........ i may be gone some time

[Flosshilde]

I wonder whether had Britten been alive today and the BBC wished to celebrate his 75 th birthday it would have been possible given that he would have been under intense scrutiny by the police investigating the likes of Jimmy Saville.

On what grounds? There's been plenty of smear & innuendo (like your comment above) but nobody's said that he had any sexual encounters with them when they were a child. If you have any evidence to the contrary perhaps you'd like to share it?

Is Britten really our greatest composer of the 20 century? Give me Delius any day of the week!

Even if he isn't our 'greatest' composer he is certainly a great one & well deserves the attention.

Given that jazz has been the most consistently potent form of music over the last 100 years, surely jazz is more important.

I often wish that there was a 'raised eyebrow' emoticon.

[Ian Thumwood]

S~A

I am a fan of Delius but I quite like some of the other English composers too. Not everything they have done was great (I can recall hearing a Bax piano sonata at a recital and thinking it was incredible that anyone had ever wanted to perform it !) Bax wrote some really good orchestral music and an "unknown" like John Foulds is also well worth investigating. Britten's music seems so camp and having watched one of the documentaries about him this week, you forget how "Establishment" he was. I agree. He was really over-rated and not worthy of displacing jazz, whether we are talking about Mr Jelly Lord or John Hollenbeck.

[Flosshilde]

Britten's music seems so camp

Um, how do you identify 'camp' music? Perhaps you should read the 'Musical homophobia' thread on the politics forum.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am a fan of Delius but I quite like some of the other English composers too. Not everything they have done was great (I can recall hearing a Bax piano sonata at a recital and thinking it was incredible that anyone had ever wanted to perform it !) Bax wrote some really good orchestral music and an "unknown" like John Foulds is also well worth investigating. Britten's music seems so camp and having watched one of the documentaries about him this week, you forget how "Establishment" he was. I agree. He was really over-rated and not worthy of displacing jazz, whether we are talking about Mr Jelly Lord or John Hollenbeck.

Ian's impersonation of Stanley Grew gets better every time.

[Ian Thumwood]

Flosshilde

I didn't think the comments were innuendo and his relationship with kids would have raised eyebrows in today's more thorough times. My understanding was that Britten's behaviour was supposed to have been inappropriate but, in the climate of the day, I suppose that there were sufficiently placed associates who would have vouched for him just as the case was with Saville. In 2013 I somewhat doubt if Britten could have avoided media scrutiny.

I'm all for British composers getting more recognition but jazz is hardly over represented on Radio 3 and to kick JRR in to touch (especially during London Jazz Week) seems a step too far. There are plenty of chances for Britten's music to be heard on radio and TV during the centenary but it seems perverse to sacrifice an whole style of music for the works by a composer who is devisive both from a musical and personal point of view. If you take into consideration the journey jazz has made in a little over a century it does put BB's importance under a different light irrespective of the fact some feel Britten's music has it's merits. Whatever your feelings about his output (in my case, I feel he wrote a few pieces that are quite agreable but the larger corpus of his music is almost unlistenable and smacks of the white, liberal, middle class values of the 1950s) it is wrong for his output to scupper a more varied and informed programme that covers 96 years of recorded jazz. For me, BB's music is the classical equivalent of a cringe-worthy jazz artist like Blossom Dearie ~ listening to it generally makes you shudder!

[MrGongGong]

Ian's impersonation of Stanley Grew gets better every time.

You must remember that it's a competition
Jazz VS the world

[french frank]

There was a complaint about Ian's first comment - which I agreed with and removed it without noticing that the discussion had continued, with a quote of the original, so I reinstated it.

Let's be clear, I don't think there has been any supposition of inappropriate behaviour and you might as well suggest that every scoutmaster or choir director would have been under scrutiny. Without complaint or evidence, they wouldn't have been. Nor would they have been suspected with any reasonable grounds.

Anyone is allowed to prefer Delius to Britten, but to suggest he was the greater composer rather ignores the views of the majority of knowledgeable music critics.

