The 2010 survey of classical music on radio 3 - the results

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  • Suffolkcoastal
    Full Member
    • Nov 2010
    • 3290

    The 2010 survey of classical music on radio 3 - the results

    Welcome to my 2nd Annual Survey of Classical Music on Radio 3 outlining the music broadcast in 2010.

    As I’ve kept the survey running only a few days behind the broadcast dates this year I’ve managed to complete it fairly swiftly over the past couple of days, so here it is!

    For those who weren’t familiar with the 2009 survey methods outlined on the R3 message boards, here is a brief resume:

    The survey is compiled using both playlists and by listening (largely using Iplayer) and I think I managed to log almost all (95%+) of the classical music played on R3. Each extract or complete work counts as one piece broadcast ie an aria from an opera and an opera both count as one work and a song from cycle and the whole cycle count as one work. This gives a more accurate picture as firstly R3 now often prefers to play extracts and short works rather than complete works and secondly this evens things out between composers who largely only wrote large scale works such as operas and those who mainly wrote shorter. If you say on average that each piece has lasted around 10 minutes then you get some idea of the amount of actual broadcast time given to each composer so a composer with 100 works/extracts broadcast has roughly had around 16 hours of air time during 2010. For a composer like Verdi where you have had around 97 extracts and 3 full operas in every 100 works broadcast, each aria/extract averages around 4-5 minutes and each of the three operas around 150 or so minutes then you still get an overall average of around 10 minutes per extract/work played, though of course not 100% accurate this at least gives you some idea of how many broadcast hours each composer has had.

    Overall Observations

    1. Anniversary composers
    Good years for Schumann, Chopin and Mahler as you would expect though there were far to many performances of Schumann’s Piano Quintet and Piano Concerto but Chopin’s delightful 1st Piano Concerto was surprisingly largely overlooked, especially at the expense of the dull 2nd Concerto. Samuel Barber, appears on the figures to have had a reasonable year, however these mask the reality that coverage of Barber was very lopsided with key works such as the Operas, the Piano & Cello Concerto’s, the large scale works being totally ignored (and the Piano Sonata also nearly suffering the same fate) and far too much emphasis on the Classic FM Barber of the Violin Concerto for example. Thomas Arne did quite well with over 80 pieces, but Wolf was actually down on 2009 and around a third of the works broadcast consisted of the Italian Serenade. Dohnanyi had less than 40 works/extracts which was very disappointing and poor William Schuman was almost snubbed (as I expected with RW) with just 5 works, 4 of which being his best known works which appeared during one week in November and Cherubini whom I thought R3 would have been interested in, was pitifully represented.

    2. General observations
    Early music still doing very well and the balance here among the composers being generally much better than for post 1700 composers. Still a tendency to favour certain French composers and a greater interest in Spanish composers in 2010. British composers outside the better known ones are still doing rather poorly, though Walton had a surprisingly good year. However the figures here mask the reality, with most of the Arnold broadcast being his light works, a considerable proportion of the Vaughan Williams being shorter popular works (his symphonies and large scale choral works still poorly represented) and almost 50% of the Holst broadcast consisting of extracts or complete performances of The Planets (mainly Jupiter). American music is also poorly represented far too much Gershwin and popular Bernstein (West Side Story & Candide extracts accounting for almost 50% of the Bernstein broadcast), apart from Adams and Barber very little else was broadcast, even Ives & Carter seem to be doing poorly. Scandinavian music too is not doing well, outside of Sibelius and Grieg. Nielsen had a very poor year and in general Scandinavian music was largely relegated to repeats of the same group of works on TTN.

