No Association Whatsoever Thread

[Nick Armstrong]

Why not on Radio 3?

On a similar theme, this rebroadcast series has been buried away on Radio 4extra this week:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b009x7g5?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

(All 15 episodes from 2008 - 2012 are available on “Sounds”)

[smittims]

Thanks, Nick. I missed that. I hope he does E minor. That's a key with a very interesting history.

I believe it is forbidden to mention tonality, modulation and other snobbish elitist things on Radio 3. Kate Molleson has got through five programmes on Schoenberg without going beyond the most general remarks about the music.

[gradus]

I wonder how many people have heard of the Foundation of St Katherine (founded 1147!), me neither until this week. It is a little haven of peace and calm just off London's Commercial Road. We went there for a celebratory meal after an inaugural lecture. Well worth considering if you're looking for an overnight stay away from the usual hotel haunts.

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks, Nick. I missed that. I hope he does E minor. That's a key with a very interesting history.

I believe it is forbidden to mention tonality, modulation and other snobbish elitist things on Radio 3. Kate Molleson has got through five programmes on Schoenberg without going beyond the most general remarks about the music.

Well, that is true, but I have to say there were things to learn about AS that would otherwise have involved trolling through more biographies than I know of. The series might have led a number of listeners into investigating further, while at the same time questioning why it is that this composer has been so much sidelined for so long by Radio 3 and the BBC. A series on his lesser known pupils would be a good follow up.

[smittims]

I agree. Maybe the more general approach will do more good . That is, I accept, the brief of COTW.

[oddoneout]

I agree. Maybe the more general approach will do more good . That is, I accept, the brief of COTW.

I think COTW has more than one approach, which is why it gets criticised sometimes for not providing enough depth. For the mainstay, well-known composers the programmes pick one aspect, whether of life or composition, and provide more depth, but for less familiar(whether in terms of how well known or how often broadcast) composers a more general approach is taken - an overview. That I think is a reasonable thing to do with the likes of Schoenberg(who falls into both categories unfortunately), providing enough material for someone to investigate further, but without deterring by going into technicalities straightaway. Now in an ideal world R3 would have follow-on programmes to look at such technicalities in more depth, but this isn't an ideal world. It's one that regards its listeners as uninterested(if I'm being polite, incapable if I'm not) in knowing more about what they are listening to or why familiar pieces(the dreaded well loved tunes) are as they are etc.

[smittims]

Quite so. I think Humphrey Carpenter relates how the original plan was to link programmes on the Light, Home and Third, dealing with progressively weightier aspects of music fr different levels of listener, in true Reithian fashion. I don't think this was ever seriously carried out. Classical music did at one time appear regularly on Radio Two, but not now I think.

[french frank]

A younger member of the family lamented being 'time-poor' which got me wondering when and where the phrase/concept originated. Apparently it appeared in the United States in the late 1950s but the OED's first British example is 2003 - which was probably about the first time I heard it.

French Frank's Law: The phenomenon of 'time poverty' increases proportionately to the introduction of labour-saving appliances (washing machines, dishwashers, microwave ovens, convenience foods, fast foods, ready meals, frozen pastry, plus multi-tasking/doing several things at the same time).

Not the desired outcome?

[french frank]

I was going to start a Just A Thought thread, but No Association Whatsoever seems equally appropriate.

Not unusually I finished my Italian meal at the trattoria with a coffee and sambuca. This got me thinking about the origin of the word 'sambuca', which seemed closely related to Latin Sambucus - the elderberry tree/shrub (elderberry being a regular constituent of sambuca, along with aniseedy ingredients like star anise, fennel, liquorice). The common elderberry is Sambucus nigra, the binomial indicating that Sambucus, as with many Latin tree names, is feminine in spite of the masculine -us ending. So when did Sambucus become (more 'correctly') sambuca; and, more to the point, WHY?

[eighthobstruction]

....it sounds more like a dance....I find it more likely that someone might jump up clap their hands and shout "EEiiii Sambuca"...

[eighthobstruction]

A woman has told how she was left in hospital "unable to breathe" after suffering a severe reaction to an unlicensed nasal tanning spray she bought online.
Edith Eagle said she felt like she was "suffocating" and "drowning inside her own body" after the allergic collapse she believes was linked to the product.
Nasal tanners ?????? are designed to be sprayed into the nostrils and claim to work by administering a substance known as Melanotan II, a chemical that darkens skin pigmentation.

[french frank]

Nasal tanners ?????? are designed to be sprayed into the nostrils and claim to work by administering a substance known as Melanotan II, a chemical that darkens skin pigmentation.

Why would you want to tan the inside of your nostrils?

[eighthobstruction]

....is it alright if I don't spend too much time worrying about that - my leader ....and can some posh sophisticated person tell the difference between natural and chemical....

[AuntDaisy]

Why would you want to tan the inside of your nostrils?

... and why orange tan on just part of your face?

BTW The Burkiss Way did a "1984" spoof which insisted "Big Brother is up your Nose!"

[Serial_Apologist]

A younger member of the family lamented being 'time-poor' which got me wondering when and where the phrase/concept originated. Apparently it appeared in the United States in the late 1950s but the OED's first British example is 2003 - which was probably about the first time I heard it.

French Frank's Law: The phenomenon of 'time poverty' increases proportionately to the introduction of labour-saving appliances (washing machines, dishwashers, microwave ovens, convenience foods, fast foods, ready meals, frozen pastry, plus multi-tasking/doing several things at the same time).

Not the desired outcome?

Remember those 1950s cinema ads in exaggerated Technicolor for new household products, ff? They always featured well-spoken {sic} showroom attendants demonstrating fridges, ovens and thermostat-controlled boilers to couples with noticeable middle class characteristics. The wifely figure would say, "Oh but do we think we can afford this, darling?", and the husband figure, taking out his pipe followed by his wallet, would tell her, "Yes darling, you can have this (fridge, whatever) for your birthday". She would then caress said product with nail-varnished finger tips and coo appropriately, those being the days before the rising costs of upward mobility necessitated both partners going out to work. Serial_Apologist's bowderlised Marxist law: the phenomenon of "time poverty" increases proportionately to the amount of propaganda perpetrated in the press and mass media not telling the general public that labour-saving devices exist for the purpose of increasing profits, not free time for the labourer.