SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL #3

And now that we've just about recovered from yesterday's #conductormovies madness, (catch up via the post below if you missed it), here are my next three musical luminaries speaking up on why a musical education is not just valuable but invaluable, and should never be barred to children whose families are unable to pay for it. Please welcome: the great British pianist Paul Lewis, ace oboist and conductor Nicholas Daniel and violinist Eos Chater from Bond!

PAUL LEWIS, pianist

"When the wide ranging benefits of music education have been staring us right in the face for so long, it's little short of depressing that as soon as budget cuts are mentioned, music remains a soft target. Growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, I was lucky enough to have benefitted from a primary school which took its music seriously, the gift of state funded peripatetic instrumental tuition, and a selection of local youth orchestras and children's music groups, all provided by the local council. 

"This kind of set-up has of course long disappeared, and the prospect of further brutal cuts sends out a disheartening message to anybody for whom music is an important part of life. Those of us who value it have a responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure that music - undeniably an essential part of a broad and inclusive education - occupies a prominent place in our education system. To deny the next generation the means to discover something so life enriching, and to which we ourselves had free access, is a thoughtless and selfish strategy."

NICHOLAS DANIEL oboist, conductor, artistic director Leicester Festival

My profound concerns over local and county council cuts in the highly productive and cost-effective music services are based on personal experience. 
My teenage sons have benefitted greatly from the legendary music service in Bedfordshire, through the County Youth Orchestra and Chamber Music courses. I would go so far as to say they were central to their enjoying music as much as they do now. The future there is still uncertain, I'm told, but looking bleak. 

I have heard about many areas facing drastic cuts, but Arts in Education in Leicester have been completely cut. Completely. 100%. This is the county that has in recent years seen thousands of children involved in dance projects and performing real, serious dance, and where Sir Michael Tippett used to conduct the Youth Orchestra. The big picture is terribly worrying nationwide, and the ignorance of the need for the arts among our local elected representatives seems truly shocking.

I protest here, I will protest where I can. However I will not be protesting in London after the horrendous experience my 16-year-old son Alastair had with 'Kettling' while protesting against education cuts last year. It makes the suspicious side of my nature wonder whether there is an overall plan.

EOS CHATER violinist, Bond

I was brought up through the British music education system, so the issue of cuts is something that is very close to my heart. It seems that music is seen as a luxury, but what is often overlooked is the additional learning that takes place in musical environments. 




When I was a kid, all the county orchestras and school instrument lessons were government funded and therefore free to pupils and their parents. That meant that anybody and everybody could learn to play an instrument, and be a part of a brass band, choir or orchestra regardless of their financial or social background. The following is a list of social development benefits that come through music:


1/ Building confidence
Being a part of a large group of like-minded people and working together and achieving  a common goal is hugely beneficial for young people. I have life-long friends from my youth orchestra days.

2/ The value of  cooperation.
In an orchestra everyone needs to be cooperative and to play together for the performance to be any good. The whole orchestra could be made up of virtuoso players but if they don't play together  the orchestra will  sound awful.


3/ Speaking and Listening
Being aware of when it's your time come to the fore and when to let someone else be heard.

4/ Sharing leadership
an orchestral soloist and conductor mutually follow one another in a (for want of a better word) dance.


5/ Punctuality.
Nothing makes you more punctual than having 70 people turning round tutting at you as you arrive late...even if it's done in good spirit.

6/ Pulling your weight and having pride in your work
People who join and are 'passengers' rarely stay so for long as everybody knows everybody else in an orchestra so people tend to make an effort.

In case you missed #conductormovies yesterday...

Think classical music and its admirers are a rarified world, out of touch with popular culture? Think again! Though maybe we do have odd ways of letting off steam...

The Twitterverse went bananas yesterday playing #conductormovies. It was all the fault of @tommyrpearson who started it with one inspired tweet carrying the fatal hashtag: Herbert von Carry On. I was out doing interviews and got back to discover my twitterfeed full of stuff like The Curious Case of Benjamin Britten, Get Solti, Dudamel, Where's My Car? (which turned up about 100 times)... you get the idea. My own contributions were somewhat late in the game but I can offer When Harry Met Solti, The Fischer King, Fanny and Alexander Gibson, and Alex Prior Doesn't Live Here Any More. You can find the rest by going on to Twitter and searching the hashtag #conductormovies...

Meanwhile The New Classical 963FM, a Canadian radio station based in Toronto, and with considerable expertise in Photoshop, took things a stage further and produced the posters. Here's the link. And here's our LPO favourite:

Back to soberer matters in a minute.... and apologies to New Classical 963FM for mistakenly identifying it as American this morning, which unfortunately is what comes of blogging before one's had one's second cup of coffee.

