Suffolkcoastal, I may have missed a similar comment in this thread, but is there not an obvious correlation between the size of the composer's recorded repertoire and his/her placement on the list? I allow for exceptions, of course, but I am thinking of the great composers.
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Recorded (CD) repertoire shouldn't have made that much of a difference, as it is only part (though admittedly an increasing part in the RW scheme of things) of what is broadcast on R3, may be if R3 had relied more exclusively on recorded music 30 years ago when the amount of music recorded was much smaller than it is today, then it may have made some impact. However, I undertook some partial surveys in the early to mid 1990's and the balance between composers across the board was much better than it is now. What could have more impact is how prolific a composer was, but that doesn't make that much of an impact on the figures either. For example a very prolific composer like Schubert would have far more pieces broadcast than Beethoven who was less prolific, similarly a relatively less prolific composer such as Ravel or Tchaikovsky should never feature as high in the list as they do. The key factor though is how much of a particular composer's repetoire is being broadcast and the answer is generally that much of it is very narrow, a dozen pieces will account for 2/3rds of the Debussy brodcast and not much more will account for about the same proportion of the Tchaikovsky broadcast.Comment
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Sadly there can be no other conclusion than R3 is by accident or more likely design being dumbed down. It has to be a very short sighted policy, turn it into CFM and to the cutters it is obviously no longer necessary. The ideals of Reith and the Third Programme are "as dust". The proms do seem to be the only place to find a fair share of contemporary music - I a relative novice adored the Rattle Prom of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg and would have loved to have heard more in the normal output..............Comment
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A further point which has, I'm sure, been raised before does the Corporation itself compile "revealing" statistics like this? Surely then they would know if they were going in the Wright direction!Comment
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I don't think they would, as some of the time one half doesn't seem to know what the other half is playing as there is often two or occasionally more broadcasts of the same work on the same day and even several broadcasts of a work during the same week. The handling of Chopin and Schumann this year seems to have been pre-determined in that Chopin was featured more often in the first-half of the year and Schumann more often in the 2nd half until early December. Also having said this there does seem to be occasions when a certain composer is targeted for some exposure for a week or so but then disappears off the schedule for most of the rest of the year and certain composers or types of composers that seem to be deliberately sidelined as presumably RW doesn't like them too much.Comment
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What a great painstaking work. Many thanks from one appreciative Boarder.
It would be interesting to see a similar exercise being done for CFM. The result might surprise us. Especially when it comes to British Music!
I think we have all noticed how certain works keep on being repeated during a short spell of time.
I remember when I knew Edward Clark in my youth, after the War. He was BBC Controller of Music around the 1937 period and I believe was finally thrown out because he tried to introduce too much Contemporary Music at that time. He told me that it was his policy to try to repeat certain modern items as many times as possible to get the public to appreciate it and gave ‘La Mer’ as an example! What a contrast to now.Comment
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It does show how much times have changed, from still be considered modern in the 1930's and being played a lot to try and get the listening public 'used to it', La Mer is now overplayed because it is considered 'safe' standard repetoire.Comment
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To "up" the UK scores in next year's Suffolkcoastal why - as has been mentioned a lot already - don't we have 7 days of British music. I feel I must add that this proposal now has Royal i.e. Salymap approval!Comment
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I would support that 100% Anton! It would be a wonderful opportunity to show the range of British music, even in periods when it was supposed to be non-existent (i.e. the first half of the 18th century) I wonder how many people know how good the symphonies of Cipriani Potter are for example. Other areas which have declined under the RW regime such as Scandinavian and American music could have at least a weekend devoted to their music for example.Comment
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Driven by a desire to keep this thread alive - I am a boring number crunchers after all - and a theory that SMP has a soft spot for Greig I have, waking up far too early, analysed "her"playlists for the last 2 weeks. The findings are far from earth shattering. 228 pieces from 112 composers 40 of whom appeared more than once.
When compared with Suffolkcoastal's analysis by looking at the respective top 23s I.e. 3 or more SMP plays we find Beethoven not in the Breakfast top 6 whilst Debussy and Haydn are. Not appearing in SMP's top 23 are Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Strauss, Britten, Wagner and Mahler. Their replacements if you see what I mean were Vaughan Williams, Scarlatti, Telemann, Faure, Elgar, Grieg and perhaps the only real surprise Eric Coates!
So there you have it the most useless survey ever I hope I now qualify as terribly sad - I'm getting up now to get a life!Comment
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What a great exercise. Much appreciated by many of us. What strikes me is that Martinu features amongst the lesser played composers when it was meant to be some type of anniversary year for him!Comment
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