A Happy New Year to all fellow MBs. Welcome to my 4th Annual Survey of Classical Music on Radio 3 outlining the music broadcast in 2012
As I’ve had a fair bit of time on my hands today and was updating the totals everyday during the last 2 weeks with the help of the iplayer, I’ve managed to compile the results more quickly than usual
For those who weren’t familiar with the survey methods outlined I’ve used here please see the brief resume I prepared in my posting on these Boards at the beginning of January 2011.
Overall Observations
That Schubertfest has naturally skewered the figures this year. So I’ve removed the Schubert works/extracts c1200! that were broadcast during the ‘fest’ from Schubert’s overall total and the total Schubert symphonies broadcast. Thus the survey this year is over 357.5 days. This accounts for 2.3% of the year. This and the Mozartfest in 2011 should be taken into account in the overall results for each composer.
1. Anniversary composers
An excellent year for Debussy, and to a lesser extent Delius and Giovanni Gabrieli, though with the exception of a broadcast of A Village Romeo & Juliet, the amount of Delius nosedived in the last 3 or so months of the year. In typical current R3 fashion the other anniversary composers were treated with less or minimal interest.
2. General observations
The composers who seem to have done well are those who wrote a fair number of short works and/or whose music can be easily cut into chunks (surprise, surprise!). After a decline in 2011, Early Music bounced back, though the strange decline in the amount of Monteverdi broadcast continued (even SMP who used to feature it regularly on Breakfast no longer does so with such frequency, is she under orders?) The narrowing of repertoire towards the mainstream composers seems to be continuing. Many composers are represented by a small proportion of their output for example: Over 36% of the Holst broadcast consists of The Planets. Over 60% of the Bernstein consists of either extracts from West Side Story or Candide. Romeo & Juliet and the Classical Symphony account for 27% of the Prokofiev. The majority of the Parry is either I was Glad, Jerusalem or chunks from the Songs of Farewell. All the Wiren except one consists of a chunk from or the complete Serenade for Strings. British music is still very much hit and miss. Elgar and Britten did particularly well, but much of their total consists of the ‘lighter’ side or better known works. RVW had a better year but his large choral works are still largely ignored. Poor Arnold seems to have been relegated to the role of ‘light’ side. Some British composers remained in the doldrums, Rubbra, Rawsthorne, Tippett, Simpson, though Tippett improved marginally it was his accessible works that were almost exclusively featured. Scandinavian music is still dominated by the big 3, though with a decline for both Sibelius & Grieg American classical music had yet another poor year, with the its music being represented by an increasingly smaller number of composers and works. As reported last year composers such as Hindemith, Henze, Honegger, Rihm, Penderecki, Sessions, Carter, Tippett & Milhaud continue to do poorly or are ignored altogether, Henze and Carter’s deaths produced only a small handful of works in tribute, and if they hadn’t have died, the amount of works broadcast by them wouldn’t have reached 5! The Stravinsky case highlighted last year was still true, with a further slight decline and a tendency to concentrate on the well known works, but with anything post 1951 being virtually ignored.
3. Composers ignored by R3 in 2012
These included composers such as: Atterberg, Eisler, Roy Harris, K A Hartmann, Kirchner, Kokkonen, Krommer, Lachner, Ohana, Petrassi, Rouse, Rosenberg (no single work or extract of one of Sweden’s greatest composers has been played in the 4 years of my survey), Robert Simpson, Toch & Williamson.
4. Popular Repertoire Increase
This worrying continuing trend continued in 2012. Around 2/3rds of the warhorses did even better this year. Top of the list were the 93 Slavonic Dances and 93 Debussy Preludes, with considerable increases for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G & La Valse, Debussy Prelude de l’apres midi d’un faune’, The Planets, Espana, the Hebrides and Egmont Overtures and Schubert Impromptu’s (not counting the Schubertfest!)
5. The Symphony
I decided to continue to monitor the number of complete symphonies broadcast, as this shows quite well the shift from playing complete works to bleeding chunks. There were a total of 1091 complete symphonies broadcast down 40 on last year, which represents just 3.0% of the total classical works/extracts broadcast. Once again a fair proportion is made up of shorter 18th century works. Below is a list of the composers who had 10 or more complete symphonies/sinfoniettas/sinfonias broadcast in 2012.
