Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Silly little snippets

On KVOD, the Denver, Colorado classical music radio station, their format is to play a piece, name the piece that's just been played, play a snippet, have a station announcement, play a snippet, then announce and play the next piece. Perhaps it's me, but those snippets -- short, 5-12 second clips extracted from some light classical piece somewhere -- are annoying.

Image the setting. You are listening to some intense piece of chamber music, say a late Beethoven quartet and it reaches its climactic ending. The announcer says the piece, then the music moment is broken with this piece of twaddle which breaks the spell. Silence is better.

I'm not sure why they do it other than the use up some seconds to balance out their timing or some such. But it's annoying

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Number Nine - the big loser

After a break of more than a month, I'm back with my constant complaint about long music. Poor old Beethoven. If he had only known to shorten his 9th. Had he, it would be played more. It's now after election day and yet KVOD, in Denver, has only broadcast the 9th 3 times this year. Just Three!
Here are the numbers:

Symphony No 1: 25 times

Symphony No 2: 25 times

Symphony No 3: 18 times

Symphony No 4: 19 times

Symphony No 5: 24 times

Symphony No 6: 24 times

Symphony No 7: 23 times

Symphony No 8: 24 times

Symphony No 9: 3 times

Doesn't that seem odd?