"Way more than 50% of our output is live music ..." claims BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright in a revealing article about a new jazz radio station in today's Guardian.
But Radio 3's definition of live is slightly different to yours and mine. As I reported here in February 2007 virtually all evening concerts on Radio 3, except the Proms, are pre-recorded. But the BBC counts these recordings as 'live' performances, and the text streamed with their FM broadcasts describes them as 'live concert recordings'.
In a wonderful example of BBC corporate-crapola Radio 3 defines 'live' as any music recorded with an audience present. Which has important implications both for musicians who earn their living from live music making, as these recorded 'live' performances can be repeated, and for audiences, who may find real concerts with living breathing musicians disappearing.
If Roger Wright turned up at a concert hall for a 'live concert', and found a pre-recorded performance being played through speakers wouldn't he feel cheated? It's not a stupid question - that's what is actually happening in my header photo. Read about it here.
Header photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Friday, January 25, 2008
What exactly is live music?
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5 comments:
I've tried to keep this post a sensible length. But there are other claims made by Roger Wright that need to be challenged. Particularly -
"Way more than 50% of our output is live music ... there's no way you can operate that as a computer-generated playlist. You've got to do it with humans."
BBC Radio 3's 'live recorded' evening concert slot is fixed at a 1 hour 45 minute duration.
Every selection of music needs to fit into that slot. It is now well known among other UK concert promoters that the BBC will only take your concert if it fits into a 105 minute slot including link announcements, so programming becomes a mathematical exercise.
Whether it is computers or humans doing the sums this fixed time window produces bizarre results -
http://www.overgrownpath.com/2006/08/bbc-proms-music-and-mathematics.html
http://www.overgrownpath.com/2007/07/bbc-making-great-music-available-to-all.html
Presumably the 105 minute slot was determined by the need to accomodate the longest works in the mainstream repertoite - Mahler and Bruckner symphonies for instance?
In the same way Sony and Philips fixed the maximum capacity of a CD at 80 minutes on Herbert von Karajan's recommendation that the new medium should be able to accomodate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
But there are major works that cannot be accomodated in Radio 3 evening slot. The Matthew Passion is the obvious one. I am sure readers can provide other, non-opera, works that exceed 105 minutes. (Bernstein's ultra-slow Enigma Variations, with the BBCSO no less, doesn't count.)
RE: corporate-crapola and the so-called "rule of 105"
When Classical WETA-FM, in Washington, D.C., recently polled its listeners and learned that they wanted to hear Mahler and Bruckner symphonies, the station obliged and broadcast a movement from each composer as part of their listener-choice top 100 countdown....
*
But to keep with your actual question, Sofia Gubaidulina's "Saint John Passion and Easter" apparently clocks in at 150 minutes. I look forward to hearing this work live or on a "live-delayed basis", despite some of the luke-warm British reviews of the epic work.
http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/news/further_info.asp?LangID=&NewsID=10313
Garth, please don't tell that to the BBC. They've already started playing extracts in record programmes - http://www.overgrownpath.com/2008/01/bbc-radio-3s-weir-and-wonderful.html
We are not far away from a Prom conducted by a reality show winner coupling the Mahler 5 Adagietto with some Lennon and McCartney.
Think I joke? Look at 9.37 yesterday - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/breakfast/pip/q02ez/
Oh my god ... don't tell Sharon Rockefeller's Classical WETA-FM, or this weekend could morph into wall-to-wall Mozart, and Lennon and McCartney.
On a 'serious' note, even the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas found it necessary (sadly) to drop one movement from the world premiere of Robin Holloway's Fourth Concerto for Orchestra, Opus 101; almost exactly a year ago.
I still recall critic Joshua Kosman's wonderful review ("Big Audio Dynamite ...") of that concert of early February 2007:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/03/DDG9ONTBID1.DTL&hw=Symphony&sn=009&sc=231
I would hope that the BBC would have broadcast the full Holloway "Fourth" (ca. 75') by this time; although perhaps I am wrong (having been confined lately to wall-to-wall 'Mystery' reruns).
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