F J HAYDN 103
MOZART W A 101
BEETHOVEN 77
SIBELIUS 55
MENDELSSOHN 45
TCHAIKOVSKY 44
SCHUBERT 40
DVORAK 37
PROKOFIEV 33
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 30
SCHUMANN 29
BRAHMS 27
BRUCKNER 27
MAHLER 27
SHOSTAKOVICH 27
BACH CPE 18
ABEL 16
STRAVINSKY 12
ELGAR 11
NIELSEN 11
RACHMANINOV 11
The Mendelssohn now includes the String Symphonies, though there weren’t many of them broadcast. A couple of notable composers who didn’t have any complete symphonies broadcast include Arnold, Harris, Roussel, Rubbra, R Simpson & Tippett The Schubert total does not include the Schubertfest.
6. The Results*
There were over 36,000 works/extracts performed in 2011, including the Schubertfest (a 10% increase on 2011) by over 2250 composers which is slightly more than in 2011. There were around 410 composers who featured in 2012 that didn’t feature in 2009-11 and around 1900 composers who featured in 2009-11 that didn’t feature in 2012. However over 950 of the composers featured in 2012 are represented by one extract/work only (up on previous years) and only a little over 370 composers had more than 10 works/extracts broadcast (slightly up on 2011). The amount of non-classical music broadcast in programmes that are mainly considered to be classical was up on last year, with a notable increase in ‘traditional’ music.
*The results do not include regular jazz or world music programmes, though I include the ‘classical’ music pieces featured in ‘Late Junction’, the proportion of which has remained fairly constant.
There were 56 composers who had over 100 works/extracts broadcast on R3 in 2011, slightly down on 2011 but roughly on a par with 2009-10. These are listed below in descending order with the 2010/11 positions and the % increase or decrease compared to 2010 and 2011 indicated (the minus indicates a percentage decrease). The figures for Schubert do not include the nearly 1200 works/extracts played during the Schubertfest and as mentioned above 3% of normal R3 broadcast time was lost to the ‘fest’ .
Continued in posting below ......
As I’ve had a fair bit of time on my hands today and was updating the totals everyday during the last 2 weeks with the help of the iplayer, I’ve managed to compile the results more quickly than usual
For those who weren’t familiar with the survey methods outlined I’ve used here please see the brief resume I prepared in my posting on these Boards at the beginning of January 2011.
Overall Observations
That Schubertfest has naturally skewered the figures this year. So I’ve removed the Schubert works/extracts c1200! that were broadcast during the ‘fest’ from Schubert’s overall total and the total Schubert symphonies broadcast. Thus the survey this year is over 357.5 days. This accounts for 2.3% of the year. This and the Mozartfest in 2011 should be taken into account in the overall results for each composer.
1. Anniversary composers
An excellent year for Debussy, and to a lesser extent Delius and Giovanni Gabrieli, though with the exception of a broadcast of A Village Romeo & Juliet, the amount of Delius nosedived in the last 3 or so months of the year. In typical current R3 fashion the other anniversary composers were treated with less or minimal interest.
2. General observations
The composers who seem to have done well are those who wrote a fair number of short works and/or whose music can be easily cut into chunks (surprise, surprise!). After a decline in 2011, Early Music bounced back, though the strange decline in the amount of Monteverdi broadcast continued (even SMP who used to feature it regularly on Breakfast no longer does so with such frequency, is she under orders?) The narrowing of repertoire towards the mainstream composers seems to be continuing. Many composers are represented by a small proportion of their output for example: Over 36% of the Holst broadcast consists of The Planets. Over 60% of the Bernstein consists of either extracts from West Side Story or Candide. Romeo & Juliet and the Classical Symphony account for 27% of the Prokofiev. The majority of the Parry is either I was Glad, Jerusalem or chunks from the Songs of Farewell. All the Wiren except one consists of a chunk from or the complete Serenade for Strings. British music is still very much hit and miss. Elgar and Britten did particularly well, but much of their total consists of the ‘lighter’ side or better known works. RVW had a better year but his large choral works are still largely ignored. Poor Arnold seems to have been relegated to the role of ‘light’ side. Some British composers remained in the doldrums, Rubbra, Rawsthorne, Tippett, Simpson, though Tippett improved marginally it was his accessible works that were almost exclusively featured. Scandinavian music is still dominated by the big 3, though with a decline for both Sibelius & Grieg American classical music had yet another poor year, with the its music being represented by an increasingly smaller number of composers and works. As reported last year composers such as Hindemith, Henze, Honegger, Rihm, Penderecki, Sessions, Carter, Tippett & Milhaud continue to do poorly or are ignored altogether, Henze and Carter’s deaths produced only a small handful of works in tribute, and if they hadn’t have died, the amount of works broadcast by them wouldn’t have reached 5! The Stravinsky case highlighted last year was still true, with a further slight decline and a tendency to concentrate on the well known works, but with anything post 1951 being virtually ignored.
