Sound Frontiers: Who Cares If You Listen?

Available for over a year

Live from London's Southbank Centre. When the Third Programme began in September 1946, the dissemination of culture and music was the central premise. Tom Service talks to the composer Sir Harrison Birtwistle, the philosopher AC Grayling, and the musicologists Jenny Doctor and Richard Witts about the ethos of the time, including the relationship between contemporary composers and audiences. They discuss the provocative 1950s article entitled 'Who Cares if you Listen?' in which the American composer Milton Babbitt proposed that 'serious' composers should not necessarily be concerned with their audience, and the panel consider the impact these ideas have in shaping the debate today.