'Tis the season...

It's that time of year again, I'm afraid, and there's something I can't put off any longer. I have to make the same plea I always do: Please enjoy your Christmas music in moderation.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't hate Christmas music on principle; in fact there are some wonderfully atmospheric and well-composed songs, carols and oratorios which, on the whole, bear the test of time. I'd just like to not hear the same music on a continuous loop all day, every day, thanks.

I will admit to being particularly intolerant to excessive repetition in general, but there is (mercifully) no other occasion in the calender when the canon of agitated air molecules filling our ears is even half so strictly regulated. Easter, the other great once-primarily-religious-now-swallowed-up-in-a-frenzy-of-enforced-consumerism festival, has somehow never spawned any memorable tunes suitable for incessant reproduction (although there are Easter carols, and various hymns that get trotted out on the appropriate Sunday, but heard literally once a year). Bunnies, chocolate eggs and crucifixion seem so far to have failed to produce any musical treatment capable of capturing the public's attention. But come late (or even early) November, the diet of muzak emanating from shops, televisions and stereos turns wearily predictable. Even the otherwise beautiful Carols from Kings (which we have to watch, and then listen to the Christmas Day repeat in the car going up to visit the grandparents) is based around the same core of tunes, although happily with the addition of more underperformed items in between.

What is worse is that this season of goodwill towards men produces not only broken records but often a concerted attempt to make them as annoying and cliché-ridden as possible. As religion is a bit of a commercial no-no in this country, song lyrics tend to revisit vapid consumerist topics and/or sentimental mush - the more 'cringeable' the better. Proponents of the powerful pro-Christmas lobby have developed a method of shutting down any voices opposing this, namely to cry 'Scrooge!' at the slightest whiff of dissent. Whilst it can often be effective, this tactic, frankly, is avoiding the issue.

Before I give the impression I'm training the majority of my fire on commercial pop music, I'm sad to say that successive years of invariance in programming have all but regulated Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria, not even a Christmas piece (and neither is two-thirds of Messiah, in fact) into the same category . Yes, I know you want to hear the Hallajujah Chorus again, because we've all forgotten how it goes in just twelve months. Yes, I understand that hearing a similar and possibly equally good work by either composer this year will not do, because that would go against tradition. My dislike (well, relatively speaking) of these pieces is simply a result of the fact that I've had to play their continuo parts year in, year out, often more than once a season.

Particular lowlights of the season include:

Away in a Manger: Now, I don't have children, so I cannot verify if seeing one's offspring singing this together with their peers in the nativity play would, in fact, move me sufficiently to value its creation. It is not, in my opinion, a very good tune, certainly not good enough to warrant three verses. Part of the problem is that the little angels learn the words syllabicly, so that the text of the carol ends up sounding something like 'Ahh-WAY-yin a-ah-main-jer no-OH crib-four-ra bed...' It also has a very dull bass line, which with the voice and instruments I play is understandably not a good tactic for trying to endear me to it.

Merry Christmas Everybody (Slade): Not actually a lot wrong with the song in itself, but, rather like Copland, marred by cheap imitations of it - in this case your mates 'singing' along to it post-pint. The end of the chorus glissandi-coupled-with-an-unexpected-move-to-chord-VI (ie the bit that goes 'It's only just begu-uu-uu-uuuuuun!') is particularly ill-advised for this sort of inebriated karaoke as very few are able to complete the manoeuvre with tuning unscathed. Generally the accuracy resembles that of attempting an Olympic ski slalom in a motorhome. That said, the sound of Noddy Holder crying aloft 'It's Christmassssss!' in the song's closing stages will give me sleepless nights forever.

Let it Snow: Isn't the opening little flute/glockenspiel duet just the most horribly twee phrase ever committed to vinyl? Perfectly formulated to send into a rage anyone who has just watched their decorations tumble mockingly to the floor, having spent twenty minutes on tip-toes up a ladder smothering them in dusty blu-tack.

Synthesised bells/chimes in pop songs: Inevitably heard as a descending scale in the tackyist pop offerings, in blissful ignorance of the fact that real church bells were often rung to announce war, pestilence and famine. Few crimes against music can match the tastelessness of this needless filigree...

...except, perhaps, (sometimes also synthesised) sleigh bells. We may all have enjoyed playing Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride in a junior school arrangement (could your trumpeter do that horse bit at the end either?), but the incessant ching-ching-ching in aforementioned pop songs with cheap production values is also an irritant the strength of industrial grout cleaner. Be very careful should anyone you meet think this is at all charming; they may also like Jedward and believe that Fearne Cotton would make an excellent elected representative. It goes without saying that 'Jingle Bells' is also something I would like not to ever know of again.

