PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS by COLIN BRADBURY, ISM PRESIDENT 2006-07

Below is a transcript of the Presidential Address given by the ISM President Colin Bradbury at the ISM Annual Conference at the Palace Hotel in Torquay on Tuesday 10 April 2007. No unauthorised reproduction. Press/Media please contact danny@ism.org for further information.

Read the ISM press release.

This conference is about the position of music in our society. By ‘music’ I mean real music; grown-up music, if you like. The accepted label is ‘classical music’, so let's throw away pedantry and use it.  I chose this theme for the conference because I believe that over the past few years there has been a profound change not only in the way music is viewed by the world at large, but in the value placed on it by people who, in every other respect, count themselves as cultured and discerning.

Performers tend to live in their own world, and I am no exception.  Especially as an orchestral musician with a permanent job, I took a lot for granted. During my early years with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though, there was controversy in plenty.  When I joined the orchestra, William Glock had only a year previously taken charge of BBC music He inherited an organisation where Malcolm Sargent dominated the Prom season, and where the pre-war pioneering work of Edward Clarke, Henry Wood and Adrian Boult seemed to have been forgotten. The music colleges were no better. If somebody at that time had mentioned to me a composer called Webern, which they didn't, I would have thought it was a misprint. 

So 1960 proved to be an exciting time to be starting out in the orchestral world, although, from the inside, it didn't always seem that much fun.  I'd already had my baptism in the avant-garde at Dartington Summer School, where John Carewe took a group of us, the New Music Ensemble, to perform new works by unknown young composers such as Harrison Birtwistle, Cornelius Cardew, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr, so I was prepared for what was to come. But when you're in an orchestra which specialises in the untried and the unfamiliar, week in and week out, you don't have the benefit of posterity to help your artistic judgement. Some of my colleagues were very ready to condemn.  The rest, to varying degrees, kept open minds, although the mordant sense of humour often found in our profession found its outlet from time to time.  Some of this audience may remember the occasion when, after a pre-recording of a particularly outrageous piece, the principal cellist jumped on his instrument and smashed it to bits.  The studio audience had no idea that it was an old factory made cello he had brought in specially for the purpose, and he made his point.  And members of the orchestra still talk about a certain live broadcast from the Round House, after which Peter Barker announced ‘That was the first performance----‘  to be interrupted by a mezzo forte comment from the 2nd trombone seat ‘and the last!’

But at the same time there were the Proms. In 1960 these were still relatively untouched by the Glock revolution. I found myself playing Tchaik 4 and Beethoven 5 for the first time, although I'd already played Schoenberg's Variations Op 31 on three occasions. So, after a couple of years in that job, I reckoned that one season's programmes of the BBCSO  covered a range of style and genre wider than that of any orchestra in the world, a repertoire that ranged from Haydn to Roberto Gerhard.  All were grist to that orchestra's mill.  Of course it would be impossible for any member of that, or any other, orchestra, to enjoy it all. The extreme avant-garde was rarely fun to play, whether or not it was difficult, although I soon discovered that Schoenberg wrote tunes as well, if you treated them as such! Some players enjoyed challenges more than others, and the division was not on age lines - often the reverse. But it was taken for granted that the vast majority enjoyed the mainstream repertoire, up to and including Stravinsky, Britten and Bartok, and that lots of other people did, too.

Was I living in an ivory tower? When I saw the difference between a thin Festival Hall audience for a new piece and a packed Albert Hall on a Saturday night Prom, did I take it for granted that there was a universal love of music after all, as long as it wasn't too new?  Perhaps I did.  In any case, although I knew that there were millions who never went to concerts at all, I always assumed that they respected it, even if they thought it wasn't for them.

It is only since becoming involved, not least through my ISM work, with wider aspects of musical education and with musical politics, that I have realised that nothing can be taken for granted. That, for example, my earlier reference to ‘music of all styles and genres’ has become a jargon phrase, and instead of referring to music from Monteverdi to Harrison Birtwistle, it now means (and I quote) Soul, Reggae, Pop, Rock, British Folk, Electronica and Dance, Avant-garde, Jazz, Hip-hop, Blues and country, Funk, DJShadow and RZA and, yes, Classical and Soundtrack. Where am I quoting from? A piece in The Guardian, February 2006. All good, entertaining stuff, of course, and quoted out of context from a supplement devoted to pop music.

