The Story Of Light Music

[vinteuil]

"Music While You Work".

mmm, I wonder if this is a clue as to a possible distinction that might be made between 'light' and 'serious' music.

I know that I have CDs which I can happily have on while I am pottering about doing other things - say, Telemann, Lefebure-Wély, Boccherini - and then there is other music - Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Bruckner - which requires all one's attention.

For me, at least, there is a real separation between these two types of music / listening. I enjoy both, but I know which is more 'important'.

I am not sure that the easy statement - that there are only two types of music: good music and bad music - is really very helpful. Does it then lead on to the question as to how the other distinction - that there are only two types of music: music I like and music I don't like - might map on to it? Do the two coincide? Probably not. But then, if there is music I somehow recognize to be good but which I dislike - how is it that I don't like what I know to be good?

[MrGongGong]

But then, if there is music I somehow recognize to be good but which I dislike - how is it that I don't like what I know to be good?

Because taste and quality are not necessarily the same thing.
There are plenty of musicians and composers who I know are brilliant BUT I still don't "like" the music.
If only more folk would separate these things then we might be able to actually have discussions about MUSIC not whether it's what is liked or not !

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I am not sure that the easy statement - that there are only two types of music: good music and bad music - is really very helpful.

The late Milton Babbitt (who wrote some lovely popular songs in his time*) shared your reservations, vinty, suggesting that it was as useful as saying that "there are two types of Music: that which in g minor and that which isn't."

* = NOT an example of ferney's mis-placed irony: he did write songs in the Jerome Kern/Cole Porter/Irving Berlin mode, and very good they are, too.

[VodkaDilc]

It seems that more and more we need to check the other radio stations to see if there's better musical programmes than R3 provides. This looks like a good example - in an area now neglected, since the disappearance of Brian Kay's 4pm programme.

Two further examples recently, when I found serious (-ish) music programmes elsewhere:
1 A fairly technical discussion about Keys on R4. This appeared to be part of a series and discussed "A Major" in rather more technical detail than R3 would dare to do these days, for fear of frightening the horses (sorry I mean the Radio 2.5 audience.) I will try to hear more of this series.

D flat major today. This is a thought-provoking series with some original ideas. From a key point of view, Liszt influencing Tchaikovsky, and Czerny influencing Wagner??
But why is it not on R3? Probably some arcane internal BBC reason about commissioning and suchlike - but why won't R3 commission this sort of thing?

[salymap]

It looks as though I must check my expensive Radio Times for more than the R3 page in future. Thanks for heads up.

[Serial_Apologist]

It looks as though I must check my expensive Radio Times for more than the R3 page in future. Thanks for heads up.

Me too sal...

(See the What are you listening to now thread)

[VodkaDilc]

D flat major today. This is a thought-provoking series with some original ideas. From a key point of view, Liszt influencing Tchaikovsky, and Czerny influencing Wagner??
But why is it not on R3? Probably some arcane internal BBC reason about commissioning and suchlike - but why won't R3 commission this sort of thing?

This is the series description from the R4 schedule:
Ivan Hewett explores how different musical keys seem to have distinct characteristics and create specific moods

E minor next week.

[Nick Armstrong]

It looks as though I must check my expensive Radio Times for more than the R3 page in future. Thanks for heads up.

My thought precisely!

[Nick Armstrong]

A link to aid navigation: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tw55v

[Serial_Apologist]

A link to aid navigation: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tw55v

Thanks Caliban.

My problems is, not that I don't check through Radio Times each week, red-circling programmes to view, but that I don't expect to find serious music programmes on Radio 4 - and why indeed should we?

It takes me half a Tuesday to trawl my way through RT as it is!

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks Caliban.

My problems is, not that I don't check through Radio Times each week, red-circling programmes to view, but that I don't expect to find serious music programmes on Radio 4 - and why indeed should we?

It takes me half a Tuesday to trawl my way through RT as it is!

Well, quite. Why the hell isn't this on R3? Because Petroc Trèshorny is too busy talking to Betty Spiggins about how she first heard that Bolero on her honeymoon in Marbella...

[amateur51]

Well, quite. Why the hell isn't this on R3? Because Petroc Trèshorny is too busy talking to Betty Spiggins about how she first heard that Bolero on her honeymoon in Marbella...

O Perfidy, thy name is Betty Spiggins!

She was on Breakfast with John Suchet on CFM only last Friday telling him she wanted La Mer because it reminded her of her honeymoon in Eastbourne

John said he'd play it for her and I listened to it but I didn't hear Charles Trenet so after 5 minutes I turned off

I bet they wouldn't make a mistake like that on Radio 3

[Pabmusic]

Because taste and quality are not necessarily the same thing.
There are plenty of musicians and composers who I know are brilliant BUT I still don't "like" the music.
If only more folk would separate these things then we might be able to actually have discussions about MUSIC not whether it's what is liked or not !

You've hit the nail on the head there! There are many composers I acknowledge as being geniuses, or important in the history of music, but whose music leaves me cold, or at least lukewarm. Likewise, there are those who are undoubtedly minor in terms of 'the big picture' but whose music hits just the right spot. For me, Gerald Finzi is an obvious example. I know that Dies Natalis (for instance) will move me 99 times out of 100, but I have to be in the right mood for Mahler - and that doesn't happen too often. But when it does, of course, it's profoundly exciting.

[Pabmusic]

That's the best defination I've heard: 'The tune is more important than what happens to it...
But within those limits, Muir Mathieson's [and others'] remark re good and bad still applies.

I found this in the Oxford Companion to Music, 1st edn (1938) - though I see it's reproduced in later ones, too. There's nothing at all for 'light music', but it does have 'light opera':

"Opera of which the subject-matter is cheerful and the musical treatment such as calls for little effort on the part of the listener".

I think that's excellent (and in beautiful English - note too the hyphen in 'subject-matter'!)

[PJPJ]

O Perfidy, thy name is Betty Spiggins!

She was on Breakfast with John Suchet on CFM only last Friday telling him she wanted La Mer because it reminded her of her honeymoon in Eastbourne

John said he'd play it for her and I listened to it but I didn't hear Charles Trenet so after 5 minutes I turned off

I bet they wouldn't make a mistake like that on Radio 3

Oh, did they play the orchestral version, then? I much prefer that little-known vocal arrangement Debussy did for his old friend Charles Trenet. I gather it was a present for Trenet after he'd looked after the cats when Debussy went to Eastbourne for a budget break with Shearings.