The Envy of the World?

[french frank]

and "people who love classical music behaving like dragons guarding the treasure they have accumulated over many years.

I really wonder what on earth people are talking about when they say things like this ('acting as gatekeepers of high culture' to quote the ineffable CB-H). Yes, there are people who glare at others because they're making some sort of (minor) noise, or fidgeting, whispering, trying to unwrap their boiled sweet very quietly and failing.

But how is glaring 'guarding a treasure' rather than just 'being irritated because one's own enjoyment is being impaired by others'? Could anyone reasonably say, "In order to attract new audiences to classical music, you have to let people behave in any way that they find natural these days, no matter how much they're mucking up the performance for you?"

I pose the question merely

[antongould]

Excellent, I bought it and look forward to reading it.

OG

A treat I think OG .... I loved it .....

[Beef Oven!]

One of my favourite books. I bought it some years ago (I have hardback and paperback copies) and have read it twice. Coincidentally, last week I brought it forward for another re-read.

[Richard Tarleton]

I really wonder what on earth people are talking about when they say things like this ('acting as gatekeepers of high culture' to quote the ineffable CB-H). Yes, there are people who glare at others because they're making some sort of (minor) noise, or fidgeting, whispering, trying to unwrap their boiled sweet very quietly and failing.

But how is glaring 'guarding a treasure' rather than just 'being irritated because one's own enjoyment is being impaired by others'? Could anyone reasonably say, "In order to attract new audiences to classical music, you have to let people behave in any way that they find natural these days, no matter how much they're mucking up the performance for you?"

I pose the question merely

My sentiments entirely, ff. Alan Davey's examples of "trying new things" seem to include just about everything except "listening". Me, I'm not keen on my next door neighbour eating noisily, talking or leafing through A4 manuscripts, or (a more recent example, in the Brangwyn Hall) someone just in front of me filming the performance on their smartphone, held above head height in my line of vision (I soon put a stop to that).

"Generosity" - I think of my Czech Jewish landlord who introduced me to Bruckner....life changing....I hope I've "given back" a tiny bit by playing in village halls.....

[oddoneout]

The point about that is that overall the audience is not increasing. So if new listeners are beng attracted to Breakfast, Essential Classics, and perhaps a couple of other programmes, it means that other listeners are turning off (like me).

If Essential Classics and Breakfast are getting good audiences, what, I wonder, is happening to the audience for other programmes - the evening concert, for example, lunchtime concert, perhaps even Hear and Now? Are these the listeners who are leaving and finding alternative listening, and if so, what will happen to this level of programme?

This is what I wonder too, and why. If R3 only started at midday with COTW, would there be an audience for the rest of the day's offerings? I still find it slightly hard to believe that the morning schedule can be solely responsible for driving listeners away from R3 altogether, but it has perhaps hastened the DIY approach to listening? If there's nothing of interest in the morning, leading to alternative listening arrangements, then it presumably becomes more likely that the alternatives stay on/are used at other times.
ferney I was being somewhat tongue in cheek about keeping the station going, so no need to apologise, although I don't think I'm quite as optimistic as you about the kudos of R3 being recognised. I do agree with your last sentence; it has already happened to much of TV as far as I'm concerned. The dumbing-down contagion is frustrating to those who can cope with more rugged fare, whether audio or visual, for the brain cells.

[Beef Oven!]

'Dumbing down' gets used a lot. I always believed that it referred to dumbing the audience down, not the programme content. An important distinction, in my opinion. If we are already smart, I don't think it can change us .....

[oddoneout]

'Dumbing down' gets used a lot. I always believed that it referred to dumbing the audience down, not the programme content. An important distinction, in my opinion. If we are already smart, I don't think it can change us .....

I've always regarded it as applying to the content, but I also think that repeated exposure to such material probably does have the same effect on the audience. The smart ones, or those not so accepting of insipid fare, will find alternatives. A combination of inertia and lower and lower expectations of the rest keeps the machine rolling.

[Beef Oven!]

I've always regarded it as applying to the content, but I also think that repeated exposure to such material probably does have the same effect on the audience. The smart ones, or those not so accepting of insipid fare, will find alternatives. A combination of inertia and lower and lower expectations of the rest keeps the machine rolling.

Well, I suppose that the content must be dumbed down both-wise, but the intention is to render the audience less discerning and critical, I thought (where's french frank when she's needed!?).

