less-than-optimal remarks ...

[calimac]

... recently made by the chattering announcers on our local less-than-optimal classical radio station. (Quotes as accurate as I can remember them.)

Diane Nicolini: This piece always reminds me of the Tudors, for some reason. Of course, it is Elizabethan ...

Yes, Diane, Elizabeth I was one of the Tudors! Don't sound so puzzled about it!

Hoyt Smith: That was one of Mozart's earlier violin concertos. In fact, it was No. 1.

Look, Hoyt, I don't expect every music-lover to know off the top of their heads that Mozart wrote all five of his full-length violin concertos in a single year when he was 19. But you're supposed to be an announcer who knows a little about the music. If you just want to say that was his Violin Concerto No. 1, OK. But if you prate about his "earlier violin concertos" all it shows is that you don't know what you're talking about.

Comments

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if Diane didn't mean the show on cable (I forget which - HBO or ShowTime) The Tudors, which is mostly about the loves of Henry VIII. Which is almost a lamer reference than just the mere historical ignorance.

As for Hoyt's comment... um, yeah. And it shows an ignorance of the mess of ordering Mozart's work in the first place - something I was aware of in childhood, because all the classical announcers I listened to (my Dad had the FM tuned to the University of Michigan's classical station all the time) would mention the Kochel listing number as well - occasionally adding factiods of why the Kochel listing existed.

:D

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Mozart dated most of his manuscripts, I think, and his letters and catalogs provide a lot of information. Köchel just gathered that all up with admirable diligence. While there have been a lot of minor adjustments to his work, there have been very few major uncertainties in dating authentic Mozart, unlike Bach or earlier Haydn works.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Gone are the days of the WFMT audition test:

http://www.ehiggins.com/humor/#WFMTAudition

Although I guess someone could pass the test and still not know the things you're talking about above.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Gone, too, seems to be the test itself. The link to it is dead, and the Wayback Machine gives for that link only the same text that you linked to.

But from the description, it seems to be mostly about pronunciation, not historical knowledge.

Not to be found on Google is a humorous speculation I once read (in that long-forgotten medium, print) about what lurid history could possibly lie behind the Chamber Orchestra of the Tsar, conducted by Karl Rist, in part. What happened to poor Karl? Was he assassinated halfway through the performance by Communist agents? (It was actually the Chamber Orchestra of the Saar, conducted by Karl Ristenpart, as the author of the piece knew full well.)

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

That text was the test -- sorry, I wasn't clear. Anyone who applied to be a WFMT announcer was handed that text and expected to read it cold.

"Audition", as the link has it, would have been clearer than test.

In any case, as you say, it was about pronunciation, so it doesn't really apply to your post.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Ah. I admit that even growing up in a very "classical" household, I didn't really pay close attention to history/biography, except on an incidental basis. All I cared about was the music itself.

:D

I bow before your much superior knowledge. I really enjoy your posts about music and music history.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Our announcers aren't too great on the pronunciation either. They pronounce Handel as if he were attached to an axehead. Really annoying.

[(Anonymous)]

I experience the same thing with the jazz radio station here in Portland, OR. I actually once heard an announcer pronounce Sonny Rollins's name with a long "o" (as in "roll the dice"). And Sonny is one of the 3 or 4 most famous jazz saxophonists of all time.

Ed Pierce

[athenais.livejournal.com]

KDFC announcers embarrass me regularly. Hoyt is particularly good at sounding dim.