Film music

[Nick Armstrong]

Agreed about the awful endless film music. CoTW will be better heard as the podcast with most of the music edited out!

Funnily enough, I rather enjoyed cycling home across London with the 'Quo Vadis' music of Rosza yesterday evening...

I shan't comment on the Early Music Show's involvement with the current Sound of Cinema season except to say a) that it comes to an end this weekend with my programme on "Farinelli, the movie" and the repeat of Lucie's programme about "Tous les matins du monde": and b) that tomorrow's programme is the last ever Saturday edition of the Early Music Show after 10 years. The programme continues on Sundays at the new time of 2pm.

Thank you for that, CB; your post is eloquent for what it doesn't say...

My only comment would be, that we needed more of you, not less.

[Ruhevoll]

I shan't comment on the Early Music Show's involvement with the current Sound of Cinema season except to say a) that it comes to an end this weekend with my programme on "Farinelli, the movie" and the repeat of Lucie's programme about "Tous les matins du monde": and b) that tomorrow's programme is the last ever Saturday edition of the Early Music Show after 10 years. The programme continues on Sundays at the new time of 2pm.

Meanwhile, if you are in London and fancy some live film music, may I recommend a quick look at www.cinemamuseum.org.uk? It's housed in part of the old Lambeth Workhouse in Kennington, with important Chaplin connections, and will be open over this coming Open House Weekend. And tomorrow evening, my good friend Donald MacKenzie, organist of the Odeon, Leicester Square, will be tickling the ivories of the Cinema Museum's piano as he accompanies a screening of the 1926 Technicolour silent The Black Pirate, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Just thought I'd mention it to strike a blow for the music of the silent screen during the current total immersion movie music experience.....

Thank you for this information, Catherine. Hopefully you will have seen the sadness and frustration expressed in another thread about the loss of EMS on Saturdays. I have written to complain to Auntie, for what good it'll do.

A sole vestige of serious music programming now whittled away to one show a week, with many on here having discovered so much thanks to it. Still, one is better than none.

[Ruhevoll]

Thank you for that, CB; your post is eloquent for what it doesn't say...

My only comment would be, that we needed more of you, not less.[/QUOTE]

Very well put.

[aeolium]

I don't think WW1 was inevitable at all, at least in the form it took. Some of the diplomatic alliances in the years preceding the war were very strange. Italy for instance joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary despite having fought three wars against the latter in recent decades. Britain had been hostile to France for several centuries and in the most recent lengthy Napoleonic war had been an ally of Prussia (as it had been in previous wars). Britain had also fought the Crimean War against Russia. Moreover Britain had signed an alliance with Japan in 1902, and Japan had fought Russia in 1904. The Triple Entente was arguably against all historical precedent and the dynastic links were at least as strong with Germany as with Russia. With different diplomacy, Britain could quite plausibly have stayed outside the tensions between Austria-Germany and Russia in the Balkans, and Germany and France in Western Europe.

[Pabmusic]

I don't think WW1 was inevitable at all, at least in the form it took...

Excellent post.

[teamsaint]

I don't think WW1 was inevitable at all, at least in the form it took. Some of the diplomatic alliances in the years preceding the war were very strange. Italy for instance joined the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary despite having fought three wars against the latter in recent decades. Britain had been hostile to France for several centuries and in the most recent lengthy Napoleonic war had been an ally of Prussia (as it had been in previous wars). Britain had also fought the Crimean War against Russia. Moreover Britain had signed an alliance with Japan in 1902, and Japan had fought Russia in 1904. The Triple Entente was arguably against all historical precedent and the dynastic links were at least as strong with Germany as with Russia. With different diplomacy, Britain could quite plausibly have stayed outside the tensions between Austria-Germany and Russia in the Balkans, and Germany and France in Western Europe.

Aeolium,There is going to be plenty of opportunity to thrash these things out over the next four years !
If we could learn, or reveal the real reasons why it all happened..... perhaps its not too late even now .

It is very instructive to look at what our Belgian allies were up to in the Congo, while we were supporting them on the Western Front.

[Ruhevoll]

Perhaps these interesting WW1 posts warrant a new thread, perhaps in the Ideas/Theory section (altho' History would be more apt), with a view to the forthcoming centenary?