So please, be discerning and tasteful in your choice of seasonal soundtrack, and dig out something unusual and interesting to hear this year. And consider supporting the 'John Cage's 4'33" for No.1' campaign...

Win

My arrangement of The First Nowell I mentioned a while back is going to be performed tomorrow night, at Andover Choral Society's Christmas concert at St Mary's Church in the town. It also features the Bach Mag, Finzi's In Terra Pax and Dyson's Three Songs of Praise, and I'm playing in the orchestra as usual. Whilst this isn't worthy of the same level of excitement as the première of an original piece, it's still an outing for some of my work, so, 'win', I guess.

Composition

Am working at the moment on an orchestral work for a competition (eek - the deadline is Jan 7th) which is actually coming along alright, although I need to keep up the work rate despite all the Christmas stuff I have to do. As the competition in question is a) for a student orchestra and b) for an anniversary celebration I've tried not to write anything too heavy or too difficult, the rules advising that it 'should be suitable for performance by a good student orchestra'. At the moment I have the first 4 minutes, the last 2 1/2 minutes and a fair amount of 'stuff' in between, most of which has been sufficiently refined to merit staying in the piece. Structurally, it's in a sort of arch form, ABCBA, with the second B somewhat varied from the first. I rarely have the entire structure thought out in much detail when I start to write, and it often develops as I get notes down and spin them out into phrases and sections. This is probably a good thing as it means the music is not contrained by being made to fit into particular proportions. By the stage of the process I am now at I have pretty much finalised what goes where and how the narrative of the music proceeds. My task now is to fill out the gaps and link together the bits I have using the motivic materials within it.

One for the kids

Frankly, I think games console manufacturers have missed a trick.

By 'console' I speak, specifically, of the Wii (which I notice is now available in a 'Limited Edition!' red colour) and it's wireless controller. This clever little piece of electronic Japanese-ery allows the player to actually enact the movements their wish their on-screen avatar to make, rather than having to transmit their motor skills through pressing buttons. As a consequence, cars on the old Playstation that, despite one's most dexterous button-bashing, would always corner like Blenheim Palace, can now be made to follow the road almost effortlessly, without requiring the player to have the finger skills of a concert pianist. Sports games actually require a modicum of physical effort. Shooting games you can look down the gun. And so on.

However, one subject area remains untapped by the gaming industry, something the Wii was born for:

Conducting.

Frankly, the system is almost perfect for it. With a controller in each hand, the tempo and character of the music can be inferred by the console's motion-sensing system and translated into the playing of a virtual orchestra (who will, appropriate to Wii-person anatomy, lack legs and any apparent joining of limbs to body, but will still be able to hold instruments). Those familiar with the system will already have realised that the Wii controller is held in a near-identical fashion to the baton, further enhancing the learning curve for aspiring maestri. Players progress through several levels of difficulty, beginning with simple beat-keeping exercises (a Strauss polka or Sousa march), before progressing through larger excerpts of the orchestral literature which require multiple tempo changes and expressive gestures. (Additional bonus levels evoke more conventional beat-'em-up and shoot-'em-up gaming subjects, as the player uses the Wii controller first in 'negotiations' with the Musicians' Union over working hours, and then to dispatch airport security cretins who fail to distinguish between a trombone and a bomb).

The advantages are obvious: one no longer has to shell out to hire a full symphony orchestra and rehearsal venue, or the risk of egg meeting face for student conductors practising that tricky little corner in the finale of Bruckner Seven.

It will of course be necessary to have on the disc an appropriate selection of the orchestral literature, and more importantly for the computer to be able to interpret a wide range of gestures from the user. Fortunately the player will be able to use the setup menu to adjust the sensitivity of the motion sensors, which ranges from 'Klemperer' at one extreme to 'Bernstein' at the other. Be warned: the 'Gerghiev' and 'Rhosdesvensky' settings require additional CPU processing power.

