Axing of BBC Singers and related cuts

[Bryn]

That's true: once you've 'contributed' you do seem to get besieged by other messages regardless of not asking for them!
Thanks, though!

Indeed, it's their rationale. Of course, they are pushy. One has to choose what to support and what to leave to others.

[french frank]

Duly signed, Pulcinella, for you. But what a pushy crowd changedotorg is. My arm is still sore.

I always choose not to be kept in touch with news/the result. Could be that as I've had nothing since signing.

[Andrew Slater]

I always choose not to be kept in touch with news/the result. Could be that as I've had nothing since signing.

Same here

[Pulcinella]

Same here

You're right: I need to manage my mailings better, as I've spotted these links at the bottom of the most recent one.

You signed Jack Apperley‘s petition, “Stop the planned closure of the BBC Singers”, on 9 Mar 2023

The person (or organisation) who started this petition is not affiliated with Change.org. Change.org did not create this petition and is not responsible for the petition content. Click here to stop receiving updates about this petition.



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[Serial_Apologist]

I always choose not to be kept in touch with news/the result. Could be that as I've had nothing since signing.

Quite a few, dare I say? left wing petitioning causes have led to my being deluged with other causes as a consequence of signing one. I usually just tick the box requesting no further information about the site or cause; if anything of vital importance is on the agenda it will surely come my way, often from the same organisation via facebook.

[eighthobstruction]

Duly signed, Pulcinella, for you. But what a pushy crowd changedotorg is. My arm is still sore.

....as said up thread Padraig....Change Org have evolved into a for-profit organisation....

[Pulcinella]

Times article about possible Proms boycott:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/proms-boycott-fear-over-axing-of-bbc-singers-956qgwqzv?shareToken=787083ad79799352c72c6851fcf67a0a

Richard Morrison in Times 2:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/will-musicians-have-the-courage-and-resources-to-snub-the-proms-lgk7szr0h?shareToken=b1cd091e976a1884e4607b5df27f59bf

[Vox Humana]

Times article about possible Proms boycott:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/proms-boycott-fear-over-axing-of-bbc-singers-956qgwqzv?shareToken=787083ad79799352c72c6851fcf67a0a

Richard Morrison in Times 2:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/w...607b5df27f59bf

Could someone summarize for non-subscribers, please?

[Pulcinella]

Could someone summarize for non-subscribers, please?

Ah! I thought that sharing the link worked without the 'reader' having to be a subscriber.
Is that not the case?

Here's the article:

The abolition of the BBC Singers is putting Britain’s peerless choral tradition at risk, the corporation was warned yesterday as musicians considered a boycott of this year’s Proms.

The BBC’s decision to disband the country’s only professional chamber choir and make sweeping cuts to its orchestras has prompted an angry response from across the music industry.

A letter in today’s Times signed by a string of senior figures warns against the damage to Britain’s “internationally revered choral sector”.

The signatories state: “We stand united in our utter dismay at the BBC’s planned disbandment of the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir, the BBC Singers. This decision is indicative of the persistent devaluation of choral music and the nation’s rich and excellent choral heritage.”

The cuts proposed by the BBC, which faces a real-terms cut in the licence fee, come after what was seen as an attack on the classical music sector by Arts Council England, which last year announced the withdrawal of millions of pounds of subsidies from three of the country’s leading opera companies.

Rob Johnston and Jonathan Manners, co-directors of the BBC Singers, made their anger plain in a letter to the corporation’s board. Their message, leaked to the Slipped Disc website, said there was “dangerous neglect by senior members of staff towards the classical music offering of the BBC”.

Negotiations between the Musicians’ Union and the BBC over redundancies are continuing. The BBC’s proposals would involve the loss of about 20 jobs with the BBC Singers and 20 per cent of musicians across its symphony, concert and philharmonic orchestras.

Strong criticism of the proposals has led to speculation that this summer’s Proms festival, organised by the BBC, could be boycotted. The last boycott was in 1980, over plans to make dozens of musicians redundant. That year the first 20 concerts were cancelled.

[Pulcinella]

And here's Richard Morrison's column.

Though eclipsed over the weekend by the Gary Lineker furore, the row over the axing of the BBC Singers, Britain’s only full-time professional choir, and 20 per cent of the musicians in the BBC’s English orchestras has not just rumbled on but intensified. This has turned into a terrible month for the BBC. However, if I were one of its self-serving bunch of overpaid executives I would be more worried about what the summer holds.

Signing letters of protest, or the Save the BBC Singers petition, is all very well. And the fact that hundreds of distinguished conductors, composers and soloists from across the world have put their names to the letters, while more than 117,000 music lovers have signed the petition, is testimony to the strength of feeling about the cuts.

The trouble is, letters and petitions can be ignored. Outrage fades. The news cycle moves on. Those letters are written on the assumption that top BBC managers care about what the classical music world thinks, whereas all the evidence suggests they don’t give a flying fig.

