Yesterday, having been warned off the fiddle concerto at the RFH, I spent a happy evening doing something I don't do often: watching TV. Solti fans may know that BBC2 had a documentary about tigers in India...but what caught me off-guard was a follow-up programme to The Choir, a reality TV series following what happened when a choral conductor named Gareth formed a choir at a school in Northolt, north-west London, trained them up and took them to China to enter an international competition. The cameras returned to see where they all are now, as well as recapping on the series for those who'd missed it, like me.
I ended up in tears.
The kids had prepared two numbers for the competition: 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' and Faure's 'Cantique de Jean Racine'. Faure?! They were stumped. First, the competition stipulated that one song had to be in a foreign language. Secondly, they just didn't see, when they tried it for the first time, how they could sing this.
Leaving aside the issue of why decent, normal schoolkids from multicultural backgrounds in a city that considers itself the capital of Europe should recoil in horror at the notion of using another language - they did it. They fought and grumbled and one stormed out. But they did it. They learned the Cantique, took it to China and sang it from memory. First, they sang it to their mums, who couldn't believe their ears. At the contest, the choir didn't get through to the second round, but they'd had an experience that moved them to bits and will stay with them forever. None of them had had the first notion of classical music before this. They assumed it was 'a bit boring' and not for them.
And the long-term effects? One, the shy Chloe, had found the confidence to sail out of school into a job that involved giving presentations. She'd found she prefers singing classical music to pop - she couldn't put her finger on why, but said "it feels good" (or something like that). One boy who'd never sung before was at college and wanting to form his own band. A lively blonde missed the choir so much that she went out and joined another. A 13-year-old was now singing in his church choir and loving it. And one boy - the one who'd thrown the tantrum - said: "Even people who couldn't spell classical before are into it now."
Tasmin started her Naked Violin project by wondering what it would take to get music through to people. This programme made clear that one thing it takes is opportunity; another is a little effort, on everyone's parts. The rewards for that effort? Immeasureable.
BBC TV now has an 'iplayer' facility, which I hadn't anticipated using...but you can see programmes online for 7 days after they've been screened. So here is this one.
6 comments:
I watched the original series but forgot to watch the follow-up.
It made me very angry.
One reason was that it seemed that this school has a music teacher but no choir. I want to know what that teacher was actually doing to earn their salary. We can discuss for ever the economics of instrumental tuition but having no choir is disgraceful. At my secondary school choir was an optional extra-curricular activity, but there, as in my Primary School, elementary choral singing was a fundamental part of mainstream lessons (also Hymn Practice because I went to church schools).
My other reason for anger is TV. When I was growing up there was a fair bit of mainstream classical music on mainstream TV. Granted, my parents were very much music lovers (as listeners) so there was the inclination, but without them, I would still have been exposed to classical musicians on Children's TV - James Galway on Swap Shop, well, James Galway all over the telly; Thomas Allen on Children's ITV; Kiri Te Kanawa Xmas special; light entertainment programmes of all sorts (I fell in love with Plácido Domingo when he was on Parkinson). I am firmly of the belief that people will - up to a point - watch anything that's on TV (snooker?). For some it will mean little more than a passing interest, but for others, inspiration.
But the people who run telly nowadays, many of them from tremendously privileged backgrounds, are such elitist snobs that they cannot conceive that 'ordinary people' can actually like classical music -and when BBC1 has its occasional concession with highlights of a few populist Proms, we get the ghastly Titchmarsh talking to us as though the entire concept of classical music is entirely alien - yet choral singing is, apparently, the most popular organised hobby in the UK (ie less popular than shopping, driving , eating out etc but more popular than playing any particular team sport, for example).
Gert
Not available outside the UK....
on 'elite' - the vice mayor of Vilnius in charge of the 2009 European City of Culture, went on record last month saying that 'the state or the elite should pay for elite art, not the municipality'.
We are still trying to work out what he was trying to say, but we are not sure whether to laugh or to cry....
Gert's comment is very interesting and spot-on. It's not those kids' fault that they'd never heard any classical music before.
Meanwhile there's a very interesting discussion about the programme/series going on at the Times Educational Supplement's forum. Wonderful Webmaster sent me this link - comment no.71 gives another angle on the thing altogether.
I am very pleased to know that some good came out of The Choir. I recently watched the entire thing in one go, in spite of the fact that the first thirty minutes suggested it would not be good for my blood pressure. It left me sad and angry. I do not need to explain why because comment 71 in the TES forum takes care of that for me singularly well.
On a tangent, the New York Times of this day, January 27, has a long piece about Vladimir Jurowski. I was intrigued to read that he has a performance of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Moscow in his schedule. There is a link here with the above, because 44 years ago the orchestra and choir of my school, together with the choir of a neighbouring girls' school and four professional soloists, gave three performance of parts 1 to 4, glowingly reviewed by the Times. This was hardly typical, of course -- our music master, the conductor, was one of the eight private pupils taught by Webern in the 30s, and the last -- he lived with Webern and his family after the others had left and before fleeing Vienna himself after Kristallnacht. Nevertheless, economics alone would bar that happening today, even if everything else were in place, which it is not. As ladonna says, for a school to have a music teacher but no choir is a disgrace.
Continuing pamos1949's tangent, the link to the NYT article on Jurowski is here. I can think of at least one critic, based in Philadelphia, who has thoroughly absorbed this article, as a quote from this article on upcoming concerts in Philly can attest:
"Vladimir Jurowski. He conquered Russian repertoire in his first two visits with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and April 10 to 12 he branches out into a varied and seemingly disconnected program: Ligeti's Atmosphères, the Brahms Violin Concerto (with the charmingly old-world sound of the young Nikolaj Znaider), Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, and the Blue Danube Waltz. Movie buffs will appreciate the nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, 40 years almost to the day after its release. But on another level a piece of history more relevant to the orchestra will be in the making, as all the constituents eyeing a potential eighth music director for the orchestra decide whether to press for this brilliant young Russian, or risk his getting snapped up elsewhere."
Wait. Seriously though. How do you get this outside the UK? I want to watch so bad now.
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