University Challenge

[hmvman]

Just seen this blog by Michael White on the Torygraph site http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture...t-from-brahms/

It's not just young students on University Challenge though. There's a similar ignorance of classical music by more mature contestants on R4's Brain of Britain. I heard an edition where all four contestants, who had successfully answered questions on history, science, mathematics etc., failed to identify Elgar's Salut D'Amour.

I suppose the question is does this ignorance of classical music matter? Is it now just a cultural backwater deserving little attention by the educational establishment?

I feel so fortunate that the headmaster (as they were called then) at my primary school played pieces of classical music to us at morning assembly and that a basic understanding of classical music was taught in my first couple of years of secondary school (a secondary modern not a grammar school).

[vinteuil]

. There's a similar ignorance of classical music by more mature contestants on R4's Brain of Britain. I heard an edition where all four contestants, who had successfully answered questions on history, science, mathematics etc., failed to identify Elgar's Salut D'Amour.

... I could well be unable to identify some piece of Elgar. But I'd be pretty good on Froberger, Schütz, or Buxtehude...

[Mary Chambers]

It does matter. Music enriches life just as literature and art do, and the basics of all those should be taught at school.

I think the University Challenge teams often know considerably more than most people of their age group do. Most people in their teens/early twenties know absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell, unless they've been to a school that teaches about it or come from an interested family.

I'm sure, though, that there are many pieces of classical music I couldn't identify accurately, and I've been steeped in it from childhood. It's a VERY big subject. (I can do the University Challenge questions!)

[Keraulophone]

University Challenge

Now on BBC 2 (Mon 25th Feb).

Wonder whether their own choirs will be heard in the music round?
Oh, King's just identified Schubert's Unfinished, then got two of the three music bonuses, none of them choral. Pity!
Don't think any of the students are reading music - they rarely seem to; but then they may not be up to scratch with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.


(Apologies if this ought to have been on Platform 3, but there is a choral connection!)

[antongould]

Now on BBC 2 (Mon 25th Feb).

Wonder whether their own choirs will be heard in the music round?
Oh, King's just identified Schubert's Unfinished, then got two of the three music bonuses, none of them choral. Pity!
Don't think any of the students are reading music - they rarely seem to; but then they may not be up to scratch with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.


(Apologies if this ought to have been on Platform 3, but there is a choral connection!)

Their two answers to where Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms were all buried......

Berlin

Salzburg ...........

[Nick Armstrong]

Just watched my recording of this... Thankfully I got the other classical question right (though the French element was a narrow squeak).

UC certainly aren't dumbing down the questions, are they? The Shakespeare quotes question (name play and character for each quote) left me floored except the last bit.

The chap on the right of the New College Oxon. team (Cappelman, or similar) is rather a phenomenon...

That mnemonic question he got right.....

I neither understood the question nor am I sure whether Paxo had finished reading it. Loved the way his mind-boggling answer left his team mates laughing, shrugging and shaking their heads in disbelief

[ardcarp]

Don't think any of the students are reading music - they rarely seem to; but then they may not be up to scratch with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

I've often pondered on the C.P.Snow-ish arts/science thing in relation to University Challenge. In general, science geeks tend to have a greater knowledge of the arts than vice-versa....which is the opposite way round from the commonly held perception. This might be due to the fact that la creme de la creme which ends up on UC probably had a schooling which instilled a wide general knowledge.

Interesting choice of Bizet to identify. The symphony in C was a teenage work which (apparently) didn't see the light of day until its 'rediscovery' and first performance in the 1930s. I thought it was a pretty arcane question for a general knowledge quiz....albeit a high-flying one.

[Flosshilde]

I've often pondered on the C.P.Snow-ish arts/science thing in relation to University Challenge. In general, science geeks tend to have a greater knowledge of the arts than vice-versa....which is the opposite way round from the commonly held perception.

Maybe my perception isn't common () but I would have said that it's the other way round.

This might be due to the fact that la creme de la creme which ends up on UC probably had a schooling which instilled a wide general knowledge.

Impossible to say, as one doesn't know what schools they went to. If they went to state schools they would, by and large, I think, have studied the same curriculum.

(As far as answering questions is concerned I always find it unreasonably gratifying if I can answer a question that the teams get wrong. It doesn't happen very often )

[Pikaia]

That mnemonic question he got right.....

I neither understood the question nor am I sure whether Paxo had finished reading it. Loved the way his mind-boggling answer left his team mates laughing, shrugging and shaking their heads in disbelief

The mnemonic is for the important mathematical constant e=2.7182818284..., Euler's Number, aka the base of natural logarithms. Any Maths or Physics student should know the answer.

[Nick Armstrong]

The mnemonic is for the important mathematical constant e=2.7182818284..., Euler's Number, aka the base of natural logarithms. Any Maths or Physics student should know the answer.

That explains it!

[teamsaint]

I once got a "Starter for 10" which was a photo of a reasonably modern sculpture, way ahead of the two sides.
Given my comprehensive ignorance of sculpture, the look on Mrs TS's face was something to behold !!

[teamsaint]

That explains it!

I was waiting to see who would spot that old one first........

[Nick Armstrong]

I've often pondered on the C.P.Snow-ish arts/science thing in relation to University Challenge. In general, science geeks tend to have a greater knowledge of the arts than vice-versa....which is the opposite way round from the commonly held perception.

It was my experience at university too.

I've just assumed that 'science geeks' are more likely to have music or books or films as leisure activities, than humanities students are to relax with calculus or thermodynamics...

[Nick Armstrong]

I was waiting to see who would spot that old one first........

Ya not fooling anyone, sainty

[JFLL]

I've often pondered on the C.P.Snow-ish arts/science thing in relation to University Challenge. In general, science geeks tend to have a greater knowledge of the arts than vice-versa....which is the opposite way round from the commonly held perception. This might be due to the fact that la creme de la creme which ends up on UC probably had a schooling which instilled a wide general knowledge.

Maybe. In my experience scientists often seem to be more than averagely fond of music. At my college my tutor, a chemist, was an opera fanatic, inviting groups of students to his house to listen to whole operas on a splendid radiogram, and taking some of us to Covent Garden, for the first time in my case. Another Fellow, a zoologist, was a leading authority on oriental music. (I’m not sure about Snow. The narrator of his Strangers and Brothers series of novels is tone-deaf, but I don’t know whether that went for Snow himself.)