[Resurrection Man]

I shan't comment on the Early Music Show's involvement with the current Sound of Cinema season except to say a) that it comes to an end this weekend with my programme on "Farinelli, the movie" and the repeat of Lucie's programme about "Tous les matins du monde": and b) that tomorrow's programme is the last ever Saturday edition of the Early Music Show after 10 years. The programme continues on Sundays at the new time of 2pm.

Meanwhile, if you are in London and fancy some live film music, may I recommend a quick look at www.cinemamuseum.org.uk? It's housed in part of the old Lambeth Workhouse in Kennington, with important Chaplin connections, and will be open over this coming Open House Weekend. And tomorrow evening, my good friend Donald MacKenzie, organist of the Odeon, Leicester Square, will be tickling the ivories of the Cinema Museum's piano as he accompanies a screening of the 1926 Technicolour silent The Black Pirate, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Just thought I'd mention it to strike a blow for the music of the silent screen during the current total immersion movie music experience.....

Catherine.....I came to your programmes late in the day and a constant delight they have turned out to be. I will miss your Saturday programme with a profound sadness.

[DracoM]

Well, CB, you need to carry back to your bosses the feedback that this film music stuff is solid R2, packing the R3 airwaves with rootless, musically trite material that is meant to illustrate FILMS - spot it? VISUALS. And it is usually bitty, in tiny bite-size units. It is acres of wallpaper and frankly meant to be, or it is headless gobbets ransacked from well-respected composers.

To have elbowed aside the regular slots, to have infiltrated almost every bloody music and speech programme on the schedule is a total disgrace.

[Ruhevoll]

Well, CB, you need to carry back to your bosses the feedback that this film music stuff is solid R2, packing the R3 airwaves with rootless, musically trite material that is meant to illustrate FILMS - spot it? VISUALS. And it is usually bitty, in tiny bite-size units. It is acres of wallpaper and frankly meant to be, or it is headless gobbets ransacked from well-respected composers.

To have elbowed aside the regular slots, to have infiltrated almost every bloody music and speech programme on the schedule is a total disgrace.

I haven't turned the radio on all week, and won't be doing so next week. I will, of course, be listening on Saturday and Sunday at 1.00 pm.

[Nick Armstrong]

Well, CB, you need to carry back to your bosses the feedback that this film music stuff is solid R2, packing the R3 airwaves with rootless, musically trite material that is meant to illustrate FILMS - spot it? VISUALS. And it is usually bitty, in tiny bite-size units. It is acres of wallpaper and frankly meant to be, or it is headless gobbets ransacked from well-respected composers.

To have elbowed aside the regular slots, to have infiltrated almost every bloody music and speech programme on the schedule is a total disgrace.

[Resurrection Man]

We could all text our 'appreciation' of the filminfestation to 83111, of course. Would be good to get our point across.

[Anna]

I usually enjoy the occasional programme about film music - but this week I really have reached the stage of not turning R3 on, it's been so utterly relentless. I bought the RT times yesterday, and my heart sank to see we have to endure another week of it. I am also very upset about losing the Saturday EMS, that is a real tragedy. Have any of the radio critics (such as Gillian Reynolds) picked this up, I haven't noticed. I was going to say I wonder who they think they're broadcasting to ..... it's pretty obvious it's not their loyal listeners - soon no longer to be loyal I think. I don't do FaceBook, have there been comments?

[Ruhevoll]

I usually enjoy the occasional programme about film music - but this week I really have reached the stage of not turning R3 on, it's been so utterly relentless. I bought the RT times yesterday, and my heart sank to see we have to endure another week of it. I am also very upset about losing the Saturday EMS, that is a real tragedy. Have any of the radio critics (such as Gillian Reynolds) picked this up, I haven't noticed. I was going to say I wonder who they think they're broadcasting to ..... it's pretty obvious it's not their loyal listeners - soon no longer to be loyal I think. I don't do FaceBook, have there been comments?

Me neither. Though I can make out the beginning of opprobrium in the latest comment: https://en-gb.facebook.com/bbcradio3

'After a week of it, is there any regular Radio 3 listener (or a ...)'

Another one. 'I'll be so glad when this week's over.' He's got the same rude awakening you had coming to him, alas.

[Anna]

It gets worse. Just looked at the online schedule - we've got another TWO weeks of it!