08 63
Amy Beach 19 1:45:21 63
Erich Wolfgang Korngold 19 2:17:27 63
Arcangelo Corelli 18 2:32:48 66
Astor Piazzolla 18 1:24:06 66
John Adams 18 2:17:58 66
George Enescu 17 2:34:07 69
Aram Khachaturian 16 2:13:58 70
Arthur Sullivan 16 1:10:09 70
Barbara Strozzi 16 1:31:33 70
Orlando Gibbons 16 0:53:05 70
Samuel Barber 16 2:25:40 70
Thomas Tallis 16 1:48:06 70
Arvo Pärt 15 1:51:33 76
Dobrinka Tabakova 15 1:48:44 76
Enrique Granados 15 1:46:40 76
Frank Bridge 15 1:39:55 76
Johan Svendsen 15 2:23:58 76
Peter Maxwell Davies 15 1:01:01 76
Steve Reich 15 1:17:20 76
Zoltán Kodály 15 2:26:01 76
Arnold Bax 14 2:20:48 84
Cécile Louise Chaminade 14 1:13:41 84
Emmanuel Chabrier 14 1:09:16 84
Johann Christian Bach 14 1:47:05 84
John Ireland 14 0:56:13 84
Alexander Borodin 13 1:42:04 89
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach 13 1:28:01 89
Charles‐François Gounod 13 1:10:02 89
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina 13 1:20:15 89
Josef Suk 13 1:52:37 89
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka 13 1:37:15 89
Sir James MacMillan 13 1:13:15 89
Christoph Willibald Gluck 12 1:26:06 96
Jacques Offenbach 12 1:01:28 96
Johann Strauss II 12 1:35:00 96
Michael Torke 12 1:40:36 96
Modest Mussorgsky 12 1:21:17 96
Charles Villiers Stanford 11 1:15:06 101
Erik Satie 11 0:49:28 101
Francisco Tárrega 11 0:48:47 101
François Couperin 11 0:30:57 101
George Butterworth 11 0:43:34 101
Grace Williams 11 0:59:40 101
Hubert Parry 11 1:19:48 101

[Serial_Apologist]

An amazing piece of work there, Anton, if not "labour of love" - for which, huge thanks!

[hmvman]

Yes, thank you very much for that, Anton. Without wishing to add to your labours I'd be interested to know, out of the total playings per composer, how many were of the same work. So, to use your RVW example, how many of the 59 playings were of "The Lark Ascending"?

[antongould]

Yes, thank you very much for that, Anton. Without wishing to add to your labours I'd be interested to know, out of the total playings per composer, how many were of the same work. So, to use your RVW example, how many of the 59 playings were of "The Lark Ascending"?

It’s eminently possible but fiddly so for which composers do you harbour suspicions ..... ????

[Andrew Slater]

Yes, thank you very much for that, Anton. Without wishing to add to your labours I'd be interested to know, out of the total playings per composer, how many were of the same work. So, to use your RVW example, how many of the 59 playings were of "The Lark Ascending"?

You can look anything up you're curious about on the database, for example:

https://radio-lists.org.uk/r3/pl.php?composer=*ghan+william*&title=*&prog=essentia*&latest=2019-12-31&days=365

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You (anyone) can do this for themselves, rather than rewarding anton's marvellous work by asking him to do more.

Go to the Database here:

https://radio-lists.org.uk/r3/pl.php?composer=*&title=*&prog=*&latest=yesterday&days=30

Scroll down past the instructions to "Search the Database"
Fill in the name of the composer in the "Composer" field.
Fill in the name of the work you wish to research in the "Work Title" field.
Put the name of the programme in the "Programme" field IF REQUIRED (leave/make sure it's blank otherwise).
Make sure "yesterday" (without the inverted commas) is entered in the "Latest Date" field
Put "365" (or whatever - but without inverted commas) in the "Days to Search" field
Scroll to beneath the turquoise examples list and click on "Submit"
Give the logorithms a couple of seconds to sort themselves out.
"Hey, Mum! It's your brother Robert!"


(In this instance "3 Results found", so The Lark Ascending was broadcast 3 times on EC in 2019)