There are more worrying manifestations, though, which are harder to laugh off.  ‘Down with self-righteous classical supremacists’ shouts Marc Jaffrey, the Music Manifesto Champion, in Classical Music magazine, while Howard Goodall complains, ‘How many classical music commentators, teachers or pedagogues have diverted their analytical skills to hip-hop?’ Later in the same speech he declares ‘the idea that there is a superior form of music and an inferior form of music is to me utterly offensive’.  So that's it then. Poor old Mozart, Bartok and Shostakovitch wasted all that energy on writing music which their great-grandchildren would enjoy.  Discovering Ravel is no more life-enriching than hearing the Arctic Monkeys. Candle in the Wind is in every respect equal to Die Forelle. 

Where can children turn to get another point of view on musical values?  They will look in vain to most adults for guidance. In our country there is very little tradition among people at large of enjoying real music.  We know that music is capable of expressing abstract ideas and emotions beyond the powers of representative art, but, by the same token, it never reveals itself easily. Of all the arts, music is the most elusive.  Looking at a picture or reading a book automatically demands concentration, but the ear is promiscuous, and you can hear lots of things at the same time without listening to any of them. Furthermore, music only exists in time.  This means that to hear music you have to start from silence, and you have to concentrate for as long as it takes.  Music doesn't have bookmarks or freeze frames and you can't take it in at a glance and then come back for a second look.  With music, it's all or nothing, and most otherwise cultivated adults have never been taught how to make the effort. Perhaps this wouldn't matter if they accepted this as their loss, but no.  ‘I'm afraid I'm not musical’, they say, as if enjoying music demanded special gifts. Do they avoid the Tate because they're ‘not artistic’, or the National Theatre because they're ‘not dramatic’?  Do they have to have gifts with the pencil or the brush before they can visit the National Gallery? Must they have acting talent to enjoy Shakespeare? Of course not, but the myth goes unquestioned.

The result is that it has become culturally respectable among many grown-up people to enjoy nothing but the ephemeral, the trivial, the easily accessible.   In an otherwise intellectual radio game like Round Britain Quiz it's impossible to score well without being familiar with pop records, but to recognise part of a Beethoven symphony in University Challenge is to earn an admiring round of applause. Once this way of thinking becomes the norm, it's only a short step to claiming that pop music is just as artistically valuable as the real thing. The hackneyed phrase ‘all styles and genres’ then implies that all types of music have equal artistic merit; they are merely different. Whilst each particular style of popular music is carefully differentiated and assigned its own special box, the whole gamut of proven, lasting, artistic musical achievement, from Monteverdi to Bela Bartok, is thrown into the one box and labelled ‘Classical’.  All the boxes are then put on the same shelf and claimed to have equal value. It becomes ‘utterly offensive’ to suggest otherwise. 

It's only when we apply the same principles to literature and drama that this whole nonsense stands revealed.  Let, for example, all playwrights from Ben Jonson to David Hare, including Shakespeare, Sheridan, Pinter, Chekhov and Shaw, be put in the ‘Classical’ box, whilst Coronation Street, Fawlty Towers, The Mousetrap and The Archers each has its own special niche. In this brave new world of literature, Dan Brown and Catherine Cookson would each have their own pigeon hole, but Jane Austen would have to share the ‘Classical’ one with Julian Barnes and a few hundred others. I shall leave you to extend the analogy to the world of visual art.  It shouldn't be difficult.

Do we have to pass these principles on, though? That's just what we are in danger of doing. Let's leave the adults to their own devices for the moment, and come back to the children.  Buzz words doing the rounds in musical education at the moment are ‘creativity’, ‘diversity’ and ‘relevance’. ‘Creativity’ is used indiscriminately as a synonym for ‘artistic activity’, regardless of originality or invention. ‘Diversity’ means ‘different styles and genres’, interpreted in the way I have already described.  ‘Relevance’ means the music that children already know and enjoy, and with which they identify.  There is very little mention these days of education, ie, leading children to appreciate what is not familiar, not superficially enjoyable and not immediately accessible. Indeed, the literary equivalent of this ‘relevance’ would, I suggest, be a study in depth of The Beano, followed, at Key Stage 3, by FHM or Cosmopolitan. There is an explicit assumption that music, like fast food, is meant for instant gratification, and that music which children don't find immediately ‘relevant’ is to be avoided.  But many children come from homes where there isn't a table and where there's very little cooking; where junk food eaten in front of the television is the norm. Would you say that a good school meal is ‘not relevant’ to them, even if they still want chips and tomato ketchup with it? If a child has never known a piece of music without a loud beat, and lasting longer than three minutes, is that all he should ever hear?  Of course we don't sit a class of Year 4 children down to listen to Bruckner 7, any more than you take them, without preparation, to King Lear, but anyone familiar with the work going on at St Luke's, for example, will know that the normal child's potential for enjoying worthwhile music is enormous. If we don't try to extend the musical horizons of young people, just as we try to do with literature, art and drama, we are letting them down. By limiting their aspirations to those of their seniors we are insulting their capabilities.

