Sleepy time composers

I guess I'm not surprised that when some stations broadcast symphonies by Mahler and Bruckner, they tend to broadcast in the late hours. The symphonies are long........, so I guess they can be used to put some people to sleep. Why enjoy music, after all, when you can sleep.

Here's a table of when symphonies were broadcast on Denver's All-Classical 24 Hour KVOD
station. Each number represents the number of symphonies broadcast from January 1, 2003
through the end of June, 2006.

Time	Mahler	Bruckner
12 AM	1
1 AM	15	9
2 AM	31	18
3 AM
4 AM	1
5 AM
6 AM
7 AM
8 AM
9 AM
10 AM
11 AM		1
12 PM	3	1
1 PM
2 PM	5	2
3 PM
4 PM
5 PM		1
6 PM
7 PM	18	1
8 PM	6	6
9 PM	32	21
10 PM		2
11 PM		2

This is pretty much what one would expect, I guess. Perhaps it's too bad I always
fall asleep before midnight.

Denver says goodbye to the late Romantics

KVOD, "The Voice of Classical Music in Colorado", seems to shunning the late Romantic symphonists, particularly Mahler and Bruckner.

I'm sure one of their music programmers must have thought at some time "Couldn't these guys write shorter stuff?" Well, they didn't, so they don't get programmed much any more.

Here's some data:

Symphonies Broadcast by	2004	2005	1st half 2006	Projection for end of 2006
Mahler	44	26	6	12
Bruckner	25	14	3	6

It sure looks pretty bad for those fan's of these two late 19th century giants. It's particularly bad for Mahler given the great success of the Boulder Mahler Festival.

I should note that some other stations aren't this bad. New York's WQXR looks on track with Mahler with about 32-34 broadcasts of his symphonies, somewhat less for Bruckner. KING out of Seattle looks like it might broadcast more Mahler in 2006 than 2005, similarly with Bruckner.

I guess it's just too bad, but "Quality must be quick!".

Oh, it should also be remembered that KVOD broadcast 24 hours a day. Still not enough time for long symphonies from the masters.

A Symphony coincidence.

Yesterday, for the second time in 2006 KVOD played a symphony "Il Comista" in C by the composer Johann Vanhal. Frankly I had never heard of him. WikiPedia has a brief article about him. He wrote 73 symphonies and some were compared favorably with Haydn. What brought Herr Vanhal to mind is that he is one of the four composers touched on by Robert Greenberg in his Symphonies lectures as one of the "Classical Masters". I just listened to this lecture today, hence the coincidence.

Vanhal isn't played much on any of stations, with only 110 discrete broadcasts since about October of 2003. He seems to be a favorite of CL24, the Minneapolis PBS station, though. However, they seem to feel that only certain movements of his "Symphony" are worth playing. I noticed that they give no number to his symphony, but with 73 under his belt it might make a difference. So here is a minor composer, considered a "Classical Master" by a major musical lecturer, who only gets fragments of his works broadcast. CL24's tastes tend toward the really short, so let's only listen to certain movements of a piece of art, rather than the whole thing. It's like the Louvre covering all but the smile on the Mona Lisa -- why would you want to look at the rest anyway?

Quality must be quick, again.

So much for long symphonies

Continuing with long symphonies not being broadcast on FM anymore.

KVOD in Denver broadcast Mahler Symphony #3 7 times in 2004, twice in 2003 and not at all by this time in 2006. Why? Probably because it's about 94 minutes long. It doesn't matter that it's a wonderful symphony that deserves a listening public, it's just too long.

KVOD is a publicly supported FM station that fund-raises a few times each year. It doesn't have advertisements, but has constant fillers of 10-20 second musical snippets and or station announcements. Yet, it still seems to feel that the audience isn't mature enough to listen to anything substantial or of any length. Three of top 4 most frequently broadcast pieces are by Ravel, "Allborada del gracioso" (#1), "Le Tombeau de Couperin" (#2) and "La Valse" (#4). Vaughn-Williams "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is # 3. All fine pieces but not really substantial. It seems that classical music broadcasting continues a slide from quality to mediocrity.

Time over quality

I've always view Beethoven as arguably the greatest symphonist. Yes, Mozart was a wonder, Brahms unbeatable, Mahler incomparable, Shostakovich profound, etc, etc. But Beethoven! What can one say?

Now you would think that his symphonies would be broadcast a lot on the radio and you would be right. However, when it comes time to see what Beethoven symphonies get broadcast, things change.

Symphony No 1 in C, opus 21 was written in 1800 and is a nice, pleasant work that marked Beethoven as a symphonist. His Opus 125 Symphony #9 in d, the famous "Choral", was written between 1822 and 1824 is a masterpiece. It's mature Beethoven and it was earthshaking. Years ago the New York radio station WQXR would end the year with a count-down of the "top 100". The last piece, the "number one piece" would be broadcast to end just at midnight in New York. It was always Beethoven's 9th.

Today, however, the 9th isn't broadcast much. Using data from my www.classicalfmradio.org's 'Interesting report on broadcast symphonies', one finds that by mid-June 2006, the 9th symphony has been broadcast on the Denver station KVOD only 3 times in all of 2006, while the nice little symphony #1 has been broadcast 15 times. WQXR in New York has 8 broadcasts for #1 and 3 for #9 and KING in Seattle has 7 broadcasts for #1 and also 3 for #9.

Why the disparity. The "Choral" was what was performed with the wall fell in Berlin! It's almost
featured time and time again. Yet, classical FM radio stations don't seem to think the 9th is worth broadcasting. I'm guessing, but I think they think it's TOO LONG. Serious music, to be broadcast to the obviously impatient listening audience, must be short.

Quality must be quick!