Proms go 50/50

[doversoul1]

Will the Berlin Philharmonic be disqualified?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/feb/26/proms-music-festivals-gender-pledge

[jean]

No!

From the comments on the article:

Ah, found the small print (not mentioned in the article): "Achieving a 50/50 gender balance of contemporary composers performed at the BBC Proms is something we have been committed to for some time and consider vital to the creative development of the world’s largest classical music festival".

Not quite as drastic - guess we're going to be getting a lot of extra Helen Grime.

[cloughie]

When I saw this heading I thought - they've gone 50% Classical!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

When I saw this heading I thought - they've gone 50% Classical!

That was my initial reaction too.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That was my initial reaction too.

And mine!

[Demetrius]

No!

From the comments on the article:

Ah, found the small print (not mentioned in the article): "Achieving a 50/50 gender balance of contemporary composers performed at the BBC Proms is something we have been committed to for some time and consider vital to the creative development of the world’s largest classical music festival".

Well, this at least sounds achievable, apparently 10 out of 29 artists with commissions for the 2017 Proms were female. 50/50 would mean a slight shift, but there are already quite a number of female composers.

Still think that judging on quality and ability should be the goal; I'm wary of quotas, as one is basically discriminating based on gender to break up discrimination based on gender. At times, maybe necessary to affect change, but in no way a magic bullet.

Take conductors, for example. An equal quota for female conductors in the near future seems impossible, enforcing it would result in a decline in quality of the concerts; not because females can't conduct or because male musicians get so randy they can't concentrate, but because few women take on conducting as a career in the first place. To get to anything approaching equality, you would have to sort that out first, a complex issue to say the least; then see to it that good graduates aren't discouraged or barred from getting jobs due to being female. And all off this would pay of at the earliest in 15 or 20 years.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I welcome this, though I hope the BBC will not go all cringeworthy over it and harp on about it throughout the Proms season. It would do the composers no favours.

[Serial_Apologist]

I welcome this, though I hope the BBC will not go all cringeworthy over it and harp on about it throughout the Proms season. It would do the composers no favours.

Tut tut - terrible pun there...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Still think that judging on quality and ability should be the goal; I'm wary of quotas, as one is basically discriminating based on gender to break up discrimination based on gender. At times, maybe necessary to affect change, but in no way a magic bullet.

Not necessarily - instead of commissioning 29 works, the Beeb could commission 38 - there'd still be 19 blokes kept busy.

[Demetrius]

Not necessarily - instead of commissioning 29 works, the Beeb could commission 38 - there'd still be 19 blokes kept busy.

Except that, technically, if you were to give the commissions to the best option regardless of gender, the result could still be something else beside 19/19. It could even be say 26 women and 12 men. I definitely wouldn't bet the house on the assumption that there are currently more male than female among qualified/deserving (how to define and allocate these musical merits is a further ever so slight problem) composers.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Except that, technically, if you were to give the commissions to the best option regardless of gender, the result could still be something else beside 19/19. It could even be say 26 women and 12 men. I definitely wouldn't bet the house on the assumption that there are currently more male than female among qualified/deserving (how to define and allocate these musical merits is a further ever so slight problem) composers.

Leaving aside the fact that the Beeb has a somewhat checkered history recently of giving Proms commissions "to the best options", with commissions, there's always going to be an element of risk: until the works are finished, you cannot say whether x or y (or "xx or xy") will produce "the better work". Proms commissions hope to produce Great Works, no doubt, but realistically, all that can be expected are works that are worth hearing. Spreading the bet 50:50 between the sexes makes no difference.

[Richard Barrett]

Leaving aside the fact that the Beeb has a somewhat checkered history recently of giving Proms commissions "to the best options"

Well, quite - so, all other things being equal, in the sense of Demetrius' hedging his bets on whether there are more "deserving" composers of one gender than the other, a 50/50 division would seem to be the most equitable way to go. Apart from which they do need to commission more new pieces and they need to look a bit further outside the list of usual suspects. And they need to be a bit more imaginative about programming than to commission so many relatively brief concert-openers as a risk-avoidance policy.

[french frank]

if you were to give the commissions to the best option

Good gracious. How does anyone know, I mean know, which is the 'best option'? It doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing which is necessarily apparent.

[jean]

[Barbirollians]

It seems a perfectly sensible proposal to me.

I cannot see why they do not make the same commitment re soloists too for example. Might give some male violinists a chance as most of the best are female