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

[Simon]

My congratulations too, sc - a wonderfully comprehensive piece of research and scholarship.

Taking all the points made into account, don't you think that it's approximately what the general classical music lover might expect? BMB at the top, with the other major composers following, then a mixed bag of lesser composers or those with fewer top class works following on.

I have no favourite that I think has been missed, though there are still a few in your lists whose names are not familiar in the sense that I know (m)any of their works.

I'm personally surprised to find the Tudor and Elizabethan era composers not higher, as I seem to catch such works quite often, but then, I suppose I would be as it's my area of interest and probably half my CDs relate to that period and to largely choral stuff.

Not surprised Parry's rep is represented by a few mainly well-known works - there are several composers to whom this would, I think naturally, apply.

bws for the New Year.

S-S!

[Suffolkcoastal]

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?

Hary Janos accounts for about 30%, but the even the suite is rarely broadcast complete, it tends to be the Viennese Musical Clock movement that accounts for about half of the 30%. There are some lesser known Kodaly works that surface on TTN, but the figure for the three popular works is around half the Kodaly broadcast.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Thanks Simon. I think why Renaissance/Tudor composers don't feature so highly in the list is that this is the one area where R3 does quite a reasonable job, in that a wide and varied range of composers are covered which results in quite a lot of composers of the period having 10-50 pieces broadcast, so the total amount of music broadcast from this period is spread across a larger group of composers than is normally the case with later composers.

[Bax-of-Delights]

As usual, SC, an outstanding piece of work for which many thanks.

Readers might find this apt in the light of R3's output these days:

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2013/01/classical-music-should-give-up-its.html

Meanwhile, SC, you can count Malcolm Arnold twice for 2013 listings already - the same Scottish Dances broadcast twice within 72 hours on Breakfast.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Thanks BoD, yes I've noticed the Arnold, a glut of his Dances already and RC is off again with the Slavonic Dances and we've also had a 'Jupiter' and an Ascending Lark. Only 4 days into 2013 and not a promising start.

[secondfiddle]

A mammoth task. Most interesting.

Just as a matter of interest, the BBC Music Division used to publish yearly a 'Catalogue of Music Broadcast in Serious Music Programmes on Sound and Television'. I have a copy of the 1962 catalogue. It is 228 pages long and typed on fool-scap, and lists composers alphabetically followed by a detailed list of all their works broadcast. Together with the number of broadcasts of each work it also specifies whether it is a live/pre-recorded broadcast, a commercial gramophone record or a foreign recording or relay. It also states in which region each of these works was broadcast. On the last page there is a list of 'Announcers' Duty Rotas' headed by 'Mr Snagge'! As 1962 was the Delius Centenary year he was quite well represented.
I have no idea how long the BBC continued with this publication (which may have been intended for internal circulation only) but it makes fascinating reading.

[Sir Velo]

I have no idea how long the BBC continued with this publication (which may have been intended for internal circulation only) but it makes fascinating reading.

Sounds fascinating. Any chance of summarising some of the salient points of interest (e.g. Top 10; notable omissions and/or surprising inclusions)?

[Suffolkcoastal]

Yes it would be very interesting to compare this with R3 50 years later. I have some partial surveys I did from the early 1990's and the difference between 2012 and that time is quite marked.

[secondfiddle]

Sounds fascinating. Any chance of summarising some of the salient points of interest (e.g. Top 10; notable omissions and/or surprising inclusions)?

Unfortunately the catalogue has no totals so it will mean a lot of counting! However, I will willingly count up for any particular composer anyone wants. Interestingly, I notice that for Janacek (not then fully recognised) there were 11 performances of which only 3 were orchestral (Idyll for Strings, Mass and Suite No 3 - no Sinfonietta!) and with Mahler, symphonies 1, 3 (twice), 5 (3 times), 6 (twice) and Adagio only of No 10, the Mahler boom just beginning. Elgar: no big choral work, neither Gerontius, Apostles nor The Kingdom, and only one performance of Symphony No 2 against 4 of No 1 (I can remember three of them - 2 under Boult and one under Stanford Robinson). Even then Elgar was undervalued and Barbirolli's EMI recording of the First Symphony did much to boost his reputation.
Unfortunately this catalogue does not date the broadcasts and does not specify the Proms performances (which of course can with a little effort be identified from the Proms Archive or the prospectus for that year). I have just noticed a small extra separate section of 'Works Transmitted on Television Programmes'. All very fascinating!

[aeolium]

Belated thanks for this excellent work, sc - I was away early in the new year when it came out.

I noticed in your "General Observations" that you had figures for the number of works played for several composers though this is not shown in your summary table which shows the total number of broadcasts for composers. The "number of works" statistics would be very interesting as the total number of broadcasts can conceal - especially for more minor composers - the fact that many of the broadcasts may be of the same work, or the same few works. I don't suppose it would be possible to include the "number of works" figures in future (only if you are in any case recording these). Sorry if it seems churlish to ask for more when you have provided so much valuable information.

[Suffolkcoastal]

It would be interesting to have a full list of all the symphonies broadcast, this could be compared against this year's at the end of the year. I'm making a note of times each individual symphony is played this year for the more important post 1800 symphonic composers plus Mozart & Haydn.

[gradus]

Tremendous effort and of considerable value to R3 in planning future music broadcasts - or at least it should be if they are interested in a balanced output.
Best wishes and thanks for doing it.

[french frank]

It would be interesting to have a full list of all the symphonies broadcast, this could be compared against this year's at the end of the year. I'm making a note of times each individual symphony is played this year for the more important post 1800 symphonic composers plus Mozart & Haydn.

I don't have anything like a full list, but "Repertoire Repeats" goes back some way. The most played in 2004 were (number of times played precedes title):

18 SCHUBERT: Symphony no.8
16 MENDELSSOHN: Scottish symphony
15 BEETHOVEN: Symphony no.7
12 BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique
11 BEETHOVEN: Symphony no.3
11 DVOŘÁK: Symphony no.8
10 SCHUMANN: Symphony no.1

These were complete plays. The note underneath says:

"Finally, I should add that all the above-described RRR3 doesn't even take into consideration the snippets -- single movements, or even parts of movements -- favoured by programmes like In Tune, which I decided not to include in my record-taking. Fortunately, Radio 3 is still, on the whole, a long way from this 'bleeding chunks' approach, much favoured by commercial stations -- but what does the future hold?"