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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2013 7:51:37 GMT -5
I thought that I ought to bring Roger Wright's latest BBC Radio 3 Blog entry to the attention of everyone reading ' The Third' and, of course, to other social media sites including the legendary Friends of Radio 3! If I may quote Charlie's first comment directly: [/i][/quote] BBC - The Radio 3 Blog - A new schedule for Radio 3 at the weekendAny thoughts, french frank and Neil?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2013 15:13:24 GMT -5
Hmm - something needs to be done about this "jazz." What a debased and horrid thing it is! I will therefore add in due course my considered response to those of the highly-esteemed: Charlie, Miss Frank, and Mr. McG. It needs to be sat upon wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head!
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Post by ahinton on Sept 17, 2013 17:11:47 GMT -5
Hmm - something needs to be done about this "jazz." What a debased and horrid thing it is! I will therefore add in due course my considered response to those of the highly-esteemed: Charlie, Miss Frank, and Mr. McG. It needs to be sat upon wherever and whenever it raises its ugly head! Why?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2013 20:03:19 GMT -5
"Why" Mr. H.? Because as Arbiter has so rightly pointed out we must have a care for the youth of the Nation and for their future! Their education! Their characters! Their simple straightness! Surely you would not wish to see green and pleasant England become a land of sprawling and prancing negroes?
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Post by ahinton on Sept 18, 2013 1:12:26 GMT -5
"Why" Mr. H.? Because as Arbiter has so rightly pointed out we must have a care for the youth of the Nation and for their future! Their education! Their characters! Who's "Arbiter" and where has he/she "pointed out" what? Who are "we" in this context? Why must "we" have this particular care? Why one "Nation" only? What does it have to do specifically with "youth" in any case, given that jazz performers have performed at all ages over the past century or so. Their simple straightness! I didn't expect that from you! Surely you would not wish to see green and pleasant England become a land of sprawling and prancing negroes? Why only England? Not all of England is "green and pleasant" in any case. How would jazz be expected to change its appearance? The rest of your sentence merits no printable comment. So - not a word of answer yet. I wonder now why I bothered to ask. I'll content myself with mentioning just a few names at random in the (probably vain) hope that they might encourage such an answer. Joe Venuti (of whom Heifetz spoke highly), George Gershwin (much admired by Schönberg), Art Tatum (much admired by Horowitz and Rachmaninov), Stéphane Grappelli (who worked with Menuhin), Oscar Peterson, Nikolai Kapustin, Richard Rodney Bennett (composer of operas, symphonies et al). Over to you (or not)...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2013 2:43:51 GMT -5
I should perhaps confess that when I go clubbing here in London, Sydney, the dance floor is often packed with sprawling and prancing blacks and other colours, even the occasional red Charlie! As a scientist, it is worth pointing out that from an evolutionary perspective, ahinton, we all come out of Africa anyway, and that a hundred thousand years ago, almost all our ancestors were black anyway. I probably have about 2.5% Neanderthal DNA, too, and for the record, my Neanderthal ancestors may actually have been more white than black at the time. As for Australia, for example, it is worth adding that the Indigenous Population of Australians migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago. Wikipedia - Indigenous AustraliansBack on topic and jazz on BBC Radio 3, jazz is a music genre that originated at the beginning of the twentieth century, arguably earlier, within the African-American communities of the Southern United States. Its roots lie in the combining by African-Americans of certain European harmony and form elements, with their existing African-based music. Its African musical basis is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day, jazz has also incorporated elements from popular music especially, in its early days, from American popular music. Wikipedia - JazzIn 1936, Theodor Adorno, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of Philosophy, wrote an article about jazz music, ' Über Jazz[/b]', although it should be noted that in the 'thirties, jazz was frequently used to refer to all popular music. Adorno launched a polemic against the blooming entertainment industry, arguing that popular culture was a system by which society was controlled through a top-down creation of standardised culture that intensified the commodification of artistic expression. In the post-war period, the Frankfurt School's argument, that most of culture helps to keep its audience compliant with capitalism, had an explosive impact. Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme. Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culture from the right. From both perspectives — left and right — the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasised moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects. Arguably, it remains influential today. From a sociological point of view, I think that there is a sense in which the emergence of popular culture in the nineteenth century generated Friedrich Nietzsche in opposition to that popular culture, Sydney. Much as I admire the Frankfurt School's analysis in the twentieth century, I do not agree with Adorno's take on jazz, pop music or the consumer society in general. What do you reckon, ahinton?
