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

[Suffolkcoastal]

Thanks to everyone for their kind appreciation of my survey. I think we already know who is going to come top in 2011, as a certain composer is going to have at least a 800 work head start with all the complete works and repeated extracts at the beginning of this month. It will be interesting to see how things pan out post January 12th. The position of Paganini I think has a lot to do with R3 current policy of favouring short works, a lot of the Paganini works broadcast were Caprices, Kreisler is another violinist composer R3 tends to favour these days though he was down slightly on 2009's total.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think we already know who is going to come top in 2011, as a certain composer is going to have at least a 800 work head start

So you haven't heard about the Telemannfest planned for June?

[BBMmk2]

A very fascinating and thought provoking survey SC!! Congratulations!!

[rauschwerk]

This list of dead white male composers has a dispiriting effect on me, I must say. 50 years ago, when I was a teenager, my parents bought an FM radio which enabled me to listen to the Third Programme (or was it Network 3 by then?) in good sound. I remember how excited I was by Willaim Glock's Invitation Concerts which contained much 20th century and contemporary music which was difficult or impossible to buy on LPs. In those days, of course, there were no RAJAR ratings or, if they were, nobody took much notice of them. Now, it seems to me, the BBC expects you to buy recordings of Bartok, middle period Stravinsky, Hindemith &c. because thay are scared that broadcasting their music will drive listeners away.

[Eudaimonia]

Very nice, thanks!

Do you think it might make sense to run the numbers again and see what you get once you separate out all the Proms concerts? It might be fun to see if there's anything interesting about the breakdown and how the two sets overlap and differ.

[Bax-of-Delights]

Thanks SC. Marvellous work. It would be interesting to know how many of those 30+ Bax items were just the two works "Garden of Fand" and "Tintagel"...

[verismissimo]

Fab work, SC!

Sad about the paltry showing for Hugo Wolf in his anniversary year. I realise that some find his work an qcquired taste, but it's not so hard really, and he's such a great composer IMO.

Things certainly won't improve unless and until R3 plays his stuff, which seems unlikely currently.

Does noone there love him?

[Suffolkcoastal]

I'm somewhat concerned rauschwerk that Bartok will go the same way as Hindemith, Honegger etc and be 'allowed' on an occasional outing on R3, Bartok is a great composer and should IMO be given more broadcast time than either Debussy or Ravel for example . There was a slight decline from the 2009 total and I'm interested to see if this downward trend continues this year. Around a quarter of the Bartok broadcast consisted of the Rumanian Dances, R3 seems to think this is 'safe' Bartok, particularly noticeable for me this year was the decline in broadcasts of his string quartets.

Regarding Bax, he actually did worse than in 2009, about a third of the broadcasts were of Tintagel, it is impossible for me at present unfortunately to keep a note of every work played by every composer, I think that would be almost a full-time job. Though if I recall correctly there were a number of short works played including a couple of the two piano works. I do however keep short notes as I go along for many composers to remind me what sort of works have been played by them and monitor some works (especially those that get regularly overplayed) directly. I'm increasing this aspect for 2011. I noticed mid-way through the year for example that Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture was being broadcast excessively, so this has been added to my monitotred works for 2011, last years educated guestimate is that it was actually broadcast more often than La Valse and would account for around 20% of the Berlioz broadcast.

The Wolf result was a surprise, as I mentioned far too many broadcasts of the Italian Serenade too at the expense of his other works. As for poor Cherubini, this seems to highlight another area that R3 needs to look at, composers of the period 1770-1830 seem to be totally dominated by Mozart, F J Haydn, Beethoven & Schubert with some attention given to Rossini and Weber, other composers of the era don't get much of a look in and don't seem to matter much in R3's current eyes. Cherubini's treatment in 2009 was appalling, Beethoven thought him the greatest of his contemporaries, so why was so little broadcast? In fact as with many other composers outside the 6 mentioned of the period, is appears from from my regular forrays into what CFM is doing, that this station seems to serve the less well known composers of this era better than R3 does.

[Simon]

Thanks for all the info s/c - a stunning piece of work again.

I couldn't agree more about Cherubini. Or less about Bartok!

bws S-S!

[Panjandrum]

Very nice, thanks!

Do you think it might make sense to run the numbers again and see what you get once you separate out all the Proms concerts? It might be fun to see if there's anything interesting about the breakdown and how the two sets overlap and differ.

Given that the Proms only account for about 10% of music broadcast during the season and less, therefore, than 2% overall of radio 3's output in the year, I don't think that excluding them would make any significant difference to the overall results do you?

The results of SC's exercise confirm what most of us had surmised long ago (saving RW's fan club and the paid up BBC apologists) that the current controller is leading R3 irretrievably into Classic FM land. Running counter to those who like to contend that the playlist is opening up classical music to new listeners, it is in fact, reducing the repertoire to an ever decreasing number of over exposed "favourites".

What would, however, be of interest, is to compare the number of different works and composers broadcast by Radio 3 with those of its continental counterparts. I suspect that we would find that German, Dutch and French radio present a far more eclectic mix of music with, at least, as large a share of the radio audience as 3 does here.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Yes Panjandrum, a closer analysis does seem to show a steady attempt to move towards the sort of repetoire that CFM regularly broadcasts (although as I mentioned earlier sometimes CFM has a more interesting range of works than R3 does). It does vary slightly from composer to composer but an increasing proportion of the works broadcast by better known composers being increasingly confined to a progressively smaller core of works, 71 Slavonic Dances and by coincidence 71 Hungarian Dances being brodcast for example and for less well known composers (with the key exception of early music) the concentration tends to be on their best known works, for example alomost all the Humperdinck broadcast consisted of the Overture of extracts from Hansel and Gretel.

For 2011 after the end of the annoying Mozartfest thingy, I'm also going to monitor the total number of complete symphonies broadcast, with the exception if Mahler I detected a sharp decline in the number of complete symphonies being broadcast in the last couple of years compared with 10 years or more ago, with only the proms really maintaining a reasonable number.

[Parry1912]

Fine work SC!

I hope the people at R3 take note of your results and your comments.

[Eudaimonia]

Given that the Proms only account for about 10% of music broadcast during the season and less, therefore, than 2% overall of radio 3's output in the year, I don't think that excluding them would make any significant difference to the overall results do you?

What about the underrepresented areas at the margins? I'm particularly wondering how much of an impact the Proms had on contemporary music figures.

[Suffolkcoastal]

The answer to question is very little, Hear and Now with pre-hear seem now to be the main source for contemporary music, apart from the small number of contemporary works at the proms. There is some contemporary music on Late Junction, apart from that just an occasional scattering in the schedules and most of that handful of works are on TTN. The only living UK composer to at least get some sort of regular coverage is James MacMillan.

[Serial_Apologist]

<quote>The only living UK composer to at least get some sort of regular coverage is James MacMillan.</quote>

You don't say... <whistle>

Thanks for this huge effort, SC, well substantiating what many of us have been feeling for quite some time now regarding the programming of R3 under Mr Wright. Thank heavens I went to the trouble of taping as much 20th century repertoire as I was able to in the years 1985 to 2005, and my father on reel-to-reels during the 60s and 70s, then. My collection must be worth... quite a bit; it certainly feels invaluable in terms well beyond the pecuniary.

S-A