Pre-Hear cut

[Serial_Apologist]

Two items from tonight's programme I had very much been looking forward to, Tan Dun's "A Sinking Love" and Andrew Keeling's "Afterwords", were not relayed in tonight's programme, without explanation of any kind, let alone apology. While the preceding programme, "Between the Ears: Not Quite Cricket", had overrun by aproximately 15 minutes, it is by no means unusual for items on Radio 3 to exceed their allotted times; indeed, in the past this has not prevented announcers from trailing future programmes, thus further delaying quoted starting times.

Extremely disappointing - is this, one wonders, a precedent?

S-A

[Serial_Apologist]

Well I'm not surprised no one has come back on this thread... Last night's Hear & Now was pretty dreary, too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Haven't listened yet; mainly because I thought the programme looked "dreary"!

How was the feature on the Harvey? (I was at the British premiere of that at the 1981 Musica Nova Festival in Glasgow.)

[Serial_Apologist]

Haven't listened yet; mainly because I thought the programme looked "dreary"!

How was the feature on the Harvey? (I was at the British premiere of that at the 1981 Musica Nova Festival in Glasgow.)

The Harvey was the OK part of the programme really, ferney. There have been quite a few programmes on this work, imho it being one of JH's most accessible, but one of the contributers to the discussion on it pointed out the influence of "Gesang der Jungelinge", which I thought was spot-on.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[MrGongGong]

The Harvey was the OK part of the programme really, ferney. There have been quite a few programmes on this work, imho it being one of JH's most accessible, but one of the contributers to the discussion on it pointed out the influence of "Gesang der Jungelinge", which I thought was spot-on.

Mortuos Plango is one of the great electroacoustic pieces of the twentieth century IMV
its much less "Bagpuss" than Gesang .......... pitch shifted voices are a real problem endlessly discussed in the past on the CEC list

[heliocentric]

Mortuos Plango is one of the great electroacoustic pieces of the twentieth century IMV

That's often said, but the first time I heard it I thought it sounded like a digitally updated version of the Stockhausen piece with all the sharp edges smoothed off, and without the feeling of "I hear a new world" (more speeded-up voices there! )... a friend once remarked to me that there's something very "Home Counties" about Harvey's music, which sums up my reaction to it in another way.

[hackneyvi]

Good evening.

This is the answer that I got from R3 about the cancellation of Pre-Hear in January. The cause of my complaint wasn't that the scheduled half hour programme was cut but that the cut wasn't acknowledged on the night. The announcer simply said: " ... and in the 10 minutes before the start of Hear and Now (we're going to play some new music for viol consort)".

To reinforce what I saw as an important point, I took the opportunity to say that the loss of a programme of new music mattered because there was less new music in this slot and that the H&N 50 contributed to the shortage. I admit to facetiously calling the H&N 50 "repeats" but the general point seemed to me to be unarguable.

The answer follows.

“Pre-Hear is an occasional series on Saturday evenings and it complements Radio 3's flagship new music programme, Hear and Now. It is occasional in that its scheduling depends on what space there is between the end of the Opera on 3 broadcast and the start of Hear and Now. On this occasion (21st January) a half-hour slot was foreseen and I scheduled the works that appeared in Radio Times - new music for the viol consort Fretwork linked to their recent concert of new works featured in the Early Music Show the previous weekend.

Pre Hear is presented live from Radio 3's continuity studio and the presenter on the evening reads the script. On this particular occasion, the earlier opera broadcast overran by some 15 minutes and as the rest of the schedule from Hear and Now onwards is pre-recorded, the only leeway to absorb the overrun was at that Pre-Hear point. It was up to the presenter on the night to deal with this situation and this meant re-timing the available works and adjusting the script accordingly. In that he had - more or less spontaneously - to bring a half-hour programme down to less than 15 minutes and meet the 10.30pm junction on time, it was smoothly executed and clear that the situation had been caused by the overrun.

As for the reference to diminishing quantities of new music in Hear and Now, due to the Hear and Now 50, I don't quite see that a work that made waves in the progress of contemporary music in the second half of the 20th century should be consigned to history and that only today's new work constitutes contemporary music. The music of the composers who are featured in the Hear and Now 50 series have been carefully selected precisely because of their influential standing in the hearts and minds of other artists, writers, thinkers and composers. I can't quite accept an argument that says that we should not consider broadcasting major works by Stockhausen, Boulez, Xenakis or any of the composers featured so far (including figures like Nancarrow and Milton Babbitt) because they are somehow irrelevant or not new. The Hear and Now 50 is concerned with maintaining that link with the iconic figures of the last century (and this). Nor do I see quite the argument that if we play an important work by for example Ligeti or Feldman, which has been played before, we are simply putting out 'repeats'.

