Radio Dignitas?

[Bryn]

Not a truth at all. Classical music has been central to my life since my early teens.

Indeed. For me it was popular music that had to wait until I was past my teens to get more than peripheral attention. The only pop record I purchased during my youth was of the Chantays playing Pipeline. There was just something about the combination of timbres and rhythm. Later I was introduced by other members of the Scratch Orchestra to VU and Zappa, the latter in response to my introducing one to Varèse, and he recognising the name from a Zappa quote in the gate-fold of Freak Out.

[french frank]

Radio One-Foot-In-The-Grave might indicate that we are predominantly elderly. Radio Dignitas has a more sinister connotation.

[Old Grumpy]

There are many groups in society strictly off limits for criticism from the outpourings of the Guardian. Are we, a group taken to be outmoded, presumably elitist and by inference I imagine biased to the elderly - are we one of those groups safe to offend? ( I heard a gentlemanly but lifelong committed Christian friend express the same sentiment recently - expected to tolerate criticism or abuse and readily accede to demands others would not, in an equivalent way, countenance).

I've only read the grossly offensive re-iterated (but not attributed*) "quote" - not the article (so far). Any chance of raising some dust and fury on that use of language? Sorry to be coarse, but for some time the words "plummy mouthed Rent-A-Gob" had formed in my mind for the likes of Sarah Vine and Katie Hopkins - but they recognisably inhabit the media space known to pander to the worst level of debate/ synthetic controversy - necessary for them to fill those column spaces when, long ago they had run out of inspiration for any ideas of worth (got to be able to command that salary for their west London lifestyle).

Its a sad day for a paper with the history of the Guardian but anyone who reads the media pages of "Private Eye"** would know that extremely poor management has stripped that paper (similarly the once great - in its political sector "Daily Telegraph" ) of journalists and resources and left them prey to either the owners/advertisers influence or in the case of the Guardian - well, it appears (a la ***Daily Mail) anyone who can raise some attention by causing offense and mobilising the partisan scorn of the "majority". Accompanied by begging messages to anyone who visits their web pages.

Its with a heavy heart that I suggest the only UK newspaper left with Standards and a semblance of journalistic resources is The Times - when I had resolved not to patronise a Murdoch Hard print/Online or TV outlet (Honourable exception: Family Guy (Fox Media)). That said, I haven't subscribed to The Times so I'm talking about following up particular articles in libraries or buying a copy, occasionally. The Times doesn't seem to feature in Private Eye as to degradation in quality or marked lack of independence from the owner - by all means correct me if I'm wrong there.

I wonder whether its time - or perhaps I'm hoping - for the spotlight to be turned on these journalists / editors / owners who have, for so long, manipulated politics and news agendas. In the days of cameras in almost every pocket, instantly posted on the web to "social" media- at last the demands for accountability and focussed outrage can be directed at those media figures? Anyone for a FoR3 demo on Miss Sawyer's doorstep - large flight tickets to Geneva with her name name on it, complete concertos played over a megaphone, cremation of 1970's R3 schedules and playlists and their burial in her front lawn (or windowbox)........

* - so can just as well, or perhaps - likely - to be the words of Miss Sawyer but thinking it will sidestep full responsibilty for the choice of words.
** For some years now I've proceeded on the basis that the most important news information is that in Private Eye - i.e. information which "they" would rather we didn't know about.
*** How can I put in accent, umlauts etc?

Yes, I wondered whether they were Ms Sawyer's words too. Googling "radio dignitas" (with the inverted commas) brings up nothing relevant to this discussion.

OG

[Serial_Apologist]

*** How can I put in accent, umlauts etc?

http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/altchrc.html

I photocopied the two pages, and keep them in the computer desk drawer for handy use in general.

[vinteuil]

http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/altchrc.html

I photocopied the two pages, and keep them in the computer desk drawer for handy use in general.

... this works well on grown-up systems.

I currently use a not-particularly-grown-up chrome book which can't do this.

So either I use a site such as :

http://french.typeit.org/

or - I search the word I'm looking for on-line and copy and paste therefrom...


