Hi

I've just heard that the Reith Lectures on Radio 4 this year are going to be delivered by Daniel Barenboim on the role of music in society. They're on Fridays at 9 am (repeated Saturdays 10.15 pm), starting 7(8) April & finishing 5(6) May.

Sorry if someone's posted this already!

Jen

Thanks for letting me know.

Of course for those of us who are technically minded, the lectures will be available on the BBC's website, and if you want to keep a record, they are downloadable so can be burnt onto CD Rom .

It is perfectly legal to keep this sort of material for "study purposes"

Ooooh how exciting! Thanks for the heads up

Excellent - thanks for the notice.

I don't know whether anyone caught Rainer Hersch's wonderful series "all the right notes, not necessarily in the right order"? Peter Schickele is hilarious...

Yayyyyyyy!!! I take it people have heard the trailer for it? Very funny stuff

I will be burning a CD and listening to it while "revising"...

Fen, no I didn't - sounds good!!

And they are going to podcast it I believe!! Fantastic! Will be able to listen to it whilst on the treadmill at the gym

Ooooh really? Now that's worth knowing, itunes can download podcasts automatically can't it. I wonder what it will be filed under, I can never find anything on there...

Filed under 'podcasts'

And yes. Just subscribe and it will download (and update if necessary) when you either load itunes or plug in your ipod

I looked under podcasts of course but couldn't find them still new at itunes. Have you found them? What did you search for? I think I searched Reith, Barenboim, BBC... I forget what else.

Just listened to the first one. Very entertaining and interesting.

There is a transcription HERE but you can listen again by clicking on the link on the same page. Better to listen of course than to just read it.

Interesting also to hear the questions, some quite famous audience members!

No 2 is on now

Listen here

....just listened to the second one. I wasn't sure about the choice of presenter after the first one, but now I'm warming to the idea ...or maybe I found this one more relevant...certainly very entertaining!

Yes, Muzak gets up my nose too (or should that be gets down my ears!). Hate it!!

Interesting thought about concert halls playing it too!! Avery Fisher Hall plays a tone row!

In the first lecture somebody asked a question about improvisation and Baremboim's answer completely missed the pojnt, in that he was referring to impro in the context of interpretation whereas the questioner (a jazz musician) meant compositional/jazz impro. Hmm.

While I like a lot of what Baremboim is saying, I think he lacks a certain amount of knowledge as to what really goes on in at least some schools music. I also think he disregards the fact that Western classical music, which is pretty much the only music he's referring to, represents a very small part of the musical history of the world. Surely some people were cultured and moral in the ways he approves of before the onset of Western classical music - what about the ancient Greeks, for example? Or the Old Testament Jews? Or the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Chinese?

He's also totally down on muzak and by implication radio like Classic Fm, but for all he knows Classic Fm is an accessible way in to classical music for large numbers of people who may well be alienated by Radio 3 or too shy to go to a classical concert. And OK, Barenboim doesn't like the idea of people relaxing to classical music they don't intellectually understand, but does he really have the right to judge their experience? How does he know how much the music is or isn't acting on their deeper selves?

Also I cringed a bit at his aspersive remark anout people who cough in concerts. For heavens sake, it all gets so precious! In Mozart's day it was considered a major success if most of the audience didn't walk out halfway through, and if they shut up at all you had a hit on your hands!

If you suddenly develop a wild tickling in your throat and haven't time to get out of the hall before letting rip with a massive (or a subtle but audible) cough, do you really deserve to have the angry glares of pained musicians levelled at you?

Hmm...

Violinia

Quite often those who cough at concerts are like me, who have asthma and are allergic to perfume. Now if they were to ban audience members from wearing perfumes there would be uproar, but I bet there would be less coughing.