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BBC Proms and the tyranny of the children’s encyclopedia

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As the annual administrative behemoth known as the BBC Proms lumbers into motion, filling the national ether with its familiar blend of civic piety and corporate branding, one is forced to confront a recurring fatigue.To listen to BBC Radio 3’s broadcasts of these mammoth London concerts is to witness a curious ritual of cultural containment. Before a note of Vaughan Williams or a forgotten rarity by Jonathan Harvey can safely enter the acoustic space, it must first be sanitized. The listener is subjected to presenters topping and tailing each masterwork with breathless, patronizing trivia, as if lifting entries straight from an illustrated children’s encyclopedia of classical music. One hears the familiar, smug cadence—that unmistakable institutional voice which assumes that the public cannot possibly encounter sound unmediated by narrative hand-holding.  The star system versus the art  The modern Proms season operates less as a sanctuary for deep listening and more as an e...
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I am not a Classic FM housewife

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Having returned from travels in a distant land I was looking forward to listening to BBC Radio 3's Proms broadcasts. But it wasn't to be, because after just two concerts I have given up. For me, even great music-making cannot survive Radio 3 presenters topping and tailing each work with endless quotes from a children's encyclopedia of classical music punctuated by smug info-commercials.  There has been much self-congratulation by Radio 3 about audience gains; however audience data shows that increase has been achieved by poaching Classic FM's listeners. Despite Radio 3's audience increase, the UK classical radio audience is not increasing. Because listeners are simply moving from Classic FM to Radio 3. In fact the total classical radio audience is decreasing . Under ex-Classic FM supremo Sam Jackson, BBC Radio 3's strategy of taking listeners from Classic FM was initially targeted at the daytime housewife audience. But that strategy has now been applied to even...
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Separating the medium from the music's message

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Marshall McLuhan presciently warned of the dangers when "the medium is the message". His prediction has come true today, with media such as MSN News offering content of exclusively  AI-generated clickbait trash . We now live in an age where are lives are defined by the media, and examples where the message is no longer subordinate to the populist message are disturbingly few and far between.  But one interesting example can be found in the arcane genre of early Franco-Flemish polyphony. Back in the 1970s the Westminster Gold label famously exploited the click bait potential of album graphics , years before clickbait became the media norm. Then half a century later the curiously titled vocal ensemble Beauty Farm very effectively played the same card - see examples above and below.  Beauty Farm are a sextet of male singers from leading European early music vocal groups. Based at the former Carthusian monastery of Mauerbach , Austria, they record on the independent...
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My symphonies are sperm

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On paper Leif Segerstam's symphonies don't look promising. More than 300 in total, each lasting only around half an hour but needing only two pages of score, and some requiring no conductor. All underwritten by the philosophy that "My symphonies are sperm. There is strength in numbers. Some will survive to take evolution forward". (So my headline is a genuine pull quote, not Slipped Disc-style clickbait). Anyone acquainted with his authoritative Sibelius and Rautavaara will know that with Segerstam unconventional does not mean unacceptable. There is a method in what many will view as his madness. In the deliberate absence of a conductor the musicians are cued by certain specified signals given by different instruments in turn. The aim is to release the players' latent creativity which is normally suppressed by the highly prescriptive Western classical tradition.  Segerstam explained that "I wanted a performance to be a creative event, not a Prussian plou...
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Street art

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CDs purchased in FNAC Avignon : Jugendstil : Mahler & Schoenberg realisations for piano by Beatrice Berrut Trinity : Jazz from iiro Rantala, Kaisa Mäensivu & Morten Lund Les Enfants Terribles & Preludes : Philip Glass played by Katie & Marielle Labèque Pulse : Minimalist playlist from Shani Diluka Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it - Jiddu Krishnamurti  Commentaries on Living: Series III
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Come to the edge!

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Twenty-one years ago I wrote about an article on NewMusicBox  that forecast the age of music streaming, and included the following quote from the article: A world where music is available via the latest technologies for a single monthly subscription charge. A world with unlimited access to a huge range of music. A world where the music business will explode and reinvent itself. A world where listeners are empowered, and the reach of new music is limited only by your own imagination. A world where the major record companies aren’t invited to the party. A world where music becomes a utility on tap, just like gas and electricity. A world where music is like water.  It can be argued that streaming has empowered consumers by offering instant gratification. But two decades ago, in my post I expressed concerns about the advent of 'music like water' with these words: "Music-like-water won’t bring a utopia where every recording, of every work, by every composer from Evaristo Abaco ...
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Musician's dissent dismissed as "sanctimonious shit"

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Violinist, conductor, composer, and improviser Pekka Kuusisto recently announced he would pausing his professional engagements in the United States in the following message: I’ve decided to stop working in the United States for the time being.  I want no pressure placed on any of my colleagues to come to the same conclusion.  Love and solidarity Predictability his decision was greeted by an outpouring of bile on the classical music industry's online resource of choice Slipped Disc . Just as the decision of respected American composer John Luther Adams to relocate to Australia  was greeted with similar bile . Here is just one comment posted in response to Pekka Kuusisto's decision: Sanctimonious piece of shit. Never going to another one of his concerts. The US didn’t kill Iranian school girls for performative violence. This false accusation is disrespectful to the US military which gives Pekka his freedoms. Online forums always attract nutjobs. But this thread is a conti...
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