Image: French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra at Maida Vale in 1973.
David Hendy
Professor Emeritus, University of Sussex
Did the launch of Radio 1 in 1967 - and with it, the birth of so-called ‘generic’ or ‘streamed’ radio - mean that all music, even ‘serious’ or classical music, would soon be treated as ephemeral background listening by the BBC?
In fact, newly-released oral history interviews show there’d been much deeper anxieties about the whole BBC approach to classical music for years.
One key individual in this story is William Glock, who’d become the BBC’s Controller of Music back in 1959. A rising star of the British musical universe, Glock had studied piano under Artur Schnabel in Berlin, founded the magazine The Score, and run an innovative international summer school at Dartington, celebrated by many – and attacked by more conservative figures - for its warm embrace of modern and experimental composers.
When he first arrived at Yalding House, the BBC’s Music Division’s own HQ, Glock sensed an organisation in desperate need of an overhaul…
Typical of the kind of changes Glock introduced on air was the launch in 1960 of the Invitation Concerts. Glock believed ionately in the indivisibility of all great music – and saw the series as a way to force some highly dramatic juxtapositions from very different eras. The opening programme , for instance, had two Mozart string quartets and – sandwiched between them - Pierre Boulez. Later, there was Stravinsky with Bach, Beethoven with Schoenberg.
For the Controller of the Third Programme, Howard Newby, such exciting musical contrasts were a welcome sign of a new, visionary approach. But Newby was also soon aware of the dangers in having a man such as Glock – a man of strong tastes and opinions - in charge of a vast array of output and a large team of producers…
Newby knew the audience for classical music would never be huge. But he wasn’t entirely indifferent to ratings. And he saw a greater proportion of the ‘classical Romantic tradition’ as the key to attracting a few more listeners to the Third.
For others at the BBC this was merely a case of re-arranging deck-chairs on the Titanic. In 1965, a new figure arrived at Broadcasting House, fresh from the BBC’s Overseas Service: Gerard Mansell, the latest head of the Home Service. Mansell made an instant diagnosis of domestic radio’s biggest challenge: a need, in the television era, to concentrate its efforts on the daytime audience:
Importantly, Mansell was not just in charge of the Home Service. He was also in charge of the so-called ‘Music Programme’ – a new addition to the BBC’s array of services, and one designed precisely to give this overdue attention to the daytime listener.
The Music Programme had been launched in 1964, when fears that TV was slowly stealing Radio’s audience had first prompted BBC managers to suggest the strategy of a predictable stream of programmes on each network: non-stop pop music here, a steady flow of news there. In other words, the kind of output that could be enjoyed at home while getting on with other things - easily dropped-into and dropped-out of, listened-to casually.
This approach was easy enough to envisage for the Home and the Light. But it presented the highbrow Third Programme with a crisis of identity. Ever since its launch in 1946, its programmes were meant to be eclectic and unpredictable, its listeners were meant to concentrate.
The obvious solution was to leave its evening programmes much as they were but for its daytime hours to be stripped of distracting talk and devoted instead to a flow of classical music. This new Music Programme, it was declared, had to appeal to the so-called ‘general listener’ and contain nothing so ‘esoteric’ as to frighten him or her away.
Composers, musicians, producers – all were aghast at the thought of their work being treated as acoustic wallpaper. As Controller of Music, William Glock had his doubts, too. But then, on the Music Programme’s first morning, he offered listeners a masterful explanation of why this ‘streamed’ future might be better than they feared…
There was, in other words, a delicate balancing act to be performed by the programme-planners.
But in his 1983 interview for the BBC oral history project, William Glock went even further in advancing his theory for the Music Programme. Far from being an abandonment of high principles, it had in fact created a wholly novel approach to classical music: what he called “a new kind of musical succession” in both the Proms and the regular radio schedule...
As far as Glock was concerned then, when it came to the Music Programme - and, after 1967, Radio 3 – it really was a case that more meant better. Instead of ‘generic’ or ‘streamed’ radio being seen as a step backwards, it could be presented as a triumphant contribution to the cultural life of the nation.