Were we to apply that view to Beethoven, Mozart or any of the classics, we should rapidly have nothing to broadcast at all.”

What really offended me was the remark that the programme was cancelled, that the cancellation went unacknowledged and yet was judged to be "smoothly executed". I sat down on the Sunday evening to listen on the iPlayer; if I'd sat in to listen live, I must say I'd have been hacked off. Cancel by all means, the wider schedule matters but say what you're doing. Don't treat the audience for a programme with this sort of disrespect.

If they'd just conceded that the cancellation of the programme should have been acknowledged, I would have been content. But even this point is evaded by suggesting that Pre-Hear was never really a scheduled programme at all.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

those that are more equal are not at fault and must not be thought ungood they are always double plus correct

[Serial_Apologist]

Good evening.

This is the answer that I got from R3 about the cancellation of Pre-Hear in January. The cause of my complaint wasn't that the scheduled half hour programme was cut but that the cut wasn't acknowledged on the night. The announcer simply said: " ... and in the 10 minutes before the start of Hear and Now (we're going to play some new music for viol consort)".

To reinforce what I saw as an important point, I took the opportunity to say that the loss of a programme of new music mattered because there was less new music in this slot and that the H&N 50 contributed to the shortage. I admit to facetiously calling the H&N 50 "repeats" but the general point seemed to me to be unarguable.

The answer follows.

“Pre-Hear is an occasional series on Saturday evenings and it complements Radio 3's flagship new music programme, Hear and Now. It is occasional in that its scheduling depends on what space there is between the end of the Opera on 3 broadcast and the start of Hear and Now. On this occasion (21st January) a half-hour slot was foreseen and I scheduled the works that appeared in Radio Times - new music for the viol consort Fretwork linked to their recent concert of new works featured in the Early Music Show the previous weekend.

Pre Hear is presented live from Radio 3's continuity studio and the presenter on the evening reads the script. On this particular occasion, the earlier opera broadcast overran by some 15 minutes and as the rest of the schedule from Hear and Now onwards is pre-recorded, the only leeway to absorb the overrun was at that Pre-Hear point. It was up to the presenter on the night to deal with this situation and this meant re-timing the available works and adjusting the script accordingly. In that he had - more or less spontaneously - to bring a half-hour programme down to less than 15 minutes and meet the 10.30pm junction on time, it was smoothly executed and clear that the situation had been caused by the overrun.

As for the reference to diminishing quantities of new music in Hear and Now, due to the Hear and Now 50, I don't quite see that a work that made waves in the progress of contemporary music in the second half of the 20th century should be consigned to history and that only today's new work constitutes contemporary music. The music of the composers who are featured in the Hear and Now 50 series have been carefully selected precisely because of their influential standing in the hearts and minds of other artists, writers, thinkers and composers. I can't quite accept an argument that says that we should not consider broadcasting major works by Stockhausen, Boulez, Xenakis or any of the composers featured so far (including figures like Nancarrow and Milton Babbitt) because they are somehow irrelevant or not new. The Hear and Now 50 is concerned with maintaining that link with the iconic figures of the last century (and this). Nor do I see quite the argument that if we play an important work by for example Ligeti or Feldman, which has been played before, we are simply putting out 'repeats'.

Were we to apply that view to Beethoven, Mozart or any of the classics, we should rapidly have nothing to broadcast at all.”

What really offended me was the remark that the programme was cancelled, that the cancellation went unacknowledged and yet was judged to be "smoothly executed". I sat down on the Sunday evening to listen on the iPlayer; if I'd sat in to listen live, I must say I'd have been hacked off. Cancel by all means, the wider schedule matters but say what you're doing. Don't treat the audience for a programme with this sort of disrespect.

If they'd just conceded that the cancellation of the programme should have been acknowledged, I would have been content. But even this point is evaded by suggesting that Pre-Hear was never really a scheduled programme at all.

Thanks for taking the trouble anyway. And I agree with your last two paragraphs entirely.

[Boilk]

The Harvey was the OK part of the programme really, ferney. There have been quite a few programmes on this work, imho it being one of JH's most accessible, but one of the contributers to the discussion on it pointed out the influence of "Gesang der Jungelinge", which I thought was spot-on.

