MUSIC
I had never heard of Jennifer McGuire before the day when the CBC website carried a story explaining that as Head of CBC radio she had just announced that Radio Two is to be re-organized, starting next September. Current programs will be dropped and replaced by new ones, designed, it would appear, to be more “popular.” The descriptions are vague, but the intention appears to be to produce the kind of musical wallpaper—a bit of this, a bit of that—which Jennifer McGuire presumably believes will raise ratings.
The show that will appear in the middle of the day will actually be allowed to play classical music. Mozart and Beethoven are mentioned. Are these the only classsical composers she assumes that her ignorant audience has heard of?
When I first read this I considered writing about it. Sloth intervened. But now the second shoe has dropped. The CBC Radio orchestra, which has existed for 70 years, will be consigned to oblivion after next fall’s season. Only a year or so ago the CBC Orchestra hired a new conductor, Alain Trudel. Trudel is a conductor of a new generation, and he spoke of his plans to find new roads for the orchestra, but now the clever Ms McGuire has decided that she will have none of that. The CBC Orchestra—once Igor Stravinky’s favourite—is a dead duck.
Now I am an ancient person, and ancient persons are famous for their supposed dislike of change. So far as I could see every single response posted blog after the first announcement was against the changes, and many of them showed a strong sense of loyalty to things as they are. Not all those who wrote were ancient. But someone at the CBC wishes for “a younger demographic,” and the prevailing assumption seems to be that young people are interested only in inconsequential chat and undemanding noise.
Let’s admit that change can be good. The new can be exciting. But what I don’t see in any of the descriptions of this new Radio Two are words like well-informed, intelligent, inventive, provocative, original. The decision to produce wallpaper is not a creative decision but the failure of all creativity, the assumption that the place of the CBC is to trail along behind commercial radio like a muddled adolescent in the wrong clothes. Their current idea of being popular is to play jazz—what is more tediously old-fashioned than jazz?—in the early evening.
Ancient as I am I have learned new things from recent CBC programs probably intended for young audiences. What’s now called world music has intrigued and delighted me. There is some talk about playing Canadian music in the new dispensation, but I don’t believe it. Bureaucracts lie. Or perhaps what is meant is more Canadian easy listening. The current system of programming on Radio Two has, over the years, introduced me to a good deal of Canadian music. More than once I have heard an interesting piece of Canadian music, recommended it to the PEI Symphony and heard it played. Isn’t that how it should work?
Creation grows from the ground up. An imaginative musician, an inspired producer, a complicated idea, those are the things that can produce original and worthwhile programming. Think of Glenn Gould. It may be that the CBC has to program to a majority by doing it one minority at a time. But that’s what democracy is all about.
Of course writing this is unlikely to do any good. I am just one fevered old man on a distant island, though though I know I’m not alone in my distress:—petitions are being signed, demonstrations are being held. But Jennifer McGuire, and her boss Richard Stursberg, have been put in charge, apparently with no bridle on their destructive impulses.
Couldn’t someone in authority at CBC show a little more sign of interest in high culture, of loyalty to a long and important tradition?