“Every child, whatever his or her circumstances, should have the chance to experience the artistic excellence of our cultural heritage, the very best of dance, theatre, opera and music, our museums and galleries, art and literature.”
You would be forgiven for thinking that this must be a quote from the latest Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, announcing the latest Government initiative of ‘five hours a week of culture’ for school children. But in fact these worthy sentiments were being expressed as long ago as 2004 by Prince Charles when he celebrated the first anniversary of his Arts and Kids scheme.
While all of the (not uniformly complimentary) headlines were grabbed by politicians, the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts – as it is now known – has been quietly beavering away doing just what the Government ordered. Which makes it strange that the first thing the Foundation knew about the Government’s announcement was when Andy Burnham started giving the obligatory round of interviews.
You might imagine that an organisation with considerable expertise in doing exactly what the Government was proposing would have been consulted. The fact that they weren’t tends to reinforce a growing impression that – despite lots of good intentions from on high – the dots remain obstinately unjoined.
This is a topic I will return to next month when I try to unravel the mystery as to why so many of the music graduates who pour out of our music colleges with teaching diplomas keep complaining that there is not enough work for them while, at the same time, we are told there are not enough music teachers to go around the schools.
Conductor Hilary Davan Wetton’s recent impassioned plea in this newspaper on behalf of Vaughan Williams’ music – which he believes is being unfairly overlooked during this year’s fiftieth anniversary of his death – provoked equally impassioned responses (particularly from those who enjoy venting their spleen in the convenient anonymity of internet message boards). But the letter which caught my eye was more reflective than impassioned. It came from reader Christina Speight who considered that “the problem for English music generally is London’s dominance of the musical scene”.
This is an intriguing proposition, particularly when you realise that almost every British composer of note lived in the countryside.
Elgar spent most of his life in sight of his beloved Malvern Hills (a brief attempt to conquer the metropolis proved none too fruitful), Delius retreated to the leafy lanes of Grez sur Loing near Fontainebleau, Walton escaped to the isle of Ischia, Britten revelled in the reeds of Suffolk and so the list goes on.
As Elgar said: “there is music in the air, music all around us, you simply take in as much of it as you require”. The trouble is that for many of today’s jet-setting musicians – whose main requirements are a seat in business class, a chain hotel with broadband and a home within easy reach of an airport – that air is likely to be heavily polluted.
It is certainly hard to envisage many of today’s maestri instructing an orchestra to play a phrase “like something we hear down by the river” as Elgar invited the LSO to mould a fragment of melody in his First Symphony.
Listening recently to an incredibly rare concert performance of Delius’ Violin Concerto given by Tasmin Little under the baton of that precious custodian of British music, Vernon Handley – who, incidentally, lives in the recesses of Wales where he can best pursue his hobby of ornithology – the perceptive letter writer’s view began to make very good sense.
In a world increasingly dominated by all things urban the concept of countryside becomes ever more obscure. So where does that leave the music of composers such as Vaughan Williams who drew their inspiration from it? Deep in the proverbial cowpat it would seem.
