Why is it so difficult to make engaging television programmes about classical music? Time and again I have watched earnest and expensive attempts fail, despite every care in the planning, coming away grateful that the effort was made but aware that nothing lasting had been achieved. I felt like this after seeing the most recent episode of Sacred Music, dedicated to Byrd and Tallis and broadcast as part of a series on BBC4, with the admirable Simon Russell Beale as presenter.
Ever since it became mandatory for peak-time television to entertain more than to educate, programmes about our cultural traditions have had a big problem of definition. This has never seemed quite so crippling with the other arts as it has with music — programmes about the history of painting, for example, never seem to struggle for the right tone.
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