Schubert on 3

[salymap]

I can't find my I G&S complete but WS Gilbert says in 'Trial by Jury' something like:-

I cannot eat breakfast all day, nor is it the act of a sinner,
When breakfast is taken away to turn my attention to dinner.etc.

Having said which, I would rather welcome a Haydn week, all those rarely heard symphonies.

[Norfolk Born]

I can't find my I G&S complete but WS Gilbert says in 'Trial by Jury' something like:-

You cannot eat breakfast all day, nor is it the act of a sinner,
When breakfast is taken away to turn his attention to dinner.etc.

Having said which, I would rather welcome a Haydn week, all those rarely heard symphonies.

Virtually word perfect, salymap - I'm seriously impressed! I've shown the two very minor differences revealed by my DVD booklet.
(I share your opinion of the whole ghastly Schubertathon).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well I like most of Schubert's music, so it's an opportunity for me to pick out works that I may not know, or works that I have not heard for a long time.
It's only for week, isn't it? Why don't we all wait and see?

Well yes. That sounds reasonable. It's just that in the Mozartfest, much of the content was kept secret until the time of broadcast. So your plan may not work well in practice.

[Dave2002]

but the other 26mins will be news flashes, random thoughts of PT and of various tweeters and others who can't resist the lure of hearing their names read out on air.

You mean PT doesn't do "wake up calls"! Daft idea, as you have to have the radio on to hear them anyway, or are there really people who only wake up if the hear their name read out? I think Suzy Klein or one of the other current R3 crop do such things.

[Norfolk Born]

'Sorry, I can't talk now, I've got Schubert waiting on 3. I'll call you back in eight-and-a-half days'

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

a reputational event for the benefit of the more than equal .... a repetition worthy of the maestro of the big lie ... despicable really and quite morally bankrupt stunt to make the audience think that they own serious music ...

[kernelbogey]

'Spirit of Schubert' is an odd name for the broadcast of everything he wrote.

What single work of his embodies for you his spirit?

I've been thinking about this and for me one aspect of his greatness is that ability to slip beneath the outward face of calm, or even jolly, acceptance to the tristesse of existence. There are many examples of this but perhaps the most consistent expression of it for me is in the String Quintet.

Broadcasting every note a composer wrote has some merit: it affords the opportunity to sample works, fragments etc one wouldn't normally hear, and which only the most dedicated disciple might have in their collection of CDs.

I heard only a small proportion of the Mozartfest, but learned some interesting things from various talks. I hope that I'll learn more about Schubert and his short life from this event.

But eliminating all other music for a week plus is bonkers. It would make more sense to spread the Schubert out over a longer period and leaven it with other fare.

(Bumping my previous post up as I would very much like to know what works embody Schubert's spirit for others.)

[MrGongGong]

I'm waiting for La Monte Young to get this treatment
should see out most of the next century

[Carmen]

Totally concur with the anti-saturation threads. The whole idea of wall-to-wall composer is a classic symptom of R3's schizophrenia and general ill-health. First of all, it thinks the answer to attracting more listeners is to dumb down so brutally that their original audience is reduced to frothing and fulminating on these pages, then it loses all control of its flaccid bowels and dumps on us the complete output of a single composer for over a week. Despair.

[Hornspieler]

Totally concur with the anti-saturation threads. The whole idea of wall-to-wall composer is a classic symptom of R3's schizophrenia and general ill-health. First of all, it thinks the answer to attracting more listeners is to dumb down so brutally that their original audience is reduced to frothing and fulminating on these pages, then it loses all control of its flaccid bowels and dumps on us the complete output of a single composer for over a week. Despair.

Calm down, dear! It's only for one week - and at least Schubert wrote some pretty good tunes. Can you imagine a week devoted exclusively to Stockhausen or Turnage or Rebecca Saunders?

Eurghh!

HS

[MrGongGong]

Can you imagine a week devoted exclusively to Stockhausen :

We live in hope

[Carmen]

Calm down, dear! It's only for one week - and at least Schubert wrote some pretty good tunes. Can you imagine a week devoted exclusively to Stockhausen or Turnage or Rebecca Saunders?

Eurghh!

HS

Well, dear love, having endured parts of the Mozart and Beethoven fests, I discovered after a while that I simply stopped hearing any of the music, good tunes or not, effectively ignoring it, it having become mere wallpaper to my life. It's a very interesting phenomen - in direct opposition to the practice of visual saturation: if you foist someone's face in front of the public enough (for the sake of argument, let's say the exceedingly ordinary Victoria Beckham), people eventually think that that face is one of great beauty, and become totally entranced by it.

[JFLL]

. It would make more sense to spread the Schubert out over a longer period and leaven it with other fare.

Yes, something like what they did a few years back when we had all Haydn's symphonies in chronological order for a whole year (when mornings on R3 were still listenable). Or, further back in the mists of time, when they did all Bach's cantatas on Sunday mornings (but rather too early for comfort, in my case, if I remember rightly). That treatment would suit Schubert's songs admirably if you had, say, ten a week. You could even theme them, too.

[Pabmusic]

This sounds so obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to post it. I can't conceive of any circumstance in which I'd be likely to sit through a whole day of one composer, let alone five. I love Gerald Finzi, and guess you could play his entire output in less than a day, but - and here's the thing - why on earth would you want to? What could possibly prevent your senses becoming sated by such a very limited range of styles? The later pieces broadcast would become little more than muzak as they flow over you.

[Bryn]

I'm waiting for La Monte Young to get this treatment
should see out most of the next century

I will be escaping a good portion of the Dispirited Schubert by hoping a coach to Glasgow at 11 pm Saturday to hear Feldman's SQ2 (Smith Quartet) from 2pm Sunday, followed, perhaps, by a performance of Riley's In C, then back on a coach to London at 10.30 pm Sunday.