The Choir - Last straw

[Honoured Guest]

I expect I'm missing your point, but choir works regularly feature in full on Radio 3, e.g. The Kingdom opening the Proms. Why begrudge others a magazine about choirs and choral music?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Is there a brief summary of content at the top of the show? If so, listeners to Choral Evensong could stay tuned for a further couple of minutes to get enough detail to make a decision as to whether to listen to any section of that week's edition of The Choir.

And yet you deny being paid by the BBC.

[Honoured Guest]

I've just listened online to the top of the show (which, incidentally, quite clearly referred to the singability of national anthems) and my gripe would be that the most potentially interesting item was about David Lang but no time was given for it, (unlike the regular weekly features announced for 4.30 and 5.00).

[french frank]

I expect I'm missing your point, but choir works regularly feature in full on Radio 3, e.g. The Kingdom opening the Proms. Why begrudge others a magazine about choirs and choral music?

Why begrudge people with a particular interest in choral work a regular programme in which to enjoy such longer works (as those for opera, drama, jazz &c)? The Choir now has a majority of commercial CDs most weeks, unlike Choirworks which was - as Radio 3 still likes to boast of its output - 'live' performances.

Or to put it another way, if a choice has to be made between a music programme with a 'special interest' focus or a CD/magazine programme for a broad audience (and why not both?), the latter usually wins out. The Choir yesterday had pretty much the identical features to the Breakfast programme - short pieces, CDs, tweets and texts, trails, snatches of what's 'coming up', listener interaction and chat - and the 'My Choir' contribution was a 4-minute voiceover, with the choir singing as a background, which made hearing about a choir more important than hearing them sing. Yet another programme which puts musical performance in second place.

[Honoured Guest]

What was the David Lang feature like?

You've ignored my point that there are now more live concerts on Radio 3, and the full choral works are there. Didn't Choir Works begin at a time when most evening concerts were recorded and someone had the brainwave to schedule most of the choral ones in a regular Sunday slot, with a regular expert presenter to announce the music, so that listeners would know where to find them and be encouraged to listen to them all? As you say, Opera on 3 continues to be broadcast in that way, but choral concerts have been releaased back into the Live habitat on whichever evening they happen in the concert hall.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sir Alex Ferguson never criticised the Glaziers.

[french frank]

What was the David Lang feature like?

I didn't get that far. Though I did hear the beginning of the Lang piece before I decided enough was enough.

You've ignored my point that there are now more live concerts on Radio 3, and the full choral works are there.

I missed where you said it. You've missed my point about there being a dedicated programme (as for other genres). Again, you offer a less good alternative - a choral magazine programme, NOT one with live choral pieces. The odd choral work (which in the case of the Proms would be on Radio 3 anyway) but not a programme.

Your offering is in fact exactly the same as the BBC response to the axeing of Choirworks - we'll still be broadcasting works but they'll be scattered about the schedule in different programme. In other words, what they would be doing anyway. The same response was given when BBC Legends was axed - we'll be playing the works in other programmes.

In fact, the same argument came again when Brian Kay's Light Programme was dropped: We'll still be playing the works ...

The last drew this response: "Personally I think that very few of us will want to endure [sic] the majority of Radio 3’s usual output in the hope of occasionally hearing a piece of light music."

Since playlists are less and less frequently posted before broadcast, how is anyone supposed to know when these choral works are to be broadcast, unless they happen to be in one of the irregular live concerts? You are really just wanting to be a contrarian, aren't you?

[You've added to your last since I began my reply]

[mercia]

I don't see the need for another magazine programme, if that's what they're called. In Tune does that quite enough, including interviewing singers and choral conductors - that ground is sufficiently covered.

I thought Sunday's National Anthem feature was, to coin a phrase, utter tosh - it might just have been made more interesting with the help of David Owen Norris deconstructing a few melodies as I seem to remember him once doing with Jerusalem.

[Honoured Guest]

Light music and choral works both feature in Live evening concerts and in the Afternoon programme, where the full schedule is always published in advance.

The general programmes without playlists only play short pieces or chunks don't they? A full choral work isn't going to pop up unheralded at Breakfast.

What was BBC Legends?

[Honoured Guest]

I thought Sunday's National Anthem feature was, to coin a phrase, utter tosh - it might just have been made more interesting with the help of David Owen Norris deconstructing a few melodies as I seem to remember him once doing with Jerusalem.

Good phrase! I didn't hear it - just the announcement - but wasn't it a feature on the singability of national anthems? Which I took to mean, by a mass population. I mean, I can't sing the british national anthem, which is a bit bonkers with its rising "da - da - da - dah" bit before we are expected to bellow "Send her victooorious! Happy and gloooorious!", projecting phlegm into the back of whoever's in front and irreparably cracking our vocal chords.

[french frank]

What was BBC Legends?

A Sunday afternoon programme of archive recordings e.g. 3 June 2001:

"2:00pm BBC Legends: 50th Anniversary of the Royal Festival Hall
Stephen Johnson presents the last of five programmes celebrating fifty years of music making at London's Royal Festival Hall. He focuses on BBC archive recordings from the 1990s, a decade which saw the start of the hall's International Piano Series. Featuring Falla played by the pianist Alicia de Larrocha, the Kronos Quartet performing Andreissen [sic] and music by Harrison Birtwistle."

and, incidentally, on the same day:

"8:30pm Choirworks
Paul Guinery introduces a performance of Handel's oratorio `Joshua', given earlier this week at St John's, Smith Square, as part of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music. Ruth Ziesak (soprano), Michael Chance (countertenor), James Gilchrist (tenor), David Wilson-Johnson (baritone), English Voices, St James's Baroque Players/Ivor Bolton."

Both programmes were on every week.

[Stillhomewardbound]

To recast the deathless prose of Mr James Corden, of Gavin and Stacy, in addressing a high profile critic of BBC Three:

"This not a programme for you, it is not a programme that you should even ever listen to. In fact, if you don't listen to it, and you don't like it, it is doing everything it should."

Which is us told. Oh for Choirworks (which was 'for us').

Corden's statement is a declaration of inverted elitism is it not?

We could never get away with such remarks and yet if it can be said that the likes of BBC3 are allowed to be exclusive to a segment of the audience, then surely that can and should apply to Radio 3.

How is it fair that a once unique and distinguished network is allowed to trash its own store to make it, apparently, accessible to a listenership that would probably never touch it with a barge pole?

[Honoured Guest]

Chalk and cheese.

BBC3 broadcasts less than seven hours a week of new programming and is specifically tasked with serving young adults.

Radio 3 is a 24/7 service and broadcasts music and arts programming which isn't targeted at any specific age demographic.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Radio 3 is a 24/7 service and broadcasts music and arts programming which isn't targeted at any specific age demographic.

A fact or an assumption?

[Honoured Guest]

If you disagree, why don't you cite Radio 3 programmes which you know or believe to be targeted at a specific age demographic, giving your evidence?

I know there's previously been some disparaging mention on this forum of newly retired people with the time to make exploratory forays into classical music, but I'm not aware that anyone has substantiated a proposal that certain programmes are specifically targeted at that age group.