Rachel Portman (b. 1960)

[Serial_Apologist]

Rachel Portman, speaking on today's edition: "It's difficult to write music for the everyday".

Does anyone else worry that this week could establish a precedent for COTW being made yet another repository for what would once have passed as Radio 2 subject matter?

[Serial_Apologist]

My apoligies for taking up forum space with this thread. What Caliban says about programmes about film music certainly applies this week. Painful doesn't do justice to it.

[Bax-of-Delights]

It's only Wednesday and I think I have probably heard all I need to hear of Portman's work. Good luck to her for her film music - she's made a more than a few bob out of it - but it's all rather, well, dull.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's only Wednesday and I think I have probably heard all I need to hear of Portman's work. Good luck to her for her film music - she's made a more than a few bob out of it - but it's all rather, well, dull.

The impression I get is that a good lifestyle is to be gained from writing this sort of stuff, and you get to meet celebrities. If only we'd known, eh?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It's only Wednesday and I think I have probably heard all I need to hear of Portman's work. Good luck to her for her film music - she's made a more than a few bob out of it - but it's all rather, well, dull.

Agreed on every point.

[Bella Kemp]

In it's place - i.e. accompanying a film I find her music wonderful. Ten minutes of it on the radio even moves me very much, but no - after a few days it wears thin.

[Nick Armstrong]

It's only Wednesday and I think I have probably heard all I need to hear of Portman's work. Good luck to her for her film music - she's made a more than a few bob out of it - but it's all rather, well, dull.

Happened to catch 10 minutes this morning - more than enough of her work in isolation.

Thin, dull gruel indeed. I think it's the only COTW I can remember when I come away from it thinking the less of the composer. Her music is fine in films but divorced from them, you realise how repetitive and formulaic it is.

[Serial_Apologist]

So depressing that the standards we've come to respect as one of the few remaining vital examples of a Radio 3 we once admired, and learned so much from, has now descended to such levels of banality.

[french frank]

So depressing that the standards we've come to respect as one of the few remaining vital examples of a Radio 3 we once admired, and learned so much from, has now descended to such levels of banality.

Miscalculations are made. I remember RW admitting (admitting! ) that the CotW on Billy Mayerl had been a poor decision, because his music 'didn't develop'. RP may have been coinciding with IWD, but there are so many women composers who would have been better choices. If it's an attempt to show that 'film music' has a place on Radio 3, it looks like it backfired.

[ahinton]

So depressing that the standards we've come to respect as one of the few remaining vital examples of a Radio 3 we once admired, and learned so much from, has now descended to such levels of banality.

Indeed so. This doesn't apply to CotW across the board, of course, but this week's does seem to be something of an aberration. There is, of course, an art in writing for movies and television and I for one am not about to get snobbish about such activity, still less pour scorn upon it, but it remains a fact that some composers can and do really excel at this and others either can't or don't and, in the latter case/s, the procedures and outcome become merely work(wo)manlike and, as such, hardly CotW material. That said, most composes who write/wrote really good film and television music also wrote really good concert music.

[Serial_Apologist]

Miscalculations are made. I remember RW admitting (admitting! ) that the CotW on Billy Mayerl had been a poor decision, because his music 'didn't develop'. RP may have been coinciding with IWD, but there are so many women composers who would have been better choices. If it's an attempt to show that 'film music' has a place on Radio 3, it looks like it backfired.

Not knowing enough about the subject, there surely must be women composers of film music who would fulfil the expected COTW brief?

[ahinton]

Miscalculations are made. I remember RW admitting (admitting! ) that the CotW on Billy Mayerl had been a poor decision, because his music 'didn't develop'. RP may have been coinciding with IWD, but there are so many women composers who would have been better choices. If it's an attempt to show that 'film music' has a place on Radio 3, it looks like it backfired.

Indeed - and abysmally at that although, if we're talking women composers, I should perhaps have used another word in place of "abysmally" given the wonders of Du fond de l'abîme by one of the finest of them!

[ahinton]

Not knowing enough about the subject, there surely must be women composers of film music who would fulfil the expected COTW brief?

I don't know about that but there's no shortage of female composers, albeit not all of film music, who merit such attention and whose output would fulfil such a brief; even the one whom I mentioned in my previous post without actually identifying her - and who wrote so little music because she lived so short a life - has sufficient to her name to justiy a week's worth in that ongoing series.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't know about that but there's no shortage of female composers, albeit not all of film music, who merit such attention and whose output would fulfil such a brief; even the one whom I mentioned in my previous post without actually identifying her - and who wrote so little music because she lived so short a life - has sufficient to her name to justiy a week's worth in that ongoing series.

Indeed - and the Beeb agrees: Lili Boulanger was CotW just over three years ago.

[french frank]

Indeed - and the Beeb agrees: Lili Boulanger was CotW just over three years ago.

And I was thinking more in terms of living composers, anyway (though if they're short of money, they could have repeated the LB programmes).