Definitions - music

[french frank]

Rather more colourfully put, Mr GG, but yes, exactly. 'Categories' are defined/selected to be the most useful for some particular purpose.

One of the things which technology facilitates is the ability to have multiple categorisations and ones which don't follow simple logic
SO I might be interested in music that features performers who share my birthday
or by composers who have never seen the sea (the old Beethoven chestnut )
or to categorise music by the pitch of the first sound
or to have music arranged by some entirely arbitrary rule.....

If the supermarket was arranged by colour you would still be able to find the red peppers (they would be near to the Merlot)

[Flosshilde]

Quite - if people ask me what sort of music I like I usually say that it's mostly 16th - mid 18th century & opera, but that recently I've been listening to some 20th century music - Shostakovitch quartets & Vaughan Williams' symphonies for example. I might also add that I like Billie Holiday, & 'classic' (ie 40's) Hollywood musicals.

(written as a response to RB's post, but could apply to Mr GG's or ff's)

[amateur51]

As Roehre says, there's no definition of classical music. (I would say the term doesn't even need to be used. I don't use it if I can possibly help it, which is almost all of the time. "Is what you write classical music?" No.)

But by the same token there's no hard and fast definition of any musical "genre": jazz, pop, folk, progressive rock, darkcore jungle or whatever. Even in mathematics, generally considered to be a more exact discpline than music, there can no general theory which is both consistent and complete. There's no hard and fast definition of music for heaven's sake. I don't think the "rules of thumb" referred to by FF are actually necessary any more - as MrGG says, the way that everything now is multiply indexed means you can invent your own selection criteria whenever you want to.

Maybe classical music can't be defined? If we can't categorise/define classic music, how, in the final analysis, will we know whether more or less of it is being programmed?

Perhaps we just ask Radio 3 to use its own categorisation (because its Radio 3's output that we're interested in) and to give us their analysed data. That way the consistency of categorisation, or lack of it, is R3's with its own 'internal' logic. It's the increase/decrease that we're interested in (apparently), no?

[Flosshilde]

R3's with its own 'internal' logic.

[french frank]

I don't think the "rules of thumb" referred to by FF are actually necessary any more - as MrGG says, the way that everything now is multiply indexed means you can invent your own selection criteria whenever you want to.

I don't think that's quite true. For some purposes it may be, for others it isn't. Not everything is indexed in that way.

If, for instance, the BBC introduces 'generic broadcasting' (which it did, in the 70s) there will be rules of thumb for what music Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 6 Extra, the Asian network, play. They don't have to be 'hard and fast' but that isn't the meaning of 'rule of thumb' anyway.

[amateur51]

Well it's no wierder than some of the discussion on here, and at least it's pertinent to Radio 3.

That won't get me any brownie points, issit

[Richard Barrett]

Not everything is indexed in that way

Everything that's on the internet is automatically indexed in that way by virtue of being there.

"Generic broadcasting " may be the problem rather than the solution...

[vinteuil]

What is more interesting are the edges, where one supposed 'style' becomes another

... our old friend Wang's Paradox emerges here -


.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

.

.

[Flosshilde]

Well it's no wierder than some of the discussion on here, and at least it's pertinent to Radio 3.

That won't get me any brownie points, issit

Not laughing at your post, but at the idea that R3 has any logic at the moment, internal or external.

[french frank]

Everything that's on the internet is automatically indexed in that way by virtue of being there.

"Generic broadcasting " may be the problem rather than the solution...

I meant that not everything is on the internet. Generic broadcasting may be a problem, but there is a sense in which the marketing industry has it right: people want to have some idea where they can find what they like as quickly and conveniently as possible. As long as linear radio continues to be massively the most popular way of listening to radio, and the more the content and choices are increased, the more generic radio makes sense.

[amateur51]

Not laughing at your post, but at the idea that R3 has any logic at the moment, internal or external.

To be fair, if we're looking at Radio 3's performance, then its 'logic' is the only one that matters.

[amateur51]

As long as linear radio continues to be massively the most popular way of listening to radio, and the more the content and choices are increased, the more generic radio makes sense.

... to whom? Bean-counters? BBC Trust? DG? Wright? Advertisers? Licence holders? DCMS? CFM?

[MrGongGong]

... our old friend Wang's Paradox emerges here -


.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

Thanks for this

[Richard Barrett]

... to whom? Bean-counters? BBC Trust? DG? Wright? Advertisers? Licence holders? DCMS? CFM?

This is what I'm wondering too.

[french frank]

It makes sense to me - for the reasons that I mentioned at the beginning of that sentence.