Re: W-H-RB on the Internet

["A. Joseph Ross" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

On 17 Nov 99,  Mark Shneyder wrote:

> Classical stations ask their target demo what they want
> to hear(and they ask them regularly and often), the 
> answer is almost always -- calm and soothing music. 
> Choral pieces,operas or chants hardly qualify and test
> extremely low.

I like calm and soothing music, too.  My tastes have always tended towards 
Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and their contemporaries.  I 
have a lot less interest in most music post-Beethoven.   But some choral 
pieces are soothing, too.  In fact, so are the Gregorian chants that WHRB 
plays.  I wouldn't mind them if they stopped sooner.

I don't object at all to WCRB eliminating from its repetoire a lot of 
unlistenable stuff by Schoenberg and Shostakovitch which WHRB always seems 
to be playing whenever I tune in (unless they're playing their hour of 
Gregorian chants.).  What I object to is the attempt to emulate the format 
of pop-stations, playing a few pieces over and over.  A few years ago, 
they played Beethoven's 8th symphony almost every afternoon -- for awhile, 
they played just the first movement, but apparently their audience 
objected to that.  It was always a favorite of mine, and I was getting 
sidk of hearing it.  Now, they almost never play it.  But "Homage to Queen 
Victoria" is played ad nauseam.  They are even more obsessed lately with 
the Concerto Achinque by Tomasso Albinone.  (I have no idea whether I'm 
spelling that right!).  It's a good piece, but not as often as they play 
it!


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 A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                 617.367.0468
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