Through the Night

[antongould]

1) No (say, 7 duplicates)
2) 13%
3) 23'

What about the stats for the R3 evening concert (or for the Proms)? Quite interesting to compare and contrast.

For the Evening Concert we have 6 duplicates with TTN TopTen composers ....

28.4% of the music played - in elapsed time- was from the Top Ten composers

The average time of each of the 1,797 pieces 15:40 ........

[kernelbogey]

My TTN answers would be similar to UTCTenor's....

What about a figure for % of previously unheard-of Balkan composers...?

[ardcarp]

Have you yet discovered get_iplayer...?

Can anyone explain to a fully paid-up dinosaur, preferably in words of few syllables, what get-iplayer is, what it does, and what advantages it has?

Thanks in advance.

[Bryn]

Can anyone explain to a fully paid-up dinosaur, preferably in words of few syllables, what get-iplayer is, what it does, and what advantages it has?

Thanks in advance.

It accesses the relevant iPlayer file, downloads it and converts it to m4a format. This last step allows the adding of bells and whistles like associated images etc. However, this has the immediate negative impact of making the file more difficult to edit. All is not lost. The original aac file can be stripped from the m4a with something like Yamb (free) and the aac can be non-destructively edited via mp3directcut which the author revised a few years ago to handle aac in addition to mp3 and mp2 files. All this without loss of audio definition.

For further information, see https://www.squarepenguin.co.uk, https://www.videohelp.com/software/YAMB/reviews and https://mpesch3.de

[ardcarp]

Thanks so much for your efforts Bryn. I got a bit lost when m4as and mp3ds started poping up...so maybe I'll just stick to bog-standard iplayer. Full marks for trying!

[Bryn]

ardcarp, m4a is just another audio file format, like mp3 (but better). Strictly, it's a file 'wrapper' which can hold either 'lossy' or lossless audio files such as the AAC used by the iPlayer, or Apple lossless. If all you want to do is download from Sounds or the iPlayer, without further editing, it will do perfectly well. Many modern music players (CD players, DVD decks, amplifiers, 'In Car Entertainment' systems) can play them. Like riding a bike, once you quickly get the hang of it, it becomes second nature.

[antongould]

1) No (say, 7 duplicates)
2) 13%
3) 23'

What about the stats for the R3 evening concert (or for the Proms)? Quite interesting to compare and contrast.

Well there were 8 duplicates to the EC Top Ten losing Handel and Dvorak and bringing in Schumann and Vivaldi.

For TTN the Top Ten amounted to 29.8% of the music played in terms of time (EC 25.5%)

The average length of the pieces played was 14:22 (EC 6:26)

As to previously unheard of Balkan Composers ……..

[kernelbogey]

I notice that Catriona seems not to automatically credit conductors of orchestral pieces: rather odd!

[Serial_Apologist]

Jan van Gilse (1881-1944) Trio

This little piece was the last in this morning's Though the Night. It was not listed in Radio Times, and it took me some time to figure out the composer, not being able to make much headway based on the Dutch pronunciation of his name.

It turned out to be by someone I'd not heard of before - Dutch 20th century music before the 1960s not being well served in this country: I've not found his name in any of my pretty extensive literature - and I seemed to be hearing music by someone who might well have taken composition lessons from Max Reger, to judge by the chromatically rich meandering opening section, following the unaccompanied flute, though the music then transitions abruptly into a neo-classicism something like middle-period Ibert, Hindemith or the Swede Larsson, and stays within that zone. It was in fact composed in 1927.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLx5BMK6BMQ

I've given Mr Gilse a heading of his own more out of respect for yet another marginalised figure of quality than thinking in terms of his inclusion under our composers list.

[LezLee]

The Jan van Gilse is listed on 'Through the Night' on the Radio 3 Schedule page. I can't begin to tell you how to find it, it's probably listed on 'Sounds'. I have it bookmarked so I can go straight to it. Like most BBC websites it's a complete mess.

