Who killed classical music?

[Retinend]

Or 'How does it interact with my experience and values?' Or 'Why do I find meaning in this?'

Yes absolutely - aesthetic considerations. These still aren't questions which bring historical criteria to bear. You're not saying "let me now lay out my life history and decide what story explains the facts," you're saying something like "what makes me happy when I reflect on my accumulated experience?"

[Johnny Yesno]

Yeah you said "not literally" so presumably at the deep level, is what I said, yeah? And right, yes that is what you mean. The deep, symbolic level.

Okay so if someone burns a flag, say some american guy with long hair from the 60s burns an american flag, is he symbolically fearful of that flag's ability to unite people with similar values? Similar values of what?

What if someone burns the same flag in the middle east today? Same fear? Fear of people uniting with values similar to what?

What I'm trying to explain is that if someone burns a US flag, it's not because they are afraid of stars and stripes. I'm saying that the symbolism is somewhat arbitrary. I'm saying that radical music didn't have to have any particular form to offend Nazi sensibilities. It just had to be different.

Political FUNCTION. Of course art might have political value, quality, importance.

What's the difference?

Yes absolutely - aesthetic considerations.

Which are largely dependent on the listener's own perceptions and experiences.

[Retinend]

Anyway, all this stuff is there to find if you want, so no need to dream, unless what you mean is there being a scene where everybody likes this stuff, which we.'be established is unlikely.

Sincere thanks for all those recommendations. I've heard of none of them before, and it all sounds good. The quite predictable response from Johnny Yesno aside, I'm glad I shared.

Do I want everyone to like this stuff? I'm like you, I'd like a variety. Major labels could possibly be run by people who love music, and would hungrily search out the weird and wonderful stuff and put it out there, just for self-satisfaction. Donald Clark's Rise and Fall of Popular Music takes the view that the music industry was briefly like this up until around the time of the mid-Sixties. Maybe it's outlandish, but a certain freedom for the higher-ups is not unheard of in the world of publishing. Editors are quite free to attend public lectures and then just approach the lecturer and asks him if he wants to write a popular book. It doesn't seem to me like a big company like penguin books struggles to come out with valuable cultural objects, even though it's ultimately just a money-mill for the stockholders. The music industry could easily spend less money on over the top advertising and make twice as many albums, keeping twice as many musicians in work, and half as many advertisers. Good deal.

[Retinend]

What's the difference?

I'm not trying to be hard here. If you just see in context I said:

"This is totalitarianism we're talking about. Art should have a function in totalitarianism. The function was to instill a new culture. I think maybe you're getting uncomfortable because I temporarily adopt the locutions of the politics I'm talking about? I don't think art should have a political function. That's philistinism, whether left or right."

I.e. the totalitarian idea that art should have political function i.e. serve the state as propaganda. And generically: political function means that something functions to advance this or that politics. I call it philistine because it reduces art to the level of a campaign tool. There's obviously many shades of gray here where someone like Dostoyevsky is a good example of an inbetweener, but to explicitly say that art ought to be useful to some political end is completely poisonous.

[Johnny Yesno]

The quite predictable response from Johnny Yesno aside, I'm glad I shared.

I'm sorry my response to the show wasn't uncritical.

[Johnny Yesno]

I'm not trying to be hard here. If you just see in context I said:

"This is totalitarianism we're talking about. Art should have a function in totalitarianism. The function was to instill a new culture. I think maybe you're getting uncomfortable because I temporarily adopt the locutions of the politics I'm talking about? I don't think art should have a political function. That's philistinism, whether left or right."

I.e. the totalitarian idea that art should have political function i.e. serve the state as propaganda.

It would have been clearer if you'd said you didn't think that what is accepted as art should be dictated by the state.

[Retinend]

I'm sorry my response to the show wasn't uncritical.

I meant "glad I shared..." a few examples of my own taste in classical music, so that Sam could give me recommendations.

