The 2020 Survey of Classical Music on Radio 3

[antongould]

Well in a previous life on here I got slated for expressimg my opinion that Rawsthorne wrote the 2nd best Pastoral Symphony of all time (with RVW in 1st place)

I was supportive IIRC Rob ......

[Bryn]

Communist sympathies? Rawsthorne as well? You're not thinking of Alan Bush are you...

Rawsthorne quotes the Internationale and Bandiera Rossa in his 1st Piano Concerto, so not exactly a true blue Tory. As I recall, while he never joined the CPGB, he was sympathetic until the invasion of Hungary in 1956.

[Edgy 2]

I was supportive IIRC Rob ......

[antongould]

Rawsthorne is certainly one composer who has largely been ignored in recent years by R3. A total of 31 pieces/chunks in the last 12 years, and a majority of these being film scores.

Almost criminal some might say ....only one spot - 2 Bagatelles on Breakfast in 2020 ....... I know Through The Night gets a good press hereabouts but compared to the big 0 for Rawsthorne, and others e.g. Weinberg, you have Mozart 373 times, JS Bach 329, Beethoven 271 etc. etc. Surely they could widen their sweep of composers a little ........

[Leinster Lass]

Almost criminal some might say ....only one spot - 2 Bagatelles on Breakfast in 2020 ....... I know Through The Night gets a good press hereabouts but compared to the big 0 for Rawsthorne, and others e.g. Weinberg, you have Mozart 373 times, JS Bach 329, Beethoven 271 etc. etc. Surely they could widen their sweep of composers a little ........

I don't know about 'almost'

[EnemyoftheStoat]

I don't know about 'almost'

Definitely no 'almost' about it. AR's neglect on radio and in concert is scandalous.

[antongould]

Definitely no 'almost' about it. AR's neglect on radio and in concert is scandalous.

Sorry friends ...... OK it’s a bleeding scandal

[Serial_Apologist]

Sorry friends ...... OK it’s a bleeding scandal

Oh, I wouldn't go quite that far...

[bluestateprommer]

Standard thread hijack by bsp, as is his usual practice, but with a bit of a reason (hopefully also as usual practice). For a point of comparison with Sc's survey list of composers on R3 for 2020, here are the top composers from the 2020 version of the Xmas Game, with the caveat that there are probably a few slight errors in the statistics, because I didn't start collating the stats until well into the game (i.e. something like after the 1000th post), so playing catch-up was a nightmare. The Xmas Game thread had 2259 posts, but a good number of them were banter, so 2259 works were not presented (don't have the exact # of those collated, as that would be another day's staring at the Excel chart). With all that said, some dry general stats:

Total number of composers (including an "Anon" for folk song / 'none of the above' listings): 526
Living composers: 88
Female composers: 32

Top 25, with numbers of entries:
Mozart: 72 (**)
Debussy: 55 (**)
Schubert: 42 (**)
Vaughan Williams: 37 (**)
Johann Strauss II: 33
Richard Strauss: 33 (**)
J.S. Bach: 33 (**)
Tchaikovsky: 31 (**)
Britten: 31 (**)
Stravinsky: 29
Beethoven: 29 (**)
Brahms: 27 (**)
Wagner: 26
Messiaen: 26
Ravel: 26 (**)
F.J. Haydn: 26 (**)
Handel: 26 (**)
Rossini: 25
Berlioz: 23
Robert Schumann: 23 (**)
Mahler: 22
Elgar: 22 (**)
Liszt: 22 (**)
Delius: 20
Holst: 18

For direct comparison, Sc's top 25:
1. Beethoven: 1922 (**)
2. Bach, JS: 1845 (**)
3. Mozart, WA: 1462 (**)
4. Schubert: 1264 (**)
5. Brahms: 786 (**)
6. Handel: 779 (**)
7. Haydn, FJ: 763 (**)
8. Chopin: 655
9. Debussy: 648 (**)
10. Dvorak: 629
11. Tchaikovsky: 536 (**)
12. Vivaldi: 517
13. Mendelssohn, Felix: 505
14. Ravel: 501 (**)
15. Schumann, R.: 474 (**)
16. Strauss, R.: 451 (**)
17. Rachmaninov: 424
18. Britten: 402 (**)
19. Sibelius: 369
20. Purcell, H.: 357
21. Grieg: 351
22. Elgar: 341 (**)
23. Vaughan Williams: 339 (**)
24. Shostakovich: 331
25. Liszt: 323 (**)

16 of the composers' names overlap (**) between the two "top 25" lists, with even one of them at exactly the same place in both, Elgar at # 22. On Sc's remark in Post #1 here that:

"...many other notable composers such as Honegger, Holmboe, Tippett, Berwald, K A Hartmann, Henze, E Carter, continued to be generally poorly represented"

Here are numbers from the Xmas Game 2020:

Honegger: 7 entries (2 of them repeats)
Holmboe: no entries
Tippett: 13 entries (4 of them repeats)
Berwald 1 entry
Karl Amadeus Hartmann: no entries
Henze: 9 entries (1 of them a repeat)
Elliott Carter: no entries

So for anyone who wonders why R3 doesn't play more of the above 7, among others: the stats from the 2020 Xmas Game have part of the answer. As well, most of the composers present have only one entry, a trend obviously more prevalent as I scroll down the Excel spreadsheet. No one composer is represented on every single page, and some composers have one or two Forumites specifically who provide the most entries (you know who you are - I'm also one of them).

Assuming that we're all around for Xmas 2021, I'll repeat the stats collation exercise then, but remembering to start at the beginning rather than halfway through.

[french frank]

Thanks, bsp

Top 25, with numbers of entries:
Mozart: 72
Debussy: 55
Schubert: 42
Vaughan Williams: 37

That was me, wasn't it? I tried to think of a Mozart entry each time (just my little sub-game)