The story of post-war West German radio and modern music

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Would it be too fanciful to suggest that you are comparing Mainstream Apples with Mainstream Oranges?

If you are suggesting that the very expression "the mainstream" is useless in such a discussion, I totally agree with you.

[Richard Barrett]

If you are suggesting that the very expression "the mainstream" is useless in such a discussion, I totally agree with you.

I was wondering also what it means to "catch on". I thought I'd proved beyond reasonable doubt that if it means anything at all in the rarefied world of non-commercial music it certainly applies to electronic composition, but maybe I'm under a misapprehension as to what "catching on" involves.

Speaking as presumably a fully paid-up member of the atonalist coterie, Stanfordian, I wouldn't dream of belittling your musical tastes (or for that matter sending private messages about ganging up on someone - what a strange idea! does anyone here actually do things like that???), I merely wished to point out that it simply isn't accurate to say that electronic music hasn't "caught on", unless, as I say, I've misunderstood what that means.

[Pianorak]

If you are suggesting that the very expression "the mainstream" is useless in such a discussion, I totally agree with you.

Print media tend to have separate sections for "Music" and "Classical" (eg Guardian). The former deals with Adele and/or Timberlake, and the latter with Haydn, Dvorak and Machaut. That's what I meant by two distinct mainstreams. But maybe I got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

[ahinton]

Speaking as presumably a fully paid-up member of the atonalist coterie

I stopped my subs to that many years ago; how much are they these days?

As you were...

[Beef Oven!]

Funny enough, I listened to Polytope De Cluny yesterday afternoon, completely oblivious of this discussion.

Interestingly, I only have two songs by Stanford and nothing else by him. Somehow his music has never caught on with me.

[Stanfordian]

Funny enough, I listened to Polytope De Cluny yesterday afternoon, completely oblivious of this discussion.

Interestingly, I only have two songs by Stanford and nothing else by him. Somehow his music has never caught on with me.

Hello Beerfy,

But if you look at the discussion I was referring to a school of composition rather than individual composers.

I wonder how many people it takes to say they don't agree with me and continue the sarcastic remarks about the composer from whom I take my Forum name. It feels tantamount to bullying.

Incidentally at Musikfest Berlin 2016 I attended the following Boulez concert: Douze Notations für klavier (1945); Première Sonate für klavier (1946); Deuxième Sonate für klavier (1946/48); Troisième Sonate für klavier (1955/57); Formant 3: Constallation-Miroir; Formant 2: Trope; Incises für klavier (version 2001); Une page d’éphéméride für klavier (2005); Structures pour deux pianos, Deuxième Livre (1951/61): Chapitre I; Chapitre II. Held in the small hall rather than the Philharmonie. So for what its worth you are not the only one who has listened to more Boulez than Stanford. Ha!

[ahinton]

Hello Beerfy

!!!

[Serial_Apologist]

But if you look at the discussion I was referring to a school of composition rather than individual composers.

As a matter of interest, which composers apart from Stanford do you include in that school? There would be many alongside whom I and probably many others here would find myself more with you than their teacher Stanford, whose overharmonised religious settings for congregations one had to put up at school!

[Lat-Literal]

A programme worth doing and a lot of it was new to me. I do think, though, it was biased and conflicted.

Early on, we were given an image of drivers in VWs on motorways just after the war listening to the avant-garde. Later in the programme we were told that West Germans were in many respects conservatives who were capable of being deeply critical of music that wasn't mundane. This, for example, was clear from reactions to the 1953 festival in Koln. It was also accepted later that aiming for a higher level was as much a statement broadcast to oppressive regimes to the east as it was ever designed for domestic consumption. And yet in the concluding comments, in which the country was heralded as the international leader in new music on the radio, that idea was once again skewed to be associated with the West German population. Throughout the 1950s, German schlager artists covered popular US hits in a sweeter melodic style. Lale Anderson, Ivo Robic and Morgot Eskens and later, in the sixties, Cornelia Froboess, Peter Alexander and Roy Black. If rock n roll was understandably initially too unsettling and socially revolutionary for the public, then that certainly was true of innovative highbrow classical music. What the aforementioned VW image actually alludes to is not the 1950s and the music being discussed but the likes of Kraftwerk in the 1970s. They in origins were part Dusseldorf electronic workshop and part almost dangerous communal fringes. For the broader context, see Can, Neu! and the umpteen versions of Amon Duul.

I am more than happy to give West Germany and its post war population credit where it is due. An ability to put the immediate past behind them, the work ethic, coping with the Soviets on their doorsteps, environmental commitments, the incorporation of football fans' true interests in the structure of their football, genuinely centrist politics at least in the 1960s and the 1970s unlike anything we have now, and above every one of these things the West German ways with technology. However, radio isn't on this list. The international model for national and international radio was and is Britain, ie the BBC. The equivalent model for local and regional radio is and was the United States. There was no reference in the programme to the liberal Hugh Greene who oversaw post war changes in radio in the British sector of West Germany. It might, as other contributors have implied, have also mentioned the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. There was no discussion of the diverse talents that were Joe Meek (British), Fagandini (of Italian parentage), Radigue (French) and Pade (Danish). And as always no credit was given to Halim El-Dabh, an Egyptian, for being the inventor of tape music. He died on 2 September 2017 with barely a murmer from today's musical establishment.

Nor was there any discussion of all the argy-bargy just after WW2 concerning the International Broadcasting Union (IBU) which has an interesting read-across to events in the current day. Founded in 1925, its technical headquarters had been in Brussels. It was in the hands of the Nazis by the 1940s. In response to the Soviet proposal for a new organisation, plans were made for a European Broadcasting Conference in 1948 to draw up a new plan for frequency use in the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) for the implementation of a “Copenhagen Wavelength Plan”. But the British were against it, fearing USSR dominance. In parallel, in 1946 the alternative International Broadcasting Organisation (IBO) was founded with 26 members and without British participation after which the IBU and IBO were at war although both were Brussels based. Britain and the BBC were unable to find suitable working arrangements with either of them. Ultimately, following the rejection of a BBC proposal for the IBO to change its constitution so there would be only one member per country, thus ensuring a Western majority over the USSR and its satellites, a consensus emerged among the Western Europeans to form a new organisation to replace the earlier ones. That European Broadcasting Union (EBU) first met in Torquay, it was under the presidency of the BBC's Ian Jacob for 10 years, it was largely dominated by the BBC due to its financial, technical and staff input, and it excluded not only the Soviet bloc but West Germany too. The West Germans were admitted in 1951 but it wouldn't be until the 1960s that they had more than two hours of television each day. That may or may not say much about the resources put into its regionally based radio but it hardly suggests the country was a broadcasting powerhouse.