Top Ten Music 24 January 1984
Trevor Leggett was head of the Japanese Department of the BBC.
This is one of his broadcasts to Japan
Zubari for 24 January 1984
Hello listeners!
Every week in the British papers there is a small item called “Top of the Pops” – and this is a list of the top ten Pop records that have been sold. Of course, it is rare that the same name appears in the list for more than two or three weeks – though in the 1960’s the Beatles did succeed in dominating the Top Ten, sometimes with two or three hits, for months together.
But once a year, an industrious journalist goes through all the programmes of the main London concert halls, and publishes an analysis of all the symphonies that have been played by first-class orchestras. And so there appears a ‘Classical’ Top of the Pops. This list has been dominated for 32 years by Beethoven, but this year there is a great excitement: Beethoven has lost his first place, and is now only second!
Who, one wonders, has displaced him? Shostakovich, perhaps, as perhaps the most famous modern symphonist?
Not at all. It is Mozart, who has been runner-up to Beethoven for many years, who has now just beaten him. It is Beethoven 70, but Mozart with 77.
Well, we think, no doubt these two are undisplaceable. But in the third and other places, shall we find our great modern twentieth composers of symphonies: Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schönberg, Britten?
No. None of these are in the top ten. The third place is Haydn, and Schubert is 4th. Then comes Dvořak, whose New World symphony was in fact the most played symphony of the year 21 times.
Brahms and Tchaikovsky come equal 6th and 7th, and now, in the 8th place, we come for the first time to a composer who lived at any rate his final years in the 20th century. This was Mahler, who died in 1911. He was played 21 times.
After him comes Sibelius, who was played 17 times, He was certainly a 20th century composer: He died only thirty years ago. But still, his music was mainly on 19th century lines.
The last of the Top Ten was Bruckner, the Austrian composer who died in 1896.
It is a great surprise to find that the music which we at the end of the 20th century wish to hear was almost all composed in the 19th century and earlier.
I have never examined the Japanese musical programmes, but from hearing the Japanese radio when I am in Japan for one month every year, I have the impression that the Japanese listeners too prefer music of the previous centuries to the 20th century music.
© Trevor Leggett