Classical TV - MOZART

[Amalie]

In March, BBC 2 TV will screen three programmes entitled, ' The Genius of Mozart'.
These broadcasts will be complemented by three workshop programmes on BBC 4.

You may meet the cast and find fuller details by visiting, 'The Genius of Mozart'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/classicaltv/mozart/

Also visit the fascinating 'Mozart Project' http://www.mozartproject.org/



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 27, 2004).]

[Steppenwolf]

Great! The date is my diary, I am looking forward to series beginning. It will be interesting to see another interpretation of Mozart after Tom Hulce's controversial portrayal in Amadeus.

It is a shame that the golden age of BBC period dramas (70s and 80s) seems to have passed, with the modern controllers more concerned with churning out dummed-down trash instead. But this series appears encouraging.

Perhaps I will get a bit of value for money after paying my damned TV licence after all!

[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited February 27, 2004).]

[Peter]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
Great! The date is my diary, I am looking forward to series beginning. It will be interesting to see another interpretation of Mozart after Tom Hulce's controversial portrayal in Amadeus.

It is a shame that the golden age of BBC period dramas (70s and 80s) seems to have passed, with the modern controllers more concerned with churning out dummed-down trash instead. But this series appears encouraging.

Perhaps I will get a bit of value for money after paying my damned TV licence after all!

[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited February 27, 2004).]

Absolutely!

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'Man know thyself'

[Andrea]

I wish I could get BBC2, but here in Austria we get only BBCPrime and BBC World. Verdammt! I would love to see this Mozart series. Wieder verdammt!

[Chaszz]

I've just glanced at the home page for BBC America, which we get here on cable. Nothing in the search index on Mozart, but plenty of stuff like a Singing/Body Language contest; a Cab Driver Q @ A; What Not to Wear; Name That Houseplant; the Brathwaites, an ordinary dysfunctional family who win the lottery, the hilarious talk show of Graham Norton, and so on and on...good job, BBC.

[Gurn Blanston]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
I've just glanced at the home page for BBC America, which we get here on cable. Nothing in the search index on Mozart, but plenty of stuff like a Singing/Body Language contest; a Cab Driver Q @ A; What Not to Wear; Name That Houseplant; the Brathwaites, an ordinary dysfunctional family who win the lottery, the hilarious talk show of Graham Norton, and so on and on...good job, BBC.

Well Chaszz, you have to admit, they know their audience! The vast majority of it, anyway. Even though I was quite enamored of BBC telly in the '70's, nowadays either I have outgrown it or it has become too sophisticated for me, hadn't decided which. The Brathwaites, eh?? Hmmmm....


Regards,
Gurn
etc.


[This message has been edited by Gurn Blanston (edited February 27, 2004).]

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
the hilarious talk show of Graham Norton

That's odd ... the Graham Norton show is not made by the BBC, but a commercial channel (Channel 4). Perhaps BBC America buys up programes from other UK stations? I didn't know that.

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Andrea:
I wish I could get BBC2, but here in Austria we get only BBCPrime and BBC World. Verdammt! I would love to see this Mozart series. Wieder verdammt!

Hopefully (if the series is any good) it will soon be released on DVD/video! Or, perhaps as well, shown on Austrian TV. Surely a programe about Mozart, of all people, will get to Austria ... to not show it there would be like making a series about Shakespeare and then not showing it in England!



[This message has been edited by Steppenwolf (edited February 27, 2004).]

[Amalie]

Originally posted by Chaszz:
I've just glanced at the home page for BBC America, which we get here on cable. Nothing in the search index on Mozart, but plenty of stuff like a Singing/Body Language contest; a Cab Driver Q @ A; What Not to Wear; Name That Houseplant; the Brathwaites, an ordinary dysfunctional family who win the lottery, the hilarious talk show of Graham Norton, and so on and on...good job, BBC.

