Music
Who listens?
Peter Phillips
Since psephology seems to be a legiti- mate part of the news at the moment I thought I would undertake my own poll of how people are getting along with Nicholas Kenyon's New Radio Three. Admittedly my canvas only covered professional musi- cians, whom we know may not be quite normal even in the matter of listening to music broadcasts; yet surprisingly not one of them — out of about 20 asked — was able to give any kind of answer to my ques- tion, since they said that they never listen to Radio Three. This reply was customarily delivered without any animus, but also without any apparent interest. Eventually I turned to students of music in the hope of finding a less world-weary response, only to be told by the Elgar Professor of Music at Birmingham University that his pupils 'lit- erally know nothing' about the station. Do they, then, listen to Classic FM instead? Not really, he said.
The conclusion is either that these peo- ple are too busy to listen to whole pieces of classical music on the radio or that the pre- sentation of it puts them off. The first pos- sibility is highly likely, though it begs the question of who does have the time; the second may be endlessly redefined. 'Too much talk' is the standard complaint, one which Mr Kenyon must have heard many times, which is to say that the mildly educa- tional element involved in programme- making turns some listeners away. Radio Four-style chattiness, I found, led my cor- respondents to listen to Radio Four, where the topics are more varied and the han- dling of them more professional.
At worst the educational element still consists of academics and other knowl- edgeable people talking down to their audi- ence. There is a particularly off-putting tone of voice that used to characterise Radio Three broadcasts more than it does now, what was once termed the Cultural Elite Rampant, which seems to imply that we all ought to be interested in serious music as presented by the BBC, and not to be is to be somehow inferior. It is the old impression of cultural cliqueyness, so jar- ring in the current climate. Mr Kenyon has done a certain amount to combat this tone, but, if the results are not always lively, if they do not ring true, if the presenters with posh voices are still trying to divert us with their lack-lustre anecdotes, it is because the nettle has not been well and truly grasped.
The nettle is the unease which many people feel these days towards heavy-duty Western culture, especially when it is pre- sented in an old-fashioned way. Museums of every sort have this problem, but music has it much worse. The National Gallery can put on exhibitions of 15th-century or (crucially) 20th-century masters from sev- eral contrasting traditions and be sure to draw good crowds. Music-planners do not have this luxury: the mainstream of interest in classical music is much more narrowly based. The problem this presents to Keny- on is that in essence he can either try to create new areas of interest and risk having very small listening figures, or find new ways of presenting safe material, which can appear over-eager whilst doing nothing more than marking time.
Kenyon has tinkered imaginatively within the framework which he inherited, but there is an argument that something far more radical is needed. This will inevitably involve confronting the question of whether Radio Three should exist in its current form, which at the moment the authorities will do anything to avoid. Of course this debate could potentially destroy something valuable, but I do not believe it can be permanently shelved. After all we are talking about a public service here; and it is still not clear to me who really cares about it.
Previous page
