BBC4 "Symphony" with Simon Russell Beale

[Panjandrum]

Its TELEVISION
from what I remember about the programme he was talking about London in Haydns time and the concert hall being exactly in the same place and with the same footprint. Seems perfectly simple to me ? TV is an audio VISUAL medium, music on the other hand is a sonic phenomena, TV works using images , spoken text and sound to communicate....
I didn't think this was a programme about "Symphonic Form" but rather contextualising the history of the symphony , which it did rather well IMV in "Locating" the music geographically and historically

I disagree entirely. Kenneth Clarke, Robert Hughes, Alastair Cooke, Jacob Bronowski, have all demonstrated how to make television programmes which deal with complex subjets intellectually, while exploiting the medium's visual dimension, WITHOUT resorting to gimmicks.

[amcluesent]

I watched all the way through and, for a modern-day BBC production, it wasn't too dumbed-down. Thankfully, unlike the ruined Horizon et al, there was no faux 'suspense' to the narrative from which I actually learned a little. Seeing the venues where the works were premièred was useful.

Will they get to C20th symphonies, or has that already been "done" by Rattle's 'Leaving Home'?

[MrGongGong]

I disagree entirely. Kenneth Clarke, Robert Hughes, Alastair Cooke, Jacob Bronowski, have all demonstrated how to make television programmes which deal with complex subjets intellectually, while exploiting the medium's visual dimension, WITHOUT resorting to gimmicks.

It was Television last time I looked ?
but you disagree entirely so it must have been something else then ? any ideas what ?
Maybe a Zebra ?

[Mr Pee]

Interesting stiff and well put Ferret

Well, I never knew that Mr. GG and Ferret were so intimately acquainted....

[MrGongGong]

ooops is my slip showing Sigmund ?

[ardcarp]

for a modern-day BBC production, it wasn't too dumbed-down.

I've watched it all through now, and yes it wasn't so much dumbed down as full of silly producer-ish mannersims. Mention a city, and you have to see people in a rush-hour with SRB jostling and talking. Luckily SRB has an engaging delivery; and Elder (a slightly manic talker...a sort of younger Patrick Moore!) and the OAE saved the situatopn. I suppose despite all the annoyances, not least the rapid switcjing of camera-shots, we have to be very grateful that a real programme about real music is given air-time on a BBC TV channel. One just wonders whether the inordinate amount of travel and whacky locations...which must have resulted in hours of film (or its equivalent) ending up on the cutting-room floor (or its equivalent)...were entirely necessary to get the message across.

[Boilk]

If this is a survey of the symphony, why was the pre-Haydn era tossed off in a mere couple of phrases? Would have been educational to illustrate how the symphony's seed was sown in the musical preludes/interludes to 17th/18th century opera and ballet. And wasn't Haydn influenced by contemporaries such as CPE Bach, Cannabich, Dittersdorf, et al. He wasn't exactly cocooned within the Esterhazy Palace!

When Beale gets around to Shostakovich you just know it'll centre on the popular 1, 5 and 7, rather than the astonishing 4th ... whose withdrawal probabably saved him from a Siberian labour camp. I guess archive footage of the Leningarad seige lends itself more readily to televisual agendas.

[MrGongGong]

Maybe, but it will give MrP a chance to pop up and say how music has nothing to do with politics !!!

[ardcarp]

...why was the pre-Haydn era tossed off in a mere couple of phrases? Would have been educational to illustrate how the symphony's seed was sown in the musical preludes/interludes to 17th/18th century opera and ballet. And wasn't Haydn influenced by contemporaries such as CPE Bach, Cannabich, Dittersdorf, et al. He wasn't exactly cocooned within the Esterhazy Palace!

Luckily Mesdames Bott and Skeaping avoided any tossing off in the EMS this weekend, and covered just the areas you mention.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I have specifically made a point of avoiding this programme, as the symphony is my chief area of interest in classical music and I expect that if I watched I'd soon be screaming at the TV in frustration and anger and probably give myself a heart attack!

The history of the symphony is probably the most mammoth undertaking in all classical music. The trouble with programmes like this is that they will tend to jump from Haydn/Mozart to Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler and Shostakovich etc as if the history and development of the symphony progressed in a straight line. Beethoven's symphonies weren't accepted universally for many years and he was regarded for a while as the equivalent of a symphonic diversion, what was happening to the symphony between 1820 and 1870 for example. You get Schubert and Beethoven, but the former was hardly known for a while and Beethoven regarded as above. There is Mendelssohn & Schuman, plus the couple of well known Berlioz symphonies but what else? Of course there were literally hundreds of other symphonies being written by other composers, all trying to carve out there own symphonic path, some followed very classical models, others tried to experiment etc. You really need to have a good look at the 'background' to appreciate the development of symphonic form and to place the great/well-known symphonies in context and to understand the symphony as a whole.

[ardcarp]

Suffolkcoastal. One has to remember this is a TV programme designed for Everyman. So one cannot expect a thoroughgoing academic analysis of the subject. Even the term 'Everyman' has to be refined; BBC4 presumably hopes to attract people with some interest in music or maybe just that thing called 'The Arts'. The fact that BBC4 assumes such people to have the attention-span of a gnat is a separate issue. But I think the AIM of the programme, namely an overview of 'the symphony' for Everyman, is a good one. Yes you probably would get cross if you saw it! But go on...have a peek, and do a 'grumpy of Tunbridge Wells' post on The Forum (like most of us do).

[Ferretfancy]

I've just caught up with the first part of the series, and what a mess! OK, the glimpses of original locations look attractive, but I doubt if any piece of music in the programme is heard for more than 5 seconds before Russell Beale or Mark Elder either appear or give us more voice over.

For me, this exemplifies everything that is so often wrong with the treatment of classical music on television, and I will be very surprised if these programmes win over a single viewer. Does anybody remember the studio productions of symphonies and other works introduced and analysed by Bernard Keefe? That was a much better way to do it than this mish mash. It's sad to see such a good opportunity squandered in this way.

[ardcarp]

Ferretfancy. Yes, I agree. SRB's choral series was much better. It's all to do with the producer mind-set. He/she wants to be trendy, has a lot of technical wizardry to play with, probably has a brief not to lecture, and has general contempt for the intelligence/attention span of the Everyman I alluded to. I'm afraid the genuinely informative programmes such as you mention that sought to inform and educate are well and truly a thing of the past.

[Suffolkcoastal]

I think that in various other programmes I've seen on various subjects that 'everyman's level' is in danger of dropping to 'every young child's level'. I was perhaps more thinking of what R3 should have been doing to compliment the series. From what I can see so far, after the programmes of the beginnings of the symphony they largely fall back on the same composers and works. But I suppose its par for the course in the knowledge and imagination free R3 of RW. I would have extended the series for a a period of about 3 months in the afternoon devoting a week chronologically to each c20 year period from the origin to the present day, allowing the listener to contrast the great and well known, with the less well known, to show the developments, side tracks, dead ends etc of this most fascinating of musical structures.

[Osborn]

I would have extended the series for a a period of about 3 months in the afternoon devoting a week chronologically to each c20 year period from the origin to the present day...

But only (to use Wil Carling's phrase) 57 old farts (& fartesses) have the time or inclination to listen in the afternoon & they've probably been listening to symphonies for 57 years & would be bored out of their skull, want the controller fired, complain to the Trust, moan that something or other is dumbed down (probably Katie Derham) & the idea would waste a catastrophic amount of money, wouldn't it?