The Off-topic Thread

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes, the most notable thing about gurnemanz's programmes was that they were all music. Radio 3 was never (and isn't supposed to be now) just 'another music station'. The interesting programmes on ideas/the arts with heavyweight contributors are gone. I wanted more intellectual stimulation than Radio 3 currently gives, but if that's not what the world wants, so be it. For music I have quite enough elsewhere without the "presentation" that mediates Radio 3's content.

Yes that’s the big difference but I don’t think it’s necessarily Radio 3’s problem. Its much publicised New Generation Thinkers just don’t bear comparison with the figures that appeared in the 60’s or 70’s Bertrand Russell , A.J. Ayer , or on the musical side of things Hans Keller. Just compare the list of Reith Lecturers in the 50’s with those in the 2010’s - “What a falling-off was there”

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes that’s the big difference but I don’t think it’s necessarily Radio 3’s problem. Its much publicised New Generation Thinkers just don’t bear comparison with the figures that appeared in the 60’s or 70’s Bertrand Russell , A.J. Ayer , or on the musical side of things Hans Keller. Just compare the list of Reith Lecturers in the 50’s with those in the 2010’s - “What a falling-off was there”

Coincidentally, I was just now on the point of playing a cassette I filched off Radio 3 back in 1985 - a performance of Schoenberg's String Quartet No 2 of 1907/8, with a long foreword by Hans Keller read out by the presenter, and thinking, we never get anything of that depth of understanding of music today - not even in COTW, which is mostly about personality, and presented a-chronologically, not allowing for the building up of an historical picture . My understanding of Keller's multi-dimensional placement of that particular work in its cultural continuum was added to by that bit of Keller insight, and has grown along with repeated hearings of the work. People today won't have that opportunity afforded, and it's just one example of what people refer to when we speak of dumbing down.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Coincidentally, I was just now on the point of playing a cassette I filched off Radio 3 back in 1985 - a performance of Schoenberg's String Quartet No 2 of 1907/8, with a long foreword by Hans Keller read out by the presenter, and thinking, we never get anything of that depth of understanding of music today - not even in COTW, which is mostly about personality, and presented a-chronologically, not allowing for the building up of an historical picture . My understanding of Keller's multi-dimensional placement of that particular work in its cultural continuum was added to by that bit of Keller insight, and has grown along with repeated hearings of the work. People today won't have that opportunity offered, and it's just one example of what people refer to when we speak of dumbing down.

The truly incredible thing is that he regularly appeared on BBC TWO ...that would never happen now.(if the great man were alive obvs,)