70th anniversary of Composer of the Week

Mention of the 70th anniversary of Composer of the Week brings to mind a distinguished list of long-running programmes on Radio 3. They all beg the question of how they have managed to survive so long in an atmosphere of constant doubt about the value of a station that has so few listeners. Time and again it has seemed as though dumbing down would be the fate of all these old shows, if not of Radio 3 itself, and every time a peculiarly British mix of grudging respect for the arts alongside a trenchant nostalgia for familiar things — of the kind that has kept The Archers going since 1951 — has saved them.

Composer of the Week can outrank The Archers, however, having been launched (as This Week’s Composer) in August 1943. It was a classic exemplar of the Reithian intention that broadcasting should ‘inform, educate and entertain’, the last of these coming last. Its early years must have been spent on a general broadcasting channel since the Third Programme didn’t come into existence until 1946, and then only for six hours in the evening between 6 p.m. and midnight. It wasn’t until 1964 that classical music programmes went out during the day, and at that point This Week’s Composer found a regular slot.

Objections to the perceived elitism of the Third Programme could be heard right from the beginning, probably not helped by its founders stating that their aims were to promote ‘something fundamental to our civilisation’ and to contribute to ‘the refinement of society’. Noble motivation never comes over well in the mouths of the privileged, and these people were clearly the recipients of expensive educations. The Third Programme Defence Society, formed when the first round of cuts hit the BBC in 1957, numbered T.