You only have to read the jaw-dropping letter sent by the BBC Singers’ co-directors to the BBC’s chairman (and leaked to the slippedisc.com website) to realise how little BBC executives care about their classical musicians. It revealed that decisions to axe the BBC Singers were made by people who had hardly attended a choral concert in their lives, on the basis of a “classical review” compiled by someone who spoke to just two people about the British choral industry, one of them a child. Consultation was minimal. The musicians were treated not just discourteously but insultingly.

This is the mindset of today’s BBC execs. They wear their ignorance of, and indifference to, classical music like a badge of honour. It’s a trivial thing, I suppose, but a news story on the BBC news website this week seemed to epitomise this. It was headlined “Dorset farmer to conduct at King’s coronation”. The Dorset farmer was Sir John Eliot Gardiner, internationally renowned conductor with 250 recordings to his name. One wonders whether, outside Radio 3, anyone at the BBC has heard of him.

PS: This is only part of the article. Continued in next post kindly submitted by EotS.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

And here's Richard Morrison's column.

There's more to RM's column. Pulci, please feel free to copy and paste this into your post and I will delete this one.

"It’s mad to hope that this present crop of BBC executives will suddenly see the value of classical music and reverse their announced cuts. That’s why I say that the summer will be when this battle is won or lost. Why? Because among my musician friends there’s a growing belief that the only weapon they have in their armoury — the only way they can discomfort the BBC sufficiently to save the BBC Singers and those orchestral jobs — is to threaten a boycott of the BBC Proms: the one classical music event that even Lorna Clarke, the BBC’s pop-fixated head of music, might have attended.

As those of us of a certain age will recall, a Proms boycott has happened before, and in similar circumstances. The BBC threatened an enormous cull of 172 musicians in 1980. Musicians united in protest, and the first 20 concerts of the Proms didn’t happen. The BBC still pushed through many redundancies, but at least one leading orchestra, the BBC Scottish, was saved from extinction.

To make a similar impact today, all those eminent musicians who signed the protest letters would have to turn fine words into tough deeds, sacrifice their own engagement fees and declare a universal boycott of the Proms, or some of them. And that announcement would have to happen now, or very soon. By the time the Proms actually start, in mid-July, the BBC Singers will have been axed, if the timetable planned by BBC management is allowed to proceed.



I wonder, though, whether the classical music world has the resolve and unity to take this bold step. Unlike Lineker and his football pundit chums, most musicians desperately need the money from every contracted engagement they can get: even a short-term strike would be painful for their families. That’s one consideration, but another is a different sort of insecurity. If you are told over and over again that classical music is “irrelevant”, “elitist” and “out of touch”, maybe you start to believe it yourself.

Evidence? This week I received an email from an outstanding, highly intelligent young British singer who confided — under terms of strict anonymity — that every singer he talks to believes, privately, that English National Opera (also under threat of being defunded) “does substandard work in an inappropriate venue at scandalous cost to the taxpayer”, while the BBC Singers might be very good at singing the avant-garde music of Gyorgy Ligeti, “but who wants to hear Ligeti?”

For decades, he continued, the classical music world has “gone down rabbit holes of inaccessible repertoire and outdated formats”. He wants the profession to have “an honest discussion with itself” about how to give the public what it really wants, rather than always expecting subsidy to continue as before.

He’s right to this extent: there’s a younger generation of classical musicians coming up who do passionately want to see their art form enjoyed by far more people of all classes and ages, and are frustrated when the organisations for which they work seem stuck in outmoded mindsets, or are simply badly run. The trouble is, having that “honest discussion” right now plays into the hands of the executives running the BBC and Arts Council England, who seem determined to kill off as much of the classical music infrastructure as they can get away with. It would end up with classical musicians wasting time and energy arguing with each other (as so often happens) rather than standing together and confronting an existential threat.

The BBC has imposed its music cuts brutally and with scant regard for standards of decency in public life. If musicians decided to boycott the Proms in response, I would be neither surprised nor critical. It would be a passionate and principled response. Whether it would change very much is another matter."

[Pulcinella]

There's more to RM's column. Pulci, please feel free to copy and paste this into your post and I will delete this one.

...

Oops: I didn't scroll far enough with my copy and paste.

Thanks. I'll keep both and hope that neither of us gets done for breaking copyright.
But if the link works, I see no problem in sharing and quoting.

[Bryn]

A total musician boycott of the First and Last Nights would probably have the greatest public and political effect with a limited overall impact on musicians' fees.

[EnemyoftheStoat]

A total musician boycott of the First and Last Nights would probably have the greatest public and political effect with a limited overall impact on musicians' fees.

A total musician boycott of said nights would involve only the BBCSO as well as the BBCSC and any other (non-professional) choirs that might be involved. I can't see that it would have much real effect apart from fuelling the BBC's persecution of said ensembles.

[Vox Humana]

Many thanks, Pulcinella and EotS. Much appreciated. Excellent piece by Morrison.