Face the Music (TV series)

:"Not to be confused with an unrelated American TV series of the same name."

"Face the Music" was a BBC television series about classical music. It began in 1966 and continued until 1979, with revivals in 1983-4 and 2007.

The programme was in the form of a quiz, but there was no scoring and no winner. It was chaired by Joseph Cooper, and the panel consisted of three celebrities. Each week there would be a special guest, who would also have to answer questions. The questions to the panel were asked in a series of rounds, each with a theme, such as "The Face, the Music" (where a member of the panel would have to identify a composer from his picture, while music by a different composer was played in the background).

The most popular round was the "dummy keyboard", where Cooper played a famous piano piece on a dummy piano so that it had to be identified merely from his hand movements. The sound of the work in question would be faded in for the home audience to hear.

Another round was "Hidden Melody" where Cooper would perform a popular tune in the style of a famous composer including extracts of works by the composer to help the listeners. If Robin Ray was appearing, he would routinely identify the opus number of the quoted works.

Regular panel members included Joyce Grenfell, Robin Ray, Richard Baker, Bernard Levin, David Attenborough, Valerie Pitts, and Patrick Moore. Guests included William Walton, Arianna Stassinopoulos (now known as Arianna Huffington), Dudley Moore, André Previn, Julian Lloyd Webber, Nigel Kennedy and Georg Solti (whose wife, Valerie Pitts was a panel member for the broadcast).

The theme music was the "Popular Song", from an extract from William Walton's "Façade" suite.

A version titled "Face the Music 2007" was aired on BBC Four on 1 July 2007. It was announced as a pilot, implying that a full series is likely to follow. The host was John Sergeant and unlike the original, points were awarded for correct answers (though Sergeant's assertion that "scores are important" was clearly ironic as the show retained the non-competitive feel of the original series).