Sam Jackson's reply

[Serial_Apologist]

Not getting angry is still a work in progress for me - possibly in part because I don't have anyone to hand to grumble with, which would reduce the head of steam effect. I do feel resentful though that what used to be such a pleasure - listening to R3 - has been reduced so much, a resentment that isn't at all helped by the constant promotion of Sounds, a non-solution for me as are the alternatives of online stations often recommended in these parts. I realise that is a minority situation(or so it seems) since "everyone" has the necessary gadgets now, but even if that option was available I still like the basic idea of switching the radio on and listening to something that someone else has made decisions about in terms of composer, period, performers etc. as it increases the chance that I will hear something new(to me) or that I wouldn't have chosen to hear. There are times when I want/need to delegate decision making or at least reduce it considerably!
There are indeed much worse things happening in the world, but until recently R3 was an important part of me coping with those awful things - no longer though, except as isolated hours here and there during the week, as the current format and content just reinforces that sense of things being done which distress me , but over which I have no control.

Thanks for precisely voicing my own feelings, and doing it so much better than I could.

[Serial_Apologist]

It's always been an important element in my life, too, but when people get angry they sometimes say things which (a) they may subsequently regret and (b) definitely won't encourage young Jackson and Co to pay much attention to what they have to say.

I don't see any harm in voicing one's anger, as long as nothing libelous is said. Having one's views heard gives others an opportunity either to support or criticise, and in the latter case can change one's own viewpoint, which otherwise would not have been known. Many things would never have been changed for the better were it not for expressing anger, including the right to.

[smittims]

Thanks Roslynmuse for #44 which put my thoughts ito words. As Susan Tomes said recently in 'Sleeping in Temples', the world seems to have less time for anything that requires patience and concentration, and classical music has lost out here. Instead of lamely following the 'instant-gratification' society Radio 3 would be doing a valuable service in offering an alternative, demonstrating the value of deeper thinking, and it would not be expensive to reintroduce such programmes. .

[french frank]

I never felt excluded even if I didn't understand everything I was hearing.

Thank you for that post - most helpful. And yes, perhaps it's a key to the sort of listener/listening that R3 should cater for: not switching off if they don't understand v someone who will switch over to some easier listening ('not for me', 'above my head'). The BBC hardly caters at all for the intelligent thirster after knowledge. This is why I used to listen to R3 and don't now.

[LMcD]

A few random thoughts from me.

Mostly I have Radio 4 on when I am driving, but on three occasions this week I have had R3 on - briefly. Twice in the first half hour of Essential Classics, once during the final part of In Tune and the first part of Mixtape on Tuesday. I heard the Jools Holland trail at least three times and was mightily irritated by it even after hearing it once. To have R3 on at random times for maybe 75 minutes and hear the same trail three times - I can only imagine how irritating it would be to have the radio on any longer. I would be turning it off. Other observations - Ken Burton's Prayer was played twice in half an hour on Tuesday evening; Sean Rafferty referred to Beethoven's Violin Sonata Op 23 No 4 (he meant the final mt of the 4th violin sonata, Op 23); Georgia Mann - who sounds so bored (heavy sighs every other sentence) - introduced the finale of Beethoven 7 rather than the 3rd mt (as has already been noted above); there were almost no standalone pieces broadcast; and I could go on.

On the other hand, the discussion programmes on R4 seem perfectly happy to talk about sentence structure (Front Row this evening), in-depth analysis of political events from 150 years ago (In Our Time this morning), etc. It seems that only music is treated as a special case that cannot be talked about except in terms of the sort of basic emotional response of a teenager.

One of the fairly regular contributors to BaL told me that their producer said something to the effect of "now, don't start talking about metronome marks and modulations" before recording their segment of the programme. Why are we being 'protected' from such esoteric references? Who is afraid that it will put off the 'average' listener? I knew what a metronome was when I was at primary school, and even if it took me longer to grasp modulations, I learned from hearing or reading the words and then hearing the music, and gradually built up my understanding from a sort of unobtrusive education during my teenage years. I never felt patronized, and I never felt excluded even if I didn't understand everything I was hearing.