[french frank]

"She is the Radio 3 breakfast presenter whose chatty style has won a new audience yet infuriated classical music purists. But Clemency Burton-Hill has defended her inclusive approach, telling the high culture “gatekeepers” that it’s time to come down from their ivory towers."

Absolutely fascinating how language is slanted to insinuate ideas.

Clemency has 'won a new audience' (has she? how many? some of the Breakfast figures were pretty lousy). She is 'inclusive', but the classical music listeners are 'infuriated purists', 'gatekeepers' up in their 'ivory towers' (where exactly are the gates? How do the gatekeepers stop people entering if they're perched up at the top of the tower?). And of course they are 'elitists' in the headline.

Pretty obvious who the villains are; still, the good guys are doing really well. Aren't they? Well, we don't really know that … But it's in the newspaper: it must be true.

Why do managers and broadcasters find it so difficult to understand that there are needs and requirements on both sides, and they often clash? Instead, we get that tired, stale old language of classical audiences bad, new audiences good. And the same strategies pursued which have failed for decades.

[teamsaint]

I don't think I have ever met either a professional or an enthusiast in the field of classical music who didn't want to popularise the music.

Comments like C B-H's should be treated as the PR puff that they are. I suppose she should know about ivory towers , with her privileged background, but self promotion ( book, new job, whatever) of this corrosive kind should be ignored, or be challenged on the grounds of complete lack of substance.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't think I have ever met either a professional or an enthusiast in the field of classical music who didn't want to popularise the music.

Comments like C B-H's should be treated as the PR puff that they are. I suppose she should know about ivory towers , with her privileged background, but self promotion ( book, new job, whatever) of this corrosive kind should be ignored, or be challenged on the grounds of complete lack of substance.

Spot on; some of the ivory tower-dwelling gatekeepers of culture of CB-H's defensive imagination were educated in the State system, and went on to spread their enthusiasm by teaching in state schools.

Incidentally, with the invaluable BBC archive of Cultural & educational material that isn't broadcast or otherwise made available to the general public, exactly who is "behaving like dragons guarding the treasure they have accumulated [by public funding] over many years"?

[Serial_Apologist]

I've always regarded it as applying to the content, but I also think that repeated exposure to such material probably does have the same effect on the audience. The smart ones, or those not so accepting of insipid fare, will find alternatives. A combination of inertia and lower and lower expectations of the rest keeps the machine rolling.

I find the thought that I get to keep the benefits conferred by the more "enlightening" Radio 3 of the past, and can take them away to enjoy for myself in some solipsistic vacuum depressing. Like Teamsaint I want to popularise music - and not just the already popularised, omni-repeated stuff such as "Rodeo" but the tougher fare that reflects the greater complexity of living and getting to grips with serious, to me often threatening issues. The kinds of informed discussion we have here on the forum, which were once the stuff of intelligent music broadcasting, criticism and journalism, really will become a form of unintended, regrettable elitism, because there will be no one left to share them with. In this I've always disagreed with MrGG's view that it is possible, even best, to approach brand new music ab ovo, as it were, abstracted from appreciating the richness of detail and folowing through how it came about. Maybe that's why I seem to detect such a thin sense of history in so much of what passes for "new music" these days - jazz being the exception.

[french frank]

I don't think I have ever met either a professional or an enthusiast in the field of classical music who didn't want to popularise the music.

If 'popularise' means to get more people, new people (whoever they may be), listening and loving classical music, of course that's so. Why on earth would anyone want to 'keep people out' or 'keep it for themselves' (as if this is a group of clones - rich, snobbish, elitist toffs - who only allow other clones in)?

Criticising or rejecting particular strategies for achieving what we all want is not the same as being against the aim.

[teamsaint]

If 'popularise' means to get more people, new people (whoever they may be), listening and loving classical music, of course that's so. Why on earth would anyone want to 'keep people out' or 'keep it for themselves' (as if this is a group of clones - rich, snobbish, elitist toffs - who only allow other clones in)?

Criticising or rejecting particular strategies for achieving what we all want is not the same as being against the aim.

The impression sometimes given ( By C B-H, SK and others) is that is the groups people I mention who are the gatekeepers. Who else would it be ?

[french frank]

The impression sometimes given ( By C B-H, SK and others) is that is the groups people I mention who are the gatekeepers. Who else would it be ?

It's language again. 'Gatekeepers' or 'cherishers'?

Or 'curators'