'Why Music?' weekend

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Listened with interest to the talk on 12-tone music, which confirmed my suspicion that it has everything to do with mathematics and nothing whatsoever with music.

Then it was either a poor "talk", or a poor "listen".

[LeMartinPecheur]

Then it was either a poor "talk", or a poor "listen".

IIRC, the mathematics just said how many serial rows there can be (a totally silly number demonstrated by giving us the rough time it would take to play them all (c.76 yrs non-stop IIRC): there was later mention that after that it was down to the aesthetic sense of the composer to decide which ones to use and how

Some of the demonstrations of composers' use of maths, e.g. Messiaen's Quattuor using prime numbers (no's of bars in repeating piano and cello parts of 1st mov't for non-recurring 'patterns'), was quite interesting.

[Roehre]

Then it was either a poor "talk", or a poor "listen".

[Nick Armstrong]

I've found the current programme by Richard Kogan on the psychiatry of Schumann and Rachmaninov etc very interesting, and in the former case horrifying.

Now gone back and listened to the first part of the Schumann segment (I'll listen to the Rachmaninov part tomorrow). Very impressed indeed, this chap Dr Kogan is quite a phenomenon. To have a professional shrink talk about the music (and the composers, from letters etc) from the inside out, and then himself give pretty exemplary performances of the music, is pretty remarkable. It's sent me back to Schumann at a canter, playing in my stumbling way some of his very late Gesänge der Frühe in the light of the lecture, and listening to Papillons...

I would recommend that if people only listen to one thing of the immersion weekend, they make it this programme.

[mercia]

wideawake but enjoying "Sleep", missed the first five hours but I think I get the gist of it, I hope the performers have got lots of black coffee supplied. Had to miss all of yesterday's programmes.

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?13970-Why-Music

[Nick Armstrong]

wideawake but enjoying "Sleep", missed the first five hours but I think I get the gist of it, I hope the performers have got lots of black coffee supplied. Had to miss all of yesterday's programmes.

I put it on for a bit but heard just one long deep electro-sounding chord which put me in mind of the sort of acoustic feedback 'buzz' I always dread on the speakers. That, coupled with a sense that the Emperor's tailors had been busy running up a new outfit, would have been sufficiently irritating to rob me of sleep had it gone on any longer than 2 or 3 minutes, so instead I listened to a bedside recording from 'TTN' of Louis Schwitzgebel playing Schubert's D845 piano sonata. Perfect


.

PS only FF has the power to merge that earlier thread about the weekend's festivities, as it's on the 'Announcements' board...

[french frank]

PS only FF has the power to merge that earlier thread about the weekend's festivities, as it's on the 'Announcements' board...

Now on Talking About Music, since the 'Announcement' is a bit out of date. There were only three posts anyway (now at the top of this thread).

[Frances_iom]

my own impression is that the little I listened to would if more tautly edited make excellent concert interval talks

[Nick Armstrong]

my own impression is that the little I listened to would if more tautly edited make excellent concert interval talks

Yes. But try the psychiatrist programme... It's the only one I've heard where the expertise of the speaker needed the span of the programme.

[peterthekeys]

I put it on for a bit but heard just one long deep electro-sounding chord which put me in mind of the sort of acoustic feedback 'buzz' I always dread on the speakers. That, coupled with a sense that the Emperor's tailors had been busy running up a new outfit, would have been sufficiently irritating to rob me of sleep had it gone on any longer than 2 or 3 minutes

It reminded me of some of the "new age" (so-called) music which started appearing in the '80s - saccharine and amorphous. (Was it actually played by humans, or computers? If the latter, I hope they built an anti-boredom extension into the operating system.)

I did wonder about complaining to the BBC about telling listeners to leave their radios on all night, and the amount of power which would thereby be wasted. (But given the size of R3's audience, and the likelihood of anyone actually taking up the suggestion, it probably wouldn't be substantial.)

[french frank]

An approving piece from Roland White in the S. Time Radio Waves column, writing of Why Music?:

"This weekend, though, Radio 3 has been gloriously rebutting any accusation that features the words "Classic FM" or "dumbing down". It has been broadcasting a short season so highbrow, you'd think the station had suffered a botched facelift."

(And he says R3 should be 'doing more of this sort of thing'.)

Also, he wrote … ah, but that ought to be on the Essential Classics thread

Have to say that I totally agree about this principle. And if some people are starved of their regular fix of whatever they listen to, week in, week out, or find the whole thing very uninteresting, Radio 3 has in any case always been allowed to fail spectacularly attempting something brave and different.

Not that I think that on this occasion it has failed: it's how I look at what Radio 3 should do and be.

[umslopogaas]

I've been listening intermittently and I have found it very interesting. Ironically, the most interesting thing I can remember has nothing directly to do with music. Apparently all human babies are borne prematurely, compared to other mammals with smaller brains. Because we have such large brains, the babies have to come out before their heads get too big to pass through the birth canal. Plenty of women would probably say they are still too big even at nine months. Fortunately that's once experience I shall never have.

Hats off to Tom Service, I expect he has a good script but he has done a very good job of presenting some really quite intellectually demanding stuff and gives every impression of actually understanding the discussions.

[Bryn]

... Hats off to Tom Service, I expect he has a good script but he has done a very good job of presenting some really quite intellectually demanding stuff and gives every impression of actually understanding the discussions.

That script was pretty much certainly written by Dr. Service himself. He may often be a right pain, but he is not without intellectual strengths.

[greenilex]

As one who has had the experience no less than three times, I must hasten to reassure readers that it is very easily put out of mind.

Otherwise the future of the species might be at risk, I suppose.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That script was pretty much certainly written by Dr. Service himself. He may often be a right pain, but he is not without intellectual strengths.

- reading Dr Service (and even, on occasions like these, listening to his discussions) can be as illuminating and focussed as his "horserace" concert commentaries can be infuriating.