The Choir 16 Feb 2014

[MrGongGong]

Does one need any further confirmation of the shallowness of the preparation of the programme's scripts? How did that gaffe get past any editorial process?

Why is that a "gaffe" ?
Surely you want people who might have stumbled across the music to know things like that?

I can think of teenagers I have worked with who would be drawn to the sound of the music and don't have the background that I had singing in a church choir every week or even know what a "Mass" was?

Most people don't go to church and if they do they don't go to ones where the Mass is sung.

I can think of "Masses" (that is pieces of music with that title !) which don't have a Kyrie etc
now you might say that they aren't "proper" masses BUT that matters very little in the way that people find out information these days.

I find it immensely annoying that the phrase "contemporary music" means songwriting to most people.... but there's no point in my banging on about it as I won't change that.

Surely its better to encourage people to become acquainted with music performed with integrity than complain about R3 telling us that Mozart's Mass in C minor has a Greek text ?

[teamsaint]

[QUOTE=MrGongGong;380248
I find it immensely annoying that the phrase "contemporary music" means songwriting to most people.... but there's no point in my banging on about it as I won't change that.

[/QUOTE]

Bit by bit, little by little, Rome (or Athens) wasn't built in a day, and other cliched stuff.

[Sir Velo]

I'm not really convinced yet that forum members care much about The Choir programme every week.

How's the new presenter doing?

[DracoM]

I think the point that jean and others were making was that the announcement seemed to suggest that the Mozart Mass in C was somehow unique in starting with a setting of Greek. Their point would be that given the Kyrie is usually the first element in most mass settings and is in Greek, Mozart's Mass in C is hardly unique? And given that as you say many listening may be unaware of that because new to the genre, surely the point to have been made was that 'in common with most Mass settings, the opening is a setting of the Greek prayer Kyrie Eleison ', thereby indicating that in fact the Mozart mass was in many respects very traditional.

Just a guess.

Ref The Choir presenter - SM-P.
Well, I fear she is the victim [ right word? she sounds bouncily confident in it, alas!] of the programme's formula based exactly on how R3 structure the contents and conduct of 'Breakfast' - a formula endemic on CFM and R2, and roundly condemned by many on this and a good number of other threads. So pick the bones out of that! A bitty, fragmentary, breathlessly 'amateur' way of conducting a programme about quite a specific subject - solely IMO, of course.

[jean]

I think the point that jean and others were making was that the announcement seemed to suggest that the Mozart Mass in C was somehow unique in starting with a setting of Greek...

Yes, that was my point, though I wouldn't have called the presenter's comment a gaffe, exactly - more a misplaced emphasis on a piece of information which anyway wouldn't be my first choice if I were introducing a setting of the Mass to people who didn't know anything about it.

I can think of teenagers I have worked with who would be drawn to the sound of the music and don't have the background that I had singing in a church choir every week or even know what a "Mass" was?

Most people don't go to church and if they do they don't go to ones where the Mass is sung.

I agree with all of that, and there's a very good case for a programme explaining (in a coherent and tweet-free way) the liturgical function of the Mass, what the words mean and the history of settings of the text, and of course why it's in Latin (I don't think anyone knows why that bit of Greek is so persistent in the Western liturgy, so perhaps that's something to be saved for the Advanced course. There may be a discussion about it here somewhere.)

[MrGongGong]

Yes, that was my point, though I wouldn't have called the presenter's comment a gaffe,

That was my point also

[jean]

Why didn't you say so then, instead of confusing us all by saying something quite different?

[MrGongGong]

Why didn't you say so then, instead of confusing us all by saying something quite different?

My point was that it wasn't a "gaffe"

Which is what I said

[jean]

But that wasn't mine.

[MrGongGong]

But that wasn't mine.

never mind