Essential Classics - The Continuing Debate

[cloughie]

From the late '70s onwards, Milton Babbitt frequently referred to himself as a Maximalist ("someone who wants to get the most out of Music, rather than the most he can get away with"!)



Pink Floyd after Barrett?

I like the Milton Babbit quote - I like to think loads of instruments.

[Bryn]

Is the opposite of 'minimalist', 'maximalist' and if so what would come into this genre and on the same tack what is 'hard listening', 'late music' and 'retrogressive rock'?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The rather fantastic Laurie Anderson - do we laugh?

Or get scared: really scared?

Flee through the air (like Superman)?

Or laugh on terror firma?

[ahinton]

Or laugh on terror firma?

Finis terror? - ou La Terror est un homme?...(!)...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Finis terror? - ou La Terror est un homme?...(!)...

[mercia]

your 20 essential British essentials - "we decided only one work per composer" - "for some reason Handel features twice" -

so apparently do Purcell, Britten and Elgar so that was quite a good idea then <doh> - worthy of Sir Baldrick

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/posts/Essential-Classics-20-Great-British-Works

[french frank]

your 20 essential British essentials - "we decided only one work per composer" - "for some reason Handel features twice" -

so apparently do Purcell, Britten and Elgar - that was quite a good idea then <doh>

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio3/po...-British-Works

[mercia]

simile/metaphor overdose alert

"the Radio 3 schedule is able, like the Olympic gymnasts we witnessed nearly a year back, to bend and flex in remarkable ways transforming itself into a streaming cornucopia of refreshed and related programmes, drilling down into a composer’s world at depth in a way that the occasional feature could never achieve"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/posts/BBC-Radio-3-celebrates-British-music

[Sir Velo]

What on earth has Dr Sarah Walker been taking? Today's "brainteaser" quiz was promised to be "challenging" and put together by "boffins". I was expecting, at the least, a multi-part question along the lines of those that used to be posed in the Gramophone, involving laborious checking in Grove and hunting out obscure long forgotten records. What we got was "Juliet as a Young Girl", and were then asked to text or tweet in who was dancing. Jeez.

While we're on the subject, am I alone in finding SW's describing Sir Colin Davis as "my artist of the week" just a mite condescending?

[french frank]

simile/metaphor overdose alert

[I]"the Radio 3 schedule is able, like the Olympic gymnasts we witnessed nearly a year back, to bend and flex in remarkable ways

Crumbs! It always seems to me that even when we have the schedules 'cleared' for 'The Beethoven Experience' or 'A Bach Christmas' it's pretty much the normal schedule and same presenters doing their stuff, just a more limited playlist.

This isn't intended in any way to belittle or mock, but when one reads in answer to the common question as to what the music is in the TV ad one reads (below the blog):

"The music in the advert is called "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughn Williams, the section in the advert is about 9 minutes 45 seconds in. Took me ages to find it, it's a shame the BBC couldn't help us out and tell us what it is"

it just disheartens to realise that that's Radio 3's target audience.

[Sir Velo]

If you think that's bad you ain't seen nothin' yet! Take a peek at the blog for the 20 best (sic) British Records. Producer Chris Marshall smugly proclaims that it has been a demanding experience coming up with the selection, and then chooses an unimaginative selection that I suspect boarders could have come up with inside two minutes.

The strangest claim, however, is that the selection was limited to one piece per composer, yet we find two Handel, Britten and Elgar. Go figure. Come on, do the math guys!

[vinteuil]

... when one thinks of what the Germans, the Austrians, the Italians - even the French! - could produce as a list of a Top Twenty - it really does make our efforts here in these British Isles seem pretty puerile.

The fact that they need to scrape together two from that fine German Haendel, and two from those nice enough composers Britten and Elgar, in order to come up with a round twenty... and thinking that they also have to scrabble around for such as that other furriner Delius, and such as those minor peaks Vaughan Williams and Holst, let alone the insipidities of a Bax!

And yet they find no room for a Dunstaple, a Sheppard, a Gibbons, - nor even a Boyce or an Arne....

[Thropplenoggin]

I expect - no, I like to think that there were two lists: the one they originally created, teeming with unsung obscurities of English music; and the one they were told to cobble together so that their eminently thick audience could recognise the names. Such contempt!

I shall now ransack the comments section of aforementioned digital palimpsest or 'blog'.

[Bax-of-Delights]

let alone the insipidities of a Bax!

I was called away while sipping my jasmine tea to listen to the "insipid" 3rd symphony. We will meet at dawn vinteuil and make sure your seconds are fully accoutred with handbags.

[Bax-of-Delights]

"The music in the advert is called "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughn Williams, the section in the advert is about 9 minutes 45 seconds in. Took me ages to find it, it's a shame the BBC couldn't help us out and tell us what it is"

it just disheartens to realise that that's Radio 3's target audience.

You will have noticed on the R3 Facebook page a number of identical questions. At first I thought someone was pulling my leg given that the Tallis Fantasia is probably in the top 3 most played on R3 and CFM for some years. This is the NEW audience FF - the audience that The Trust says FoR3 does not represent and that it is going to ignore you from now on!
I note that one of the responses to the blogs quoted above is asking if anyone knows where such-and-such a place was filmed in the TV advert.