Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[cloughie]

On this morning’s programme ‘She moved through the fair’ sung by Andreas Scholl was probably technically very well sung and a very nice harp accompaniment BUT I don’t think any version of this for me will ever replace Sandy Denny’s vocals on Fairport Convention’s ‘What we did on our holidays’.

[cloughie]

This morning’s slow moment is an annoying noise and not the restful sounds that should occupy this spot. Wrangham by Claire M Singer

[Bryn]

This morning’s quiet moment is an annoying noise and not the restful sounds that should occupy this spot

Ah, something worth listening to, perhaps. What was the title of the work which filled this "quiet moment"? There does not appear to be such a section listed:

0915 Playlist starter – listen and send us your ideas for the next step in our musical journey today.

1010 Song of the Day – harnessing the magic of words, music and the human voice.

1030 Playlist reveal – a sequence of music suggested by you in response to our starter today.

1100 Essential Five – after last week's saints, this week we focus on five sinners in music.

1130 Slow Moment – time to take a break for a moment's musical reflection.

[AuntDaisy]

This morning’s slow moment is an annoying noise and not the restful sounds that should occupy this spot. Wrangham by Claire M Singer

I'm with cloughie on this, Bryn. Surprisingly long pause at the end.
As GM enthuses "an all embracing one... ...the organ just has an immensity to it... ...like being enveloped in a warm wave of sound."

[cloughie]

Ah, something worth listening to, perhaps. What was the title of the work which filled this "quiet moment"? There does not appear to be such a section listed:

You mean because I didn’t like it you probably would?

https://youtu.be/xzV-J58jK80

Wrangham by Claire M Singer.

[Serial_Apologist]

You mean because I didn’t like it you probably would?

https://youtu.be/xzV-J58jK80

Wrangham by Claire M Singer.

Pretty innocuous - something Holst might well have knocked off on an uninspiring day.

[oddoneout]

Pretty innocuous - something Holst might well have knocked off on an uninspiring day.

It didn't irritate me as much as it seems to have done cloughie but I would agree that it wasn't particularly inspiring.
There was a high spot in this morning's programme for me and that was Nadine Koutcher singing Rameau (Triste apprets from Castor et Pollux) - not a name I recognised and not a piece I knew but certainly memorable.

[french frank]

It didn't irritate me as much as it seems to have done cloughie but I would agree that it wasn't particularly inspiring.

The one thing I do lay squarely at the present controller's door is Radio 3's current mania for Mindfulness, Meditation, Slowing Down, Relaxing, Ambiant Floaty Nothingness. The last thing I would want Radio 3 to be providing for me. If I were to feel I needed it, I could provide it for myself by sitting quietly in a darkened room intoning Ommmmmmmmmmm ……

[Bryn]

You mean because I didn’t like it you probably would?

https://youtu.be/xzV-J58jK80

Wrangham by Claire M Singer.

Close. I only really know Clare from her work on the hydraulics of the Willis organ at Union Chapel, Islington a year before that Youtube item was posted. This is the first of her own music I have heard. I find Wrangham a tad derivative but pleasant enough and without anything to scare the horses. I meant to listen to her "This Classical Life" last month but will catch it before it goes. I recall Mr GG, late of this parish, was fond of her work. I wonder whether the Wrangham of the title refers to the anthropologist, the dog trainers, the poet of someone or something quite different?

[oddoneout]

The one thing I do lay squarely at the present controller's door is Radio 3's current mania for Mindfulness, Meditation, Slowing Down, Relaxing, Ambiant Floaty Nothingness. The last thing I would want Radio 3 to be providing for me. If I were to feel I needed it, I could provide it for myself by sitting quietly in a darkened room intoning Ommmmmmmmmmm ……

It's a shoehorn exercise - the music is the same but it has to have a trendy label attached to signal to R3 dinosaurs (aka listeners) what they should be thinking, and tick a few management boxes. It amuses me sometimes - "you think that's restful???" but is eminently ignorable, unlike the increasingly crass and intrusive adverts.

[Serial_Apologist]

The one thing I do lay squarely at the present controller's door is Radio 3's current mania for Mindfulness, Meditation, Slowing Down, Relaxing, Ambiant Floaty Nothingness. The last thing I would want Radio 3 to be providing for me. If I were to feel I needed it, I could provide it for myself by sitting quietly in a darkened room intoning Ommmmmmmmmmm ……

From what I remember, it has to be intoned "Aum" to be effective: "Aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm". Something like that.

The other mindfulness alternative is to walk aimlessly around, preferably outdoors for the dual benefits of "fresh air", paying full attention to the "passing now", while by-passing description, stopping the discursive processes and processings of thought. In other words (or, rather, no words), taking in everything happening through all the senses - tactile, auditory, olfactory, treating the experience as a sort of Gesamtkunstwerk of the senses.

[french frank]

From what I remember, it has to be intoned "Aum" to be effective: "Aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm". Something like that.

Thank you for that, Serial. I'll try that next time I feel the need

[cloughie]

From what I remember, it has to be intoned "Aum" to be effective: "Aaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmm". Something like that.

You mean like:

https://youtu.be/N36oRaEF4jA

[Bryn]

You mean like:

https://youtu.be/N36oRaEF4jA

If you're in the mood, maybe but otherwise:

[Serial_Apologist]

You mean like:

https://youtu.be/N36oRaEF4jA

That music is too "directional". To work with music, the music needs to give a sense of continuousness without beginning or end, in which the listener/participant feels he or she is always in the middle of it all. Atonality probably offers the nearest we can approximate the great Renaissance polyphonic works, in which modes, modality gave more of a sense than major/minor diatonicism's enharmonic restlessness of music in no hurry to "get there" - the big neurosis of the times in which we live, time-starved, ironically, by over-scheduling, having to meet deadlines or be out of kilter with an age which is itself out of kilter and using up its and our resources. It's undoubtedly why the music of people like Part has become so popular under late capitalism, I think.