Any fool knows that a metronome is an undersized traveller on the Paris Underground.
On a more serious note, I've gone from irritation to a resigned recognition that Mr J is trying to please as many different audiences - real or imagined - as possible and will very probably fail. The increased incidence of errors of the kind which you mention is a further cause of irritation, but In the mean time, life carries on, and I move on with it.

[french frank]

On a more serious note, I've gone from irritation to a resigned recognition that Mr J is trying to please as many different audiences - real or imagined - as possible and will very probably fail. The increased incidence of errors of the kind which you mention is a further cause of irritation, but In the mean time, life carries on, and I move on with it.

Don't blame it all on Sam Jackson. This has been going on for years - decades (FoR3 started in 2003 and long before that people like RVW, TS Eliot and Olivier were involved in 'defence' [sic] of the Third. Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Colin Davis, Alan Brownjohn (just to mention those who've recently died) supported FoR3 - I still have the correspondence. There were many other well-known people and loads of 'ordinary listeners'.

BBC policy wasn't going to change with a new controller. It's the BBC that has "dumbed down" [apologies for the term - it is has long been recognised by the OED).

[oddoneout]

The mentions by forumites of the various music related talk based programmes on R4 in recent months, so often followed by the plaint "why not on R3?" have left me with the impression that it is only the R4 audience that is perceived by those in charge to possess the intellectual capacity to deal with talking about music related matters in a focused way. Erroneous I know,* but that's what it feels like, since even the "last man standing" programmes that survived the Great Refresh seem to have been eroded in their depth and content, exacerbated by the need to accommodate adverts etc.
I have never acquired the R4 habit so miss such programmes when they appear, and lacking catch up they stay missed. However, why should I have to look outside R3 to find that kind of content - it's what R3 should be doing anyway.

* It's actually R4 = talk, R3 = music taken to extremes, that results in a nonsensical and counter-productive divide, is my interpretation. Perhaps the hope is that disappointed R3 listeners might make more use of R4, rather than just jumping(the BBC) ship completely.

[Retune]

What doesn't really satisfy is to have the points made (aka 'complaints') ignored but countered by examples of what weren't the subject of complaint.

That seems to be very much the standard response to criticism. When the inevitable claim that R3 has become too much like Classic FM was raised in an interview on R4 (possibly Feedback), a comparison Sam Jackson clearly resents and rejects, he countered with examples of R3's more adventurous repertoire. But that of course misses the point. R3 has a better playlist, but it still broadcasts music for most of the daytime schedule in the same way that CFM does - unconnected short pieces, single movements and bleeding chunks, with the presenter as DJ.

This started a long time before Sam's tenure, but it has got worse on his watch. The Saturday schedule I once looked forward to has been replaced by an unappealing succession of playlist programmes. There are probably interesting bits in Tom Service's show like the guest interview, but I have to wade through the playlist content to find them so I tend not to bother. It's no substitute for Record Review, now shunted off to the 2PM slot with its runtime outside Building a Library slashed by over a third and its Extra sister programme cancelled (perish the thought that we should listen to anything at greater length!). This Classical Life has been pointlessly padded out at both ends by playlist stuff that isn't shared with the guest. Inside Music, a format where short pieces actually made sense as the considered choices of the guest (the Patricia Kopatchinskaja episode was a highlight of the year), is no more. Even some of the revamped Music Matters miniseries like The Land Without Music? have been interrupted every few minutes by rather irrelevant bits of music from a playlist (to be fair, the current Music on the Front Line makes better use of the format). Music Map is a sort of playlist parlour game. Classical Live is mostly a playlist programme of random pieces that happen to have been recorded from live performances (or not). I suppose we should be grateful that this is one of the few daytime slots where performances of complete works can be found.

[french frank]

When the inevitable claim that R3 has become too much like Classic FM was raised in an interview on R4 (possibly Feedback), a comparison Sam Jackson clearly resents and rejects, he countered with examples of R3's more adventurous repertoire. But that of course misses the point. R3 has a better playlist, but it still broadcasts music for most of the daytime schedule in the same way that CFM does - unconnected short pieces, single movements and bleeding chunks, with the presenter as DJ.