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Post by ahinton on Sept 18, 2013 3:20:09 GMT -5
I should perhaps confess that when I go clubbing here in London, Sydney, the dance floor is often packed with sprawling and prancing blacks and other colours, even the occasional red Charlie! As a scientist, it is worth pointing out that from an evolutionary perspective, ahinton, we all come out of Africa anyway, and that a hundred thousand years ago, almost all our ancestors were black anyway. I probably have about 2.5% Neanderthal DNA, too, and for the record, my Neanderthal ancestors may actually have been more white than black at the time. As for Australia, for example, it is worth adding that the Indigenous Population of Australians migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago. Wikipedia - Indigenous AustraliansBack on topic and jazz on BBC Radio 3, jazz is a music genre that originated at the beginning of the twentieth century, arguably earlier, within the African-American communities of the Southern United States. Its roots lie in the combining by African-Americans of certain European harmony and form elements, with their existing African-based music. Its African musical basis is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day, jazz has also incorporated elements from popular music especially, in its early days, from American popular music. Wikipedia - JazzIn 1936, Theodor Adorno, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of Philosophy, wrote an article about jazz music, ' Über Jazz[/b]', although it should be noted that in the 'thirties, jazz was frequently used to refer to all popular music. Adorno launched a polemic against the blooming entertainment industry, arguing that popular culture was a system by which society was controlled through a top-down creation of standardised culture that intensified the commodification of artistic expression. In the post-war period, the Frankfurt School's argument, that most of culture helps to keep its audience compliant with capitalism, had an explosive impact. Adorno saw the culture industry as an arena in which critical tendencies or potentialities were eliminated. He argued that the culture industry, which produced and circulated cultural commodities through the mass media, manipulated the population. Popular culture was identified as a reason why people become passive; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture made people docile and content, no matter how terrible their economic circumstances. The differences among cultural goods make them appear different, but they are in fact just variations on the same theme. Adorno's analysis allowed for a critique of mass culture from the left which balanced the critique of popular culture from the right. From both perspectives — left and right — the nature of cultural production was felt to be at the root of social and moral problems resulting from the consumption of culture. However, while the critique from the right emphasised moral degeneracy ascribed to sexual and racial influences within popular culture, Adorno located the problem not with the content, but with the objective realities of the production of mass culture and its effects. Arguably, it remains influential today. From a sociological point of view, I think that there is a sense in which the emergence of popular culture in the nineteenth century generated Friedrich Nietzsche in opposition to that popular culture, Sydney. Much as I admire the Frankfurt School's analysis in the twentieth century, I do not agree with Adorno's take on jazz, pop music or the consumer society in general. What do you reckon, ahinton? [/quote] What I reckon is firstly that you don't need to remind me of where most of us originated from (particularly as it was not me who made the remark that prompted you to refer to this) and secondly we have absorbed musics from all over the world increasingly over the past century or more and have access to so very much more of it now that singling out "jazz" - which is a large subject in and of itself - for the kind of unexplained negative discriminatory implications seen above is as risible as it is distasteful.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2013 3:34:58 GMT -5
I can only offer you, ahinton, and everyone reading 'The Third' and other social media my full and unreserved apologies once again.
