Peter Porter: Desert island dross
Serious music lovers will not be joining in the 60th anniversary celebrations for radio's castaway show. A friend who is a countryman of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms once admonished me. "Why should I love music just because I'm German?" he asked.
A friend who is a countryman of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms once admonished me. "Why should I love music just because I'm German?" he asked. I thought he should and was upset that he didn't fit into my expectations of national character. A German indifferent to music seemed as untoward as an Englishman who ignored football. But his pronouncement gave me a clue as to why I find Desert Island Discs such a silly programme. Should we presume that people in the public eye must care for music, and that from learning their taste in it we will be able to draw wider conclusions about their character?
Tower Records shops are decorated with the slogan: "No music, no life". My own informal polling reveals that a considerable proportion of the population is tone deaf and is frequently ashamed of the fact. It is more acceptable in polite society to admit to a disbelief in God than a lack of appreciation of music. Consequently, for 60 years celebrities have been trooping into the BBC radio studios to tell Roy Plomley or Sue Lawley what records they would take to their Crusoe's retreat, and the listening public has been sitting in judgment on them. I have been astonished to hear people making moral assertions about these "castaways", as they are cosily known, after listening to a few genial confessions interspersed with snippets of music.
I may be making heavy weather of a programme which is intended as light entertainment. But Desert Island Discs is regarded as a barometer of public worthiness. To be invited as "this week's castaway" is as strong a conformation of one's importance as getting on to one of the year's honours lists. If Thought For the Day is an acceptable form of mini-sermon for a mildly religious nation, then Desert Island Discs is an equivalent sort of secular liturgy, about as far as the modern world will go in reciting the catechism.
It's obvious that those who don't care for the programme are usually serious music lovers. There is a programme for us, of course: Michael Berkeley's Private Passions, on Radio 3, where the invited guest is expected to know pretty well what he or she likes and be prepared to keep the discussion largely to musical matters.
If you want to tell the waiting world about the more endearing aspects of your life's struggle, then you should wait for a summons from Miss Lawley, not from Mr Berkeley. Private Passions is revelatory, however, of the taste of one's friends. My selection of records for the programme got me into hot water for being too highbrow. I'd included Josquin des Pres's Miserere, an extract from The Magic Flute which wasn't a certified hit and a fairly fugitive Bach organ chorale. "Who was I showing off to?" my friends demanded. The answer is: I was taking up the challenge of choosing the pieces too literally, thereby ignoring the obligations of show business.
Show business is what Desert Island Discs is all about. In the articles celebrating its 60th anniversary, emphasis has been on the vagaries and oddities of some of its contributors' lives. Diana Mitford's delight at the Führer's blue eyes, Oliver Reed's version of the Kokoschka inflatable woman for island solace and Sue Lawley's inquisition of Michael Portillo are the sorts of highlights remembered.
Occasionally musical egoism is recalled - when Elizabeth Schwarzkopf chose only her own performances and Peter Pears did almost the same, just stopping short of the full monty. I suppose I have heard the programme hundreds of times but my memories of castaways' eccentricities are not vivid; nor has their taste in music been any sort of revelation. Appearing on the programme has chiefly liberated in its guests a complacent trickle of anecdote within an ambience of vindication and self-esteem. I remember being with Philip Larkin when he was ordering records for Hull University library. He asked me which recording of Rossini's Barber of Seville overture he should put down. "I thought you didn't care for classical music," I said to him. He said he didn't, but that he might need something, in case he were ever asked on to Desert Island Discs.
When this happened, I was surprised to hear that along with Bix Beiderbecke and other early jazz musicians there were some orthodox bits of Handel and Elgar, but no Rossini. I had forgotten that Philip always took his public profile seriously.
Sour grapes, you'll say: this man has never been asked to appear. Indeed, I probably ruled myself out early on. In almost the first of many reviews I wrote as radio critic of the New Statesman in the 1970s, I attacked Desert Island Discs. Except for a hurt letter from Kenneth Williams when I objected to his camping up a With Great Pleasure anthology, and partisans of Enoch Powell accusing me of opportunism for criticising that great man, my Desert Island Discs review earned me the strongest rebuke ever received from readers.