    3. Popular Repertoire Increase
    This is one of the most obvious and most worrying continuing trends in 2010. For example nearly 50% of Bizet broadcast consisted of Carmen, around 30% of Prokofiev being Romeo & Juliet and the Classical Symphony, 15% of Dvorak the Slavonic Dances, around 18% of Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake & Sleeping Beauty and 11% of Brahms the Hungarian Dances. La Valse was played 36 times and Prelude de L’apres midi d’un faune 34 times. It was not just Breakfast and In Tune that were responsible for the popular repertoire increase, this seems to have become a staple part of Morning Collection, is appearing more regularly on Afternoon on 3 and even invading TTN more frequently than before. Another interesting fact is that over 50% of the music broadcast consists of the music of just 35 composers. Certain composers have remained as poorly represented as they were in 2009, mainly 20th century symphonists (outisde of the well-known ones), and composers such as Lutoslawski, Penderecki, Honegger, Hindemith, K A Hartmann, Panufnik, Carter, Holmboe don't seem to be much in favour with RW.

    The Results

    There were over 33,500 works/extracts performed in 2010 (over 1000 more than in 2009) by over 2400 composers. There were around 700 composers who featured in 2009 that didn’t feature in 2010 but 800 composers who featured in 2010 that didn’t feature in 2009. However over 860 of these composers are represented by one extract/work only and only a little over 320 composers had more than 10 works/extracts broadcast. The amount of non-classical music broadcast in programmes that are mainly considered to be classical was around the same as last year, though with the overall increase in the number of works/extracts in 2010 this showed actually showed a slight overall decline from 4% to 3.4% of the total.

    As R3 now loves its charts below are the 55 composers who had over 100 works/extracts broadcast on R3 in 2010 in descending order with the 2009 position and the % increase or decrease compared to 2009 indicated (the minus indicates a percentage decrease).

    Apologies but I can't get my spreadsheet to copy in to the posting or line up the columns, the information in order is as follows:
    2010 position, name of composer, number of works, 2009 position and % difference from 2009

    1 BACH J S 1430+ 1 11.2%
    2 MOZART W A 1370+ 2 16.2%
    3 BEETHOVEN 960+ 6 17.5%
    4 SCHUBERT 940+ 5 2.1%
    5 CHOPIN 900+ 10 67.2%
    6 HANDEL 750+ 3 -30.0%
    7 SCHUMANN R 710+ 12 58.8%
    8 BRAHMS 700+ 9 21.4%
    9 HAYDN F J 630+ 4 -40.4%
    10 TCHAIKOVSKY 510+ 16 35.5%
    11 DVORAK 500+ 13 18.7%
    12 DEBUSSY 500+ 11 7.6%
    13 MENDELSSOHN Felix 440+ 7 -39.1%
    14 VIVALDI 430+ 14 2.8%
    15 RAVEL 430+ 15 11.3%
    16 STRAUSS R 380+ 17 4.4%
    17 LISZT 330+ 22 16.7%
    18 SIBELIUS 320+ 18 6.8%
    19 BRITTEN 300+ 20 0.3%
    20 PURCELL H 290+ 8 -51.1%
    21 WAGNER 290+ 27 45.8%
    22 MAHLER G 280+ 35 70.1%
    23 RACHMANINOV 280+ 21 -4.8%
    24 GRIEG 270+ 24 5.8%
    25 ELGAR 260+ 23 -3.2%
    26 TELEMANN 250+ 25 12.7%
    27 STRAVINSKY 250+ 19 -16.2%
    28 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 250+ 28 28.6%
    29 VERDI 240+ 30 26.6%
    30 MONTEVERDI 240+ 39 73.6%
    31 PROKOFIEV S 240+ 29 25.4%
    32 SHOSTAKOVICH 230+ 26 12.0%
    33 ROSSINI 220+ 31 15.7%
    34 FAURE 220+ 32 18.9%
    35 SAINT-SAENS 200+ 33 10.8%
    36 BERLIOZ 200+ 36 28.5%
    37 BYRD 190+ 40 44.9%
    38 GERSHWIN 170+ 48 52.6%
    39 BARTOK 160+ 34 -9.2%
    40 SCARLATTI D 150+ 38 6.3%
    41 POULENC 140+ 45 14.7%
    42 STRAUSS J II 130+ 44 6.9%
    43 JANACEK 130+ 37 -4.1%
    44 BARBER 130+ 83 83.1%
    45 RAMEAU 120+ 42 -4.5%
    46 BACH C P E 120+ 47 4.2%
    47 WEBER 120+ 50 8.0%
    48 WALTON 120+ 61 37.5%
    49 PUCCINI 120+ 53 15.4%
    50 TALLIS 110+ 65 35.3%
    51 SMETANA 110+ 57 19.8%
    52 BIZET 110+ 55 11.1%
    53 BERNSTEIN L 100+ 69 32.3%
    54 MUSSORGSKY 100+ 63 23.3%
    55 GRAINGER 100+ 49 -11.5%