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Post by ahinton on Sept 18, 2013 4:47:05 GMT -5
I can only offer you, ahinton, and everyone reading ' The Third' and other social media my full and unreserved apologies once again. I see no obvious need for any apology on your part; OK, you did not need to address your observation about human origins to me and they'd better have been addressed to someone else who as made certain remarks in this thread but, otherwise, I see no problem, frankly!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2013 4:48:15 GMT -5
"Why" Mr. H.? Because as Arbiter has so rightly pointed out we must have a care for the youth of the Nation and for their future! Their education! Their characters! Who's "Arbieter|" and where has he/she "pointed out" what? . . . Mr. H! Arbiter (as in "of taste") may be found at the B.B.C. link kindly provided at the head of the current thread by the admirable kleines c. After consulting Arbiter's post, and giving due consideration to the views of Lord Reith and Percy Scholes to whom both reference is there made, perhaps you will return with an altered and dare we say more informed and considered position!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2013 5:25:05 GMT -5
My apology was for reminding you of where most of us originated from, ahinton, to which you clearly objected above. To be honest, I am not entirely sure, and when I trace my own family tree back, I tend to get lost somewhere in the Dark Ages! Once again, I can only offer you, ahinton, and everyone reading ' The Third' and other social media my full and unreserved apologies. As for Arbiter, it might be helpful for us all if I quoted him or her directly (Comment 10 on the BBC Radio 3 Blog in the link below): [/b][/i] BBC - The Radio 3 Blog - Roger Wright - A new schedule for Radio 3 at the weekendOn balance, I think that jazz had a beneficial effect on British youth over the course of the twentieth century, so I find myself in disagreement with Arbiter. A little jazz is in my view preferable to listening to too much Wagner. Nevertheless, I would still encourage everyone to try listening to at least some classical music over the course of their lifetimes, Sydney! As an introduction to young people here in London, I tend to recommend a visit to the Proms during the long summer school and university holidays, and often even take members of a local youth club to the Royal Albert Hall myself. BBC Proms
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Post by ahinton on Sept 18, 2013 6:00:33 GMT -5
Who's "Arbieter|" and where has he/she "pointed out" what? . . . Mr. H! Arbiter (as in "of taste") may be found at the B.B.C. link kindly provided at the head of the current thread by the admirable kleines c. After consulting Arbiter's post, and giving due consideration to the views of Lord Reith and Percy Scholes to whom both reference is there made, perhaps you will return with an altered and dare we say more informed and considered position! Thank you for identifying - insofar as you have - "Arbiter" - that is to say by pointing to him/her as one of the respondents to, rather than the author of, the piece to which kleines c drew attention; it would not otherwise have been at all obvious who this "Arbiter" might be or where his/her astonishing lucubrations might be located but, since we are not in any case told his real identity, he/she could surely be anyone. "Arbiter"'s post reads "It should not be forgotten that many many listeners are disgusted by "jazz." It is after all a degraded and cynical form - don't take my word for it but refer to the well-known views of Lord Reith and Percy Scholes. Therefore if you really MUST broadcast this dreadful stuff - and many would prefer that you did not - but if transatlantic pressure is irresistible, then the only appropriate "time slot" would obviously be in the dead of night. Seriously, we must think of the youth of the nation and the effect it will have upon their education and character." Why should it "not be forgotten" when no evidence has even been provided for such a bald and unadorned (not to mention unAdorno-ed) assertion? BBC Radio 3 as a whole is a minority channel to which "many many listeners" do not listen but few of those listeners who ignore it could credibly be said to be "disgusted" by it. The contention that jazz is "a cynical and degraded form" is a nonsense, not least because it makes no attempt to identify it as a "form" of what, let alone explain why or by what or whom it is allegedly "cynical and degraded". Would any of the names that I mentioned in my earlier post have seen it this way? Reith, once the DG of what was then the only broadcasting organisation in Britain and Scholes, best known as a music lexicographer, are from an earlier age and, even in their own time, they could not be regarded - nor, I imagine, did the latter even expect to be regarded - as the ultimate authoritative arbiter of musical taste. Times have changed immeasurably since their day; there are vast quantities of music lexicography and other musicology online and broadcasting worldwide has expanded to levels that Reith would almost certainly never have imagined. Jazz has changed with those times and is perhaps no longer an especially useful term nowadays given that it encompasses so much. What do you imagine "transatlantic pressure" to mean in this context and what do you believe that it might have to do with the subject? If it is supposed to suggest that pressure is being brought to bear upon one small sector of BBC by authorities in Canada, US, Mexico