If you could control Radio 3...

[Joseph K]

I fear that many young people today do not even know that classical music exists, so rarely is it placed in their way, thanks to the dumbing-down of the media and education.

Definitely education, though I am not sure whether things were much better when I was at school. Then, as now I suspect, if you were planning on giving a child the opportunity of studying music for GCSE or further then you would arrange for them to have private lessons several years in advance (since music lessons at school were not serious). I didn't have that and taught myself to read music, and even then I was probably 14 or 15 so quite late. Music lessons at Middle School (ages 9 - 13) were either singing songs together with the music teacher accompanying us on piano, or later on us composing tunes on the recorder. I did have free guitar lessons at school but, guitar being what it is, we were just shown tablature.
I've drifted way off topic I know and all I've offered is some anecdotal evidence, but I do think that it's a shame that music and especially music literacy is perhaps seen by many as a luxury for the well-off. I see no reason why these things can't be taught to every child - I mean, we started learning French in Middle School so I see absolutely no reason why we couldn't have been taught solfeggio.

[smittims]

I found your view valuable there, JosephK. As to music literacy I've even heard people disparage it , and say the same about training voices. They say 'I'm glad I can't read music; it would stunt my creativity' ; surely an argument in favour of ignorance!

I said to the person who spoke of voice training as if it were Communist-brainwashing, that without it you could never sing Mozart; but I fear he never wanted to hear Mozart sung anyway.

[french frank]

As to music literacy I've even heard people disparage it

I was about to pick up on that same point: music literacy is "unnecessary". And for many it is unnecessary if current 'singer-songwriters' can be hugely successful without it. We come back to the same point, that young people's musical horizons are so limited. What is being done to widen them?

[antongould]

Increase length of Building a Library to one hour
Axe twofers
No more bleeding chunks
Bring back Rob Cowan
Bring back Stephanie Hughes

Are we saying no bleeding chunks anywhere in the schedule ….. ????

[gurnemanz]

Are we saying no bleeding chunks anywhere in the schedule ….. ????

And presumably no extracted opera arias or individual songs from song cycles.

[Serial_Apologist]

Are we saying no bleeding chunks anywhere in the schedule ….. ????

They're fine in some programme about a particular work or composer, say, when a passage can be played that illustrates some characteristic; but isolating movements (without the composer's say-so) for performance as separate works means no more to the passing listener than were I to stumble on a conversation involving you and another person or group of people. Knowing nothing about how the stage of conversation had been reached or why, I would be likely to interlope some irrelevant inanity that would get up your nose as much as isolating music from its context and presenting it as the be-all and end-all of the work's being. Fine if we're just exchanging commonplaces, as in saying "Nice day isn't it" to the person next in the shop queue; to talk commonplaces in relation to great classical works of music represents a condescending judgement on our listeners. But this seems more and more to be what mainstream broadcasting is generally in the business of doing these days!

[french frank]

Are we saying no bleeding chunks anywhere in the schedule ….. ????

Early morning programmes used to be fine without them until the "Breakfast Show" idea hit Radio 3. And you'll remember the thread we had here, way back when, where we suggested any number of pieces, some seldom heard, which were c 10 minuts or so long. So there is at least an argument for No Bleedings Chunks.

And presumably no extracted opera arias or individual songs from song cycles.

I don't think there's really a "presumably" about it. The schedules don't really allow for much full length opera through the week (and it's my impression Through the Night used to broadcast more lesser-known operas than it does now - if at all). So I do think there would be a case for including opera arias among the "10 minute or so" pieces. Especially if there's enough time(!) to contextualise them properly.

But there should be plenty of time for full length symphonies, concertos, chamber music in the Essential Classics slot, the Lunch time Concerts (recitals), afternoons and evening concerts. No need for the plethora of single movements that are seemingly inevitable in the early mornings.

[peterthekeys]

Early morning programmes used to be fine without them until the "Breakfast Show" idea hit Radio 3. And you'll remember the thread we had here, way back when, where we suggested any number of pieces, some seldom heard, which were c 10 minuts or so long. So there is at least an argument for No Bleedings Chunks.

