2012 Survey of classical music broadcast on Radio 3 - The Results

[EdgeleyRob]

Thanks for that sc.

[Lateralthinking1]

To answer your questions the best I can:

1. I'm not aware that R3 does anything similar itself, though I think there is a far amount of planning on roughly what proportion is given to the major composers, as their figures each year seem to be reasonable similar.
2.It is all done manually, though everything is input and calculated on spreadsheets.
3.COTW is taken into account but not its repeat on the same day. Coleridge-Taylor's figure was 34, his previous best from 2009-11 was 6!
4.No, that would be very difficult, but I do have one of those memories and when you are inputting every few days the repertoire broadcast of many of the composers stays in the memory, and I have a rough idea of the coverage of some of them, plus I make some notes which helps!
5. I think what is covered by anniversaries is based purely on the regime in charge and which composers are in and out of favour once you get away from the 'big guns'

Many thanks.

I have had a look at my own lists of one kind or another. My aim was to find composers who might arguably have been expected to feature in your lists. To some extent this is subjective but looking at it as neutrally as I could I have written down Bax, Bridge, Dukas, Gliere, Gounod, Leoncavallo, Ligeti, Lloyd, Moeran, Nancarrow and Varese. There might be a more obvious "team eleven".

[Suffolkcoastal]

The increase in the amount of pieces is of concern, showing the preference for short works and chunks under the present regime. I've just done a rough calculation, taking out the time per week for non-classical music programmes and the average length for a piece is around 13 minutes. The 10% increase in 2012 is a significant jump in the number of works/chunks.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Frank Bridge, (he is a favourite I believe of the Dear Leader), has done quite well the past couple of years he is in the 50-99 figures.

As for the others:
Dukas 20 (75% being one certain work!)
Gliere 8
Gounod 47
Leoncavallo 6
Ligeti 42
G Lloyd 3
Moeran 21
Nancarrow 5
Varese 5

[Lateralthinking1]

Frank Bridge, (he is a favourite I believe of the Dear Leader), has done quite well the past couple of years he is in the 50-99 figures.

As for the others:
Dukas 20 (75% being one certain work!)
Gliere 8
Gounod 47
Leoncavallo 6
Ligeti 42
G Lloyd 3
Moeran 21
Nancarrow 5
Varese 5

I missed Bridge. My apologies. I now need to find one more obvious omission. With reference to Dukas, it won't be Pachelbel.

[Lateralthinking1]

...........I will offer five more and that will be that - Charpentier, Chausson, Rodrigo (yes I know but there is more), Whitacre and from a biased point of view Ramirez.

(Do you also have the figures for Bax as added late to my earlier post? Thanks. You then deserve a well-earned break. )

[teamsaint]

Just fantastic work, SC. Many thanks.
some of the (continuing) ommissions from the schedule are dreadful.

I have to learn and get guidance from my friends on this board, rather than from R3.

The British ommissions are particularly frustrating, since so much of it would fit so easily into daytime schedules.

Oh well , back to youtube.......

[Suffolkcoastal]

...........I will offer five more and that will be that - Charpentier, Chausson, Rodrigo (yes I know but there is more), Whitacre and from a biased point of view Ramirez.

(Do you also have the figures for Bax as added late to my earlier post? Thanks. You then deserve a well-earned a break. )

Here we go:
Bax 31
M A Charpentier 28
Chausson 31
I presume you mean Ariel Ramirez and he had no music broadcast in 2012, he did have a few works in previous years.
Rodrigo 32 (but mostly consisting of the two most popular works and a couple of piano pieces, all the other lovely concertos were ignored)
Whitacre 37

I've got another day off tomorrow, so only a 2 day working week to break me back in after the Christmas break!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Astonishing work and dedication, Suffy - so much fascinating data and information: MANY thanks!

[Suffolkcoastal]

Yes teamsaint, the omissions from the R3 schedules are of great concern. There were some bright spots, notably the increase in RVW Symphonies, and COTW is still varied. But even the apparent increase in some composers masks the true story behind the figures. A considerable portion of Parry is just 3 works and the increase in Shostakovich is more to do with an increase in the lighter CFM Shostakovich, though most aspects of his repertoire did at least feature. The serious Copland works have totally disappeared, even Ives continues to decline. Half the Milhaud is Scaramouche, Miaskovsky hardly features and composers of the Classical era outside the big guns are given fairly minimal airtime.
Thank God we have the recorded music available we do, plus spotify and the efforts of youtube contributers that at least allow us to listen to so many works.

[Roehre]

Many thanks SC, brilliant job.

I see that an important birtdaycomposer, Sweelinck (born 1562) is (nearly) ignored completely.
Nice to see that on the continent, especially the Netherlands and Belgium, but Switzerland too, special weeks and concert series -inclusive of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam- were held.

Pre-baroque composers:
40 BYRD 160+ 37 54 -16.75% +41.37%
53 GABRIELI G 115+ 91 123 +98.31% +192.50%
56 DOWLAND 100+ 99 114 +87.04% +129.55%
TALLIS 65+
PALESTRINA 60+
GIBBONS O 50+
LASSUS 50+
of which 4 English, but with DesPrez completely absent

Living composers (or who died in or after 1975 -the last quarter of the 20C) are
18 BRITTEN 375+ 19 18 +24.83% +15.64%
24 SHOSTAKOVICH 280+ 32 29 +20.51% +23.14%
BERNSTEIN L 90+
CAGE 85+
PART 75+
ARNOLD 65+
GLASS P 60+
ADAMS 50+
MESSIAEN 50+
NYMAN 50+

Morale: we are talking about dead white men (de)composing between approximately 1715 and 1975:
not many outside this period (including important composers as DesPrez and Sweelinck, though these were played in TtN), or lady-composers (not even British or American ones - again some were broadcast during TtN). Old hat "modern" composers seem to represent the compositions of approximately the last 50 years.
A bit one sided, but I'm afraid that's something we knew already

Thank God we have the recorded music available we do, plus spotify and the efforts of youtube contributers that at least allow us to listen to so many works.

[Suffolkcoastal]

There's also Copland & Barber in the 50-99 category Roehre. As mentioned earlier the near absence of post 1951 Stravinsky shows the current R3 mentality. It is clearly 'to scary'.

Sweelinck = 36, he actually did slightly better in 2009 and 2010 and we didn't have a surfeit of anniversary composers in 2012 either. Yes very poor. Without TTN this figure would have been considerably worse.
Josquin = 34, his best was also 2009 (44).

[Lateralthinking1]

Here we go:
Bax 31
M A Charpentier 28
Chausson 31
I presume you mean Ariel Ramirez and he had no music broadcast in 2012, he did have a few works in previous years.
Rodrigo 32 (but mostly consisting of the two most popular works and a couple of piano pieces, all the other lovely concertos were ignored)
Whitacre 37

I've got another day off tomorrow, so only a 2 day working week to break me back in after the Christmas break!

You have the right Ramirez - and there's nothing at all! (Nevertheless) our survey says...........Lateral scored better on round two.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Thank you for all the comments. I do need to find a way of attaching the results in a clear format as I'm unable to attach my spreadsheets. I better get ready to work on the 2013 survey, hopefully as we have three opera composers with anniversaries it will reduce the amount of chunks. We'll we can live in hope.

[Hautboiste]

Amazing work suffolk. Do you know what proportion of the Kodaly works are something other than the usual suspects of Hary Janos suite, Dances of Galanta or Dances of Marosszek?