.

[french frank]

One way that the Mac keyboard is the ultimate 'grown-up' keyboard is in having dead keys for the accents: e.g. ë ê é è &c. - only four keys to remember.

... this works well on grown-up systems.

I currently use a not-particularly-grown-up chrome book which can't do this.

So either I use a site such as :

http://french.typeit.org/

or - I search the word I'm looking for on-line and copy and paste therefrom...


.

[kernelbogey]

Not a truth at all. Classical music has been central to my life since my early teens.

For me too, David - although I am not sure that would still be a trend (if I may so put it).

[Bryn]

One way that the Mac keyboard is the ultimate 'grown-up' keyboard is in having dead keys for the accents: e.g. ë ê é è &c. - only four keys to remember.

Various freeware solutions exist to reassign keys under Windows too.

[gradus]

As an infant our class teacher bought two 78s of classical music to play to the class and I still like the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy but it didn't stop me listening to and buying pop until my teens when my oldest friend started playing along to the Bach double vc and tried unsuccessfully to persuade me that Mahler and Wagner were worth listening to. After that music just dawned on me, no thanks to the music teachers at my grammar school who utterly failed to instil a love of music in any of my contemporaries.

[Cockney Sparrow]

All I can recall at infant level was music and movement over the radio - surely many of us have been there, pretending to be a seed and then growing out of the earth, reaching for the sun, et al. I recall singing heartily (boys grammar school) from the National Song Book. And, after an absence of most of 4-5months from illness, agreeing to sit at the back and cause no trouble when recorder teaching / playing was in progress**. Its therefore not surprising that when I followed O level options, my music lessons had ceased.

Soon after my last music lesson I somehow became interested in Classical Music - the nearest in my house was my mother's 78 of Ketelby. It was either Boutique Fantasque or L'Arlesienne played in assembly by a new, more dynamic music teacher which triggered my interest, then re-inforced by resort to the local Gramophone Library and the Radio (when did it start being called Radio Three?). Then I became friendly with a new arrival in my year, who was a capable musician, who got me singing.

And I married a primary teacher who throughout - until she threw in the towel* in May this year - was and still could be a committed and enterprising teacher and advocate for music in every school where she taught.

(*another story, a long and painful story. ** Mrs CS - unashamedly committed to recorder teaching to all children so that most could read music by year 4 / 5 - and her insistence that it could not be taught to the whole class but in differentiated groups. The refusal to accommodate that in the timetable was but one of the issues which led to the decision to resign. We suspect that an underlying issue was that the recorder was regarded as " old fashioned " and that music teaching had "surely moved on". I'll stop there......).

[Serial_Apologist]

For me too, David - although I am not sure that would still be a trend (if I may so put it).

You mean, if you were a teenager being introduced to classical music in this day and age, KB?

For me, I think that, having long been attracted to what I perceived as the "cutting edge" in music (which meant mainly contemporary classical, jazz and jazz-related musics) I would find less relevance in today's new classical music, there being so many composers with barely an aesthetic or idiomatic thread between them, and little perceptive continuity with any "tradition". For others that lack of tradition continuity will represent freedom from fetters of cultural baggage, as it did for artists on the West Coast of the US in the 1950s, as cited by John Cage in his writings. It probably boils down to a question of generation - my parents' introduction of classical music to me from the moment I was born, my mother's virtuoso skills as a pianist in the 19th century repertoire. Where I a teenager today (not the nearly 72-year old that I am) I do now wonder what sort would attract me into the worlds of music. I would think those without the family or school influences are more likely than my generation was to find some kind of personal identification with musics of whatever era or genre they just happen upon.

[french frank]

an underlying issue was that the recorder was regarded as " old fashioned " and that music teaching had "surely moved on".

It is. They play mouth organs now.

[Serial_Apologist]

It is. They play mouth organs now.

[french frank]

They DO! I heard them. Like the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang

[Beef Oven!]

Just caught up with this thread. I think the Late Junction is an excellent programme