[Johnny Yesno]

I meant "glad I shared..." a few examples of my own taste in classical music, so that Sam could give me recommendations.

Well, if you can't take it...[nb]Although I should be pleased that you mistakenly ascribe cleverness to me based on my liking of noise and industrial music.[/nb]

Why do some of the cleverest people listen to nonsense like this and Schoenburg, Hindemith, extreme Noise & Industrial etc?

[Sam]

I meant "glad I shared..." a few examples of my own taste in classical music, so that Sam could give me recommendations.

Another would be Henri Dutilleux. Couple of good box sets around or for individual CDs the Belcea Quartet have done his quartet coupled with the Debussy and Ravel and there's his ravishing Correspondances (settings of Van Gogh's letters to Theo among other things).

[Johnny Yesno]

Perhaps you should listen to some industrial music and noise, while you're at it.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Since you said that such highbrow trinkets "altered aesthetic judgement away from the classical," it was I suppose one of those points that just cropped up in your manner of writing.

It may be, there are few manners of writing I hate more. That and the rest of the response is so far away from what I thought I was talking about I'll have to leave it there and go for a sulk.

[Howj Begg]

I'd love to do more radio 3 chat, can't really spare the time at the moment, just a note that this is on tonight:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03t3kvq

And this is on the iplayer from this week

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q5hb4

[Retinend]

Perhaps you should listen to some industrial music and noise, while you're at it.

I recently paid £14 for a whole evening of it it in Sheperds Bush. The headliner was Thurston Moore's new band "Porn." And another was called "Wolf Eyes," which had some ex member of, I think, Faith No More. Pretty pretentious, but an "experience" or whatever. I think that's enough for me (or any sane person) for a decade or so. 

edit: I think I was in the audience for this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj2-bcJOEz4

[NoSleep]

...me (or any sane person)...

We can all agree on your own distinction between your confused state and the sane.

Wolf Eyes were amazing when I saw them. They have that Detroit rock'n'roll edge (MC5, Stooges) and focus. As an added bonus, they have recorded with Anthony Braxton (excellent, too).

[Johnny Yesno]

I recently paid £14 for a whole evening of it it in Sheperds Bush. The headliner was Thurston Moore's new band "Porn." And another was called "Wolf Eyes," which had some ex member of, I think, Faith No More. Pretty pretentious, but an "experience" or whatever. I think that's enough for me (or any sane person) for a decade or so. 

edit: I think I was in the audience for this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj2-bcJOEz4

Blimey! So, one experience of noise rock was enough for you to write off everything under the vague banner of noise. You should get better acquainted with it before you slag it off.

Main - IV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlAQNcdqBs0

04 Mika Vainio - LESLIE (LESLIE) [Touch]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWSCUCXoreg

Oval - Do While: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWU_Nrwe10

Microstoria - Flexen & Artik: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0waO6shEpY

Pan Sonic - Arktinen_Arctic [KESTO]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ-CqKadeP4

Final - Light Underground/Dark Overground: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCyVL6RDGAE

Thomas Koner - Ruska: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GAy75M2eb8

[Retinend]

Does Pauline Oliveros count as noise? Because I listen to her a lot. Again, just as reading music. Nothing profound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZLJ7PKmpE0

And no that gig wasn't the only time I ever heard noise music in my my life. Just the first time live.

[Retinend]

Oval - Do While: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpWU_Nrwe10

Isn't this ambient?

[Johnny Yesno]

Does Pauline Oliveros count as noise? Because I listen to her a lot. Again, just as reading music. Nothing profound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZLJ7PKmpE0

I really couldn't tell you, but I suspect not.

And no that gig wasn't the only time I ever heard noise music in my my life. Just the first time live.

Well, your keenness to call it all nonsense demonstrates your ignorance of it.

Isn't this ambient?

If you like. Ambient, noise, ambient noise. The significance here is the willingness to embrace the glitch.