SHOUT OUT! MUSIC EDUCATION FOR ALL #1

Music education in the UK is facing a shaky future due to financial cutbacks. Despite an apparently positive response from central government to Darren Henley's recommendations in his official report, local authorities have already begun to slash their music services and budgets for music teaching. Some are putting fees for instrumental tuition up to levels way beyond the recommended MU rates, pricing the non-privileged out of the market. This discrepancy between apparent central intent and what's really happening "on the ground" needs to be recognised and spotlighted. And it needs noticing now. 

I, for one, don't want to see music-making in the UK barred to those who can't afford to pay for lessons. Yet while authors jumped forward with alacrity and tough words about the iniquities of closing libraries, and were instant fodder for headlines, even the most prominent musicians seem to lack suitable outlets to speak out. An entire musical country has therefore been feeling voiceless and hopeless. 

Enter JDCMB. I've asked some of the prominent British musicians I know to please consider voicing their concerns via my site and I'll be running their responses throughout the week ahead. Today we begin with no less a team than Tasmin Little, Barry Douglas and Julian Lloyd Webber. 

TASMIN LITTLE violinist

"My point is short and far from sweet.  If we do not keep music education high on our agenda, it is not just the current generation of children who will be deprived of profound experiences which can affect their whole lives, but future generations, who will wonder why they cannot understand emotions which lie deep within themselves.  

I have had so many experiences of the power of music on children of all ages, nationality and social background - from kids with communication disabilities in UK, to groups of Chinese children who have never heard a note of any live music, to young Zimbabwean children whose animated faces at their discovery of music will never leave my memory.  However, a teacher in Yorkshire emailed me recently and her words sum it all up for me:

“I also teach minority ethnic children English, and thought you would like to hear this story:  one of these children had selective mutism, and it was only when I took my guitar in to her English lesson and gave it to her to hold that she said her first sentence to me, which was 'I'd like to learn the violin'!  From that point she has begun speaking, and after I arranged violin lessons for her, it turns out that she has musical talent and is doing well.  This is the power of music!”

BARRY DOUGLAS pianist

"We like to define society by the expressiveness and achievement of its people. OK - fine.  But in this era of cutting mercilessly, it's not 'just about the economy, stupid!' The wealthy class always hold all the cards and the rest try 'their best'; and here is an amazing example of, potentially, a whole generation of young people being barred from the fulfilment and delight of music and the arts. When all other European countries except Ireland are freezing or increasing funding, the one-time hub of the music world is cutting and imploding.  How short-sighted and how cruel. Even when I was growing up during the conflict in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, the concerts, festivals and music education available helped sustain us. Think again, please, for the sake of your children and grand-children." 

JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER cellist

"It is extremely frustrating when the Coalition has given its support to the importance of music in schools – having recognised the huge social benefits music brings both to children and their communities - to then discover slash-happy local authorities lagging far behind in their thinking. It is so easy to make a knee-jerk ‘cut’ to provisions for music and so hard to reinstate it later.

"Music is a universal language which brings people together and which provenly enhances children’s skills in so many other ways. There is no better way to build a ‘Big Society’ than through music – one thing EVERYONE can share together."

Look what I found today - not a joke

A Friday historical with a twist: here is something I have never heard before, namely Vladimir Horowitz playing Faure. This recording comes from a recital that the great Russian pianist gave in Ann Arbor in 1977. It is Faure's last and darkest Nocturne, No.13, written in 1921 and completed not long after the death of Saint-Saens. Horowitz gives short shrift to the misleading legend that late Faure must sound obscure, restrained and difficult: he draws out all the emotional devastation in the death-haunted heart of this music and its concentration and power come bowling out with immense impact. I find it breathtaking. You?

(Update, 5 April - there's been some to-ing and fro-ing over whether or not this recording was in fact commercially released, but I'm now assured by the owner of this Youtube channel that it wasn't. Please see the comments boxes!)

Breaking news: Monteverdi invented the "leitmotif"

An extraordinary new light was cast upon the late works of Claudio Monteverdi (left) last night, when the Amsterdam University scholar Dr Pieter van der Oeugewalt revealed at last the startling result of secret research work he has been undertaking for the past five years.

The academic has issued a statement as follows:

"Monteverdi has long been regarded as the founding father of modern music. I believe that my discovery will prove that he was precisely such, yet in a more pervasive manner than we had hitherto imagined.

"Studying his opera L'Incoronazione di Poppea of 1642-3, I became fascinated by the presence of a recurring figure, a simple pattern consisting of a falling fourth followed by a one-tone dip below and return to this note. A close examination of the libretto reveals that this theme - as simple, skeletal and strong as any motif by Wagner - is associated on every recurrence with Poppea's greed and unstoppable ambition. Having checked and double-checked this association, I find it to be consistent and unfailingly so. Monteverdi's music sounds as modern today as it must have on the day it was written: this composer would spare no experiment in his determination to reveal through music all the secret depths of the human heart. There is no conceivable reason why he should not have thought of developing a means to associate a musical motif with one of the philosophical themes that drives the opera's action. It appears that we could now say, with 99 per cent certainty, that Monteverdi was also the father of what we term the leitmotif.

