The Classic FM-isation of R3 is almost complete

[mercia]

crikey, was the British composer month a "gimmick to get the plebs to listen" ? [msg#1 ]

I hadn't realised that - there must be some plebs on this forum then - I hope that's ok with them

[teamsaint]

crikey, was the British composer month a "gimmick to get the plebs to listen" ? [msg#1 ]

I hadn't realised that

if it was, did it work?

[Thropplenoggin]

crikey, was the British composer month a "gimmick to get the plebs to listen" ? [msg#1 ]

I hadn't realised that

Well it certainly wasn't done to promote lesser known British composers, was it? As was noted on here by devotees of British music.

Vaughan-Williams is pretty much a daily feature on R3, etc.

[french frank]

crikey, was the British composer month a "gimmick to get the plebs to listen" ? [msg#1 ]

I hadn't realised that - there must be some plebs on this forum then - I hope that's ok with them

Well, judging from the regular arrival of people on R3's Facebook page enquiring what the music was on the TV advert (someone suggested R3 put up a fixed announcement at the top of the page but no one from Radio 3 ever answered the question anyway), it must have been widely advertised on television - which appealed to a lot of people unfamiliar with the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (which doesn't make them plebs necessarily, but the 'broader audience' which Radio 3 is intent on attracting).

These special events usually coincide with big advertising campaigns for Radio 3 ...

[french frank]

Well, judging from the regular arrival of people on R3's Facebook page enquiring what the music was on the TV advert (someone suggested R3 put up a fixed announcement at the top of the page but no one from Radio 3 ever answered the question anyway), it must have been widely advertised on television - which appealed to a lot of people unfamiliar with the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (which doesn't make them plebs necessarily, but the 'broader audience' which Radio 3 is intent on attracting).

These special events usually coincide with big advertising campaigns for Radio 3 ...

I've just looked for a press release announcing the Great Event. It hasn't appeared yet but someone's been tellt aboot it ...

http://www.makingmusic.org.uk/our-work/projects/reaching-a-new-audience-with-bbc-radio-3

Reaching a new audience, eh?

NB Stephen Miron's (CEO Global Radio, owners of Classic FM) speech in Salford:

'Radio 3 now has more film soundtracks in its daytime programmes - particularly breakfast - copying Classic FM.'

[BBMmk2]

Radio 3 has a large of a collection of lesser known British composers. Whty the heck can't they broadcast them? Breakfast or In Tune or even Rob Cowan, who certainly is not being used to the full.

[antongould]

Well it certainly wasn't done to promote lesser known British composers, was it? As was noted on here by devotees of British music.

Vaughan-Williams is pretty much a daily feature on R3, etc.

Was it not? The Heffer shows and others certainly featured composers new to me.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Where I disagree with you strongly is where you regard the music as belonging on a lower plateau simply because it doesn’t conform to your rather ‘purist’ notions of what ‘serious’ music should be. This dividing music into higher and lower art forms has a long and rather inglorious history, beginning with Wagner’s infamous “Judaism in Music” and ending Milton Babbit's contemptuous dismissal of the audience. Following your criteria there is an awful lot of music that would have to be discounted, including most program music or incidental music for the stage.

French Frank.

It’s just as well then that I’m not redefining classical music as 'music played by a big orchestra'! Sadly for you there is just far more film music that has rather more than a “scant connection stylistically with classical music of the same era” than you care to admit. But then, given your ignorance of the subject I’m not surprised you are unaware of this.

And, yes, that is my opinion - just rather better informed!

Thropplenoggin.

You started the thread. Tell us why you have a bee in your bonnet about film music. Failed film composer, perhaps?

DavidP: this is the first time I've been bracketed with Milton Babbit so many thanks for that. Those who know me better than you clearly do will know that I don't have much in the way of purist notions. In this thread I was commenting from observation of what film music has and hasn't entered the concert and the official classical CD repertoire as indicated by the likes of Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and CD Review.

I was trying to explore why this happens, and pointing to what I see as some differences in kind between the sort of film music that doesn't make the jump and the sort that does. The latter will find its way into R3 programming and into Prom programmes quite easily, and do so on its own merit as established classical repertoire. The type that doesn't, in which I include the likes of Dr Who (yes, I do know it isn't a film...), Magnificent Seven, 633 Sqdn, Star Wars etc etc, appears to be what you think merits its own prom. Well, I'm not dogmatic, maybe it does once in a while, as does (apparently) the odd jazz concert, various types of folk performers, Broadway musicals and no doubt a good few more non-classical genres.

The real issue is just how many of these non-classical Proms get squeezed in per season. Your earlier postings appear to be making a case for routine/regular inclusion as if any non-classical genre that can fill the RAH is entitled to one prom a year. If so I think this is where you will find that many boarders will part company.

Re your comments to French Frank and Thropplenoggin, may I respectfully suggest that you should be careful not to become 'unclubbable'?

[french frank]

I don't feel inclined to let this rest, given certain lines of 'argument' that are being pursued.