I'm not disparaging pop music, any more than I would disparage any other form of entertainment.  I enjoy The Archers (or used to before it became loaded with feminine angst), but I don't claim it's as profound as Ibsen, any more than P D James is the equal of George Eliot. What I am saying is that education should be extending the boundaries and stimulating discovery.  This is where the government's Music Manifesto is so disappointing.  In spite of all the publicity and razzmatazz, it is so unambitious. We would expect a pledge to have more primary school teachers trained in music, and all we get is the promise of ‘music leaders’ and ‘community musicians’, with no mention of who they are, how they are to be selected and what their qualifications should be. This would be unthinkable in any other school subject; in the sciences it would be heresy. Even the much-vaunted £10 million promised for singing will not go far if children are to be properly taught to make the best use of their voices, and the specialist, proven music centres that we do have are now threatened with the withdrawal of some of their funding so that head teachers can spend the money as they wish, with no guidance as to quality, and not even necessarily on music. Meanwhile the Times Education Supplement reports on 30 March that Pimlico Special Music, the only state-funded music school in England, has had that funding cut, and expects more cuts to come. As for the promise, long ago, that every child should have the chance to learn a musical instrument, their is no glimmer of hope that children in state schools will ever get the one-to-one tuition on an orchestral instrument or the piano which privately taught children of middle class parents take for granted.

Some attitudes are changing, though.  The value of music in the development of a child's mind is now beyond dispute in the highest educational circles, and the function of music in developing desirable skills such as teamwork is lauded. But the approach is still utilitarian. It is not accepted that the enjoyment of music in itself is a life-enriching experience equal to reading a great novel or seeing a great work of art. The emphasis is still overwhelmingly on musical activity, with music as a recreation, practised, as like as not, out of school hours, and without any necessity for skilled guidance. More importantly, the quality of the music which children play and sing is rarely questioned and the tired clichés ‘all styles and genres’ and ‘diversity’ are drearily trotted out in justification. I have no quarrel with musical activity. That was the way I came to music, and I grew to love it as a result of having played it, not the other way round. Monseigneur Ronald Knox once said that to be a Catholic and to work in Rome was like going on a world cruise and spending all your time in the engine room. I confess that it was my fascination with the engines that got me on to the ship in the first place. Not only is activity the best way, as we all know, of involving children, but music, even more than drama, needs performers. Even if the day ever dawned when everyone could read a score, we would still need orchestras, just as, although we can all read a play, we still need theatres. Interpretation and understanding go hand in hand. Neither, as I have said, do I have a quarrel with pop music. However limited, the best of it can be exciting and stimulating, and very occasionally it can be timeless. What I do want to be clear about is where musical education is leading.

Very few young people will make music their career, certainly not as performers. Not only does it require exceptional talent and dedication from an early age, but it is so highly competitive that only those who could never dream of doing anything else would be wise to attempt it. Besides which, as members of the NYO have always demonstrated, the most highly gifted young performers are usually very good at something else as well. We have already recognised the role that learning musical skills has in the development of the young mind, and we've praised the social and all the other benefits that flow from school music making. But is that all there is to it? If activity as all that we are talking about, then, apart from those who go on to make a hobby of playing or singing, the answer, I'm afraid, is yes. Looking at the wider purpose of music, though, and considering all those young people who have little performing talent or inclination, then this, surely, should only be the beginning. If activity and participation were the whole story, I wouldn't ever have enjoyed an art gallery. I discovered at school that I had no drawing talent whatsoever, so that would have been the end of it. I did enjoy acting, but I had many colleagues who had no ability on stage. Would they be destined never to take delight in the theatre? Please let's look beyond performance and think of music itself, and what it's there for. This conference is not only about children's education. It is about the position of music in our society. The first object of the ISM is ‘The promotion of the art of music’. Only second is ‘maintenance of the honour and interests of the musical profession’.

If we are going to reclaim the stage for real music, let's restore to the word ‘creative’ its true meaning. Every now and again there is born a man or a woman who not only possesses exceptional sensitivity, insight and invention, but who has the power to communicate his or her experiences to us through art, drama, literature or music.  These are the creators. They have given, and their present day counterparts are giving, us works which can immeasurably deepen our experience. Beyond entertainment, these works of art explore every intellectual dimension; raw emotion is only one of them. In music, they often demand repeated hearings before they fully reveal themselves. But enjoyment of them is open to everyone who will make the initial effort. No special gifts are needed; only a willingness to listen.

In every other discipline, be it in science or the arts, young people are encouraged to express themselves. But they are also led to understand and to appreciate the work of the giants - the few whose art has enriched the lives of us all. Let music be no exception.