Simply Educational

Today I was listening to a radio station here which goes by the name of Symphony FM. It's a sort of Singaporean Radio 3, I suppose, playing what might broadly be termed classical music. Its existence clearly represents a golden opportunity to educate the youth of the nation, well those few likely to be interested, and folks like myself who know a little and would like to find out more, in such music.

The fact that it fails to do so almost wilfully astonishes me. Simple point: wouldn't you think it would be useful to let listeners know what it is that they've just been listening to? The name of the composer? The opus number, movement, that sort of thing? With a spectacular indifference to such niceties whoever's in charge as a matter of course just plays a few jumbled pieces back-to-back, unannounced, and follows them with a couple of adverts for the station itself.

I was particularly narked today when I recognised a movement as being one I knew from my listening at home but couldn't pin down the actual composer. I thought at first it was from a Mozart piano concerto, but then there was no piano. So it then seemed more likely to me to be something from a Beethoven symphony, a slow movement, yet it sounded more Mozartian, but I was inclined to rule this out as I don't own that much Mozart outside of the piano concerti, and I knew I owned it and had played it recently (in the last year or so, I mean.)

Now I know I sound incredibly dim in that last paragraph, not knowing something that should be obvious to me. But that's my point. I am incredibly dim in these matters and would like to have my dimness illuminated, and learn something. But with this radio station that just doesn't happen. Incidentally, I found it fascinating that what I was listening to seemed to me to be extraordinarily beautiful, yet despite knowing it well I was aware I had never recognised its beauty before. One of the benefits of being as obtuse as I am regarding music is that you get moments like that.