Film music as a genre is akin to jazz in one respect: it was born in the 20th c. It is quite unlike ballet music (or 'opera music'): it has not been part of the classical tradition for centuries, developing musically down the ages. Lully's music is baroque, Tchaikovsky's romantic, Ravel's of the early 20th c.

Film music is a, broadly speaking 'popular' genre - and, no, that doesn't mean 'pop', it simply means music in a lighter style which has broad appeal. It is no more 'classical' than contemporary pop music (broad sense) - also a genre which has grown up over the 20th centuriy in its own myriad styles.

To say film music is 'not classical' is not to denigrate it or say it is on a 'lower plateau'. Classical music is already being marginalised in society: being no longer allowed to have a festival in which it has traditionally been celebrated just because other people want their taste in music celebrated at the same time is something we object to. From Schoenberg through to Cage, Babbitt or Eliott Carter (who I regard as the 20th c. 'classical composers') I would find it hard to find a composer writing in a style like John Williams, Danny Elfman or John Barry.

There will always be 'grey' areas - there usually are when anyone tries to dictate fixed rules: but on the whole I would say that modern film music is an off-shoot of classical music which has discarded the aspects that the broad public will find distasteful ("like someone bouncing on rusty bedsprings, thwacking at rats with a saw", to quote the current Radio Times on Lachenmann). And by 'modern film music' I don't mean every film score you choose to come up with, but the works which are frequently performed detached from their films (Star Wars, Titanic, Goldfinger, Lord of the Rings) and which are chosen for such performances because they are 'crowd pleasers' - if that will not be taken as an insult.

[DavidP]

I made no comment suggesting that you did. I was trying to ascertain where you drew your dividing line between criticism of work that was popular with some audiences and "contempt" for that audience for liking it - your comments about "hostility to the commercial world" didn't make this clear.


Glad to hear it.


What evidence do you have for such a suggestion? What relevance does it have to the discussion?


Correct; I should have concentrated on the subject of Hollywood film scores.

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

Your total loss to understand things is perhaps something to which you will need to become accustomed.

Ah! I see what you did there! I said I am at a total loss to understand why there such intolerance toward film music on this forum. I admit to no such loss of understanding anywhere else (although my partner might object to this last statement!)

Why do I think you were in a temper? Well, you appeared to be in such a spluttering rage you managed to magic up a Schoenberg film score where none exists (I repeat – Schoenberg wrote no film scores!) and that you felt compelled to quote yourself from a thread from 18 months ago! This does suggest quite a bit of self-defensiveness on your part.

[DavidP]

DavidP: this is the first time I've been bracketed with Milton Babbit so many thanks for that. Those who know me better than you clearly do will know that I don't have much in the way of purist notions. In this thread I was commenting from observation of what film music has and hasn't entered the concert and the official classical CD repertoire as indicated by the likes of Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine and CD Review.

I was trying to explore why this happens, and pointing to what I see as some differences in kind between the sort of film music that doesn't make the jump and the sort that does. The latter will find its way into R3 programming and into Prom programmes quite easily, and do so on its own merit as established classical repertoire. The type that doesn't, in which I include the likes of Dr Who (yes, I do know it isn't a film...), Magnificent Seven, 633 Sqdn, Star Wars etc etc, appears to be what you think merits its own prom. Well, I'm not dogmatic, maybe it does once in a while, as does (apparently) the odd jazz concert, various types of folk performers, Broadway musicals and no doubt a good few more non-classical genres.

The real issue is just how many of these non-classical Proms get squeezed in per season. Your earlier postings appear to be making a case for routine/regular inclusion as if any non-classical genre that can fill the RAH is entitled to one prom a year. If so I think this is where you will find that many boarders will part company.

Re your comments to French Frank and Thropplenoggin, may I respectfully suggest that you should be careful not to become 'unclubbable'?

I take your point, LeMartinPecheur. In my defence I did put purist in quotes. All opinions have their origin in some world-view or aesthetic approach whether we are conscious of them or not. I was merely pointing out the similarity between some of your comments and the aesthetic tradition of German romanticism encompassing Wagner and ending in Adorno and the modernist ideology.

And, no I’m not making a case for routine/regular inclusion of any non-classical genre. Film music obviously covers both classical and non-classical areas. I’m only talking about the inclusion of film music where it clearly belongs to the classical tradition. My comments are directed at those who, like French frank seem to wish to exclude it altogether.

Notwithstanding your wink eye I take your comment at the end seriously. We will have to see if or when I become unclubable (if I haven’t become so already). Think of it as a test case as to whether this forum is generally representative of ordinary Radio 3 listeners or the platform for a tiny clique.

[Richard Tarleton]

Think of it as a test case as to whether this forum is generally representative of ordinary Radio 3 listeners or the platform for a tiny clique.

David, I daresay this is more one for ff, but I think this sentence could do with unpicking.

I discovered FoR3 (a few years ago now) as (I thought) an ordinary Radio 3 listener who was becoming - quite unprompted - increasingly fed up with the direction of travel of R3.