As with any game, there exists the potential for all manner of cash-in sequels and 'expansion packs', and Wiiductor, as our creation shall henceforth be known, will be no exception. The 'Ba-rock! Expansion Pack (novelty wig sold separately) sees the player 'take on' the eighteenth century, first perfecting the Mannheim Rocket with a deft flick of the wrist, before progressing onto the court of Louis XXVXIVIIIII where the controller must be used to master double-dotted quavers without accidentally causing gangrene. The 'Stravinsky: Dissonance Unleashed' add-on culminates in perhaps the hardest level of all, the première of Rite of Spring in which aside from dealing with time signatures dreamt up by aliens, the player must dodge seats and other missiles hurled by the audience. (Gaming 'hack' rumour has it that completing this unlocks a secret level contining Le Marteau sans Maitre, which has been neither confirmed nor denied by the game's developers).

With the right development and marketing, I see no reason why this game won't be a best-seller. If ten million Chinese kids learn the piano, ten million Brits can wave the stick (even if it is comprised of invisible microwaves).

On arrangement

I have, as of today, finished an arrangement of The First Nowell that I've been commissioned to write for a concert in December. It's a rather unusual scoring; two flutes, two oboes, three trumpets, timps, harp, organ and strings (and chorus) - basically the baroque orchestra that will play in the Bach Magnificat earlier on. The inclusion of the harp, and indeed the arrangement, is explained by Finzi's In Terra Pax being in the concert, a piece that quotes the carol, albeit tentatively. Admittedly a slightly odd ensemble to write for, one saving grace is that the absence of the bottom half of the the wind section, horns and heavy brass is made up for by the large modern organ in the church where the arrangement will be performed. This instrument is more than capable of filling in the weight these instruments would otherwise provide (and playing quietly when needed), and in any case such a small string section would be overwhelmed by too much sound from the back of the stage.

As with arranging folk songs, the obvious problem of having a strophic melody-and-accompaniment carol is that it really only has the words to provide any ready-made variance. The arranger must pull out every trick available to keep the tune sounding as fresh as possible, the difficulty of which increases exponentially with the number of verses. Often the text is the most useful starting point to creating contrast, as that the arranger can highlight the significance of certain lyrics or verses in the ancient art known as word-painting. Thus in the second verse of Nowell, which describes the star moving towards a certain stable in central Palestine, the loud full-ensemble texture of the first verse is replaced by the chorus in harmony, solo violin, solo flutes, and harp, with the strings entering softly at the chorus. Likewise, the third verse uses the trumpets, oboes and a reedy registration on the organ to suggest the exotic origins of the wise men (the carol perpetuates the perennial idea that there were three of them, despite there being no confirmation of the number in any of the Gospels) as well as little turns and arabesques which I hope, remain the sensible side of cliche.

However, where the arranger can really inject their individual stamp is in the last verse. This is usually, in the church music tradition, sung with the voices in unison, allowing the organist, or whatever other accompaniment is playing, to provide an 'alternative' harmonisation for the verse. As the choir and congregation are all singing the tune (one hopes at roughly the same key/place/words) there is no obligation to follow the bass line or the rest of the four-part harmony that will be found written out in the hymn book and thus pretty much 'anything goes' in the harmony. Obviously the aim is usually to make the thing sound spectacular (and wake the neighbours/shatter windows/cause seismograph needles to jump with the force of the sound) whilst not being so 'way out' that the congregation cease to follow the tune and disaster ensues. In the case in hand, I have instructed the organist to draw as many stops as grabbable before jumping simultaneously on two pedals both tuned to the note D natural, making a noise like Brian Blessed blowing through a ship's hooter; and then play as series of mildly dissonant ascending chords aided by the strings playing tremolo (moving the bow back and forth so fast it's a blur). At the second stanza the harmony starts taking excursions into all sorts of exotic key areas, with harp and strings playing arpeggios - there's little point making them compete for the melody in their lower register with all the other noise going on. Finally, the last chorus appears in more conventional harmony (high descant doubled by flutes, great upward scales in the strings), big slow down; then organ, drums and trumpets into overdrive for a high-volume frenzy of D major in the coda. Bang-crash-wallop. Bosh. Mahler never even came close.

The above description is probably very confusing and peppered with muso jargon. A simpler explanation for the layman is that it will sound good and be very loud. Both of which are commendable aims in composition.

The end of history

Today saw the very last broadcast programme in Radio Four's A History of the World in 100 Objects. If you have no idea what this is, the title speaks for itself really; the curator of the British Museum has chosen 100 artefacts and narrated a radio series examining the significance of each one. Yes, there are 100 episodes. No, I've not yet heard them all. Yes, it is brilliant

I can't praise this series highly enough - where to start? An elegantly simple concept, although a massive project overall, with a knowledgeable and unobtrusive presenter (a rarity), equally appropriate and knowledgeable contributors, patient and engaging. It was intellectual without being monotonous or high-minded, and perfectly combined education and entertainment, to use Reithian terms. If the necessity of Radio Four, indeed radio in general, were ever called into doubt, this series alone would be evidence to the contrary.

