Proms 2022

[french frank]

The link I posted should take you to the BBC Proms Composer index - it works here. Please let me know if it doesn't work and I'll investigate.

It does now. But their A-Z list doesn't seem to be for 2022 only: several composers were listed as having no recent or upcoming events?

The Index of Works and Index of Performers in my listing should link back to the entries in the listing itself (by clicking on the blue concert title on the right). Clicking on the blue concert title heading in the main listing should link to the relevant BBC Proms page. Again, please let me know if this isn't the case - I've only tried it on one browser.

Yes, I meant I couldn't find a link(?) - Ha! just spotted Jump to Prom and Indexes!

For Bert - hover over Andrew's tab Jump to Prom (top left of page) and go to the Index of Works. These are listed by composer so you have all the composers, all their works and direct links to the relevant concert.

Am I the only one who finds the absence of such a search facility surprising (to put it mildly)? Does the R3 audience really care more about who is appearing than what works are being played?

Andrew's listings are always more comprehensive, so it's business as usual for the BBC.

[Serial_Apologist]

Pity they've scrapped Cadogan Hall Monday lunchtimes - but I guess rotating concerts round the country might be a good idea.

It will almost certainly make it impossible to go to every single Prom in a season - as one visitor from the States did a few years ago - unless she was provided with a private jet or helicopter!

[Serial_Apologist]

Am I the only one who finds the absence of such a search facility surprising (to put it mildly)? Does the R3 audience really care more about who is appearing than what works are being played?

You know it makes (BBC) sense!

[Bert Coules]

Thanks to everyone for the replies.

[Andrew Slater]

I've added a direct link to the (unofficial) index of composers and works in the forum sidebar in the section marked "PROMS 2022".

[Constantbee]

It looks like the worst season I can ever remember - largely second rate soloists ...

Do you really think so? I beg to differ Freddie de Tommaso (Prom 1)? Lawrence Power (Prom 5)? Ibragimov and Tiberghian (Proms@Bristol)? Allan Clayton (Prom 59)? Many more.

[Constantbee]

The word is out :) .

Interesting, for one, to note that Cadogan Hall has been jettisoned completely for the Monday 1 PM concerts, replaced by afternoon matinee concerts from various venues around the UK. Will leave it to others to tease out the implications/subtexts (besides the obvious of venturing beyond London to bring musicians and performance spaces around the UK under the Proms umbrella, separate from The Last Night), if any.

Surprise for me, too Good news for the regional venues, though. The one and only time I attended a Cadogan Hall Monday Chamber Prom the live experience was somewhat disappointing, mainly because of the poor acoustics of the hall (upstairs), and relatively poorly attended, too. It struck me at the time that maybe the venue was chosen for its suitability for broadcasting. I hope that the regional venues this year will attract bigger audiences.

[Bryn]

I will try and make the two RAH Proms which included some Xenakis, and maybe one or two others with pre-21:45 finishes. Season ticket purchasers do appear to be sold somewhat short this year.

[Pulcinella]

I've added a direct link to the (unofficial) index of composers and works in the forum sidebar in the section marked "PROMS 2022".

Andrew:
Quite understandably, the composer index is ordered alphabetically by FIRST name (with the added oddity that Sir appears for living - at the time - composers so entitled but not for example for Tippett!).
Would it be a real labour of love to recompile by SURNAME?
Presumably this would be sensible/practicable only if there are different fields designated within the 'name' rather than just the whole lot.
Or is there clever software that sorts alphabetically on the last word in a field?
It took me a while to find Xenakis, as I'd forgotten that he was Iannis.

[Bryn]

Andrew:
Quite understandably, the composer index is ordered alphabetically by FIRST name (with the added oddity that Sir appears for living - at the time - composers so entitled but not for example for Tippett!).
Would it be a real labour of love to recompile by SURNAME?
Presumably this would be sensible/practicable only if there are different fields designated within the 'name' rather than just the whole lot.
Or is there clever software that sorts alphabetically on the last word in a field?
It took me a while to find Xenakis, as I'd forgotten that he was Iannis.

I was also briefly thrown by the forename ordering but was familiar with that of Iannis Xenakis. In some (most) browsers, could one not use the "find in page" facility to search for the family name?

[Pulcinella]

I was also briefly thrown by the forename ordering but was familiar with that of Iannis Xenakis. In some (most) browsers, could one not use the "find in page" facility to search for the family name?

