Radio 3: In Tune Mixtapes

Posted by: Ebor on 08 June 2018

At 5pm every weekday, Radio 3 are broadcasting half and hour of specially 'curated' [sic] music, sometimes with a general theme, sometimes not. I must admit I thought it something of a gimmick when I first heard it trailed, but I've had to eat my words a bit having listened to a few. Inevitably it's a bit of a mixed bag, but I've discovered a few new composers and pieces of music as a result, which is always fun. They have the last months'-worth on the website to listen to (though I suspect only for UK-dwellers - sorry):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programm...ykj4/episodes/player

I particularly enjoyed the Music for Meditation and Music for Study, but there's good stuff in many of the others too.

Mark

Posted on: 09 June 2018 by Massimo Bertola

Perhaps a little off-topic, but I remember when, in 2000, I was spending a few days in Oxford and discovered ClassicFM.

I was, then, a bit shocked by the fact that for the first time in my life a Radio station featured only parts from classic compositions. I had never experienced that on Italian radio, where the classic channel (RAI Auditorium) only sent, and sends, full compositions (in uncompressed FM format, fishing from an inexhaustible catalogue of live concerts too). 

Now 'appetizer music' seems to be becoming the standard, selected (by who?) playlists and 'curated' selections are taking the place that once whole concerts had. I maybe a man from 20th century with traces of 19th, and it very luckily is so, since my breeding and studies, but I see this – as I see the invasive trend of Amazon, iTunes and slowly all others having an internet platform to follow Spotify, Tidal and the sort – to feed us pre-chosen, pre-chewed, pre-digested bits of everything.

If it's a way to introduce inexpert people to the vastness of the last 5 centuries' Fine Music, a blessing; but I fear it's just one of the many ways in which Society is getting us accustomed to fragmented culture, inability to choose, indifference to complexity and to chances to decide.

This was not intended to open a discussion, and as I said is in part off-topic; so this post can die here, and everyone is free to stick with his/her opinion.

M.