Yes Chaszz,
I guess we are all in the same boat and what you say is all too sadly true, but there again and with respect, American television is hardly a shining beacon of intellectual truth and culture with its 500 satellite channels of turgid drivel.
I was reading the other day, of main stream television in Italy, that run 24hr a day hard core pornography, German and Dutch television is not much better in this respect. One of the joint inventors of the television was an American whose name escaapes me for moment was horrifyed at the content of American television in the 50's , and believed it should be an educational medium and rejected his 'brain child' in later life and refused to whatch it in later life. I think I have mentioned that we don't actually have a television, and don't have the time.
Television I think now anyway, is becoming a defunct medium and the future I think belongs to the internet, books, and classical music.
Though it is encouraging to see some cultural programmes hoping that it won't be too dumbed down.



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 27, 2004).]

[v russo]

Originally posted by Amalie:

Yes Chaszz,
I guess we are all in the same boat and what you say is all too sadly true, but there again and with respect, American television is hardly a shining beacon of intellectual truth and culture with its 500 satellite channels of turgid drivel.
I was reading the other day, of main stream television in Italy, that run 24hr a day hard core pornography, German and Dutch television is not much better in this respect. One of the joint inventors of the television was an American whose name escaapes me for moment was horrifyed at the content of American television in the 50's , and believed it should be an educational medium and rejected his 'brain child' in later life and refused to whatch it in later life. I think I have mentioned that we don't actually have a television, and don't have the time.
Television I think now anyway, is becoming a defunct medium and the future I think belongs to the internet, books, and classical music.
Though it is encouraging to see some cultural programmes hoping that it won't be too dumbed down.



[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 27, 2004).]

Amalie:

How do you see the future as being Internet (I DO AGREE) books (on what, movie stars?) and classical music (classical what??)
You paint the picture of a cultural Rennaisance. In this Pop infested, dumb-downed, cultural wasteland?

explain Amalie....


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v russo

[Gurn Blanston]

Amalie,
Yes, dear, do tell! I think that there are always going to be reactionaries (alright, I'll say it "like us") who would rather read and listen to music while typing messages to kindred spirits, but I fear that we are and always will be the minority. There is a good bloody reason that these things have proliferated: this is what the public want. The great unwashed is growing greater by the hour, and the soft-core intelligentsia is being attritted into nothingness. That is the reality. Quick, duck, maybe we'll miss it!


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Regards,
Gurn
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That's my opinion, I may be wrong.
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[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by Gurn Blanston:
Amalie,
Yes, dear, do tell! I think that there are always going to be reactionaries (alright, I'll say it "like us") who would rather read and listen to music while typing messages to kindred spirits, but I fear that we are and always will be the minority.

For every one person who types in 'Classical music' into the search box of an internet search engine, there are probably twenty million others who type in 'porn'.

[Steppenwolf]

Originally posted by v russo:
Amalie:

How do you see the future as being Internet (I DO AGREE) books (on what, movie stars?) and classical music (classical what??)
You paint the picture of a cultural Rennaisance. In this Pop infested, dumb-downed, cultural wasteland?

explain Amalie....

I do believe there will probably be a renaissance, but it may be way into the future. And I am one of those who suspect that the slate will need to be 'wiped clean' before we can start again.

[Amalie]

The Empire of the Mind.

