Classic FM attacks Radio 3!

[MrGongGong]

Of course the MUSIC that many folk love doesn't need us at all , Bach will carry on existing fine without us
unlike improvised music which depends on continuous exposition to actually exist at all

One thing I DO know is that most of us who are enthusiastic about our niches are NOT typical of the rest of the world
so for me to say that "I always have loved the oboe since my primary school teacher played a Léon Goossens LP in assembly, (which she did) why can't we simply do that ?" would miss the point entirely.

Not to mention ...

One of my favourite websites

[cloughie]

Not so sure about that. Whereas people 'get' popular/pop music now from the age of 4, but don't always retain their interest in contemporary pop, they catch up with classical music (if they're lucky) later on, even if they missed out earlier.

The great division of opinion is whether you try to attract new audiences by presenting classical music under all sorts of familiar guises - reality TV, pop radio/culture - and thus risk alienating those who already listen, or whether you just wait for the curious to discover it. If the BBC ceases to present it unvarnished, the music will never discovered for itself.

(I notice Fiona Sturges says elsewhere that she not much into classical music: astonishing!)

Looks likes she does not write very objectively about about rock music either!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/fiona-sturges-does-gender-explain-my-immunity-to-bruce-springsteens-songs-of-cars-bars-and-women-called-mary-1719377.html

[JFLL]

Not so sure about that. Whereas people 'get' popular/pop music now from the age of 4, but don't always retain their interest in contemporary pop, they catch up with classical music (if they're lucky) later on, even if they missed out earlier.

I agree that people catch up with (or even catch on to) classical music later on in life, and I often take comfort from that, but of course since they'll be 'getting on' they won't, in the eyes of today's media administrators, be the 'right' audience! And they won't enlarge the audience, because they'll just about replace those of us who Fiona Sturges gleefully calls 'almost dead'.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Looks likes she does not write very objectively about about rock music either!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...y-1719377.html

Yes; it's all about her, isn't it!


Wonder what she thinks of The Grateful Dead?

[Gordon]

Wonder what she thinks of The Grateful Dead?

The award-winning Hyperion recording of the Ninth Symphony of Robert Simpson was sponsored by the Rex Foundation of San Francisco, which administers the charitable activities of the rock group, "The Grateful Dead." Simpson thereafter called himself, "The Grateful Living."

If you think this debate over teh BBC's and R3's cultural standards is new have a look here for an intervied [quote above] with Robert Simpson in which he talks about his BBC producer days on the Third Programme and the kind of stuff they broadcast then!

http://www.bruceduffie.com/simpson.html

No one ever erected a statue to a critic

[Catherine Bott]

Good question Russ - I do know that Forumeers are pretty anti-Twit, but the breadth and depth, if not the youth, of R3 listenership in general never ceases to surprise, even after 9 years (can personally vouch for a resident of Brixton Prison, a famous American crime writer and a Royal Duke outing themselves as enthusiastic regulars, but would have to admit that all three are of a certain age). You might get a teeny glimpse of insight into some of my thoughts on this Sunday's Pick of the Week, R4. But then again, some of my choices might not make the cut.

[french frank]

If you think this debate over teh BBC's and R3's cultural standards is new have a look here for an intervied [quote above] with Robert Simpson in which he talks about his BBC producer days on the Third Programme and the kind of stuff they broadcast then!

RS: I think in a broadcasting organization, you have to have a staff which is educated and experienced and knows its stuff - knows what there is and knows how to discuss intelligently what is to be produced. I think we did in the days of the Third Program just following the war - in the late 40s and early 50s. Those are the times we had a real feeling of conviction about what we were doing, and we didn't consider how many people were listening. We considered, really, whether the thing we were doing was worth doing regardless of box office, regardless of financial considerations.

BD: Was there a sense that you were writing history?

RS: Yes. We were. What we were doing was the envy of the whole broadcasting world, and it was, to some extent, imitated later on in Germany and France, but very few other places. You ask me what I would do now and that's a rather impossible question because all those things have been so much eroded and the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that it would be a rather hopeless task, I think, trying to restore it.

BD: I see. You'd need a magic wand to put it back.

RS: I think you would, yes.

[cloughie]

Whereas people 'get' popular/pop music now from the age of 4, but don't always retain their interest in contemporary pop, they catch up with classical music (if they're lucky) later on, even if they missed out earlier.

I'm not so sure about that - many people over 60 have never 'got' classical music but maybe unlike previous generations have retained a very strong interest in rock and pop music and will never really be too keen on Classical. They also are as fed up with what's happened to R2 in the same way that we are with R3. Folk fans, equally are not happy with the removal of Mike Harding from the R2 Wednesday evening folk slot.
Perhaps the tweeting, ageist Fiona would like to register with the forum and enter into debate with us directly. Perhaps one of our tweeters could put out an invitation.

[Bryn]

Good heavens! Well, nothing new there (and am I right in thinking the Indy didn't cover the Global Radio story at all? - The Guardian and Telegraph did, as well as the Mail).

That really was a nasty reference to the critics of Radio 3 all being 'dead soon'. I expect she has some jolly good ideas for cutting expenditure on the NHS too ...

This is she, by the way - wouldn't you know it?

A twit of the first order.

[french frank]

I'm not so sure about that - many people over 60 have never 'got' classical music but maybe unlike previous generations have retained a very strong interest in rock and pop music and will never really be too keen on Classical.

