The Sunday Feature; Vaughan Williams as teacher

[smittims]

Last Sunday's 'Feature' (available on BBC Sounds) was about Vaughan Williams as a teacher of women composers. Generally informative and well-put-together, it raised some questions for me about how these programmes are chosen and edited .

Firstly, why just women composers? VW taught a lot of men too . And , inevitably, about half-way through they trod gingerly onto the question: was he a predator? It was 'said' by whom wasn't mentioned, that he was what Joan Bakewell called N.S.I.T. .

So would the programme have been made if it didn't fit in with two current BBC fashions, women composers and predatory males? I'd like to think it would , but, like those TV documentaries where someone has to weep on camera, I had a lingering doubt.

Next Sunday's 'feature ' is about VW's sixth symphony, and what, if anything, it 'means'. Here again, I wondered if this was a more attractive slant for the BBC than an analysis of the symphony's tonal and rhythmic structure, which I'd have preferred. But I know how people love a story in music, which is why operas are more popular than sonatas (unless they have a 'moonlight' story) , so maybe audience-potential won.

[Master Jacques]

Thank you for the heads-up on this, which sounds all too typical of BBC Radio 4's current approach to programming - the biographical book they abridged and broadcast was sold on the headline of child abuse, so we can't expect anything better of a programme about his teaching.

I've tried to find out what this mysterious N.S.I.T. might be, but all that comes up online is the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, which I don't suppose is what Lady Joan was referring to.

Last (and least!), if opera is more esteemed than sonata form by many composers as the Olympian summit of art, it is partly because it needs to encompass that popular element. Even Beethoven couldn't get that quite right. So we should never demean popularity, per se. Without a popular element, we don't have worthwhile music at all, even in supposedly "abstract" sonatas: as Charles Rosen demonstrates, there is not a single Beethoven piano sonata which doesn't rely on vocal/operatic parallels and imitations, to some extent or other.

[gradus]

Thank you for the heads-up on this, which sounds all too typical of BBC Radio 4's current approach to programming - the biographical book they abridged and broadcast was sold on the headline of child abuse, so we can't expect anything better of a programme about his teaching.

I've tried to find out what this mysterious N.S.I.T. might be, but all that comes up online is the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, which I don't suppose is what Lady Joan was referring to.

Last (and least!), if opera is more esteemed than sonata form by many composers as the Olympian summit of art, it is partly because it needs to encompass that popular element. Even Beethoven couldn't get that quite right. So we should never demean popularity, per se. Without a popular element, we don't have worthwhile music at all, even in supposedly "abstract" sonatas: as Charles Rosen demonstrates, there is not a single Beethoven piano sonata which doesn't rely on vocal/operatic parallels and imitations, to some extent or other.

Perhaps NSIU these days?

[Bryn]

Perhaps NSIU these days?

http://acronymsandslang.com/NSIU-meaning.html

[smittims]

NSIT means 'not safe in taxis'.

It wsn't a bad programme. I just felt someone had said 'you must make it relevant for the #MeToo generation'.

[Master Jacques]

http://acronymsandslang.com/NSIU-meaning.html

This acronym link didn't get me much farther ('Navigation Switching Interface Unit'?) but smittims has revealed all, thank you!

[oddoneout]

This acronym link didn't get me much farther ('Navigation Switching Interface Unit'?) but smittims has revealed all, thank you!

A bit more here https://uncommon-courtesy.com/2013/1...safe-in-taxis/
A generation and class thing, and would appear in novels by the likes of Nancy Mitford.
I can't find the reference now but it was said not that long ago about the previous PM, by someone who had a poor opinion of his morals.
Sadly the risk still exists (although perhaps not so much for black cabs) and is of more than just getting "handsy".

