Music on BBC4. Don't die of shock.....

[Bryn]

Well, the Popular Song (and others) can stand alone. But I'm with you Bryn..the Sitwell poems are what this work is about. And I have a personal interest as an oft-times 'narrator' ....not a particularly apt word in this case...in Facade. I can remember the first time I did it as a student, sharing the numbers with Ilona Sekacz, a talented composer with much film and TV work to her credit. We didn't use megaphones behind a curtain but dressed in 1920s period costume and played it 'straight'. It tickled the audience no end, even if it wasn't strictly HIPP.

I like the name of the ensemble used for the Boyd/Soanes/Wilson recording. Nice tilt at Schönberg 3x7. :wnkeye:

[ardcarp]

[ardcarp]

The relationship betwixt music and speaker is less closeknit than it would be between music and singer.

I've never felt that. Think "Old Sir Faulk" or "Lily O'Grady" or "Sir Beelzebub". You'd come seriously unstuck without a very closeknit relatonship with the ensemble. As for rap, it either hadn't been invented when I first did Facade...or I hadn't heard of it....so the comparison has never occurred to me! I concede that matters of pitch are left out of the equation, but that goes without saying.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've never felt that. Think "Old Sir Faulk" or "Lily O'Grady" or "Sir Beelzebub". You'd come seriously unstuck without a very closeknit relatonship with the ensemble. As for rap, it either hadn't been invented when I first did Facade...or I hadn't heard of it....so the comparison has never occurred to me! I concede that matters of pitch are left out of the equation, but that goes without saying.

I've often thought "Facade" to be the very first example of Rap anywhere, though I'd expect those who've come to regard some of the lyrics as suspect from today's pov would strongly disagree. Questionable lyrics? In Rap???

[Cockney Sparrow]

Two programmes. Certainly fit the "Radio 4" criterion.
Street Cry Goodbyes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002r65

A celebration in music and sound of the disappearing cries of street vendors, past and present.

Street Cry Goodbyes captures the startling musical essence of these human cries, along with a recreation of past cries long gone. It includes extracts from the work of earlier composers inspired by these sounds. Handel's opera Serse features the calls of a flower seller which he transcribed from contemporary street sounds. Thomas Ravenscroft cunningly interwove street calls into rounds in his Pammelia (1609) and Melismata (1611), while Orlando Gibbons in his madrigal The Cries Of London preserved the voices of vendors selling everything from haddock and walnuts to washing balls and frumenty. The satirist Jonathan Swift wrote the poem Women Market Cries as celebration of this enduring phenomenon.
(And on to present day markets….)

Pursuit of Beauty - Dead Rats and Meat Cleavers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00017qy

The sounds of casting, chiming, singing and clanging are fused together to make a magical sound track to the story of how meat cleavers have been used as musical instruments for over 300 years.

Growing up in Suffolk, Nathaniel Mann, heard stories passed down by his grandma about a tradition of the village Rough Band, made up of pots and pans, iron and metal implements, including meat cleavers - delivering a sort of sonic warning to anyone stepping out of line, committing adultery or behaving in way considered unacceptable.

As part of the Avant-Folk trio 'Dead Rat Orchestra', Mann, a singer and composer, has long been playing music with strange percussive instruments. Coming across an old meat cleaver in his dad's garage he was inspired to make a set of cleavers to play music on - so turned to a bronze bladesmith to help turn meat cleavers into musical gold.

In a chance discovery, he discovered the idea wasn't new - and so he sought out Jeremy Barlow, author of “The Enraged Musician”, to find out the coded messages of Hogarth’s musical prints, including marrow bones and meat cleavers. (At time of The Restoration).
He also visits BathIRON 2018, as a new bandstand is being cast for the city of Bath, and gets the chance to conduct and sing with an orchestra of master smiths.
....(25 Smiths and forges gathered for the event - shades of the Descent into Nibelheim, although I do not recall it being mentioned).

[Bryn]

The thing is, this is the BBC 4 (Four), i.e. television, thread.

[burning dog]

I've often thought "Facade" to be the very first example of Rap anywhere, though I'd expect those who've come to regard some of the lyrics as suspect from today's pov would strongly disagree. Questionable lyrics? In Rap???

I think Auden/Britten are much closer to rap

esp. the first minute!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0