BaL 25.06.11 - "Essential Light Music"

[arcades]

. Am I the only one (as it were) or is the UK (England perhaps especially) addicted to NOSTALGIA? Lots of TV programmes seem to be set in a decade distant enough to have become a code of appearances/themes as dramatised; there's the Heritage Industry. For the 'earlier' stuff on TV there's costume drama. Not to mention the Royal ... not to mention it. Is the Light Music Festival another manifestation ...

Just seen Serial Apologist's earlier comment. Which I think intersects with mine.

[aeolium]

I agree with that second paragraph, ardcarp; what you claim has been inherent I thinkin much of the subtext of the commentaries between the music played. It's a big discussion I'd like to follow up on this thread; suffice for the moment to say that I find it hard to get much aesthetic satisfaction from music that seems to smug in some way and presents such a cosy view of the world, and I wonder what precisely is or was the ideological function of so-called light music. There are so many other musical genres which are capable of offering the much-vaunted feelgood factor - which can be gained by being challenged by music, rather than having ones complacency preconceptions confirmed at every turn.

S-A

S_A, I think you may be over-complicating things by suggesting there is a particular ideological function to 'light' music - surely most of it was written pretty quickly as commissions for radio or as occasional music. As to its conservative qualities, it's not really surprising given the outlook of most of the authorities who were commissioning the work (including the BBC), and also given that the period covering the supposed high point of light music production was the inter-war period and the decade or so after the second war. It's not surprising that there is a strong patriotic element given that a fair amount of this music will have been written either with war as a looming prospect or a recent memory (or in fact as propaganda music during the war). Nostalgia is understandable when it is for a way of life that is threatened or has been threatened with complete destruction.

As to your last sentence, don't you think that there is an awful lot of occasional music written by not-first-rank composers going back to the C18 at least which would have been every bit as unchallenging as this light music? Music such as the Sarti quoted in Don Giovanni or Feld-parti music? Then as now commissioners (aristocratic or royal) would be quite happy to have their 'complacency preconceptions' confirmed.

[Caliban]

... nor me from D'Anglebert or Brumel.

[Ferretfancy]

I was travelling on Saturday, so I did not hear the BAL. However I did catch the recommended examples on yesterday's Classical Collection, two very dull pieces by Eric Coates. Surely they could have done better than that, even by drawing on other better works by him. I don't have any dislike of light music, and play the excellent Hyperion discs from time to time,along with a few other compilations, and there is much more enjoyable music there than in the selection we heard yesterday.

[Alf-Prufrock]

I suppose somebody has to say it, so I do.

I am glad that the heavy music is back with us (or do I mean 'dark music'?)

Actually I do own all five Hyperion discs alluded to above, so I can listen appreciatively to light music (though I think the performances could be vastly more effective and engaging), but once again BBC over-exposure has done a genre a disservice, I think. Its essential conventionality and even banality gets thrust into the foreground. At least with me.

(Takes cover.)

[Ferretfancy]

Alf-Prufrock

No need to take cover! I think that for some of us ancients the light music genre was so much part of our radio youth that it was part of our childhood learning process, to be heard with a touch of nostalgia now and again. It was probably my first introduction to what an orchestra sounded like before I moved on to what my benighted but much loved parents called " The highbrow stuff"
If you grew up with programmes like Grand Hotel or Music While You Work, possibly featuring Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler, you'll know what I mean.

[aeolium]

once again BBC over-exposure has done a genre a disservice, I think

I agree - I think CotW and perhaps a couple of concerts would have been sufficient, but there was definitely overkill (and crazy to have a simultaneous broadcast with R2).

[Alf-Prufrock]

I wish to modify my message above a little. It seems too strong in the light of day. I do enjoy light music, especially from those composers who display originality as I see it. I like Eric Coates (but not all - his extended pieces often seem too long to me) and Ronald Binge, and dear old Ernest Tomlinson has done sterling work (and is still doing it, I hear). It is just that so many of the pieces by lesser composers lack any real daring and sparkiness. Too many pieces this last weekend came across one after the other as smooth, unexciting both melodically and harmonically, and safe as a row of council houses. They did each other a disservice, I fear.

But to assuage the slight feeling of guilt I feel, I have just listened to Binge's The Watermill - a minor masterpiece and certainly well out of the ordinary. It soothes one's disturbed spirit.