John Gilhooly speech: How to Save Music

[Master Jacques]

I have to say I disagree strongly with that, although, admittedly, the names I might come up with would be people who would run a mile from any coronation commission! They would also, in many cases, not be the kind of people whose work would appear in the context of "classical music" showcases like the Proms, but that is the fault of an establishment which seems sometimes to be doing its best to live up to the accusations of irrelevance and elitism we're talking about in this thread. The terrain on which music is being written is constantly changing, so that musical media that were previously thought of as central, like symphonic works or opera, have become increasingly marginal in the minds of many composers, apart once more from those whose approach is basically retrospective and thus feeds into an establishment agenda. This morning I was alerted to a new release (on the very interesting Bandcamp label Scatter Archives) of electronic compositions by the Oxford-based pianist and composer Pat Thomas (b 1960) and thinking to myself this is really fascinating and fresh and original contemporary music, and hardly anyone is going to know it exists. Before diagnosing an "irreversible decline" in music being produced in the UK I would suggest that it's necessary to dig somewhat deeper to find out what's actually going on!

As I too have said, art music is increasingly to be found "underground" (or at least out of the public eyeline) in a country which demands atavism from its publicly-funded art. I heard yesterday a radio profile of one of the populist (though far from popular) composers commissioned for the Coronation, which stated impressively that having "written a symphony" showed their respectable, "classical" credentials - ignorant of the fact that very few symphonies get written nowadays, for very good reasons.

What's wrong here, of course, is the media-driven perception of what constitutes "classical music", a term which ought to be consigned to the depths of Avernus!

As for opera, we have an Arts Council conveniently de-funding the expensive business it chooses to call "grand opera", while giving the cold shoulder to music theatre initiatives which cannot demonstrate overriding amateur/social service agendas. It is significant, and sad, that art music now plays such a marginal part in our "national conversation" even during major public ceremonials. "Irreversible decline", who knows? But I fear that none of us are going to be around to see art music's reinstatement within the country's self-image.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The deterioration of public transport facilities in the UK has not helped, either, and I am not thinking of just the impact of the entirely called-for industrial action by rail workers, but the severe loss of bus routes and journeys, too.

And the cost!

[french frank]

That unfortunately is a myth. Yes, everything is available, but "finding an audience" in that kind of environment is no easier than it ever has been before

Yes, banging a slightly different drum: putting 'easy listening', 'classical for beginners', 'unclassifiable' programmes on Radio 3 does make them more 'available' but it doesn't mean they find the desired audiences.

[french frank]

Before diagnosing an "irreversible decline" in music being produced in the UK I would suggest that it's necessary to dig somewhat deeper to find out what's actually going on!

Wrong description, perhaps? A classification perhaps equivalent to 'post-classical' needed to market contemporary music? It's noticeable that the 'new musc' on Radio 3 does keep throwing up the same few names, some of them quite … elderly … now. The Berger "shock of the new" shouldn't be off-putting to a generation which craves the new. But who precisely will it appeal to? Identify them, then give it to them. Put it solely on R3 and you target an R3 audience: is that what one wants?

[Mandryka]

I have a naive question about funding.

Wigmore Hall has received £1.3M of Arts Council funding over the past four years.

Cafe Oto has received less than 300K over the same period.

So why has Wigmore Hall needed so much and Cafe Oto so little in comparison? Cafe Oto is half the size but it's needed more than four times the money.

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.artscouncil.org.uk%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdownload-file%2FNPO_successful_20182022_June_17_2_0.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

I also want to mention that tickets at The Wigmore are, for the most part, considerably more expensive than at Cafe Oto.

[RichardB]

So why has Wigmore Hall needed so much and Cafe Oto so little in comparison?

Because Wigmore Hall pays musicians enormously more than Cafe Oto.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Because Wigmore Hall pays musicians enormously more than Cafe Oto.

Indeed I saw Martha Argerich there once and the tickets were £80. A top artists fee there might be in the thousands.

[Mandryka]

So one question is: do we want Britain to be the sort of place where the state continues to subsidise the fees of star performers to come here to play classical music concerts? It’s not a question of quality of performance or quality of music, it’s about whether the state should support the classical music star system. Gilhooly could find plenty of people to play the sort of music he currently offers for a fraction of the price, and there’s no reason to think that performance standards would deteriorate significantly. If people want stars, they can pay for it through higher ticket prices.