Are we forever to assume that any electroacoustic work with a boy's voice is a direct musical descendent of Gesang? I think the catalyst for this piece was Harvey's son being a chorister at Winchester. Has anyone ever demonstrated musical processes here which hark back to the Stockhausen piece? I suspect the digital tools at Harvey's disposal (IRCAM, 1980) enabled rather more sophisticated sonic processes than what was on offer at Westdeutscher Rundfunk studios back in 1956 :) It's like saying anything with player piano going full throttle must be influenced by Nancarrow!

And while this 9-minute work seems to have become a classic (at 30 minutes would it have been so regularly programmed?) I think it's because the composer chose familiar and attractive sounds of the environment (human voice and bells) whose mutations keep the source recognisable and therefore fascinate rather than alienate people, whereas non-environmental sounds whose source we cannot place will turn off most people.

Like most people, I'd never heard a church bell with a soft attack (or with a 'reverse decay') before this piece, and I think its charm lies perhaps more in its ingratiating sonic playfulness than any cogent argument.

[MrGongGong]

Are we forever to assume that any electroacoustic work with a boy's voice is a direct musical descendent of Gesang?

Indeed
ALL violin music seems to hark back to Bach

It is one criticisms of electroacoustic music that certain sounds seem to feature in many pieces

trains
water
bells ....... for example

but that is a bit like saying that all string quartets have the same sounds in them ?

I'm not sure that "familiar and attractive" necessarily makes for a good piece it can lead to blandness, though Harvey's piece is beautifully made and executed. There is the whole area of using sounds that appear to have no physical origin (John Richards of DMU wrote a PHd thesis about this).
Thinking about it this

"non-environmental sounds whose source we cannot place will turn off most people."

is not true at all if one includes sounds which we ascribe names from the physical world to

the sound known as BASS DRUM in a non orchestral context is often a very low , highly compressed and filtered noise sound that has no relation to the physical object we call "bass drum" yet is ubiquitous and popular as are many purely synthesised sounds.........

[Serial_Apologist]

Are we forever to assume that any electroacoustic work with a boy's voice is a direct musical descendent of Gesang? I think the catalyst for this piece was Harvey's son being a chorister at Winchester. Has anyone ever demonstrated musical processes here which hark back to the Stockhausen piece? I suspect the digital tools at Harvey's disposal (IRCAM, 1980) enabled rather more sophisticated sonic processes than what was on offer at Westdeutscher Rundfunk studios back in 1956 :) It's like saying anything with player piano going full throttle must be influenced by Nancarrow!

And while this 9-minute work seems to have become a classic (at 30 minutes would it have been so regularly programmed?) I think it's because the composer chose familiar and attractive sounds of the environment (human voice and bells) whose mutations keep the source recognisable and therefore fascinate rather than alienate people, whereas non-environmental sounds whose source we cannot place will turn off most people.

Like most people, I'd never heard a church bell with a soft attack (or with a 'reverse decay') before this piece, and I think its charm lies perhaps more in its ingratiating sonic playfulness than any cogent argument.

It may be that I am "hearing" references to "Gesang" that aren't there, fair enough; but Harvey is not above being "referential" in his music: the never (it seems) mentioned quote from Debussy's "Le Martyr" right in the middle of the electronic "descent" in "Madonna of Winter and Spring", for instance, might have alerted me to be on the lookout.

[MrGongGong]

It may be that I am "hearing" references to "Gesang" that aren't there, fair enough; but Harvey is not above being "referential" in his music: the never (it seems) mentioned quote from Debussy's "Le Martyr" right in the middle of the electronic "descent" in "Madonna of Winter and Spring", for instance, might have alerted me to be on the lookout.

I think there are very definite things that happen when one pitch shifts voices as happens in Harvey's piece and Gesang that DO mean we hear one in the other....... for some listeners Gesang owes more to the mice from Bagpuss than the rest of the music of the twentieth century !

[Boilk]

Indeed
It is one criticisms of electroacoustic music that certain sounds seem to feature in many pieces

trains
water
bells ....... for example

True but I think that's a criticism of the composers in question rather than the medium of EA music. I'm more bothered by composers shackled to the preset sound banks of the symphony orchestra, and its chamber offshoots.

The sound known as BASS DRUM in a non orchestral context is often a very low, highly compressed and filtered noise sound that has no relation to the physical object we call "bass drum" yet is ubiquitous and popular as are many purely synthesised sounds.........

I get the gist of the point being made, although a bass drum-type sound probably has numerous connotations in the physical world - impacts/collisions/explosions; and perhaps a more distant connection to the sound of a heart beat, or (when repeated within a certain tempo range) copulation! Very rarely is a bass drum the focus of the music - it may be the one instrument I've never heard a solo for