One of the most enlightening things the series did was to choose a significant percentage of the objects from pre-AD periods. The first two million years of the human species tend to get dealt with fairly briskly in most histories - not ignoring the fact that we have vastly less in the way of information and surviving artefacts from these times - but also to get lumped into a few distinct periods based on the famous bits. So there's basically cavemen for, ooh, ages; then eventually there's some Egyptians building pyramids and Babylonian hanging gardens and some Jews in roughly the same region for a bit - oh, and the Chinese are doing some stuff - and then a while later the Greeks and Romans show up and history properly kicks off. What was great about AHOTWIOHO was that we got a full 35% of the objects, and thus the programming, on the pre-Christian world, which would otherwise remain monumentally under-exposed. I had no idea that anybody was even on Papua New Guinea in 2000 BC, let alone that they were producing novelty bird-shaped cookware. Yet a defaced penny from 1903 was similarly interesting.

Some of the objects were familiar, of course, even famous - the Rosetta Stone, the head of Ramesses II, the Lewis chessmen - possibly because of the requirement that all 100 objects came from the British Museum. But of course a collection that contains ancient stone sculptures or hand-made coins should not exclude credit cards and such like. They have as much historical significance, as the programme clearly set forth - I'd never read so much into Hokusai's The Great Wave before, for example.

I'm glad that AHOTWIOHO wasn't made as a television series, because it didn't need to be. The obvious weakness of having a radio series based around visual artefacts was offset by the narration, making the events and ideas signified by the object more important, and by the equally excellent website which allows high-resolution viewing of all the objects from several angles. More importantly, there was no need for the distractions that so often blight 'cultural' programming - overbearing and loud presenters, needless graphics and silly camerawork - based on the assumption that modern attention spans are inadequate for things quite interesting enough to stand on their own. In any case, who would commission a television series lasting a hundred episodes, yet with each only fifteen minutes in length? This is where radio honestly has the upper hand as a medium.

All 100 objects are on display in an exhibition at the British Museum. Best of all, all 100 radio programmes will remain available to listen to or download, hopefully in perpetuity. You can find them here.

Why the choir organ is hardcore

Has anyone noticed that the height at which musicians hold their guitars has a direct correlation to the level of hardcore-ness in the music?

Think about it for moment. At the one end of the scale - the scale being both vertical and musical - (and not the sort you get in exams, idiot!) we have country and western/folk/hillbilly guitarists, who either place said fretted instrument on their knee via a footstool, or at least have it pretty close to their chin whilst crooning about farming and how they'd rather you didn't mention Taylor Swift. Classical guitarists tend to follow the same formula in Bach and Brouwer.

Next we have the average middle-of-the-road pop guitarist. As these somewhat shy and secretive creatures tend to be session musicians in a backing band, they prefer the rear of the stage where it's darker. Thus, the guitar is held in an uncontroversial middle axis position.

Finally, the bottom end of the chart, in more ways than one, is occupied by the rock guitarist. Despite being rebellious and non-conformist, rock music has many rules and conventions, one of which is that any fretted instrument must be held as low as possible. Presumably this enables the rock musician greater slouching ability and thus to be more 'badass'.

How does this translate to other instruments, namely acoustic non-fretted ones? Obviously many musicians have no choice as to what height they hold their instruments. If you're a clarinetist there's not really a great deal of quibble on whether part of the instrument goes in your mouth or not. (In fact by the logic as explained above, observing a schalltrichter auf! marking in Mahler or Strauss actually makes you less hardcore because the instrument is held higher...right? It's the exception that proves the rule). String players theoretically could hold their violin or viola lower down on their chest, baroque-style, whilst cellists can just not use the spike. But it's all still a bit arbitrary as the argument goes.

However, after some thought, I realised there is one non-guitar instrument on which it is quite possible to play genuinely low to the floor and thus be genuinely hardcore on. And I'll bet you can't guess what it is in the next three minutes.

Time's up - it's the pipe organ.

