Just the beginning...

Does the UK government have the first clue about what it's doing? Less than a year since the coalition came to power and they're already being told by their own select committee that decisions they made a few months ago were poor - something the public spotted right away when the UK Film Council was turned into a clay pigeon and shot down. Now they want the ACE to slash another 50% of its own operating costs and are making noises about not being 'convinced' that so many subsidised orchestras are needed. Yet so many of the comments, as reported today, are self-contradictory, confused or oddly timed that the incoherence and anxiety that lie beneath are clearly visible. You can read the whole Select Committee Report yourself, here.

..."Arts industry insiders believe the timing of the report is designed to damage the council and deflect negative reaction to the forthcoming announcement away from the Government."... (The Independent) (Read the rest here.) 

..."The committee also said it was not convinced there was a need for so many symphony orchestras to receive funding from the council and the BBC; claimed heritage had been underfunded compared with the arts; and expressed concern at the deep level of cuts to funding for culture proposed by some local councils.

The arts world is waiting anxiously for the results of public funding applications, which are due to drop into email inboxes up and down England between 7.30am and 9.30am on Wednesday. Grant applications have been made by 1,300 organisations; almost half will be unsuccessful....  (The Guardian)" (Read the rest here)

Feeling sick already? We ain't seen nothing yet. I'm not saying the status quo was perfect - yes, there's a serious deficit, and yes, there was a world financial crisis. There has to be a way to save money. But it has to be a competent, considered, sensible way and we have yet to see anything that suggests the current administration is capable of this; or that there is an electable alternative that could be any better. The sense of lunatics running the asylum has rarely been stronger; today, after all we've seen taking place in the US, persistent clinging to belief in the free market as the answer to all the world's problems seems staggeringly naive at best and, at worst, plain stupid. In one word: Detroit.


It's the apparently hasty and ill-considered way in which decisions like the abolition of the Film Council and the PLR (public lending rights) distributing agency were forced through that seems most dubious. The report says the following re PLR:

147. We are surprised at the Government's decision to abolish the PLR body and disappointed that DCMS did not discuss the future of the PLR with its Registrar before announcing its abolition. It follows the same disturbingmodus operandi as with the other bodies, including the UK Film Council. We have not found anyone who supports this decision. Any proposal that the Arts Council should take over the PLR was unrealistic and rightly abandoned. However, this has left the PLR in a state of protracted uncertainty, which could have been avoided had the department discussed proposals with the PLR sooner.

148. We do not believe that the British Library is an appropriate body to take on the work of administering the PLR. Far more appropriate is the ALCS, which already distributes royalty payments to authors. We understand that there may be a legal technicality preventing this, in which case we recommend that legislative measures are put in place to allow it to happen as soon as possible.

NB "WE HAVE NOT FOUND ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS THIS DECISION"


Meanwhile in academia, ideology-driven policies that bear little relation to reality are taking hold too...have a dekko at this weirdly Stalinist requirement, reported yesterday, that humanities research at university level will be required to study 'the Big Society', something that I hope profoundly might have been misinterpreted or misquoted or at least mis-something. Here are David Lodge's thoughts on the university situation.

26 March: A few thoughts about cuts

[RANT ALERT. IF YOU DON'T LIKE RANTS, SURF AWAY NOW. IF YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF MUSIC EDUCATION IN BRITAIN, READ ON.]


This afternoon, London sees the March for the Alternative - the biggest mass protest to hit the capital's streets since the Stop the War Coalition March in 2003. Various newspapers are predicting between 100,000 and 300,000 participants and the NUT has chartered trains from around the country in order to join in. Here are thoughts from a cross-section of people planning to march today.

A couple of months ago, after Philip Pullman and other authors spoke out with eloquence and passion against the closure of public libraries, I ran a post on JDCMB calling for star musicians to speak up too. And several promptly got in touch with words to the effect of: "Yes, anytime!" But... everyone was waiting for Darren Henley's report into the state of music education and for the government's response. These arrived very late.