One of my fondest memories is of a business trip to Glasgow during the mid 1990s: I stayed in a very nice guest house on the outskirts of the city. When I awoke, it was a beautiful morning, and I came downstairs to a magnificent breakfast - and, wonder of wonders, the background music was Radio 3. And it was complete works, and in between, just announcements of what had just been played, and what was next on the programme. No chat or gushing half-baked opinions. And no bleeding chunks!

[peterthekeys]

Thanks smittims - I must check out Susan Tomes.

Definitely worth it. There is much wisdom in her books. She's not a bad pianist either ;)

[peterthekeys]

I fear that many young people today do not even know that classical music exists, so rarely is it placed in their way, thanks to the dumbing-down of the media and education.

I agree. It's just appalling :( I wonder whether it's as bad in other European countries (yes, I'm a rejoiner and proud of it :) ) - or if it's just in the UK. Or even just in England - I get the impression that there's at least a certain degree of awareness of culture left in the populations of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

I always remember a visit to Stuttgart in the late 1990s. The first evening, we went for a walk in the city to find somewhere to eat. We passed a music shop - and it really was a shop that sold musical scores: the only items on display in the window were copies of classical piano works. I was thunderstruck - I just couldn't imagine any "music shop" over here daring to limit itself to classical music and hoping to remain in business.

[peterthekeys]

I find myself with Smittims regarding the 'usual suspects'. Weir, Bingham, Ades and Matthews all deserve to have their work represented but not to the exclusion of those mentioned, let alone some of the younger generation of UK-based composers.

So many of the not-so-young generation are also completely excluded at the moment. It's a long time since I noticed on the schedules anything by Kenneth Leighton or John McCabe. The neglect of them both - particularly of the latter - is nothing short of a national scandal. (A few years ago, I tried to obtain a score of McCabe's big choral work "Voyage". I was unable to do so: apparently the publisher didn't have a copy of it. So - hard luck for anyone who actually wanted to consider performing it :( )

[Serial_Apologist]

Well there will be less, because there will have been less on offer to guide them. Younger generations than ours - arguably those born later than 1990 - are looking elsewhere for musical adventure - to alternative rock, hip-hop, and crossovers of the sorts we are hearing lots of on J to Z these days, typified in last week's focus on the Notting Hill Carnival. These different kinds of music do feature on Late Junction in sometimes raw form, as well as becoming increasingly apparent in some of the younger generation of composers featured on the New Music Show, though, for me at any rate, the yield is pretty thin from a rewarding musical experience point of view. Some will argue a measured, gradual embrace of musical cultures which have made their homes and evolved here, such as Reggae/Drum 'n' Bass/New Soul, to healthy, positive adjustment to the pluses of living in a multicultural, multiracial society that no longer confers second class status based on loaded assumptions; others, such as myself, welcoming such change as progressive but in two minds about ditching our own, if I could put it that way. Still others - and I could think there are one or two here who regularly and valuably point out that a critical evaluation of the interrelationship between all these putatively new areas of creativity (in the arts and cultures outside as well as inside the music world) need not necessarily stand as a barrier to creative innovation: we could be at a point in history analogous to the time when composers began to turn away from material dependence on church and aristocratic sponsorship, the possibilities in terms of how we are all to carry on infinite.



Like many of us I was and am self-taught, and this may be a bit of a generalisation, but from having observed radicalisation taking place among those of my generation who were not brought up on classical music, what seemed noticeable was how this worked through to the desire for more complex explanations for the forces shaping society than mainstream education and family offered, and for corresponding arts and musics. While one can be thankful for what one has gained, either from background, education, or even the existence of Radio 3 at a particular juncture, one always tries to be mindful of other perspectives and the experiences shaping them, along with ones own attitudes towards them.

