Gratuitous Musickal Observation

How sweet is this? WETA-FM, the Dee Cee NPR affiliate, has switched back to an all-classical format!

The move appears to have come about when the only other local classical station (the commercial WGMS) decided to drop the format. WETA moved in and is now working with WGMS to pipe the music out from the public station.

This is fantastic news. WETA used to be a classical station, but in the middle of the night a couple years back switched over to a round-the-clock gabfest format, where earnest, tweed-clad inullegkshuls told us what an awful country this is and how it's All Dubya's Fault. I was furious then and have been fuming about it ever since. And try as I might, I could never get into WGMS, which usually played only selections from pieces instead of the whole thing, confined itself to warhorses and kept interrupting with very annoying commercials.

Well, the music is back now. Not only will I start listening again, I'll also start donating, too. And maybe I'll even start reading their new blog.

Woo Hoo!

UPDATE: Speaking of musickal things, today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1797, of Franz Schubert. My quote-of-the-day email guy says at the end of a collection of adulatory quotes by Schumann and Beethoven:

N.B. I discovered in preparing today's QOTD that there are no entries for Schubert in Nicolas Slonimsky's Lexicon of Musical Invective, which suggests that very few listeners have found much in his music not to like.

Well, now. Far be it from me to say anything bad about Schubert, especially about his chamber music, over which many people fawn and about which I know very little. But I do know something about the structural unwieldiness and unimaginative repetitions of some of his orchestral music, especially his 9th Symphony in C. It is often refered to as "The Great," but as my mother points out, a better nickname might be "The Large."