What I look for is whether I'll be asked questions about the criticisms made. "I really don't accept that R3 is becoming like CFM. Why do you say that?" At which point one can say that hours on end of short musical snippets, apparently randomly chosen, in the same stripped week-long presenter-led chunks, is what CFM does.

And to do otherwise would be more expensive. Bear in mind that R3 gets less money than any of the other BBC network radio stations; and that's the BBC's decision, not the controller's. The question for the controller is: Are you batting for the BBC which pays your salary, or for Radio 3, its reputation and its listeners?

[smittims]

At any rate I was pleasantly relieved to hear both moveemnts of Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 yesterday (yes,the whole 8 minutes!) towards the end of Classical Live, instead of just the Aria, which is what we usualy get these days, so maybe the message is starting to get through.

[LMcD]

At any rate I was pleasantly relieved to hear both moveemnts of Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 yesterday (yes,the whole 8 minutes!) towards the end of Classical Live, instead of just the Aria, which is what we usualy get these days, so maybe the message is starting to get through.

Breakfast ended - or EC began, it's increasingly hard to tell the difference- with the last movement of Mozart's 25th piano concerto.

[french frank]

Breakfast ended - or EC began, it's increasingly hard to tell the difference- with the last movement of Mozart's 25th piano concerto.

Last movement probably better than the first, followed by Walking the Dog.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The BBC Singers sing The Great Broadway Songbook on now encapsulates what’s going wrong. It’s just not their bag. It’s like Alfred Brendel playing boogie-woogie.

[oddoneout]

That seems to be very much the standard response to criticism. When the inevitable claim that R3 has become too much like Classic FM was raised in an interview on R4 (possibly Feedback), a comparison Sam Jackson clearly resents and rejects, he countered with examples of R3's more adventurous repertoire. But that of course misses the point. R3 has a better playlist, but it still broadcasts music for most of the daytime schedule in the same way that CFM does - unconnected short pieces, single movements and bleeding chunks, with the presenter as DJ.

This started a long time before Sam's tenure, but it has got worse on his watch. The Saturday schedule I once looked forward to has been replaced by an unappealing succession of playlist programmes. There are probably interesting bits in Tom Service's show like the guest interview, but I have to wade through the playlist content to find them so I tend not to bother. It's no substitute for Record Review, now shunted off to the 2PM slot with its runtime outside Building a Library slashed by over a third and its Extra sister programme cancelled (perish the thought that we should listen to anything at greater length!). This Classical Life has been pointlessly padded out at both ends by playlist stuff that isn't shared with the guest. Inside Music, a format where short pieces actually made sense as the considered choices of the guest (the Patricia Kopatchinskaja episode was a highlight of the year), is no more. Even some of the revamped Music Matters miniseries like The Land Without Music? have been interrupted every few minutes by rather irrelevant bits of music from a playlist (to be fair, the current Music on the Front Line makes better use of the format). Music Map is a sort of playlist parlour game. Classical Live is mostly a playlist programme of random pieces that happen to have been recorded from live performances (or not). I suppose we should be grateful that this is one of the few daytime slots where performances of complete works can be found.

I am afraid I am not especially grateful, since such complete items are buried to a greater or lesser extent by incomplete other works and dismembered concert recordings to which they don't bear any relationship, except on rare occasions. Listening to the "big label" works means guesswork about when they'll be on, since the initial schedule doesn't include all the works that will be included in the afternoon slot, so timings are approximate. Fine if you listen on catch-up, not so fine in real time wanting to listen to the main item but not the stuff around it.
It's a generous time slot that could accommodate something approaching a concert format for part of the time, even if not every day, with the bits'n'pieces filling the space before or after. Why would that frighten the horses, aka "new audience". Isn't experiencing a concert part of the introduction to the world of classical music?

[vinteuil]

The BBC Singers sing The Great Broadway Songbook on now encapsulates what’s going wrong. It’s just not their bag. It’s like Alfred Brendel playing boogie-woogie.

... tho' I feel sure Mr Brendel did a mean third variation to the arietta in op 111







.