    The following six composers had over 100 works last year but less this year:
    Holst -20.2%, Bruckner -15.2%, Martinu -41.4%, Corelli -21.6%, Nielsen -45.5%, Kodaly -35.8% .

    I hope you find this of interest and will try and answer any questions when I’m logged into the Radio 3 Forum. My thanks must be extended to frenchfrank for these message boards and all the excellent work that has been put in to these Boards.

    Best Wishes
    SC
    Last edited by Suffolkcoastal; 03-01-11, 21:32. Reason: Forgot to mention Cherubini's poor showing among the anniversary composers.
  • Eine Alpensinfonie
    Host
    • Nov 2010
    • 20570

    #2
    Fascinating, and much appreciation for the time and effort you must have put into it, Suffolkcoastal. The % variations are particularly interesting, though I suppose a single year does not necessarily indicate a trend.

    Comment

    • MrGongGong
      Full Member
      • Nov 2010
      • 18357

      #3
      fascinating stuff
      What immediately struck me was this

      Originally posted by Suffolkcoastal View Post
      1 BACH J S 1430+ 1 11.2% DEAD
      2 MOZART W A 1370+ 2 16.2% DEAD
      3 BEETHOVEN 960+ 6 17.5% DEAD
      4 SCHUBERT 940+ 5 2.1% DEAD
      5 CHOPIN 900+ 10 67.2% DEAD
      6 HANDEL 750+ 3 -30.0% DEAD
      7 SCHUMANN R 710+ 12 58.8% DEAD
      8 BRAHMS 700+ 9 21.4% DEAD
      9 HAYDN F J 630+ 4 -40.4% DEAD
      10 TCHAIKOVSKY 510+ 16 35.5% DEAD
      11 DVORAK 500+ 13 18.7% DEAD
      12 DEBUSSY 500+ 11 7.6% DEAD
      13 MENDELSSOHN Felix 440+ 7 -39.1% DEAD
      14 VIVALDI 430+ 14 2.8% DEAD
      15 RAVEL 430+ 15 11.3% DEAD
      16 STRAUSS R 380+ 17 4.4% DEAD
      17 LISZT 330+ 22 16.7% DEAD
      18 SIBELIUS 320+ 18 6.8% DEAD
      19 BRITTEN 300+ 20 0.3% DEAD
      20 PURCELL H 290+ 8 -51.1% DEAD
      21 WAGNER 290+ 27 45.8% DEAD
      22 MAHLER G 280+ 35 70.1% DEAD
      23 RACHMANINOV 280+ 21 -4.8% DEAD
      24 GRIEG 270+ 24 5.8% DEAD
      25 ELGAR 260+ 23 -3.2% DEAD
      26 TELEMANN 250+ 25 12.7% DEAD
      27 STRAVINSKY 250+ 19 -16.2% DEAD
      28 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 250+ 28 28.6% DEAD
      29 VERDI 240+ 30 26.6% DEAD
      30 MONTEVERDI 240+ 39 73.6% DEAD
      31 PROKOFIEV S 240+ 29 25.4% DEAD
      32 SHOSTAKOVICH 230+ 26 12.0% DEAD
      33 ROSSINI 220+ 31 15.7% DEAD
      34 FAURE 220+ 32 18.9% DEAD
      35 SAINT-SAENS 200+ 33 10.8% DEAD
      36 BERLIOZ 200+ 36 28.5% DEAD
      37 BYRD 190+ 40 44.9% DEAD
      38 GERSHWIN 170+ 48 52.6% DEAD
      39 BARTOK 160+ 34 -9.2% DEAD
      40 SCARLATTI D 150+ 38 6.3% DEAD
      41 POULENC 140+ 45 14.7% DEAD
      42 STRAUSS J II 130+ 44 6.9% DEAD
      43 JANACEK 130+ 37 -4.1% DEAD
      44 BARBER 130+ 83 83.1% DEAD
      45 RAMEAU 120+ 42 -4.5% DEAD
      46 BACH C P E 120+ 47 4.2% DEAD
      47 WEBER 120+ 50 8.0% DEAD
      48 WALTON 120+ 61 37.5% DEAD
      49 PUCCINI 120+ 53 15.4% DEAD
      50 TALLIS 110+ 65 35.3% DEAD
      51 SMETANA 110+ 57 19.8% DEAD
      52 BIZET 110+ 55 11.1% DEAD
      53 BERNSTEIN L 100+ 69 32.3% DEAD
      54 MUSSORGSKY 100+ 63 23.3% DEAD
      55 GRAINGER 100+ 49 -11.5%DEAD