[Retinend]

Bullshit. Noise is about distortion and static. Here, you might learn something about your favourite genre (for me it's a comedy, not educational) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGrN6PeIiOU

[Johnny Yesno]

Bullshit. Noise is about distortion and static. Here, you might learn something about your favourite genre (for me it's a comedy, not educational) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGrN6PeIiOU

Hmm. A 2008 documentary proves I was wrong in 1994 to call the music I was into at the time noise. Interesting.

But what is the glitch if it isn't noise?

Guess you'll be telling me this isn't industrial music, next:

Throbbing Gristle Walkabout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuNn8dOUny0

[Talulah, really!]

That's simply a less interesting day.

The point isn't whether it is or is not a less interesting day (How and to whom?) but is it typical of the time or not?

Each week would have highlights.

And a link was provided to a week's worth of programming from approximately 30 years ago, give or take a couple of months, it was the first sample that turned up, no specific cherry picking.[nb]Other than the image had a whole day's programming on it unlike some of the others.[/nb]

There would be series (with single episodes on a particular night of the week) like "The Electronic Voice" (which I would love to have copies of now, lots of fantastic music concrete and more from the 40's through to the 60's; my introduction to "Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul" for example). Also regular slots for jazz and, later, Mixing It. Lectures from Stockhausen, some amazing recordings of composers playing their own pieces on a highly sophisticated Player Piano (a young Stravinsky playing the Firebird Suite, for example) that meant you were hearing vintage performances in pristine modern recording form. A major series on the life and work of John Zorn (I have this in mp3 form, thankfully), Derek Bailey live, with the Ruins, an early performance of Steve Reich's Desert Music (by the same ensemble that performs on the album), Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw putting to shame their own studio performance, in the same period, of Shostakovich 8, Chick Corea on solo piano for an entire concert, McCoy Tyner and ensemble for a similar lengthy concert... those are just from memory. Let's not forget regular slots for Ivor Cutler either.

That however is cherry picking and a sleight of hand moving from a general statement of "Radio 3 is dumbing down, narrowing it's range" to a specific individual view of "it no longer has things like this that excite me and/or that am hearing for the first time", for example, "Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul"?

Played in Hear and Now " And in the latest instalment of the Hear and Now 50 series, American film editor and sound designer Walter Murch nominates Symphonie pour un homme seul by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, music he first heard on the radio as a schoolboy and which influenced his subsequent work in the field of film sound. Author and journalist Rob Young puts the work in context of post-war Paris and Schaeffer's early experiments at French Radio, which led to the birth of musique concrete." April 2012.4

It has also been played in Late Junction in 2013 alongside The Last Poets, Kevin Ayres, Ligetti and numerous other artists that could all be filed under 'you won't be hearing this anywhere else' and all available for listening up to 7 days later, so those late night programmes that might have been missed, shunted off to the bedtime margins in the 1970s/80s/90s are now just as available as the daytime programming to hear with little or no effort, mentioning this because it also highlights that Radio 3 now operates in a different media landscape, armed with a smartphone/tablet/laptop/PC and an internet connection, oceans of information and context are available at our fingertips if we want in a way impossible to previous generations, you can easily find all sorts of useful articles, er, like this.

By a useful coincidence today's Guardian has an article on "Consistency Bias."

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/25/oliver-burkeman-consistency-bias

It is also worth pointing out that even the Wikipedia entry on the history of Radio 3 is littered with examples of exactly this dumbing down debate since its inception.

The Broadcasting in the Seventies report also proposed a large cutback in the number and size of the BBC's orchestras.[Some things never change, Alas!] In September 1969, a distinguished campaign group entitled the Campaign for Better Broadcasting was formed to protest, with the backing of Sir Adrian Boult, Jonathan Miller, Henry Moore and George Melly.[12] The campaign objected to "the dismantling of the Third Programme by cutting down its spoken word content from fourteen hours a week to six" and "segregating programmes into classes".[13] Mention of the campaign even reached debate in the House of Commons.[14]


"The second controller, Stephen Hearst who assumed the role in 1972, was different.... .... financed by public money it needed to consider the size of its audience – there was a minimum viable figure but this could be increased with "a lively style of broadcasting",[7]:268

Hearst attempted to make the content of the channel more accessible to a wider audience, but his efforts, which included the evening drivetime programme Homeward Bound and Sunday phone-in request programme Your Concert Choice (the former an uninterrupted sequence of musical items identified only at the end of the programme; the latter a resurrection from the old Home Service), were criticised."

