Certain critical voices, typically in the world of jazz, have suggested that reissuing alternate takes can be both aesthetically and ethically disrespectful to the artists' and producers' original decisions about the relative value of the various takes. This point of view is, for example, exhibited on ESP discs, which all bear the slogan ‘THE ARTISTS ALONE DECIDE WHAT YOU WILL HEAR ON THEIR ESP-DISK’. In other words, when Charlie Parker recorded ‘Parker's Mood’, and the studio team decided to issue only one take, should we be able to listen to the other four that they rejected, but which were all released by Savoy on The Charlie Parker Memorial Albums?

This article examines the way in which music has featured in documentary films and programmes. The conventions of restrained use to cue mood and theme are explored, using examples and the recommendations of manuals. Across the varieties of documentary output, the article notes how the dominance of journalistic and observational formats has, for different reasons, tended to place music in the margins. Drawing on an example from the classic period of documentary film-making in Britain, it points towards a more expansive use of music in a complementary relationship with images. A number of general theoretical points about the specific properties of the documentary image and its relationship with music are raised and recent examples of successful innovation discussed. The article ends by suggesting that there is more scope for aesthetic development in music-image relations than has often been recognised and that some of the established inhibitions about mixing ‘fact’ with ‘emotion’ need to be reviewed.

The idea I have in mind is to compare the situation on television today and thirty years ago of what persists in being known as classical music. I write as an academic, but this will not be a normal academic paper. For one thing, I shall not do any special research but base myself instead on memory and autobiographical experience, because thirty years ago, before becoming an academic, I began by writing music criticism and making documentaries on music for television. My intention is to say something as a participant observer about the alteration of the cultural context in which this thing called classical music operates, and about the part that television has played in this.