"I have spent years researching in the great libraries of the Gonzaga Palace in Mantua and in the Basilica San Marco of Venice. In November 2010, a letter came to light in the most extraordinary manner. Restoration work in the library at Venice, aimed at protecting this valuable collection from the likely rise of sea level in the years ahead, revealed a secret cubby-hole high in the wall in which several priceless documents had been stored to protect them from floodwater, possibly as long ago as the 18th century. Among these documents was one in a familiar hand and bearing unmistakeable content: a letter written by Monteverdi himself that has remained unread ever since its sequestering therein. Regrettably the date and addressee are not present, and where they should have been the paper bears what appears to be the marks of teeth belonging to a small rodent. But having authenticated the watermark and signature, and dated the document as 1643, I am pleased to offer my translation of its contents.

Monteverdi writes:

"My opera is done, and my life's work. I do feel my passion spent, my intellect drained of energy, yet sated also with the satisfaction of bringing to the sensibilities of my fellow man the vision that lay within me, calling for release: the message that love must triumph and even over death itself. To such an end I have implanted in this opera a new idea that doth unite the message with the music in a manner ne'er before attempted. Th'association hence between the notion of the theme and the theme itself shall not be divided. It is not an invention to boast thereof, yet I do believe it shall melt into the world of musical composition as if imperceptible and if applied with the power of which I do feel it capable, one day it may come to dominate the conception of many great men of the theatre. Others may have interfered with Poppea, adding or subtracting or otherwise mathematically manipulating its content to their own ends for the expedience of flamboyant performance. Nevertheless at heart the opera remaineth mine own, and above all this introduction of a quality that is novelty yet not mere novelty, seeming simplicity yet nothing simple. I commend my opera to thee and sign my name: 

Your 

Claudio Monteverdi."

Tomorrow is another day...

After yesterday, I've been hugely impressed by the attitudes expressed by those organisations who've lost their ACE funding yet have issued statements declaring their determination to carry on with their work. While certain bullish media commentators are desperate to portray them all as that magical invention of the school playground, "whingeing luvvies", I've not spotted a single "whinge" anywhere. There's disappointment, of course, and sometimes incomprehension about some of the decisions - but principally we note fortitude, resourcefulness and gratitude for the support thus far.

These are people who work extremely hard, often for little financial recompense, and commit to their various activities with dogged determination against a sea of ignorant, opposing twatdom. I am especially sorry to see that the brilliant charity Live Music Now is among those whose funding has been wiped out - you'll find their website in my Music Inspirations list, but here it is again. Others include beloved Riverside Studios, Dartington, Lake District Summer Music and the Rose Theatre in Kingston. As for the massive cut to the excellent Almeida Theatre, Norman Lebrecht has theories about this.

There's good news, too: among the big winners has been the Britten Sinfonia, with a massively increased grant that is very well deserved, and several famous early-music orchestras have won funding despite having existed perfectly strongly without it for decades, while the London Mozart Players is out of the picture altogether. (There is an early music enthusiast, or so, on the ACE board, as you'll note if you have a look at Norman's lavish commentary from yesterday.) More news here from the Independent.

It was entertaining to see Jeremy Paxman facing a team of theatrical manager, Tory minister and a highly intelligent scientist on Newsnight yesterday, and finding no dissent amongst them at all over the value to society of public funding for culture and research. The more he pushed the philistine mealymouth view, the more strongly and excellently they reasoned.

My husband still has a job: all the symphony orchestras have taken a roughly equal 11% cut. Many in other sectors of work across the country are less fortunate. As the libretto of Anna Nicole says: "There but for the grace of your deity of choice..." Never think that we don't know this.

As far as the UK's cultural life is concerned, there's much to celebrate. Many creative and resourceful people work in this industry; it's now going to be up to them to find alternative ways forward. The arts here take just a sliver of public funding - notable when you compare it to other departments and see the returns that investment in the arts can bring - and the "mixed model" of funds-gathering - a sort of hedging approach with a bit of public, a bit of private and a lot of commercial nous - is currently proving its worth. It's a bit like freelancing: you're not dependent on any one company for your income, but on many different ones, so it is unlikely that you'll lose the whole lot at once (as I have learned over a sometimes difficult but often rewarding patch of 18 years to date).

And so, as Scarlett O'Hara says, tomorrow is another day. Keep calm and carry on.

A far greater danger than ACE cuts is the tearing up of culture and education by the grass roots, in the shape of university tuition fees and local authority budget-slashing. That is a topic for another time.