Let me explain, for the benefit of non-organists. Organs, unless they're very small and weedy, have at least two keyboards ('manuals') and often three or more. These are, for obvious reason stacked on on top of each other in a gently raked fashion to enable the player to switch effortlessly (less so in my case) between them. All these keyboards have names which we don't really need to discuss, suffice to say that the lowest one is known as the Choir Organ because it's got quieter stops for accompanying the choir. (Since my church no longer has a choir, this function is somewhat moot). And it's really, genuinely low down, practically on the organist's lap, which puts it in pretty much the same vertical territory as the hardcore metal guitarist's instrument. Move over, Matt Bellamy.

Haydn seek

One of the things I often pick up from other musicians is an implicit consensus that any piece of music from, let's say, before the time of Beethoven, will essentially be pretty similar to any other piece written around the same time. On a superficial level, this seems like a reasonably forgiveable assumption: to give an example, eighteenth-century music in the galante style is invariably lightweight, in major keys and based on minuets and gavottes and things; thus few non-specialists, on a first hearing, would perceive much difference between a sonata by Stamitz and one by JC Bach. I readily confess to being unable to match any unfamiliar pieces by Schutz, Pachelbel and Buxtehude to their respective composers because my knowledge of the German Baroque does not extend particularly far beyond Bach. In the twentieth century (particularly the latter half), compositional practice suddenly seems to have exploded without warning into dozens of different 'schools' and even lone individuals, all writing very different-sounding music, yet alive at the same time. This is a rather interesting reversal of the rest of history, because everywhere else, the overall trend of the twentieth century has been homogenisation and rationalisation - communication advances meaning that everyone speaks English, every country adopts capitalism as a political philosophy and value system, so there's a McDonalds in every town and everyone drives a Ford, etc. One would think that this would cause art to follow suit as public tastes become equally homogenised and cultural values less varied. Quite the opposite - in fact as everything else starts to get more globalised and technologised, so more and more artistic niches seem to open up, increasing the diversity of artistic expression.

Anyway, whether this is actually true or whether artistic output is actually as homogenised as the rest of the world (that's if it even is, after all that preamble) and we don't realise it, is another blog post/PhD thesis/epic-length academic conference speech for another day. What I'd actually like to talk about is Joseph Haydn, he of the practical jokery and curly-locked wig.

Returning to my opening gambit, quite a few of us think Haydn is basically the same as Mozart - symphonies, operas, perfect cadences, curly wigs. Recently, however, I've had two things occur that have led me to the conclusion that nothing could be further from the truth. The first is Nimbus' brilliant two-volume set of all 104 symphonies (plus the Sinfonia Concertante; the symphonies 'A' and 'B', supposedly numbers 107 and 108; some violin concerti and some overtures to fill the last MP3 disk) by Adam Fischer and a band calling themselves the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, which turns out to be most of his mates from the top orchestras in Central Europe. It is, I understand, the first complete set under a single conductor, all done over about 8 years when everyone had some spare days to meet up and make the recording. What's more, the entire set are recorded in the Haydnsaal in Esterházy Palace, no less, and although it's not done on period instruments the performances have an air of authenticity as a result. But what's really exciting about these disks (there are sixteen - and no, despite extensive listening time I have not yet got through all 37 hours of music) is the playing style that the musicians instinctively bring - little inflections in rhythm, a particular way of phrasing and articulation, agogic accents in the minuets - a style which is natural to the orchestra, with its mix of Germanic, Austrian, Hungarian and Slavic musical cultures. It's absolutely perfect for Haydn, and for a very simple reason: this was the music Haydn was surrounded by during his 'exile' at Esterházy. 'I was cut off from the world and forced to develop my own style' he later remarked, a style which was entirely immersed in the folk music of the region. Never mind the refined, cosmopolitan, elegant style of the Viennese Mozart; Haydn is a country Hungarian: rougher, more rhythmic, less urbane - although no less dazzling, intelligent and compositionally fluent either.

Further proof of this comes as I practice the C major Cello Concerto for a gig next week. I learnt the first movement as a teenager (not that I had particularly distinguished level of technique back then) and followed the Rostropovich /Sadlo editorial bowings without question, adding liberal dollops of Romantic vibrato to hide to dodgy bits. But recently I've become more and more convinced that the 'folk music' approach, coupled with a judicious application of points gleaned from learning about period performance (don't worry, I'm not one of those people who is obsessed with 'authenticity' (another ranty blog post for the future methinks)), is the way to bring the best out of Haydn. It doesn't matter if fast runs and figurations are rough and even scratchy; that's how Haydn probably heard stuff done out in the street. Pulling the rhythms around, double-dotting things, the very Hungarian technique of playing fast using an entire bow length with almost no pressure, all bring the music to life without ever compromising the wit or sparkle of it. What would be horribly crude in Mozart or Boccherini works marvellously here, even to the point where it helps with technical issues. In fact my only difficulty may be getting the orchestra to adopt this style as well, on just two rehearsals.