When they turned up, they seemed good. Henley made some excellent recommendations and the response appeared to take them on board. Michael Gove seems to like music, and noises were even made about ringfencing certain bits of money for music education. It seemed, at first glance, that there wasn't all that much to yell about.

But on closer examination, this doesn't reflect what's actually been happening while we waited. There's a dangerous division between the national, centralised government recommendations and the individual responses of local authorities hard hit by budget cuts. At times the two situations bear no relation whatsoever to one another. Local authorities, in charge of their own budgets for everything from refuse collection to care for the elderly to music teaching, could not afford the time to wait for the report, let alone act according to it. Up and down the country, music services have already been slashed by councils desperate to save money wherever they can; and because of the division in national plans and local realities, it seems hard to get the message through about what is really happening.

The same, of course, is true for professional musical organisations: many regional orchestras, for instance, depend on local funding as well as ACE grants and are facing a double whammy of cutbacks in both. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, for instance - a fabulous orchestra and host to Vassily Petrenko, possibly the most exciting young conductor to hold a post in this country - is being rewarded for its runaway success and massive increases in its audience by something resembling a financial brickbat. The CBSO too is facing a serious cut, but seem glad it isn't even bigger.

The lack of clarity about the national and local divisions in these issues has, I think, caused a heap of confusion and made it difficult for the public to recognise what's happening. I am sure there are plenty of conspiracy theorists who could suggest that this sense of muddle might even be deliberately imposed from somewhere high up the tree. Personally I tend to subscribe to 'cock-up' theories rather than 'conspiracy'. I suspect that in the diplodocus of bureaucracy, the head hasn't a clue what the tail is doing, so great is the distance between them.

Yesterday Tom Service reported on his Guardian blog about the response of Bedfordshire: soaring costs for music lessons that far exceed the recommended fees suggested as market rate by the Musicians Union. And a well-known musician in Yorkshire has written to me, forwarding a message from a concerned local about the slashing of music provision to the effect of: "Why isn't anyone saying anything about this?" Music-making in the UK should never be reduced to a pursuit barred to those who cannot afford exorbitant fees for lessons.

If children do not hear music, they will not know that it exists. And they are missing out. In assuming they won't be interested in western classical music because it isn't "cool" (that word is a plague on all our houses), and in failing to teach them to appreciate it, play it and understand it, we are subjecting them to a deprivation of spirit. We're treating our youngsters with patronising assumptions for which they're going to come back to us one day, when we're doddering around taking out our dentures, and say WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US?

A challenge for you: this week, play a young person some music. Choose it well, answer their questions, offer follow-up suggestions. Last week, as part of a writing workshop, I played a group of eight A and AS level students some Keith Jarrett. One boy in particular was crazy about it. He said he had never heard any jazz before. A month ago I took my niece to see Madam Butterfly at the Albert Hall. She is a bright university student and comes from an academic family full of people who appreciate music, yet she'd never heard a note of this opera before. She loved it.

Young people deserve the chance to find an enthusiasm and make up their own minds about music: how dare we assume they won't like it? If you don't play them music, if you don't show them what is available for them to enjoy, if you do not teach them how it works and equip them with the vocabulary to understand it, explore it and talk about it, you are killing part of our collective soul and theirs.

Perhaps even more worrying is this: as regards the benefits that music brings all round, the case has been made. The points have been proved, the evidence is there and it has been hammered home. EL SISTEMA. Sistema Scotland and the Big Noise. Buskaid, Soweto. What more proof do we need that music-making is a force for good, a shortcut to all-round improvement to spiritual, mental, physical and social health, the provision of it a financial stitch in time? The case has been made, and proven, and unarguably so. But how do we get anyone to listen? What more do we have to do?

Enough hanging around! If we wait any longer, it will be too late. I think we've all been too patient and way too nice. Music teachers, get out there in central London today and do some shouting.