[RichardB]

So one question is: do we want Britain to be the sort of place where the state continues to subsidise the fees of star performers to come here to play classical music concerts? It’s not a question of quality of performance or quality of music, it’s about whether the state should support the classical music star system. Gilhooly could find plenty of people to play the sort of music he currently offers for a fraction of the price, and there’s no reason to think that performance standards would deteriorate significantly. If people want stars, they can pay for it through higher ticket prices.

So many of the arguments about cultural funding come down to finding ways to spend less money, or at least to move around a gradually shrinking amount in order to favour one constituency or another. Why? Why not increase the overall budget so as to make it possible to support both the traditional "centres of excellence" and the non-traditional ones? "If people want X they can pay for it" is the kind of thing that I would associate with the socially destructive reign of Margaret Thatcher.

[Mandryka]

So many of the arguments about cultural funding come down to finding ways to spend less money, or at least to move around a gradually shrinking amount in order to favour one constituency or another. Why? Why not increase the overall budget so as to make it possible to support both the traditional "centres of excellence" and the non-traditional ones? "If people want X they can pay for it" is the kind of thing that I would associate with the socially destructive reign of Margaret Thatcher.

I can’t respond to this intelligently Richard, because I don’t understand enough about economics, and in particular MMT.

[Bryn]

I can’t respond to this intelligently Richard, because I don’t understand enough about economics, and in particular MMT.

The thing is, the banking industry is so much more deserving of £billions of support than the arts are.

[LHC]

I have a naive question about funding.

Wigmore Hall has received £1.3M of Arts Council funding over the past four years.

Cafe Oto has received less than 300K over the same period.

So why has Wigmore Hall needed so much and Cafe Oto so little in comparison? Cafe Oto is half the size but it's needed more than four times the money.

https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.artscouncil.org.uk%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fdownload-file%2FNPO_successful_20182022_June_17_2_0.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

I also want to mention that tickets at The Wigmore are, for the most part, considerably more expensive than at Cafe Oto.

Actually, the Wigmore Hall seats almost 4 times as many as Cafe Oto, so the subsidy per seat is not that different.

[Ein Heldenleben]

So one question is: do we want Britain to be the sort of place where the state continues to subsidise the fees of star performers to come here to play classical music concerts? It’s not a question of quality of performance or quality of music, it’s about whether the state should support the classical music star system. Gilhooly could find plenty of people to play the sort of music he currently offers for a fraction of the price, and there’s no reason to think that performance standards would deteriorate significantly. If people want stars, they can pay for it through higher ticket prices.

That’s a very interesting question and there are quite a few in the classical music sector who are concerned that public subsidy , far from expanding the range of music performed , simply bleeds through the system in the form of higher fees to stars. The big names pull the audience in (so the theory goes ) but the cost means less adventurous risky repertoire. There’s also a principle of fairness when the conductor and soloist fees comfortably surpass those of the entire orchestra.
In the opera world there was so much concern over subsidy bleeding through to inflated fees the major opera houses agreed something like a £10,000 per night role cap. What happens now is the stars have the role supported through individual sponsorship. They get a lot more than 10k but to be honest they deserve it,
In the case of the Wigmore concert I mention above I have no idea what fee Argerich got . I’m sure it was much less then a standard concert fee. Incidentally while she played well her companion that night was technically very insecure . Any undergraduate from the nearby Royal Academy would have done a better job for nothing ! . I wrote a very rare letter of complaint to the Wigmore and didn’t even get a reply. That doesn’t alter the fact that the Wigmore Hall does an outstanding job for comparatively very little public support. 330k per year strikes me as a bargain.

[Bryn]

Actually, the Wigmore Hall seats almost 4 times as many as Cafe Oto, so the subsidy per seat is not that different.

You're asking for trouble, inserting a definite article before Wigmore Hall' like that. The management don't like it.

[Mal]

That unfortunately is a myth. Yes, everything is available, but "finding an audience" in that kind of environment is no easier than it ever has been before, believe me, particularly with algorithms pushing things at you (on Youtube for example) based on what you've listened to before, and not on what you don't yet know you might like to listen to. As for concert audiences in 2023, that varies enormously according to where you are in the world. Where I am, audiences for orchestral music are at least back to pre-pandemic levels, whereas in other countries the figure is indeed relatively low.

I doubt all the algorithms work that way - Spotify Discover Weekly throws some very unexpected, and interesting, material at me! (Side note - we are not post-pandemic in UK...)