As an afterword, it's not hard to see how one of Haydn's pupils picked up on such features as the 'misplaced' accents, pounding rhythms and general bucolic impetus of this style either. His name? Ludwig van Beethoven.

(Wikipedia happens to have a page on 'Haydn and folk music' which elaborates several points not touched upon here).

Damning with faint praise

Rather unremarkably, I was browsing the BBC News site yesterday. This is unremarkable due to this particular diaspora of silicon chips being set as my start page. Whenever Firefox loads, invariably the first thing I see is either David Cameron or Chris Moyles. These are not, admittedly, two of the people high on my list of 'faces I would ideally have pasted across my monitor immediatly following breakfast', but such is. Anyway, the point of the preamble is that on this occasion I came across this little story:

Elgar's Wolverhampton Wanderers striker anthem sung: A song by Sir Edward Elgar, which is believed to be one of the first football anthems, has been performed at a concert to raise funds for a church.

Now I probably should apologise for shoving an external link in the collective face of my readership when not even 200 words into a new blog, but I think this can be excused on the grounds of its musical specialism and the quirky-ness of the story in general. It's actually quite a touching piece detailing Britain's finest (and he IS, alright?) composer's loyal support of a particular soccer team who play in an orange-and-black home strip, resulting in a crowd-pleasing little ditty. I'm prepared to ignore the fact that the term 'football anthem' is used perhaps a little too literally here. But then I came across this paragraph:

Elgar, who was born in Broadheath, a village three miles from Worcester, is famous for a string of symphonies and concertos.

Well, not quite. In terms of completed works, Elgar wrote two symphonies, a violin concerto, and a cello concerto. He also left - but didn't complete - about half of the music for each of a Third symphony and a piano concerto, both of which have been completed (on his behalf) by Anthony Payne and Robert Walker respectively. So the grand total, depending on what your definition of an actual piece constitutes, is either 4, 5 or 6 symphonies and/or concerti. Hardly a 'string of', I'd venture. Haydn; yes, 104+ symphonies is a definately a string. Even Sibelius or Prokofiev, with a rather more modest seven apiece, could justifyably cash in their 'has done a string of' credentials. But not Elgar. One wonders why the author of this piece didn't pick up on a more suitable and incredibly obvious example, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches, which form a definate 'string of' five (and a half, because yet again there's an unfinished one). Apart from anything else, the somewhat trivialising term 'string of', implying that the subject was rather unceremoniously churned out as a potboiler, suits these misleadingly jingoistic pieces rather better than symphonies that took two years to compose.

In other words, research fail. Hmm.

This sort of error might seem trivial, but it belies a general confusion over the practice of art music. Presumably the author of this piece was under the - generally correct - impression that all classical composers write symphonies and concertos, which are, admittedly, the dominant music forms in The Western Art Music Tradition. And there are a confusing myriad of forms, structures, genres and sub-genres which one cannot really expect a journalist to familiarise themself with the intricacies of, especially for the purpose of a minor regional news article. Why can't we just call everything classical a 'song', as folks are apt to do (ignoring the elephant in the room, which is instrumental music making up the majority of this tradition) and not worry about the nitty-gritty of sub-stratae?

On the other hand, it has the makings of a major error - imagine if the composer in question had been Palestrina, Faure or John Cage, none of whom even contemplated writing symphonies or concerti. And imagine if the article had actually applied the same logic to sports, citing Wolves' striker Steven Fletcher as a cricketer because, well, he plays with a ball, right? Even mis-attributing his on-field position would, presumably, unleash either howls of derision or the wrath of die-hard fans. With this in mind, I consider my foregoing complaint to be not only justified but distinctly mild-mannered. If you cannot do your research correctly, why not just play safe and describe Elgar as 'a leading British composer/birth and death dates/favourite flavour of Pringles'? He's not really that obscure a figure, especially considering his stint on the back of our second-highest denomination of paper money a few years ago. Everyone's heard of 'Land of 'ope and Glory'; it is not as if we are discussing Broadheath's 1857 pigeon-racing champion. Is it really that snobby and elitist to ask for a little knowledge of a venerable tradition which is actually quite deeply embedded in the national consciousness?

Anyway, to fob you off with another link, here's one of my favourite bloggers talking about other mis-attributions in music, although from a different tack.