Yes, but surname/family name still more logical, surely.

I was reminded of an experience in a CD shop (remember them?) in Italy, in which the opera sets were ordered alphabetically purely by title (as it would be in Italian).
While there's logic in that (for a native Italian speaker), it made searching for The rake's progress or Götterdämmerung quite challenging.

[Bryn]

Yes, but surname/family name still more logical, surely.

I was reminded of an experience in a CD shop (remember them?) in Italy, in which the opera sets were ordered alphabetically purely by title (as it would be in Italian).
While there's logic in that (for a native Italian speaker), it made searching for The rake's progress or Götterdämmerung quite challenging.

Agreed. I was just offering a workaround.

[Andrew Slater]

Andrew:
Quite understandably, the composer index is ordered alphabetically by FIRST name (with the added oddity that Sir appears for living - at the time - composers so entitled but not for example for Tippett!).
Would it be a real labour of love to recompile by SURNAME?
Presumably this would be sensible/practicable only if there are different fields designated within the 'name' rather than just the whole lot.
Or is there clever software that sorts alphabetically on the last word in a field?
It took me a while to find Xenakis, as I'd forgotten that he was Iannis.

I had a feeling that someone might point this out, which was the reason why I was trying to divert people towards the BBC site.

The problem is that, as you suspect, the names are completely free-form, i.e. no field structure. It wouldn't be onerous to add some code to put the last word first, but it wouldn't work in every case - a case in point being Ralph Vaughan Williams, who would come out under W rather than V. Having said that I think there's only one other case at the moment, "Public Service Broadcasting", which presumably should stay as it is, although "Broadcasting, Public Service" wouldn't be too bad. It wouldn't be difficult to correct these two cases by manual editing, but every run of the main code generates a new index, and there may be as many as four or five runs per year to bring in changes and updates, and therefore four or five editing sessions, which I'm not keen on doing. Another possibility is to generate a permanent look-up table which would expand as the number of composers increased over the years, so that manual editing of a particular name would only be necessary once, but it would still be messy as the first runs with each new name would always result in the need for editing.

I'm not ruling changes out of hand, but if for the moment you could use your browser search tools to look for a particular composer, as Bryn suggests, I would be grateful.

If you've ever looked at the playlist database you will have noticed the same problem exists there. For that, adjustments are completely out of the question as the database currently contains over 50,000 composers' names.

[Pulcinella]

Andrew:
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I completely understand the difficulty, and it's no great hardship to skim through or search as Bryn suggests.
Even less of a problem now I have a printed copy of the guide.

[ferryman]

I will try and make the two RAH Proms which included some Xenakis, and maybe one or two others with pre-21:45 finishes. Season ticket purchasers do appear to be sold somewhat short this year.

Speaking of Xenakis, does anyone remember the famous performance of the Pleiades in 2008? The piece was sandwiched between Holst Planets and RVW 7. I guess that much of the audience came along for the bread rather than the actual filling!

The Guardian so reported the evening....

"The BBC Proms message board was nearly unanimous in its verdict on Xenakis's Pleiades, the percussion sextet who caused such a ruckus on Wednesday night. One audience member wrote that "the cacophony in the middle [of a programme otherwise consisting of Holst's The Planets and Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia Antartica] would appeal to the pretentious pseuds such as the music critic I was reading in the paper this morning, but not anyone else. My word, it was rubbish." Another writes, "I can only hope that it is never attempted again. I would like to request that the BBC Proms organisers restrict such modern outlandish noisy unmusical works to no more than 15 minutes, if it is necessary to include this type of work."

So, not to everyone's taste then. Particularly, I suspect, not to the taste of the gentleman who booed loudly in the middle of the first movement (I actually recall this very outburst - Ferryman), nor to the scores of punters who, like the two quoted above, only lasted 10 minutes before evacuating the hall. Sure, the piece was loud, and the Metaux first movement did sound a bit like the insistent hammering of pots and pans. But I must be a pretentious pseud, as must the several thousand who did stay the distance and cheered and wolf-whistled at the end, because this was a truly epic performance of a truly epic work. Xenakis was possibly the most single-minded, uncompromising and original composer of the 20th century, and it was a pleasure to hear his music performed in front of a (mostly appreciative) capacity crowd. Kudos to the "BBC Proms organisers" for having a sense of adventure, and boo to those audience members who did not."