Emphasis mine.

[NoSleep]

The point isn't whether it is or is not a less interesting day (How and to whom?) but is it typical of the time or not?

And a link was provided to a week's worth of programming from approximately 30 years ago, give or take a couple of months, it was the first sample that turned up, no specific cherry picking.[nb]Other than the image had a whole day's programming on it unlike some of the others.[/nb]

????

I went through the whole week's shows, like I would have if I had a copy of the Radio Times and picked most of the items that interested me (I will have listened to what preceded and followed most likely too. That "first sample" was oddly the final day of the week (all the pages for the week are on that link), particularly not a day of the week to find the more interesting programming (Thursdays were more like it, I recall).

It does seem a duller radio station when I tune in these days, especially after the appalling way they dispensed with Mixing It (The two presenters were just told not to turn up the following week as the station didn't want to announce its demise). Like I said, even standard shows like Choral Evensong seem blander these days.

I wasn't "cherry picking" btw; that was genuinely straight from memory (and obviously memorable moments); but there were many more (some which I managed to tape).

[JesusAndYourBush]

Who killed classical music? Blame Edison![nb]He's not a real country anyway![/nb] His invention of the phonograph meant that classical pieces had to be abbreviated to 3-minute chunks or spread over a number of sides. It was very crackly and the sound was tinny. Classical music wasn't meant to be experienced like this, it was supposed to be listened to in large halls.

Luckily though, his invention was perfect for Jazz which was just developing/about to burst onto the scene.

[NoSleep]

No it wasn't. Jazz liked the extra room to stretch out in improvisation (which we were able to sample when Apexjazz played some selections from the Bill Savory collection - recorded straight from the radio on huge discs allowing much longer sections). The records were a sideshow, a souvenir of the live experience.

[Talulah, really!]

It does seem a duller radio station when I tune in these days,

But and this is somewhat my point, isn't that more about you and how you have changed over the years than Radio 3? For myself, when I first started listening it was all new and it was thrilling to hear a work like The Lark Ascending, now, however, I'd rather hear something else, something new to me but the station has to cater to a) people, and there are a lot of them, who just want to hear that sort of thing most of the time and b) people like me back then for whom it might be their first revelatory experience.

The problem Radio 3 has is that it has to cater for both its core comfortable wanting to be entertained audience and its public funded requirement to educate and explore in ways that commercial radio fails to do, it has to awkwardly navigate between these two poles as otherwise it falls into the whirlpool of circular reasoning used by the critics of the BBC.

A) Chasing ratings and making popular programmes for a wide ranging audience is what commercial radio does and not what a public service broadcaster should be doing so scrap the licence fee and get rid of the BBC.

B) Using the licence fee to make programmes only listened to by three sociology students and a unicorn with gender issues is a tax on Hard Working Families so scrap the licence fee and get rid of the BBC.

Anyway, off out (to a friend's Burns Supper!) but it might interest you to know that this week's Jazz on 3, Monday 11pm has the Alexander von Schlippenbach trio in concert with Evan Parker and Paul Lovens, there was surely a time in your life when the thought that the BBC were broadcasting such music cheered you up, no?

especially after the appalling way they dispensed with Mixing It (The two presenters were just told not to turn up the following week as the station didn't want to announce its demise).

Radio 2 pretty much did the same to Mike Harding and yes, it is a shameful way to treat anybody especially really good broadcasters as these people were in their respective fields.

[Sam]

But and this is somewhat my point, isn't that more about you and how you have changed over the years than Radio 3?