[LezLee]

Got it:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fgxw

[Serial_Apologist]

Got it:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fgxw

Thanks Lez - I might just bookmark that link.

[kernelbogey]

Another Dutch composer, Pieter Hellendaal (1721-1799), to me previously unknown, crops up from time to time on TTN. Worth looking out for.

[Serial_Apologist]

This little piece was broadcast this morning, commencing 5 minutes before the time anounced in Radio Times, so many may have missed it, coming as it did towards the end of the programme. It is Hugo Wolf's Intermezzo for String Quartet in E Flat, and it has fascinated me ever since hearing it on TTN a few months ago, when I raised it on the forum - but I can't now find it anywhere!

I find it hard to believe Wolf composed this as early as 1886 - between the early String Quartet and the relatively better known Italian Serenade, also for string quartet. It starts innocuously enough, but no distance in Wolf begins freely developing some of the material contrapuntally, and the underlying tonal fabric starts to unravel in ways remarkably foreshadowing the string quartet writing of Schoenberg, and especially Webern, a full two decades in advance! Rather than employing unresolving sometimes superimposed triads for ramping up emotional tension - as would Strauss a few years hence - here, in this little piece, in protracted passages, the chromatic implications inherent in the shape and direction of the materials at specific launch points in the formal discourse begin to subordinate all sense of modulatory intent or even requirement for harmonic resolution. This to me is unprecedented in any other music within the post-Wagnerian lineage at this early stage in the journey towards atonality Wagner had begun to unfold, taking his listener by hand from chord to chord in "Tristan" and parts of "Parsifal" in a long drawn-out process only to be foreshortened in such works as Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie and Reger's near-contemporary Fourth Quartet by means of the primacy of counterpoint.

Most of the writings on Wolf have, maybe rightly, concentrated on his word settings - given that Lieder took up so large a part of his output, much being made of the extent to which the latter represented a next step in the lineage beyond Wagner - yet here one senses another, arguably more direct link to The Second Viennese School - one devised along purely musical aesthetic lines, which Schoenberg would have surely have appreciated if he knew the piece. Here is a link - be amazed, be very amazed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcG5bYup-Gs

[Joseph K]

This little piece was broadcast this morning, commencing 5 minutes before the time anounced in Radio Times, so many may have missed it, coming as it did towards the end of the programme. It is Hugo Wolf's Intermezzo for String Quartet in E Flat, and it has fascinated me ever since hearing it on TTN a few months ago, when I raised it on the forum - but I can't now find it anywhere!

I find it hard to believe Wolf composed this as early as 1886 - between the early String Quartet and the relatively better known Italian Serenade, also for string quartet. It starts innocuously enough, but no distance in Wolf begins freely developing some of the material contrapuntally, and the underlying tonal fabric starts to unravel in ways remarkably foreshadowing the string quartet writing of Schoenberg, and especially Webern, a full two decades in advance! Rather than employing unresolving sometimes superimposed triads for ramping up emotional tension - as would Strauss a few years hence - here, in this little piece, in protracted passages, the chromatic implications inherent in the shape and direction of the materials at specific launch points in the formal discourse begin to subordinate all sense of modulatory intent or even requirement for harmonic resolution. This to me is unprecedented in any other music within the post-Wagnerian lineage at this early stage in the journey towards atonality Wagner had begun to unfold, taking his listener by hand from chord to chord in "Tristan" and parts of "Parsifal" in a long drawn-out process only to be foreshortened in such works as Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie and Reger's near-contemporary Fourth Quartet by means of the primacy of counterpoint.

Most of the writings on Wolf have, maybe rightly, concentrated on his word settings - given that Lieder took up so large a part of his output, much being made of the extent to which the latter represented a next step in the lineage beyond Wagner - yet here one senses another, arguably more direct link to The Second Viennese School - one devised along purely musical aesthetic lines, which Schoenberg would have surely have appreciated if he knew the piece. Here is a link - be amazed, be very amazed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcG5bYup-Gs

Thanks for this post.

I seem to recall you mentioning this piece before. I will make sure I listen to it later...