      SC
      So much for the idea that some have the Radio 3 "inflicts modern noise" on us !

      no Webern, Berg, Boulez, Ligeti et al

      Comment

      • Eine Alpensinfonie
        Host
        • Nov 2010
        • 20570

        #4
        ...and I think that is part of the dumbing down of Radio 3.

        Comment

        • french frank
          Administrator/Moderator
          • Feb 2007
          • 30252

          #5
          smittims would have picked on Gershwin at 38 , well into the top 50, with an average of 3 plays per week. Distinctly hmmmm, considering the distinguished names which don't figure at all. He's a treasure for the popularisers because he genuinely straddles the fields of classical and popular (like Bernstein). The snag is that his concert hall pieces are very few, particularly considering his high placing in the list. Which pieces of his got the mosts plays, sc?
          It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.

          Comment

          • Suffolkcoastal
            Full Member
            • Nov 2010
            • 3290

            #6
            Nothing particularly stands out with Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue had 18 outings and the Three Preludes and I Got Rhythm Variations slightly more, there were an awful lot of arrangments on Breakfast, but the Concerto in F hardly featured at all.

            In relation to composers such as Ligeti, he actually remained one of the more frequently broadcast 'modern' composers with just under 50 works (down on 2009), but he along with composers such as Messiaen and Cage are now more frequently to be encountered on Late Junction. Both Berg and Webern had less than 40 works/extracts broadcast in Webern's case his most broadcast work appeared to be the 'safe' early Im sommerwind! The most broadcast living composer was John Adams in 72 place with nearly 70 works, up on 2009.

            Comment

            • aeolium
              Full Member
              • Nov 2010
              • 3992

              #7
              Thanks for another very thorough piece of work, Suffolkcoastal. The main gainers this year seem to be early music and mainstream C19 composers (even allowing for the two anniversary composers Schumann and Chopin), and the main loser C20 music. One statistic that would be interesting to have would be to see what percentage of the total broadcast output of a composer was represented by his most commonly played 10 works (or 5 or 20) - that would also show how little variation there was *within* composers as well as across the whole repertoire.

              Comment

              • Suffolkcoastal
                Full Member
                • Nov 2010
                • 3290

                #8
                I monitored directly a number of pieces that seem to have been overplayed in 2009 and the same was largely true in 2010 in fact in most cases the broadcasts were even more frequent. In relation to your question aeolium, for certain composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Vaughan Williams and Tchaikovsky 10 works will account for comfortably over 50% of the works broadcast (in Saint-Saens' & Prokofiev's case 5 works) by that composer, for other composers, particularly in the top 10 the spread doesn't seem quite so slanted towards particular works though for example in Brahms's case we have far too many Hungarian Dances and in Schubert's case far too many Impromptus and An die Musiks often the fault of Breakfast and In Tune. What is interesting is what is performed less often for these composers, I've already pointed out Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto another area is Beethoven symphonies, though extracts appear, complete performances, with the general exception of the 'Eroica' are far less common. Quite a considerable portion of the Beethoven and Brahms broadcast for example consisted of the piano and chamber works. Another point of interest this year was decline in the amount of Stravinsky broadcast and the tendency to keep to 'safe' Stravinsky (ie Fireworks, Firebird, Rite of Spring, miniatures from the 1920's - 40's) and to keep more 'difficult' Stravinsky to a minimum.
                Last edited by Suffolkcoastal; 03-01-11, 18:41.