and the nations of Central and Southern America, it, too, is a nonsense; since when did any of those countries' governments or broadcasting organisations give orders to BBC as to what it should and shouldn't broadcast on Radio 3 and demande and expect abject compliance therewith?! The apparent implication that only "the youth of the nation" might listen to Radio 3 in general or its jazz offerings (few as they are in any case) in particular has no basis in fact. Even Reith's vision for BBC was to achieve a number of things including but not limited to education and he didn't envisage any of them as being for the exclusive benefiot of "the youth of the nation" - nor, for that matter, did he ever imagine that BBC would be listened to and watched "not only in this country but arond the world", as the venerable Nicholas Parsons would put it. Why restrict jazz broadcasts to "the dead of night"? R3 is a 24/7 channel and already assumes that there will be lisners wide awake and listening to whatever it may be offering at any time of day or night; in any case, while those who listen to it in Britain at midnight, others will be doing so - in Australia, for example, during daylight hours. This "argument" is therefore as specious as all the others that "Arbiter" presents here. Lastly, what specific "effect" would jazz in any case have, or be expected to have, on people's "education", regardless of both their age and the other kinds of music to which they listen? And, if the spectre of education must be raised, what of all the academic work on jazz and other musics that has been undertaken and disseminated by musicologists the world over? I return to the fact that, as "Arbiter"'s true identity is not revealed, his/her "disgusted, Tunbridge Wells" style of observations are arguably even less possible to take seriously than the above might alone suggest. Although I have no idea who this self-appointed "Arbiter" may, I would somehow be less than surprised to learn that you do! So there "we" are. You assumed - or perhaps at least hoped - that, having read this piece of stuff in the context in which it is published, I would "return with an altered and dare we say more informed and considered position"; well, I have "returned", I am "more informed" than previously but only on the grounds of having read the piece concerned from which you quoted and I have certainly "considered" it, probably in far more detail than it merits but, as to an "altered" position, I cannot provide that when I'd no previously expressed position to "alter" in the first place even had I otherwise been motivated to "alter" it. I trust that this meets with your expectations as a comprehensive and thought-through response to a post that I regard as either equally ill-considered or a not particularly entertaining spoof!
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Post by ahinton on Sept 18, 2013 6:04:10 GMT -5
My apology was for reminding you of where most of us originated from, ahinton, to which you clearly objected above. I didn't "object" as such; I merely sought to point out that the person to whom you would more appropriately have addressed this fact was other than me! No offence was caused so, as I said, no need for an apology!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2013 6:39:53 GMT -5
Greetings once again from kleines c. I trust that all is well with all of you. If I may nevertheless quote you directly, ahinton: '" ... What I reckon is firstly that you don't need to remind me of where most of us originated from ... " I'm sorry! To be honest, I am still not completely sure at all, although I would guess that you originate in Scotland, ahinton! On the subject of musical taste, aesthetics and subjectivity, I suspect that even the great philosopher Immanuel Kant got it wrong here. His ' Critique of Judgement' is generally considered to be the most important and influential work on aesthetics in the eighteenth century, and Kant argued that instrumental music is beautiful but ultimately trivial - compared to the other fine arts, in the sense that it does not engage the understanding sufficiently, and it lacks moral purpose. In order to display the combination of genius and taste that combines ideas and beauty, respectively, music must be combined with words, as in song and opera. Wikipedia - Aesthetics of music - 18th centuryI would argue, in contrast, that Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is not a higher artform than his other symphonies because it contains words. The words are, to my twenty-first century ear, beside the point. The point is simply the sound of the music, Sydney. Out of interest, are you also 'Arbiter' on the BBC Radio 3 Blog, Sydney Grew? As for jazz, world music and pop(ular) music on BBC Radio 3 and elsewhere, I would argue that they are not intrinsically better or worse than classical music, for example, only different. Interestingly, film music can be classical, fusion or something else entirely. I commend such an approach to everyone reading ' The Third' today!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2013 6:55:07 GMT -5
. . . Tunbridge Wells style of observations . . . Not a million miles from Sissinghurst, Tunbridge Wells . . . . . . if the spectre of education must be raised, what of all the academic work on jazz and other musics that has been undertaken and disseminated by musicologists the world over? Be on your guard Mr. H! Constantly and everywhere! Persons of that type are not at all beyond attempting a surreptitious "brain-washing."
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