A View From The Sidelines

[Petrushka]

It's been a pity to have lost one or two valuable members recently (temporariiy hopefully) and I would most certainly miss HS's posts which are never less than interesting and frequently illuminating.

FF has done what she can to hide the political part of the forum without dispensing with it entirely. I rarely bother looking at it any more so wasn't aware of any issue but taking a peek I see that the composers represented on the forum seem to post there rather than on the music threads!! Would like to see more input from ahinton and Richard Barrett on the music forums please! Politics discussion is so often hampered by the argument frequently going round in circles and people taking entrenched positions. I consider it a waste of time but have no objection to others partaking if that's what floats their boat.

Ignore the political part of the forum, HS, as I do, and provide the music forums with your knowledge and experience.

[salymap]

And meanwhile HS is willing to answer PMs on music, he says, but let's hope he returns before too long.

[Don Petter]

I think HS's analysis of recent trends is sadly correct, and I find that recently I am posting less and less, as there seem to be few threads of interest among the increasing politico content.

However, I 'm content to avoid these by skipping their subject headings and keeping a watching brief for what is of interest. I see no reason to abandon the forum deliberately. It may be that my participation will dwindle until this happens naturally, but I hope not.

We did have an interesting chat about badgers recently, but I think one factor in the diminishing musical discussion is that several of us now rarely listen to R3, so that contributions relating to their output is no longer within our remit.

[Flosshilde]

As for not soliciting these replies, then why did you post?

Wasn't there someone on the old BBC board who had more farewell appearances than (insert name of any diva)?

I don't think there are any fewer 'musical' (did you know that that was '50s slang for homosexual?) threads at the moment. Each Prom concert has one, and there are numerous 'Summer BAL' threads, and one for Edinburgh International Festival concerts, the 'Bargains' thread, & more.

[Richard Barrett]

I wasn't going to contribute to this thread, because I find it very strange that a forum member should leave in a huff because of what gets posted in a part of the forum he doesn't contribute to... on my occasional glances at the "Choral Evensong" section, for example, I've come across plenty of opinions I find objectionable! But since I've been mentioned by Petrushka -

Would like to see more input from [...] Richard Barrett on the music forums please!

- the thing is that unfortunately there seems to be so little overlap between my musical interests and those of most (not all!) forum members that I have very little to say in most of the forum most of the time. I'm not complaining, that's just the way it is, and there are plenty of members whose opinions and knowledge I'm always interested to read, on musical subjects I'm not so well up on, without necessarily putting in my own two cents' worth.

On the subject of political threads: I think there's a lot to be said for carrying on discussions about politics between people who have been brought together for some other reason: in this case a shared enthusiasm for music and R3-type things in general. And one person's sour atmosphere is another person's frank exchange of views. As for entrenched opinions, I don't think any of those expressed on the political threads here come near the closed-minded intransigence of some people's musical views, for example on historically-informed performance or contemporary composition (and this includes you, Hornspieler, if you're still reading this thread!). I have the impression that some members think that getting involved in a discussion on political issues (or maybe even just seeing that such things go on here!) is getting their hands dirty when they'd rather be away in the pristine realm of music: my answer would be that there's no dividing line between these realms, between issues of music and issues of society, unless one sees music as some kind of escapist pastime, which I don't.

[Tony Halstead]

What an excellent, eloquent and thoughtful post, Richard Barrett.

[Roehre]

What an excellent, eloquent and thoughtful post, Richard Barrett.

seconded

[VodkaDilc]

We did have an interesting chat about badgers recently, but I think one factor in the diminishing musical discussion is that several of us now rarely listen to R3, so that contributions relating to their output is no longer within our remit.

Very true. My R3 listening recently (and, as a result, my contributions here) has been almost exclusively to Proms I have actually been to. I no longer listen to R3 as a regular routine - as I did for the previous 45 years.