One is also allowed to prefer jazz over all other forms of music. But I sympathise with the dropping of the jazz programmes. So much for the new schedules safeguarding jazz...

[hmvman]

One is also allowed to prefer jazz over all other forms of music. But I sympathise with the dropping of the jazz programmes. So much for the new schedules safeguarding jazz...

I sympathise too but surely this isn't the first time that the jazz programmes have been dropped for one of the 'composerthons'. Was there any jazz during the three-week Schubertfest?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it felt strangely unannounced but maybe i was not paying attention [[[ i am frequently so accused, found guilty and tongue lashed by swmbo]]]

it is a travesty of scheduling to knock back the jazz in LJF time, only comes once a year so easy to spot ..

mind you Britten will not have another centenary in the immediate future

i have no views on his standing as a composer on a Local European or Global basis .... i just can not stand listening to his stuff [as i said elsewhere especially the operas and song stuff it always strikes me as posing, somehow artificial but that is my cloth ears] [Finzi any day though] and i do not find Stravinsky's work that attractive to my lobes niver ...


and i agree with Ian, Jazz has been more interesting than other serious music for most of the last 80 years and quite possibly still is but we would not know it through R3; its main rival to the title Indian music is nigh on completely ignored by R3

[burning dog]

I prefer Schubert to Britten, and Britten over many other British composers (there is only one great "British" composer IMO and he was a German bloke in a wig) but the merits of classical composers should not be the issue, that's a topic on the classical part of the forum, it's that Jazz programmes always seem first to go. Opera from the Met is allowed to overrun (incidentally there's quite a lot of Opera I like) but a concert by Wayne Shorter or someone similar would be cut short.

[Flosshilde]

Flosshilde

I didn't think the comments were innuendo and his relationship with kids would have raised eyebrows in today's more thorough times. My understanding was that Britten's behaviour was supposed to have been inappropriate but, in the climate of the day, I suppose that there were sufficiently placed associates who would have vouched for him just as the case was with Saville. In 2013 I somewhat doubt if Britten could have avoided media scrutiny.

Perhaps you haven't read any of the large number of articles & letters about Britten's relationships with boys. Perhaps you aren't aware of the comments by David Hemmings. Perhaps, not being interested in his music, you haven't bothered to read or listen to any discussions on the subject (& there have been plenty this year), but instead relied on second-hand innuendo & smear.

a composer who is devisive both from a musical and personal point of view.

Are there many composers who aren't?

his music ... smacks of the white, liberal, middle class values of the 1950s

What on Earth does that mean? Nothing - just another fatuous comment like "Britten's music seems so camp".

jazz artist like Blossom Dearie

I rather like her.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

infamy infamy .... &c

this thread is about there being negligible jazz on R3 this last weekend because there was a lot of something else ... as pointed out above this happens often ...

[Serial_Apologist]

I wonder whether had Britten been alive today and the BBC wished to celebrate his 75 th birthday it would have been possible given that he would have been under intense scrutiny by the police investigating the likes of Jimmy Saville.

Why so, Ian - because the police are institutionally homophobic, and would equate homosexuality with paedophilia?

[french frank]

I sympathise too but surely this isn't the first time that the jazz programmes have been dropped for one of the 'composerthons'. Was there any jazz during the three-week Schubertfest?

I was really referring to Mr Wright's recent blog:

"I have, quite understandably, received from our committed jazz listeners feedback that our live opera scheduling makes it hard to know when the jazz programmes are on and sometimes they get knocked out of the schedule altogether. Our new Saturday schedule gives Jazz Record Requests a fixed slot and brings Jazz Line-Up back into daytime."

It didn't take very long to find another reason for knocking the jazz out of the schedule.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Squealer was never a creature whose word could be relied upon .....

...in comparison with the days of Jones, the improvement was enormous. Reading out the figures in a shrill, rapid voice...the animals believed every word of it...besides, in those days they had been slaves and now they were free, and that made all the difference, as Squealer did not fail to point out."