Not really. That may be partly true, but there really has been a measurable decline in BBC R3 and there is a big imbalance between what the suits think people want and what people actually want.

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2013/08/radio-3-loses-14-of-its-audience-how.html?m=1

My subjective gut reaction to R3 is that it's an awful load of simpering, patronising, glib, unctuous shite. The links and data above would seem to back this up, but that's two separate things.

[NoSleep]

But and this is somewhat my point, isn't that more about you and how you have changed over the years than Radio 3?

I believe I'm capable of separating the two. Sure, I find new things exciting, but I can also judge the substance of a broadcast. I would actually enjoy Radio 3 more today if its programming was exactly the same as three decades ago, mulling over what for me would be, now, familiar territory.

I was going to say I appreciate the increased coverage of free improvisation but then realised even that the frequency of these hasn't really changed much (possibly less after the loss of Mixing It), albeit the new interviews and performances are most welcome (via Jez Nelson, still going under the "jazz" banner).

[Talulah, really!]

Not really. That may be partly true, but there really has been a measurable decline in BBC R3 and there is a big imbalance between what the suits think people want and what people actually want.

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2013/08/radio-3-loses-14-of-its-audience-how.html?m=1

My subjective gut reaction to R3 is that it's an awful load of simpering, patronising, glib, unctuous shite. The links and data above would seem to back this up, but that's two separate things.

Being a simple person, I follow a straightforward strategy with pieces like that. One fallacy is fine, a mere mischance, we all make mistakes. Two starts to seem like carelessness and Three means either the person can't reason properly or they are resorting to rhetorical persuasion, misleading the reader.

1) "Radio 3 loses 14% of its audience - How dumb is that?" This isn't true and is therefore a composition error or more likely deliberately creating a false impression as a headline.

2)Most of the article is an example of "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" based on a "One sided assessment" of an accounting identity. Which is to say the author states that the decline is due to the dumbing down but there may be other reasons for the decline which aren't being put forward.

For instance, figures rounded to approximates, if Radio 3 has 2 million listeners and loses 2% of them then that is 40,000 but Classic FM has 5 million listeners and gains 2% then that is  100,000. So perhaps Classic FM is running a successful promotion which is tempting people to try it rather than Radio 3 particularly alienating its audience.

3) It's ridiculous to run the runes on one set of Rajar figures.   Last year Roger Wright made that mistake when the figures were rising and he used this to puff up a soufle that has popped this year and left him with egg all over his face.

My mind turned to figures this morning as the radio industry listening for April to June was just announced. The Radio 3 figures have risen, mainly due to significant increases in our morning programmes, Breakfast in particular.

Of course, as I always say, our listening figures are only one measure of success. However, it is gratifying to know that, given the pressure on everyone's time and the increasing choices about how we spend it, the Radio 3 audience remains so loyal and that new listeners continue to discover the station.

_{Italics there for that example of the half concealed qualification leaving some wriggle room to shift the grounds of the debate when the figures go in the wrong direction.}

4)"You don't need to be mathematician to work out that a 14% audience loss in an area of extreme dumbing down and a 2% audience loss overall means there must have been some substantial compensating audience gains in non-dumbed down programme areas. Which blows the whole Radio 3 strategy of chasing audience by dumbing-down out of the water." Conclusion which denies its premise.

5) "Chasing audience by dumbing-down" this is put forward as a statement of fact in a hyperlink which takes you to another blog post by the same author which puts forward the premise on evidence which is in itself fallacious, this is a version of "argumentum ad nauseam".