                Comment

                • Suffolkcoastal
                  Full Member
                  • Nov 2010
                  • 3290

                  #9
                  One further point I forgot to mention in relation to British music is the worrying continuing decline in the broadcasts of works/extracts by Tippett (down to just 26 from 34 in 2009), if the decline gets much worse they'll be none of his music broadcast at all by 2012.

                  Comment

                  • antongould
                    Full Member
                    • Nov 2010
                    • 8780

                    #10
                    Suffolkcoastal
                    This is once more a wonderful piece of analysis. I very much appreciate the problems of displaying large spreadsheets but would it be possible to also "send" composers with between 25 and 99 works/extracts played so that we can get to see Tippett and others?

                    Comment

                    • Suffolkcoastal
                      Full Member
                      • Nov 2010
                      • 3290

                      #11
                      Here's a basic list for you antongould of the composers who had between 25 and 99 works/extracts broadcast.

                      95-99 Holst, Buxtehude, Borodin
                      90-94 Copland, Delius
                      85-89 Rimsky-Korsakov, Bruckner, H Wolf, Part
                      80-84 Arne, Paganini, Martinu, Corelli
                      75-79 Franck
                      70-74 A Scarlatti, Albeniz, Messiaen, Glazunov, Nielsen, Respighi, Palestrina, Kodaly, Falla
                      65-69 Satie, J Adams, Scriabin
                      60-64 Villa-Lobos, Milhaud, Glinka, Pergolesi, Gounod, Kreisler, Chabrier, F Couperin
                      55-59 Schoenberg, Lassus, G Gabrieli, Szymanowski, Gluck, Schutz
                      50-54 Sullivan, Suk, Stanford, Dowland, Arnold, Piazzolla, Albinoni, MacMillan, SS Wesley, Korngold,
                      45-49 Ligeti, Frank Bridge, Salieri, Donizetti, Offenbach, Khachaturian, Bruch, Sweelinck, Howells, Bellini
                      40-44 Massenet, Gibbons, Zelenka, Weill, Reich, M Haydn, Gesualdo, Moeran, Victoria, Duparc, Biber, Moniuszko, Ives
                      35-39 Kuula, Josquin, Boccherini, Frescobaldi, Parry, K Abel, Loewe, Marais, Delibes, Webern, Reger, Lully, P Glass, G Butterworth, Berg
                      30-34 E Whiteacre, C Schumann, Hummel, Dohnanyi, Beach, Pachelbel, Granados, Geminiani, Spohr, Cavalli, Jarzebski, Humperdinck, Enescu, Dufay, Rautavaara, J M Krauss, Finzi, Busoni, Bax,
                      25-29 Svendsen, Tavener, E Coates, Warlock, Sarasate, Liadov, Durufle, Campra, J Christian Bach, Balakirev, Tippett, Karlowicz, Ireland, Gorecki (snr), Durante, Varese, Schnittke, Roussel, Lutoslawski, Hindemith,

                      As you can probably see there are quite a number of notable composers who still aren't represented!

                      Comment

                      • antongould
                        Full Member
                        • Nov 2010
                        • 8780

                        #12
                        Indeed - fascinating thank you for taking the time to do this I'm sure we all appreciate it.

                        Comment

                        • Eine Alpensinfonie
                          Host
                          • Nov 2010
                          • 20570

                          #13
                          I was surprised to see just how high up the list Paganini is, compared with the "bigger" names lower down.

                          Comment

                          • amateur51

                            #14
                            A fabulous and fascinating piece of scholarship, suffolkcoastal - many thanks for your dedication!

                            Comment

                            • Eine Alpensinfonie
                              Host
                              • Nov 2010
                              • 20570

                              #15
                              Indeed, we are indebted to you.

                              Comment

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