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Poor old Peckham! It's really not that bad a place. Some of my best friends come from Peckham - they have great Open Garden days there in summer. Just remember not to leave your bike unattended for two seconds, while removing your cycle clips.Originally posted by visualnickmos View PostQuite! Lewisham - yes - OK, BUT Peckham.......
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Originally posted by Stanfordian View Post
If I'd been that piano teacher, I would have argued back that my 'mere close proximity' was having a beneficial effect on his playing. And, I'd argue (with a straight face) that all Furtwangler had to do was pass by the door of a room where the Berlin Philharmonic was playing to 'instantly' improve its efforts.Comment
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Originally posted by Conchis View Post
That reminds me of Turkey Rhubarb - a stomach disorder "sorter" notorious for its revolting taste, of which it was alleged that merely to look at the bottle made the sufferer feel better!Comment
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Hmmm! Reminds me of a joke (actually told to me by an old style trade union official, now deceased, but he worked for a notorious boss as a paid union official!) A trade delegation from the USSR was watching some work in progress and one of its members commented critically that, in Russia, it would have been done such and such a way. Came the reply from one of the British hosts - "they would not do that, they are all bloody Communists!"Originally posted by Beef Oven! View PostActually, that's what communism and socialism did. That's why Gorbachev had to abolish communism in the end.The same man told a few of us how, when these delegations came over for brotherly discussions, it was his job to go out and hire prostitutes.
Certainly, I remember before the Iron Curtain fell there was an exchange scheme between orchestral players in Britain and players from Eastern Europe. For years even the most left wing of us had agreed to allow our performances to be broadcast free on hospital radio (some wags used to question whether this would make the patients more ill but there you go). Until there was a certain viola player from Prague - a good party man - who stuck up his viola bow to vote no when we were asked as a matter of courtesy to do another hospital broadcast. Mean, nasty and pointless.
Think carefully before ever allowing that kind of thing to return.
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What about the Scandinavian model? They seem to be punching above their weight, at least I get the impression that the "good orchestras/population" ratio is high. But according to the following article Scandinavian nations may be good for the social life, but it's still low pay!
Germany seems to be favoured. NORMAN LEBRECHT pitches in on the thread... mainly complaining about the lack of job security for orchestral players in the UK: "none of the chamber orchs or early music ensembles offer much by way of security – in London, or beyond."Comment
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In the main orchestral and opera centres such as Munich, Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna properties prices are so expensive I wonder how the players can afford to live there.Originally posted by Mal View PostWhat about the Scandinavian model? They seem to be punching above their weight, at least I get the impression that the "good orchestras/population" ratio is high. But according to the following article Scandinavian nations may be good for the social life, but it's still low pay!
Germany seems to be favoured. NORMAN LEBRECHT pitches in on the thread... mainly complaining about the lack of job security for orchestral players in the UK: "none of the chamber orchs or early music ensembles offer much by way of security – in London, or beyond."Comment
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Largely because the lead from music provision in Scandinavian schools onwards etc makes being in the music biz a not unlikely career path, and not some idiosyncratic bit of eccentricity. Ditto the perception that - golly gosh! - music might matter to national well-being maybe?Comment
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Living outside the city, renting smaller or worse apartments than you would elsewhere, living in shared flats. Same as everyone else does, no matter the profession.Originally posted by Stanfordian View Post
Something that has crept up in this thread again is the concept of "but others are payed worse, so shut up". This is one of the main-stays when it comes to slowly killing off something. In the case of payed musicians: make them squabble over the distribution of the pie, so that they don't show a united front against the slow incremental decrease of funding overall.
As I still struggle to find explicit numbers: is the Arts Council handling all public funding of the Arts in England outside the city/community level?
The numbers I found are these: https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ng-england-uk/
If that is the whole pie, let's talk about about its actual size (2014): 850 Million Pounds, for a country with a population of 53 Million people. So about 16 Pounds per person/year.
Is that really all?
In 2013, Germany had an overall arts budget on federal and state level (so no cities or communities, even though i thought they were in it when I posted on the ACE and Opera funding thread) of 9,89 Billion Euro., at the time that would have been 8 Billion Pounds. At 81 Million people, this comes to 99 Pounds per person/year.
For the distribution, here is a nice pie chart (though it is for 2009): http://www.bpb.de/cache/images/8/618...e620.gif?CBB48
And its not like Germany is all smiles and fluffy bunnies when it comes to arts spending, as the Radio SOs of Stuttgart and Freiburg can attest (those funds aren't in the statistics above, as they are/were financed through public broadcast organisations, akin to the BBC)
If that is how it currently is, maybe it is time to start talking about increasing the pie 5-fold, and then funnel increased total shares to non orchestral or operatic forms of music without any need of touching their budgets. In fact, you should then still have enough left over to increase their share significantly, as well.Comment
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Interesting quote from Hanz Zimmer in a documentary about film music watched recently. He reckons that film music is keeping a lot of orchestras going at a time when they’re being squeezed financially. Is he right? Well, he would know, I suppose
Although, where an orchestra is used in film music most players appear to be studio musicians sight reading the score, and where big budgets are at stake there is huge time pressure to get the work done fast – eg at Abbey Road and Air Studios in London. Doesn't sound like much work to me.
The documentary btw is:
Score: A Film Music Documentary, Matt Schrader (2016)
Recommended if you’re interested in the subject
I suppose the same argument must apply to video game music ...And the tune ends too soon for us allComment
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That sounds exactly like "work" to me!Originally posted by Constantbee View Post[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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What he is overlooking is that many of the best players now do not want to be tied down to one job. For some years there have been players who have been contracted to more than one orchestra (including one leader of a regional orchestra who was also leader of an orchestra in France). I know of one situation at the moment where a Principal player is trying to go to another orchestra on a part-time basis whilst keeping the job that he has now. Presumably the idea is to cherry pick work each week.Originally posted by Mal View PostWhat about the Scandinavian model? They seem to be punching above their weight, at least I get the impression that the "good orchestras/population" ratio is high. But according to the following article Scandinavian nations may be good for the social life, but it's still low pay!
Germany seems to be favoured. NORMAN LEBRECHT pitches in on the thread... mainly complaining about the lack of job security for orchestral players in the UK: "none of the chamber orchs or early music ensembles offer much by way of security – in London, or beyond."
It should be remembered that many of the great orchestras abroad have virtually a double set of players working rotas. Even the Berlin Philharmonic during WW2 worked this way. And I remember the great Dutch horn player Willem Valkenier saying that, when he was 1st horn in the Berliner Staatskapelle in the 1920s, if you had a nice gig offered on a day that you were rotated 'on' you just went to the office and asked them to change the rota.
I also remember meeting up with the horn section of the Liceu opera in Barcelona. They could not believe that we had played the whole of Tristan und Isolde plus everything else that was on at the time as well.
I have got to say that I always regarded the morality of time off to work elsewhere to be questionable. But some people regarded it as a right.
And if one has to be honest, they tended to be the better players.
In my time as an MU steward the union would not countanance part time contracts in orchestras - not even job shares. "We have spent years negotiating these contracts and we are not letting you bugger about with them" was once shouted at me with some force by a now-deceased official (which did tempt me to ask who was supposed to be representing who but, there you go
) when we first broached the idea of sabbaticals (he then added that, if you joined a professional orchestra you should have learned to play first!) Now things are very different.
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