Music on the Brink

[french frank]

Details about Radio 3's new season - five days devoted to the music from five cities on the eve of World War One.

[Serial_Apologist]

Wow! - bring it on! - the music, that is, not WW1!

[Thropplenoggin]

Details about Radio 3's new season - five days devoted to the music from five cities on the eve of World War One.

In Tuesday’s Free Thinking (10pm) the novelist AS Byatt, the film expert Neil Brand and cultural historians Alexandra Harris and Philipp Blom select artworks from the period and explore the spirit of the European capital cities on the Brink of WW1 with Anne McElvoy. Later in the week Matthew Sweet is joined by author William Boyd to discuss Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities, one of the early accounts of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Wednesday 8 January, 10pm). On Thursday Philip Dodd chairs a landmark discussion about George Dangerfield’s 'The Strange Death Of Liberal England'. His guests are Baroness Shirley Williams, Professor Roy Foster, journalist and author Nick Cohen, author Bea Campbell and Duncan Brack of the Liberal Democrat Party History Group. Together they discuss Dangerfield’s analysis of liberal thinking and whether it has a message for political debate and the wider culture now (Thursday 9 January, 10pm).

I have this doorstep idling unread beside my bed. I generally enjoy 20th Century mittel-European literature, but have been off fiction for a while, replacing it with musical biographies.

Another excellent work about Western civilisation teetering 'on the brink' pre-1914 is Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.

[Serial_Apologist]

In Tuesday’s Free Thinking (10pm) the novelist AS Byatt, the film expert Neil Brand and cultural historians Alexandra Harris and Philipp Blom select artworks from the period and explore the spirit of the European capital cities on the Brink of WW1 with Anne McElvoy. Later in the week Matthew Sweet is joined by author William Boyd to discuss Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities, one of the early accounts of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Wednesday 8 January, 10pm). On Thursday Philip Dodd chairs a landmark discussion about George Dangerfield’s 'The Strange Death Of Liberal England'. His guests are Baroness Shirley Williams, Professor Roy Foster, journalist and author Nick Cohen, author Bea Campbell and Duncan Brack of the Liberal Democrat Party History Group. Together they discuss Dangerfield’s analysis of liberal thinking and whether it has a message for political debate and the wider culture now (Thursday 9 January, 10pm).

I have this doorstep idling unread beside my bed. I generally enjoy 20th Century mittel-European literature, but have been off fiction for a while, replacing it with musical biographies.

Another excellent work about Western civilisation teetering 'on the brink' pre-1914 is Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.

Something in 2014 to look forward to, at least!

[muzzer]

I too have the MM in my to read pile. Perhaps the impending hols are the time. I have a horrid feeling that next year's centenary things are going to be quite painful all round.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

"In a year when the BBC will be remembering and reassessing World War One, we hope our millions of listeners will be enlightened by this cultural aspect of a continent about to be changed forever by the conflict." "

Roger Wright, Controller, BBC Radio 3

he should be sacked for that sentence .....

[Petrushka]

This is good, imaginative scheduling and exactly what Radio 3 should be about. I would hope that these programmes reach a wider audience than R3 devotees () not least because the culture and events of that period are fundamental to our understanding of all that followed.

RW gets many brickbats on here and elsewhere but on this occasion a hearty bravo is in order.

[Roehre]

This is good, imaginative scheduling and exactly what Radio 3 should be about. I would hope that these programmes reach a wider audience than R3 devotees () not least because the culture and events of that period are fundamental to our understanding of all that followed..

I hope we eventually aren't disappointed by what this blurp promises....

[french frank]

he should be sacked for that sentence .....

'Our millions of listeners'? Well, two (millions), most quarters.

But, I agree, it does sound more like the kind of thing Radio 3 should be doing. Still wouldn't be certain that the best way to tackle it is by immersion. But that has more 'impact', and 'impact' is one of the performance criteria (Quality, Reach, Value-for-money, Impact). I think it means 'getting noticed'.

[amateur51]

'Our millions of listeners'? Well, two (millions), most quarters.

But, I agree, it does sound more like the kind of thing Radio 3 should be doing. Still wouldn't be certain that the best way to tackle it is by immersion. But that has more 'impact', and 'impact' is one of the performance criteria (Quality, Reach, Value-for-money, Impact). I think it means 'getting noticed'.

Yes impact is a word in need of a clear definition, I agree I'd argue that impact is directed towards affecting a named change and you'd need to measure that too.

[french frank]

Yes impact is a word in need of a clear definition, I agree I'd argue that impact is directed towards affecting a named change and you'd need to measure that too.

OT, yes: "They" have said that "people" are unaware that there is any drama on Radio 3, concluding that it 'lacks impact'. Or perhaps publicity elsewhere over the BBC services? At any rate, a 10pm start should guarantee even less impact.

But, on topic, so much of what the BBC does seems driven by the necessity to be 'noticed' by the general public. Getting column inches in the press is probably cheaper than trails ... A five-day bonanza is less 'missable' (even if you want to) than a one-hour programme each week for three months.

[muzzer]

I'm enjoying this - what do other boarders think? Though finding the various progs etc on the website is far too hard.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm enjoying this - what do other boarders think? Though finding the various progs etc on the website is far too hard.

Having given up trawling through various subsections of the Radio 3 website, I have come to the conclusion that the best way to find what I am looking for is to Google the actual titled of the programme, followed by "on iplayer". That always seems to take me to where I want to be, providing of course there is an actual iplayer for the programe concerned.

[Barbirollians]

Ill-focused and an excuse to play music utterly randomly. The Free Thinking programme ( although as all too often Philip Dodd is far more interested in his own opinions than that of contributors) was an exception .

Also it seems very arbitrary . Where is the analysis of the effects of oncoming war on composers - Schoenberg's attack on Bizet and Stravinsky for example , upon old Magnard whose war was more than brinked , the clash between a Habsburg autocracy and an increasingly modern artistic scene in Vienna etc etc . The use or misuse of Elgar's music , VW's attitudes and music in 1914 - Butterworth etc etc .

[Serial_Apologist]

Ill-focused and an excuse to play music utterly randomly. The Free Thinking programme ( although as all too often Philip Dodd is far more interested in his own opinions than that of contributors) was an exception .

Also it seems very arbitrary . Where is the analysis of the effects of oncoming war on composers - Schoenberg's attack on Bizet and Stravinsky for example , upon old Magnard whose war was more than brinked , the clash between a Habsburg autocracy and an increasingly modern artistic scene in Vienna etc etc . The use or misuse of Elgar's music , VW's attitudes and music in 1914 - Butterworth etc etc .

Indispensable issues - all these and more, one would have thought.