(The blog post claims Radio 3 is dumbing down because Private Passions which used to be good, according to the author in another linked[nb]Is all this cross linking to drive page hits?[/nb] blog post "...is one of my favourite radio programmes. The format is deceptively simple. Personalities from the arts and public life are asked to play the music that is important to them, and explain why." Now however it is awful and dumbing down because instead of "Personalities from the arts and public life[nb]Love that. I appreciate personalities from the arts and public life, You like expendable media celebrities, He follows any old tart in the public eye.[nb]This is the loaded words fallacy.[/nb][/nb]" it has "expendable media celebrities whose tastes in music are more Radio 2 than 3. Which means I - and probably a lot of other people - no longer listen to it." He obviously isn't listening to it, as a simple check establishes that recent guests include the scientist Lewis Wolpert, the author Pat Barker, Archbishop Justin Welby, the artist Maggie Hambling, the art writer Martin Gayford, Greg Doran artistic director of the RSC, philiosopher Angie Hobbs, the Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies, film critic Philip French, astrophysicist Joceyln Bell Burnell and the Chief Rabbi - Lord Sacks. Look forward to seeing that lot on Celebrity Big Brother![nb]The nearest in the list to the sort of person implied would seem to be Laura Mvula. Her choices included Elgar, Tippet, Walton, Debussy, Nina Simone & Miles Davies.[/nb]

Going back to the topic of listening figures, a basic search turns up the following, the Rajar figures for 2002, lo and behold, Radio 3 has "performed strongly with a reach of 2.2million. This is an increase of 144,000 on the quarter and 97,000 on the year. Share at 1.3% is also up 0.2% on the quarter and 0.1% on the year."

Currently it sits on "a weekly audience of 2.03 million listeners – compared to 2m last quarter and 2.15m last year. The network's share is 1.2%, level with last quarter and from 1.3% last year." Quotes from the BBC.

So slightly shrinking from a good last year (2012) which was near identical with the, also a good year on the previous, 2002, so over a decade the Radio 3 audience seems to be surprisingly stable.

Sorry if some of the above seems tedious but on the whole I'm inherently wary of "dumbing down" arguments for various reasons and the case for it to convince me has to be water tight which this isn't, it's opinionated rhetoric as far as I can see.

[Sam]

Seeing as you put all that effort in, you should email that to him!

Sorry if some of the above seems tedious but on the whole I'm inherently wary of "dumbing down" arguments for various reasons and the case for it to convince me has to be water tight which this isn't, it's opinionated rhetoric as far as I can see.

Out of interest what are the various reasons you are wary? To me it seems more natural to be more wary of dumbing down itself than the arguments against it. To emphasise the latter may involve a level of undue trust toward institutions (who instigate it) and cynicism toward individuals (who speak up about it).

Why do you need a water tight case? Dumbing down is pretty subjective by nature; I'm not sure how anyone could go about proving a case of that in any kind of logical/mathematical way.

Opinionated rhetoric is standard for this kind of blog, or any blog, or here, or the internet really. Surely nothing to be too cross about?

His blog is full of biases, grinding axes, fallacies, egotism, you name it. It's also the best blog I've ever read on classical music.[nb]I'm thinking of the 'paths' that relate to intersections between the Western classical tradition and Eastern philosophy; original research from his travels; in-depth articles about marginalised and underappreciated figures etc.[/nb]

Anyway there's more to it than just listener numbers.There are other articles about R3 on there that deal with financial issues, fingers in pies, conflicts of interest etc. You may be able to unpick that too, though.

I said earlier that the links in the article about why R3 is a bit shit and my opinion about R3 being shit are two different things.

I used to listen to R3 more. Now, I don't because a) there is less music that I like on it and b) the 'tone' of the station is in my opinion dumbed down. The over-reliance on twitter (not unique to R3) the vacuous listener phone-ins and the simpering platitudes between pieces are all enough to put me off. It didn't used to be like that in my memory.

[Retinend]

Why do you need a water tight case? Dumbing down is pretty subjective by nature; I'm not sure how anyone could go about proving a case of that in any kind of logical/mathematical way.

May be of interest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

(...Well, mathematical as it is, it shows the opposite effect, and only shows it so long as you believe that the way IQ tests are designed do pick out skills which reasonably portray the notion of intelligence, culturally independent.)