In reply to Gurn and v.russo about the shape of things to come.
Perhaps we could start with my view of global television. About 30 years ago appeared on British tv the ultimate gold standard which was Kenneth Clarke's 'Civilization' closely followed by another brilliant blockbuster 'Bronowski's' Ascent of Man.
Unsurprisingly, these two brilliant series translated easily into wonderful spin off books. So tv can do it, that is produce viewing and educational material of the highest quality. But that was then, and this is now!.
The slight difficulty is that globaly speaking, the tv is becoming a refuge for the disadvantaged or deprived, either intellectually, materially or otherwise, but where the content is locked into a cycle of ever declining standards where vast commercial interests and the lowest common denominator of human taste each feed off one another. I am not confident that this depressing cycle can be reversed so far as tv is concerned, where on the one hand we have the vast profits of the corporations in pandering to an ever lower standard of public taste, as Gurn quite rightly observes and the almost masochistic desire of millions to drag themselves down into the lowest levels of human excess and turpitude.
The truth about the modern world is surely this, that it is placing vast premuims on the intellectual resources of everyone and woe betide anyone in these demanding and challenging times whatever their level of education maybe who does not take steps to improve their skills,learning, culture, artistic appreciation and general thinking power. That is why tv is such a lie nowadays and is doing such a disservice to millions of fellow creatures by inculcating a creed of the basist sort that Beethoven would have despised by allowing people to wallow in this excess and not to fit and prepare them for the challenges ahead.
Entertainment of course is a different thing and everyone has different ideas about that, and if someone gets something from tv, then fair enough. But as the great American business philosopher Jim Rohn says, 'Frankly, you don't want the reputation of being known as being a television watcher', that we should skip the trash, even if there might be on odd occasions something worthwhile and the example he gives is of going through trash cans to find a piece of bread.
As he quite rightly says, there just too much brilliant stuff to read, listen to, absorb and reflect on and apply in ones life rather than the trash. So if there is hardly any time to absorb even a part of the brilliant stuff, why on earth are people bothering with trash.

Beethoven's most telling phrase which should stand as the rubric of the internet
Was his idea of the 'Empire of the Mind'.
I think he would have welcomed the great positive aspects of the internet and the true arrival of the global village.
The truth is, the modern world has become almost entirely a mental construct which the internet brilliantly encapsulates and conveys. We lead our normal lives pretty much in the old way, but above, below and all around us, and even permeating our very being is this awesome intellectual medium used intelligently, called the internet.
The potential of computers and the internet in my view has scarcely been scratched, and I was reading in fortune magazine last week that Bill Gates is working on a typically pioneering project to improve the computer interface and communicability called Long Horn. Billions are being spent on some incredible projects, and research and development, and we really do not know in what staggering discoveries are around the corner. What is for sure, is that the future will not belong to tv viewers unless something radically changes there, either in the medium, the message, or more probably the viewer. You don't get progress without intellectual effort, and tv is the very antithesis and enemy of this so it is therefore a defunct medium which can offer nothing in its present form to the world that is now being created unless it is radically changed.
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle of the universe says that we can't know two things at once, that is, we can only study the movement of something but not its destination or vice versa, but not both.
The phenomenal progress of the internet means that we don't really know where it is headed, but I for one think it will be an exciting journey. But it will only be a journey for those who have the flexibility and thinking machinery, and make the effort to stay the trip!
and anything that impairs out ability or makes us dummer and not smarter must be ruthlessly sidelined in my view, because this is such a demanding and challenging age and we need all our wits about us.
There was some silly talk some years ago about computers abolishing books, but we can now see how mistaken this is because the digital revolution is also feulling a renaissance in books and printing material.
The sum total of human learning is so unspeakably vast that books and the internet work together in a virtous circle, though I accept some types of publishing has declined but that will only make for new forms. May I respectfully point out that the philosophical basis of the new technology has scarcely even been outlined yet alone shaped into some sort of coherent form and we are no doubt creating things that we don't fully understand.
So to summerize this is an age of wonders and miracles, to quote the line from a recent Paul Simon song. But it is a demanding time as well, and all of us have to pull together and pool intellectual resources to create a greater quality of life for every one.
And let's try turning off the TV shall we?




[This message has been edited by Amalie (edited February 28, 2004).]

[spaceray]

Originally posted by Steppenwolf:
I do believe there will probably be a renaissance, but it may be way into the future. And I am one of those who suspect that the slate will need to be 'wiped clean' before we can start again.

"wiped clean" yikes,what ever can you mean by this?