A Merry Christmas, Bach

My friend Lavengro in Spain, often excoriates the BBC for its atrocious spelling here and it's lack of judgement when it comes to listing in importance news events here
Those criticisms have to be measured against the Corporation's outstanding, and perhaps unrivalled, output.

Since 7 pm  last Friday for 24 hours a day, BBC Radio Three has been broadcasting  J.S.Bach's entire musical output. The celebration will end on Christmas Day  with Parts 4-6 of the  Christmas  Oratorio BWV 248  "Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben; Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen; Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde schnaubenall .

It's difficult to think of any other broadcaster brave enough to turn over its entire schedule to single composer-many of whose works are difficult and complex.

Comments

[Peter Harvey]

Tony,

The point is that at one time the BBC could both broadcast good music and be a byword (literally) for good English.

I don't know about the BBC, but Catalan and Spanish radio have serious classical music. Every night Spanish radio has an hour of chromatic music and there is also no shortage of flamenco, which is meaningless to the uninitiated and fascinating to the aficionados (I don't understand it).

Peter (Lavengro)

[Tony Hatfield]

Peter,
I agree, and of course it's no excuse, but the Beeb's output has increased by a factor of n since the website was created. Your criticism seems to be limited to that part of the output!
t

[Peter Harvey]

The BBC’s web site says in various places (news and travel) that Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia is a cathedral. It is not, and by doing this the Beeb is adding to the mystification of the considerable number of tourists here who ask for directions to the cathedral and later find themselves standing right outside – the cathedral!

Peter

[BrianB]

Tony, I agree entirely about the fantastic feast of Bach being provided by the BBC: what unalloyed pleasure, and all for a small fraction of the anyway modest licence fee!

Radio 3 has its down-market aberrations these days, but overall it's utterly indispensable for serious music. It far surpasses even New York's WQXR, itself pretty good (owned by the NY Times, of course).

And next year we can look forward to a feast of Mozart!

Cheers
Brian
http://www.barder.com/ephems/