Are questions on pop music legit. for University Challenge?

[MrGongGong]

I think I'd be OK with jazz questions on UC.

Q: Without searching via the url name the composer and work

[teamsaint]

Like, 'What's the leading note in the scale of C# minor?' They'd have to B# to get that.

Moving swiftly on, an awful lot of pop and pop-musicians rely very heavily on a few common chords (shoot me down, Gongers, I am Tita-ni-um) meaning that they are innately very, very conservative. Jazz musicians OTOH are quite cool on the harmonic front. I think I'd be OK with jazz questions on UC.

I think you must have been listening to the wrong stuff, Ards !

Plenty of rock/pop/whatever based on a few common chords that doesn't sound remotely conservative, to my ears, in one way or another, not least because context is so very important.

[EdgeleyRob]

Q: Without searching via the url name the composer and work

Is it Bye Bye Baby by the Bay City Rollers ?

[Bryn]

Q: Without searching via the url name the composer and work

Not sure which work it comes from, but it's pretty clearly AB.

[Richard Barrett]

Not sure which work it comes from, but it's pretty clearly AB.

Looks like it could be 98.

edit: 94 - I was pretty close!

[Beef Oven!]

I'm not sure that anything is too light for University study these days. I know someone who's thesis subject was the 'Carry On' films. Probably comes under popular culture or something.

Many universities have courses like 'Carry On Films'. In the fullness of time, they will realise these courses were big boobs.

[Richard Barrett]

Moving swiftly on, an awful lot of pop and pop-musicians rely very heavily on a few common chords (shoot me down, Gongers, I am Tita-ni-um) meaning that they are innately very, very conservative.

Or meaning that judging their music in terms of harmony is missing the point. An awful lot of "classical" composers rely very heavily on a few common instruments.

[gurnemanz]

Wilfrid Mellers, if I recall. It was considered at least debatable! Second thought: didn't he say they were as good as Schubert?

Further research suggests Tony Palmer - but Mellers devoted a book to the Beatles.

Was not one big breakthrough for pop being taken seriously the article by William Mann, Lied expert, in the Times 27 Dec 1963? Reprinted here. I was 14 and didn't read the Times, being more into the Beatles Fan Club mag, but I was aware of its impact. Now there was just music.

I happened to be doing a PGCE in language teaching at York University 1971-72. The music department there had a very eclectic series of events which some of us music enthusiasts attended. These included Prof Mellers' brilliant series of Beatles lectures (later a book) liberally illustrated with songs played through some massive speakers (first time I had heard about pentatonic melismata). Fritz Hennenberg from Leipzig on Brecht and music. We spoke to him afterwards and I later got to know him and have been in touch with him ever since, he's over 80 now. A diverting evening with John Cage who chatted and played the piano. A piano recital by Roger Woodward with Hammerklavier, Takemitsu and Scriabin - different colour lighting for each composer. Thomas Hemsley, baritone, Lieder recital, including Dichterliebe ... just music.

[MrGongGong]

Looks like it could be 98.

edit: 94 - I was pretty close!

no conferring

But one point is that this is possibly of an equivalent to some of the more obscure science questions

[EnemyoftheStoat]

no conferring

But one point is that this is possibly of an equivalent to some of the more obscure science questions

Except that it would be a picture question?

[Stanfordian]

Many universities have courses like 'Carry On Films'. In the fullness of time, they will realise these courses were big boobs.

Barbara Windsor to you too! Remember her bra flying off in Carry On Camping.

[french frank]

Are the UC questions about general knowledge AND more specialist subjects? If general knowledge, yes, 'most' people nowadays (the younger the more likely) know about pop music: for them it is general knowledge, because the majority know about it at a 'general' level. Once it becomes treated as a specialist subject (and I don't question this), there should be no more questions than about maths, science, history, classical literature, classical music. Whether the UC format with 'Starters' makes this more difficult, I don't know.

But an example of how popular culture excludes by its sheer uniquity [oops, typo!]: A few days ago there was a BBC news story about this year's BBC Music Day under the headline 'Which pop stars deserve a blue plaque in their honour?' The public was invited to suggest 'pop legends' - people or places - that deserved Blue Plaques to commemorate their contribution to the nation's music heritage. There were 5 helpful suggestions: George Michael's school, Peak Cavern in Derbyshire (venue which 'has hosted gigs by the likes of Richard Hawley, Mystery Jets and The Vaccines'), Freddie Mercury's market stall, Delia Derbyshire's childhood home and Beachy Head (connections with David Bowie, The Cure, Throbbing Gristle, The Who).

Right at the bottom of this long story - with six large pictures of various 'pop legends' - it says 'any genre of music is permissible'. Yeah, right: pop, rock, heavy metal, R & B, hip hop …

Before one start blaming BBC Music (on this occasion), one could look at their press release, second paragraph: 'Whether you’re rooting for a country guitarist, a classical composer or a famous jazz venue - we need your suggestions for a range of people and places that have made a significant musical contribution.'

The news story was written by a reporter who I would estimate to be in his late twenties and tweets under the name of @mrdiscopop. For him, clearly, classical music doesn't even exist. Nor jazz. Music IS pop.

But this is why UC concentrates on pop music/culture: it's the comfort zone of those involved. Can one change it? Should one even try? If so, how? Will dumbing down [see OED definition] help at all?