By 'people' I didn't mean everyone: I meant 'there are people'. In other words the replenisher audience (as the BBC terms it) can be of any age, and may well actually be looking for something different from youth culture (if they're young) or the general ethos of pop culture.

[Russ]

I had a feeling I shouldn't have mentioned that Indy article, and I do not form opinions of people on the basis on whether they tweet or don't (the medium is far more the massage than the message these days), but here's the thing - R3 gets little mainstream press attention these days, so I take the view there's no such thing as bad publicity, and I think Fiona Sturges took her bitchiness cue from Paul Morley's incisive contribution to that particular edition of Music Matters (worth listening to, btw, although it's only Morley who lights it up). Whether one agrees with Sturges' line of thought is another matter, and in general I quite like her radio reviews. However, with Elizabeth Mahoney announcing she's throwing in the towel at the Guardian, that leaves only Sturges and doyenne Dame Gillian doing all the broadsheet radio coverage. (I can't see the paywalled Times though, and radio doesn't exist at the Huff Post.)

It may be that radio discussion will be increasingly diverted to internet outposts such as this forum, but it is being sidelined for critical review in the mainstream press. That should be of concern both to broadcasters and listeners. No debate is worse than a lively if occasionally uninformed one.

Russ

P.S. Catherine, ta. Will be listening in!

[french frank]

I had a feeling I shouldn't have mentioned that Indy article

Ooh, noo noo noo noo noo. I'm glad to see it.

Elisabeth Mahoney, though, is another one like Sturges who has an occasional foray over to Radio 3 to say how wonderful the d'd-d programmes now are (à bas les snobs)! GR is 'very R4' but takes a strong, intelligent interest in 'culture'. Paul Donovan is still at the S Times (though I never read him for obvious reasons): don't know about The Times.

It may be that radio discussion will be increasingly diverted to internet outposts such as this forum, but it is being sidelined for critical review in the mainstream press.

A pity, particularly as - surely? - BBC radio has a bigger reach than BBC TV.

We're not missing the hint, are we, that CB is doing Pick o' t'Week? I did not know this. I hope R3 gets a good mention!

[Barbirollians]

I think this misses the point . I cannot imagine younger , intelligent listeners being seduced into a lvoe of Classical Music by the classical lite guff of Breakfast and Essential Classics that insults their intelligence as much as it does anti twitter old fogies or a supposed one foot in the grave listenership .

Mr Morley's point is a good one but I have little doubt judging from the endless bilge he puffs on the Review Show and the like and has done for the last 20 years that his prescription would be one we agree with . Probably talking whilst the music is going on and orchestras dressed in t shirts and jeans . Would that make a difference to those people who I know who were turned on to classical music . I doubt it - it was by chance being moved by a piece of music or a performance of say a touring opera company that did the trick and started them .

The underlying problem to me is one that has been present for at least the last 35 years as someone who went to school in the 1970s and 80s - it is treated as a peripheral subject at most state schools and presented and taught with little interest often by music teachers who aren't really interested in it themselves. Only when classical music is treated as having a similar importance in schools and potential life enhancing significance as literature and art will it really have a chance to attract a wider audience . There must also be a role for enormously enhanced outreach in education for this too .

No doubt it is all too expensive

[MrGongGong]

The underlying problem to me is one that has been present for at least the last 35 years as someone who went to school in the 1970s and 80s - it is treated as a peripheral subject at most state schools and presented and taught with little interest often by music teachers who aren't really interested in it themselves. Only when classical music is treated as having a similar importance in schools and potential life enhancing significance as literature and art will it really have a chance to attract a wider audience . There must also be a role for enormously enhanced outreach in education for this too .

I don't think it's a problem to do with "classical" music , but with the IDEA of music as more than simply entertainment
without another model of music , it will simply be "entertaining" or not.

What I like about Paul Morley is that he (and I don't necessarily agree with everything he says) engages with music as a thinking activity, something which is almost totally absent from the National Plan For Music Education in England (and the "Curriculum for Excellence" in Scotland etc etc )

In my experience, a group of teenage music technology students who make hip hop were moved (almost to tears !) by having the experience of recording one of the finest young string quartets playing Haydn for a website I made with them more than they would have been by attending a concert , or listening to a CD. There are many ways of engaging people with music NOT just by adding flashing lights or "presentation" ......

[JFLL]

The underlying problem to me is one that has been present for at least the last 35 years as someone who went to school in the 1970s and 80s - it is treated as a peripheral subject at most state schools and presented and taught with little interest often by music teachers who aren't really interested in it themselves. Only when classical music is treated as having a similar importance in schools and potential life enhancing significance as literature and art will it really have a chance to attract a wider audience .

But I don’t think myself that good formal music teaching is a prerequisite of developing a love of classical music. (And that’s surely what we’re talking about, rather than the ability to play an instrument?) I went to a good state school in the late 50s and 60s and we had in succession a good music teacher and a really dire one, but the few of us who developed a love of music (I mean a love of listening to it) did so independently of, or even in spite of, what we were being ‘taught’. I suppose, for the (very) few of us who developed the taste, something just suddenly clicked at the right time -- maybe from hearing something casually on the Third Programme or even on ‘Music Magazine’ on Sunday mornings, which may (I’m not sure) have been on the Home Service (Radio 4) in those days. And my parents weren’t particularly musical either, so the radio was very rarely tuned to the Third Programme.

It’s a minority interest, no use pretending otherwise.