Please excuse this bit of self-indulgece, but to my surprise and delight I have just listened to the following programme on Radio 4:

1.30pm - A Little Flat: the Music in Our Ear Outlook
Musician, DJ and producer Nabihah Iqbal draws on musical traditions from around the world to explore how people choose the music they listen to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bkyc

It does a lot more than indicated by the above blurb, actually, and confirms some of the points I raised in my quote above - in its own way a perspective which has been gestating in my head for some months now. Nabihah Iqbal cites the differing approaches to tuning in cultures other than Western mainstream traditions, increasingly under threat as a consequence of new instrumental designs being inappropriately imposed on genres not conforming to Western equal temperament; this was something I had not realised, although I recall early pioneers of improvised and experimental musics in the late 60s relating how they had avoided using standard(ized) off-the-shelf electronic keyboards etc for this very reason, preferring to gather from other musical cultures, use "found objects" for novel sounds or design and build their own electronics. I was very sympathetic to Iqbal's point that this trend in new tech was both detrimental to the continuation of ethnic music traditions here and worldwide, and that exposure to musics other than "our own" encouraged openness to wider aspects of other cultures. At the same time our present discussion's focus on diminishing appreciation of classical music in this country, in particular, reminds that there are two sides to the discussion. I find myself on both sides, without in any way wishing to indulge in "whitewashing", because I see a great richness in our western classical heritage - in the same way I love Regency architecture: this I do not believe to be in ignorance of the contribution of slavery to the 18th and early 19th century built environment but because, as in the charge of "elitism" thrown at classical music appreciators, I appreciate the aesthetic model and wish it to be a gold standard of design for all classes, not restricted to a privileged few.

Having said all that, surely this is the sort of programme as Controller one would be wishing to present on Radio 3, where arguments such as this one can be more fully explored, and in the context of a restored remit to the quality of programming and presentation Radio 3 was once celebrated for?

[french frank]

Having said all that, surely this is the sort of programme as Controller one would be wishing to present on Radio 3, where arguments such as this one can be more fully explored, and in the context of a restored remit to the quality of programming and presentation Radio 3 was once celebrated for?

A point RichardB made a while back on this thread was the inadequate funding for the arts, and that applies to R3 which, according to the latest BBC Annual Report and Accounts, now gets significantly less for its Content spend than some years back. That's not less 'in real terms' when inflation is taken into consideration, it's actually fewer millions, in spite of inflation. That applies also to Radio 4, but Radio 4 gets the biggest shareout of BBC network radio stations' funding and Radio 3 gets the least.

Documentaries are very expensive, CD-based, presenter-led programmes are the cheap junk food of broadcasting. But as we know, many people like junk food.

[Joseph K]

Please excuse this bit of self-indulgece, but to my surprise and delight I have just listened to the following programme on Radio 4:

1.30pm - A Little Flat: the Music in Our Ear Outlook
Musician, DJ and producer Nabihah Iqbal draws on musical traditions from around the world to explore how people choose the music they listen to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bkyc

It does a lot more than indicated by the above blurb, actually, and confirms some of the points I raised in my quote above - in its own way a perspective which has been gestating in my head for some months now. Nabihah Iqbal cites the differing approaches to tuning in cultures other than Western mainstream traditions, increasingly under threat as a consequence of new instrumental designs being inappropriately imposed on genres not conforming to Western equal temperament; this was something I had not realised, although I recall early pioneers of improvised and experimental musics in the late 60s relating how they had avoided using standard(ized) off-the-shelf electronic keyboards etc for this very reason, preferring to gather from other musical cultures, use "found objects" for novel sounds or design and build their own electronics. I was very sympathetic to Iqbal's point that this trend in new tech was both detrimental to the continuation of ethnic music traditions here and worldwide, and that exposure to musics other than "our own" encouraged openness to wider aspects of other cultures. At the same time our present discussion's focus on diminishing appreciation of classical music in this country, in particular, reminds that there are two sides to the discussion. I find myself on both sides, without in any way wishing to indulge in "whitewashing", because I see a great richness in our western classical heritage - in the same way I love Regency architecture: this I do not believe to be in ignorance of the contribution of slavery to the 18th and early 19th century built environment but because, as in the charge of "elitism" thrown at classical music appreciators, I appreciate the aesthetic model and wish it to be a gold standard of design for all classes, not restricted to a privileged few.

Having said all that, surely this is the sort of programme as Controller one would be wishing to present on Radio 3, where arguments such as this one can be more fully explored, and in the context of a restored remit to the quality of programming and presentation Radio 3 was once celebrated for?

Thread about the programme here:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?24321-A-Little-Flat-The-Music-Our-Ears-Overlook

[Serial_Apologist]

Thread about the programme here:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...-Ears-Overlook

Yeah thanks - I omitted to listen to the programme first time around.