[Serial_Apologist]

Vaughan Williams on this week's COTW really does deserve a separate thread; however for now here is a link to the first programme, Ceri Owen, talking about VW's early influences, which particularly fascinate me, is absolutely wonderful as a consequence of her wide research, explaining why (to my ears if not hers) the very early Romance from the Serenade in A minor, like several passages in his music from this time, hovers harmonically between Wagnerian chromaticism and the modality to come, sounding remarkably akin to early Sibelius at times. Her interpretation of VW's identification with Whitman's words in the Sea Symphony aligns exactly with my own, and is the reason for the very special place this work has for me.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0016rsx

[gradus]

This acronym link didn't get me much farther ('Navigation Switching Interface Unit'?) but smittims has revealed all, thank you!

Uber.

[Serial_Apologist]

Last Sunday's 'Feature' (available on BBC Sounds) was about Vaughan Williams as a teacher of women composers. Generally informative and well-put-together, it raised some questions for me about how these programmes are chosen and edited .

Firstly, why just women composers? VW taught a lot of men too . And , inevitably, about half-way through they trod gingerly onto the question: was he a predator? It was 'said' by whom wasn't mentioned, that he was what Joan Bakewell called N.S.I.T. .

So would the programme have been made if it didn't fit in with two current BBC fashions, women composers and predatory males? I'd like to think it would , but, like those TV documentaries where someone has to weep on camera, I had a lingering doubt.

Next Sunday's 'feature ' is about VW's sixth symphony, and what, if anything, it 'means'. Here again, I wondered if this was a more attractive slant for the BBC than an analysis of the symphony's tonal and rhythmic structure, which I'd have preferred. But I know how people love a story in music, which is why operas are more popular than sonatas (unless they have a 'moonlight' story) , so maybe audience-potential won.

Programme link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cnt3

[Serial_Apologist]

NSIT means 'not safe in taxis'.

It wsn't a bad programme. I just felt someone had said 'you must make it relevant for the #MeToo generation'.

I thought this was an excellent programme - for once was revealed what VW thought about certain other composers such as Stravinsky, by way of their influence on his pupils. I'd had no idea he'd dissed Le sacre and Wozzeck. Also of interest was the marginalisation of many women composers after WWII, put down to the return of male compatriots from military service and of women to subordinate domesticity, but in my view as much to do with the judgement of much of the music of similar "pastoral" generic as past its sell-by date. Even VW suffered in this respect; his veneration is of relatively recent vintage, about which one could say an awful lot.

[richardfinegold]

NSIT means 'not safe in taxis'.

It wsn't a bad programme. I just felt someone had said 'you must make it relevant for the #MeToo generation'.

RVW is always photographed wearing those heavy tweed three piece suits, even in photographs that appear to be taken at the height of summer Between his bulk and being swaddled in such attire, I would think that most young women would have been able to escape unwanted embraces fairly easily

[Serial_Apologist]

RVW is always photographed wearing those heavy tweed three piece suits, even in photographs that appear to be taken at the height of summer Between his bulk and being swaddled in such attire, I would think that most young women would have been able to escape unwanted embraces fairly easily

There was talk on a programme some years ago of VW sat in his armchair, two huge bulges making up the front of his body, upon which would be perched two cats, one on each bulge!

[Serial_Apologist]

Vaughan Williams Week in all its glory concluded with this uplifting talk from Amanda Dalton:

The Essay: Vaughan Williams - Belonging

Poet and dramatist Amanda Dalton recalls her teen years in a 1970s working-class Coventry family, specifically the flamboyant favourite uncle who introduced her to Vaughan Williams and bought her a recording of the Sea Symphony.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001vny0

Ms Dalton has something of the Adrian Mole about her, and evokes no one better than my aspergous father in her description and embarrassment of the uncle who got her into the Sea Symphony. The few years between us bespeak cultural differences of place and time which our colourful change-embracing generation can remind us of: prompters to make sense of 30+ years of intellectual and political bankruptsy, reflected in monetarist meanness and masculine formal drabness.

[smittims]

Your description encourages me to listen to it when I have time to sit back and take it in.

There is something special about memories of a particular occasion in one's encounter with classical music. In many cases we are in permanent debt to some long-gone person who didn't live to see the effect they had on our life.