The 2016 Survey of 'Classical' Music on Radio 3

[Richard Tarleton]

That his time is already coming (albeit long after it should have been) is evident from the sheer number of recordings, so all the more reason for surprise at his being overlooked.

Are we talking about the composer of Schwanda the Effing Bagpiper? I'd have thought that had had enough spins from RC to earn him a place

[ahinton]

Are we talking about the composer of Schwanda the Effing Bagpiper? I'd have thought that had had enough spins from RC to earn him a place

Of course not! That was Jaromír Weinberger. We're referring here to Mieczysław Weinberg.

[Richard Tarleton]

Apologies

[french frank]

Had a lot to deal with (one way and the other ) so haven't yet chipped in with my thanks and admiration to suffy for yet another impressive contribution.

(don't get excited: it's only a box of chocolates).

[Suffolkcoastal]

Indeed - some composers are sold by numbers, others by weight (I've just got back from doing the shopping, bear with me) - it's amusing to see Dowland and Bruckner next to eachother at nos 53 and 54 - one seldom over 3 minutes, the other seldom under one hour.

Do we know what system if any R3 uses?

I've copied from an earlier post the system I generally have used when undertaking my survey. The system hasn't been altered to keep consistency.

Each extract or complete work counts as one piece broadcast ie an aria from an opera and an opera both count as one work and a song from cycle and the whole cycle count as one work. This gives a more accurate picture as firstly R3 often prefers to play extracts and short works rather than complete works and secondly this evens things out between composers who largely only wrote large scale works such as operas and those who mainly wrote shorter pieces. If you say on average that each piece has lasted around 10 minutes then you get some idea of the amount of actual broadcast time given to each composer so a composer with 100 works/extracts broadcast has roughly had around 16 hours of air time during 2010. though of course not 100% accurate this at least gives you some idea of how many broadcast hours each composer has had.

Though Bruckner ended up with 108, complete symphony broadcasts only accounted for 27, a fair proportion of the rest was made up of the short motets.

There is a kind of strange pattern to how composers/pieces are broadcast by R3. Composers or works often come in clusters, a composer such as Chopin or Mendelssohn will sometimes not be broadcast for a few days, then we get several days of a fair amount of his music broadcast. We had, if I remember correctly 5 Hebrides Overture broadcasts in 72 hours, and very few broadcasts of Rachmaninov's Vocalise until the last couple of months when it started being broadcast in various forms with increasing regularity.

[Richard Tarleton]

Many thanks for the explanation sc....