[Richard Tarleton]

Are the UC questions about general knowledge AND more specialist subjects? If general knowledge, yes, 'most' people nowadays (the younger the more likely) know about pop music: for them it is general knowledge, because the majority know about it at a 'general' level.

I think the answer to that must be yes - there's always a scattering of quite tricky general knowledge starters for 10. The bonus questions are always related to eachother, somehow or other. Occasionally there are ones about such things as computer games, or things which only the more, er, obsessive student who doesn't get out much might know. Paxo likes to tease students who answer correctly on embarrassing subjects (ABBA, for example), and to be able to joke in later rounds about surprising areas of knowledge displayed by the teams in earlier rounds while he's introducing them. He's full of witticisms about what he terms "the student mind". The other day he joked about how the losing team would have to take "the minibus of shame" home afterwards. It was an entertaining round which went right up to the wire.

I'm sure I would have struggled at that age with many (most) of the classical music questions. I remember our college team, chosen in a beery open session in the JCR (circa 1968, it was less professional in those days), contained a classical music buff, but sadly he didn't get a chance to show it in the actual contest.

[french frank]

I'm sure I would have struggled at that age with many (most) of the classical music questions. I remember our college team, chosen in a beery open session in the JCR (circa 1968, it was less professional in those days), contained a classical music buff, but sadly he didn't get a chance to show it in the actual contest.

Yes, I was thinking back. I don't think it was the case that in the 1960s we got together discussing classical music (though as an undergraduate the only concert I went to with another group of students was an early performance of Britten's War Requiem - someone in the know about what was 'important'). But equally we weren't much interested in popular music, as a group - no idea what people listened to privately.

As a postgrad I mixed with more undergrads in the late 60s, early 70s and The Beatles featured - and folk song. Nothing much else, that I remember - I had just bought my first 'record player', good enough, I remember requesting, to play classical music on; so not a Dansette. As a teacher, the only music I came across among other lecturers (mostly late 20s-early 30s) was classical. I've no idea what sort of music students were playing then, just that when they gathered in the TV room in the union it was usually to watch the children's programmes …

[Lat-Literal]

Was not one big breakthrough for pop being taken seriously the article by William Mann, Lied expert, in the Times 27 Dec 1963? Reprinted here. I was 14 and didn't read the Times, being more into the Beatles Fan Club mag, but I was aware of its impact. Now there was just music.

I happened to be doing a PGCE in language teaching at York University 1971-72. The music department there had a very eclectic series of events which some of us music enthusiasts attended. These included Prof Mellers' brilliant series of Beatles lectures (later a book) liberally illustrated with songs played through some massive speakers (first time I had heard about pentatonic melismata). Fritz Hennenberg from Leipzig on Brecht and music. We spoke to him afterwards and I later got to know him and have been in touch with him ever since, he's over 80 now. A diverting evening with John Cage who chatted and played the piano. A piano recital by Roger Woodward with Hammerklavier, Takemitsu and Scriabin - different colour lighting for each composer. Thomas Hemsley, baritone, Lieder recital, including Dichterliebe ... just music.

It was interesting to read your thread to find out more about the old place. In 1982, it was much closer to the late 1960s than it is to now in all ways. I understand it has become a "big business". Then there were common rooms with what we called psychedelic walls and a strong vibe of the pamphlet about so much of the campus. We liked it but it seemed quaint. It said something about how student life had been back in the pre punk mists of time. What we were supposed to be like to be proper students although none of us fitted that mould. Why? Because that was when there were young adults with long hair and we were in the infants trying to comprehend them. So I had no idea of all the classical music events you outline. What I did hear were rumours about the rock acts that used to play "unlike now"....Kershaw's "Leeds gets them all". But we did have a few. Ones barely on the way up. Others on the way down. Nor did I know that York had been so significant as an early music centre. At that age you can't conceive of what is beyond the immediate realm.

That is not to say that there wasn't a strong sense of history. It was just a different sort, residing between course work and pubs with an odd feeling that it felt like the 1960s in a different way. Later, I realised a part of it was the shops there hadn't yet acquired "big light". The music education took place in the shared house. The NME for the times. Friends who had old rock records to borrow which while they were theirs were so old they could have been their brothers'. Riverside Records was there briefly for the eclectic second hand. I bought "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" and a cassette of RVW 2 on the same day, falling asleep to its beauty as the sun shone in and my mates attended a lecture by Professor Sathyamurthy. That Will Mann, article. It's good. But he contradicts himself. The Fab Four can't have been Merseyside unblemished by America and influenced by American blues.

Yes, I was thinking back. I don't think it was the case that in the 1960s we got together discussing classical music (though as an undergraduate the only concert I went to with another group of students was an early performance of Britten's War Requiem - someone in the know about what was 'important'). But equally we weren't much interested in popular music, as a group - no idea what people listened to privately.

As a postgrad I mixed with more undergrads in the late 60s, early 70s and The Beatles featured - and folk song. Nothing much else, that I remember - I had just bought my first 'record player', good enough, I remember requesting, to play classical music on; so not a Dansette. As a teacher, the only music I came across among other lecturers (mostly late 20s-early 30s) was classical. I've no idea what sort of music students were playing then, just that when they gathered in the TV room in the union it was usually to watch the children's programmes …

The "important" thing is important - it is the impetus for transitions from pop to rock/indie to other genres to classical or was - but it is based on a continual insider/outsider requirement. I have always tended to take a bridge to groups who felt that what they were liking was important but weirdly, even amusingly, removed from everything else.