Now, dear musician friends, if you would like to send me any words of protest against the bureaucracy-sponsored suffocation of music lessons, as well as exhortations about the human value of music, I will post them here with the greatest of pleasure.

Hungry for Hungary, plus a suitable Friday Historical

I'm back from the mini-tour of Hungarian Dances. This week the three of us went to Old Swinford Hospital School in Stourbridge, which made us welcome with a winning combination of warm atmosphere, enthusiasm and, by no means least, school dinners complete with apple crumble and custard. Bradley and Margaret pulled out all the stops that can be found on violin and piano, the story seemed to go over well and the continuity gelled: the ideal for these concerts is that music and words should become a gesamtkunstwerk of sorts, a goal that is beginning to feel not just possible but natural. The sophisticated and substantial cutlet of the Debussy Violin Sonata is the perfect foil for the Gypsy numbers and balances the Ravel Tzigane in the second half. And Bradley's Gypsy-style playing really has to be seen to be believed, and I'm not just saying it because it was my book. The Northern Sinfonia is a lucky old orchestra to have him at the helm. 

The next day we all gave workshops for the kids and I managed to introduce my creative writing group to Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert in the process. We have an exercise in which I suggest that music can provide a route into the stillness of mental space from which focused creativity can spring, but which is sorely lacking in modern life, especially if you're facing a heap of exams. I put on something suitably calming - here's where The Koln Concert works beautifully, but in the past I've also used Chopin (slow movement of B minor Sonata) - and treat it as a meditation, in which the music leads the pen. Some people respond more enthusiastically than others, of course, but it is just one example of an option that can be harnessed to help access that space in ourselves. And just occasionally, someone will produce something in the music exercise that is rather incredible... This group was no exception and I think KJ would have been pleased to think he'd sparked such interesting thoughts and reflections. 

Meanwhile the voice coaching sessions I had a few years ago have proved their worth. I love rediscovering that fabulous "afterglow" sensation where you're on a total high after giving a really good concert - and without having to play a note! HA! Still, Bradley and Margaret play enough notes for seven, never mind three... The whole thing has been fantastic, dreamlike and showered with spring sun and daffodils galore. THANKS, FOLKS!

And so it's home and back to the hamster-wheel. And it's Friday. So here is Jelly d'Aranyi playing a Hungarian piece we don't have in the concert: Hubay's Poemes hongroises, Op.26 No.6. This should put a spring in everyone's step.

Liszt gets his own airport

Amid all the current world horrors, there's one shred that can cause us musos to smile: "Liszt Ferenc" is getting his own airport. Hungary is renaming Budapest aiport after him in honour of his 200th birthday. Nice one, folks, and I'm sure that were he alive today, Liszt would have travelled by private jet. I hope we can look forward to Aeroport Claude Debussy in France (new name for Roissy, perhaps?) next year; a good big Italian job for Giuseppe Verdi in 2013; and for that other great 200th anniversary in 2013 maybe somewhere in Bavaria could go for...ah, all right, maybe not... Come 2057, will Heathrow become Edward Elgar Airport? Unlikely. The oil will probably have run out by then.

Speaking of Hungary, our Hungarian Dances concert at Potton Hall in Suffolk the other day was huge fun. Concert environments do make a difference: Potton Hall, a converted barn, not only has wonderful acoustics and perfect tranquility, but with its glowing golden wood, vaulted roof and warmth of atmosphere it just begs to be "performed in". Next concert tomorrow night at Old Swinford Hospital School, Stourbridge. (We are open to bookings, btw- drop me a line for details anytime...). Left, a pic from the green room at Potton Hall: muggins, Bradley Creswick (violin), Margaret Fingerhut (piano).

Striggio goes biggio

So what's a Renaissance mass that has been lost for four centuries doing in the pop charts? Here's my thought for the day in the Indy. 

Off to Potton Hall, Suffolk, in an hour or so for the Hungarian Dances concert tonight with Bradley Creswick & Margaret Fingerhut. Next one is on Tuesday at Old Swinford Hospital School, Stourbridge.