3. Composers ignored by R3 in 2012
These included composers such as: Atterberg, Eisler, Roy Harris, K A Hartmann, Kirchner, Kokkonen, Krommer, Lachner, Ohana, Petrassi, Rouse, Rosenberg (no single work or extract of one of Sweden’s greatest composers has been played in the 4 years of my survey), Robert Simpson, Toch & Williamson.
4. Popular Repertoire Increase
This worrying continuing trend continued in 2012. Around 2/3rds of the warhorses did even better this year. Top of the list were the 93 Slavonic Dances and 93 Debussy Preludes, with considerable increases for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G & La Valse, Debussy Prelude de l’apres midi d’un faune’, The Planets, Espana, the Hebrides and Egmont Overtures and Schubert Impromptu’s (not counting the Schubertfest!)
5. The Symphony
I decided to continue to monitor the number of complete symphonies broadcast, as this shows quite well the shift from playing complete works to bleeding chunks. There were a total of 1091 complete symphonies broadcast down 40 on last year, which represents just 3.0% of the total classical works/extracts broadcast. Once again a fair proportion is made up of shorter 18th century works. Below is a list of the composers who had 10 or more complete symphonies/sinfoniettas/sinfonias broadcast in 2012.
F J HAYDN 103
MOZART W A 101
BEETHOVEN 77
SIBELIUS 55
MENDELSSOHN 45
TCHAIKOVSKY 44
SCHUBERT 40
DVORAK 37
PROKOFIEV 33
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS 30
SCHUMANN 29
BRAHMS 27
BRUCKNER 27
MAHLER 27
SHOSTAKOVICH 27
BACH CPE 18
ABEL 16
STRAVINSKY 12
ELGAR 11
NIELSEN 11
RACHMANINOV 11
The Mendelssohn now includes the String Symphonies, though there weren’t many of them broadcast. A couple of notable composers who didn’t have any complete symphonies broadcast include Arnold, Harris, Roussel, Rubbra, R Simpson & Tippett The Schubert total does not include the Schubertfest.
6. The Results*
There were over 36,000 works/extracts performed in 2011, including the Schubertfest (a 10% increase on 2011) by over 2250 composers which is slightly more than in 2011. There were around 410 composers who featured in 2012 that didn’t feature in 2009-11 and around 1900 composers who featured in 2009-11 that didn’t feature in 2012. However over 950 of the composers featured in 2012 are represented by one extract/work only (up on previous years) and only a little over 370 composers had more than 10 works/extracts broadcast (slightly up on 2011). The amount of non-classical music broadcast in programmes that are mainly considered to be classical was up on last year, with a notable increase in ‘traditional’ music.
*The results do not include regular jazz or world music programmes, though I include the ‘classical’ music pieces featured in ‘Late Junction’, the proportion of which has remained fairly constant.
There were 56 composers who had over 100 works/extracts broadcast on R3 in 2011, slightly down on 2011 but roughly on a par with 2009-10. These are listed below in descending order with the 2010/11 positions and the % increase or decrease compared to 2010 and 2011 indicated (the minus indicates a percentage decrease). The figures for Schubert do not include the nearly 1200 works/extracts played during the Schubertfest and as mentioned above 3% of normal R3 broadcast time was lost to the ‘fest’ .
Continued in posting below ......
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