I thought I knew this country well, but should have appreciated that to question some British institutions is deemed to be not a criticism but a profanation.
·Peter Porter is a poet and music critic
Tower Records shops are decorated with the slogan: "No music, no life". My own informal polling reveals that a considerable proportion of the population is tone deaf and is frequently ashamed of the fact. It is more acceptable in polite society to admit to a disbelief in God than a lack of appreciation of music. Consequently, for 60 years celebrities have been trooping into the BBC radio studios to tell Roy Plomley or Sue Lawley what records they would take to their Crusoe's retreat, and the listening public has been sitting in judgment on them. I have been astonished to hear people making moral assertions about these "castaways", as they are cosily known, after listening to a few genial confessions interspersed with snippets of music.
I may be making heavy weather of a programme which is intended as light entertainment. But Desert Island Discs is regarded as a barometer of public worthiness. To be invited as "this week's castaway" is as strong a conformation of one's importance as getting on to one of the year's honours lists. If Thought For the Day is an acceptable form of mini-sermon for a mildly religious nation, then Desert Island Discs is an equivalent sort of secular liturgy, about as far as the modern world will go in reciting the catechism.
It's obvious that those who don't care for the programme are usually serious music lovers. There is a programme for us, of course: Michael Berkeley's Private Passions, on Radio 3, where the invited guest is expected to know pretty well what he or she likes and be prepared to keep the discussion largely to musical matters.
If you want to tell the waiting world about the more endearing aspects of your life's struggle, then you should wait for a summons from Miss Lawley, not from Mr Berkeley. Private Passions is revelatory, however, of the taste of one's friends. My selection of records for the programme got me into hot water for being too highbrow. I'd included Josquin des Pres's Miserere, an extract from The Magic Flute which wasn't a certified hit and a fairly fugitive Bach organ chorale. "Who was I showing off to?" my friends demanded. The answer is: I was taking up the challenge of choosing the pieces too literally, thereby ignoring the obligations of show business.
Show business is what Desert Island Discs is all about. In the articles celebrating its 60th anniversary, emphasis has been on the vagaries and oddities of some of its contributors' lives. Diana Mitford's delight at the Führer's blue eyes, Oliver Reed's version of the Kokoschka inflatable woman for island solace and Sue Lawley's inquisition of Michael Portillo are the sorts of highlights remembered.
Occasionally musical egoism is recalled - when Elizabeth Schwarzkopf chose only her own performances and Peter Pears did almost the same, just stopping short of the full monty. I suppose I have heard the programme hundreds of times but my memories of castaways' eccentricities are not vivid; nor has their taste in music been any sort of revelation. Appearing on the programme has chiefly liberated in its guests a complacent trickle of anecdote within an ambience of vindication and self-esteem. I remember being with Philip Larkin when he was ordering records for Hull University library. He asked me which recording of Rossini's Barber of Seville overture he should put down. "I thought you didn't care for classical music," I said to him. He said he didn't, but that he might need something, in case he were ever asked on to Desert Island Discs.
When this happened, I was surprised to hear that along with Bix Beiderbecke and other early jazz musicians there were some orthodox bits of Handel and Elgar, but no Rossini. I had forgotten that Philip always took his public profile seriously.
Sour grapes, you'll say: this man has never been asked to appear. Indeed, I probably ruled myself out early on. In almost the first of many reviews I wrote as radio critic of the New Statesman in the 1970s, I attacked Desert Island Discs. Except for a hurt letter from Kenneth Williams when I objected to his camping up a With Great Pleasure anthology, and partisans of Enoch Powell accusing me of opportunism for criticising that great man, my Desert Island Discs review earned me the strongest rebuke ever received from readers.
I thought I knew this country well, but should have appreciated that to question some British institutions is deemed to be not a criticism but a profanation.
·Peter Porter is a poet and music critic
Use the feedback form below to submit your comments.
Use the form below to email this article to your friends.