I think perhaps you could define what you mean here by "ordinary listener", and by "clique", the OED definition of which is "A small and exclusive party or set, a narrow coterie or circle; a term of reproach or contempt". What is an ordnary listener? I've been an R3 listener for getting on for 50 years, and in my late teens and for much of my adult life it provided exactly what I wanted. I'm upset to find myself one no longer, if by ordinary listener you mean someone who welcomes current trends on R3. And this is not simply down to age.

As for clique, I don't think a group of people unknown to eachother outside these boards could be described as one. A group of people who find themselves drawn together by common concerns, maybe.

[aeolium]

Film music as a genre is akin to jazz in one respect: it was born in the 20th c. It is quite unlike ballet music (or 'opera music'): it has not been part of the classical tradition for centuries, developing musically down the ages. Lully's music is baroque, Tchaikovsky's romantic, Ravel's of the early 20th c.

You could also say atonal music, which is also unlike ballet music, is akin to jazz in one respect: it was born - or at least first appeared - in the 20th century. But film music, like atonal music, did not spring fully-formed from nowhere. It was written by people who had often been writing for quite different forms and often by people who had developed with a training in classical music, and who often (in some cases principally) wrote classical works that were completely within the classical tradition: Prokofiev, Korngold, Shostakovitch, Walton, Herrmann, Schoenberg, Weill, Vaughan Williams. Even John Williams has written a large number of classical works including concertos and chamber music. Morricone composed classical works before he went into film composing in a big way, and was also a member of an Italian avant-garde group of composers in the 1960s and 1970s devoted to free improvisation, the Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuovo Consonanza.

Film music is a, broadly speaking 'popular' genre - and, no, that doesn't mean 'pop', it simply means music in a lighter style which has broad appeal. It is no more 'classical' than contemporary pop music (broad sense) - also a genre which has grown up over the 20th centuriy in its own myriad styles.

I think it depends on who is writing the film music, but I don't think you can generalise about film music any more than you can about classical music: there are huge variations in quality, intensity, character. There are obviously film scores that fit that description about being popular and lighter, but there are others that don't.

To say film music is 'not classical' is not to denigrate it or say it is on a 'lower plateau'. Classical music is already being marginalised in society: being no longer allowed to have a festival in which it has traditionally been celebrated just because other people want their taste in music celebrated at the same time is something we object to. From Schoenberg through to Cage, Babbitt or Eliott Carter (who I regard as the 20th c. 'classical composers') I would find it hard to find a composer writing in a style like John Williams, Danny Elfman or John Barry.

There will always be 'grey' areas - there usually are when anyone tries to dictate fixed rules: but on the whole I would say that modern film music is an off-shoot of classical music which has discarded the aspects that the broad public will find distasteful ("like someone bouncing on rusty bedsprings, thwacking at rats with a saw", to quote the current Radio Times on Lachenmann). And by 'modern film music' I don't mean every film score you choose to come up with, but the works which are frequently performed detached from their films (Star Wars, Titanic, Goldfinger, Lord of the Rings) and which are chosen for such performances because they are 'crowd pleasers' - if that will not be taken as an insult.

Again, I don't think you can generalise. One of the developments particularly of the C20 in classical music is the breaking-up of a common language and a common line of development, so that there are now many different styles in some cases unrelated to each other - something that was never the case in the C18 for instance. There is atonal music, different kinds of serialism, conventionally tonal composers, minimalists, mystical composers such as Pärt, Gorecki, Tavener, electronic and aleatoric music. All of these sometimes wildly different styles can be comprehended in the term 'classical music of the C20'. And I suggest that film music - at least some film music - falls within the ambit of classical music, considered broadly.

But I am not in favour of film music being included in a Prom simply because it is popular. I think it ought to be able to stand on its own coherently, without the images, and if it does not it shouldn't be played stand alone. And just as one would require if one was programming any music - ballet music for instance - it ought to justify its programming on grounds of its quality.

I also think those who are moaning about the dumbing down of programmes in the Proms season should have a look back at some earlier seasons. Look, for instance, at the 1920 season, which ran between August and October. There are a great number of programmes with what one would call lighter music, lots of overtures, not too many big pieces, lots of British music - and a lot of songs - by composers now forgotten, quite a lot of orchestral arrangements. That seems to me a much more populist Prom schedule than the one we have today.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

who but R3 would play Sir Jimmy Shand in the morning show?

[Sir Velo]

I think there's been a wilful bit of straw man argument here. It's not the great works of film score composition which are being contested as fit for inclusion in a Prom. Quite rightly, Nevsky, Scott, Also Sprach Zarathustra () are major works of art. Rather, it's the mise-en-scene soundtrack which complements a specific action where the whole purpose of the score at that point is to enhance the emotion of the cinematic sequence. Film scores of this type are inherently weakened by being taken out of their natural habitat. In much the same reason most full length ballet scores are better condensed into suites for concert performance, much the same can be said of music composed for the cinema. This is not, pace my good friend David P, a condemnation of the very high skill evinced by "film" composers.