Pinned post
Following last year’s classical review looking at the sector and the BBC’s role within it, the BBC today sets out a new strategy to strengthen its public purpose for classical music, delivering the best music to a wider audience, with a significant new investment in music education. The new strategy ensures every pound of licence fee funding works harder for the sector and for our audiences now, and in the future.
At the heart of the plan, the BBC commits to:
- Creating agile ensembles that can work flexibly and creatively, working with more musicians and broadcasting from more venues – up to 50 – in different parts of the country, and reducing salaried orchestral posts across the BBC English Orchestras by around 20%
- Reinforcing the distinctiveness of the BBC’s five unique orchestras, artistically, educationally and geographically serving their own audiences whilst fulfilling their collective role in providing the widest range of content across Radio 3 and BBC platforms
- Doubling funding for music education and launching new training initiatives, providing more opportunities for people to engage with classical music, building audiences and creating extraordinary experiences.
- Creating a single digital home for our orchestras, giving audiences access to the full range of our high-quality orchestral content, including new and archive performances, educational content and concert listings.
- Taking the difficult decision to close the BBC Singers in order to invest more widely in the future of choral singing across the UK, working with a wide range of choral groups alongside launching a major choral development programme for new talent.
The BBC, as the biggest commissioner of music and one of the biggest employers of musicians in the country, has a vital part to play in the British cultural landscape and a duty to future proof what we deliver for the public. At a time of very real financial challenges across the orchestral and choral sectors, the BBC has reviewed how it invests in resources to deliver the best possible value for the licence fee payer. A key part of this is the BBC’s role in music education, and how we must invest more and create stronger partnerships to develop future talent.
The strategy invests more widely in the sector across the UK, whilst delivering savings that ensure we deliver high quality orchestral and choral music within a sustainable financial model. Even were there no financial challenges, we believe these steps are the right ones to take to help ensure the future success of the sector.
Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s Chief Content Officer, says:
“This is the first major review of classical music at the BBC in a generation. This new strategy is bold, ambitious, and good for the sector and for audiences who love classical music. That doesn’t mean that we haven’t had to make some difficult decisions, but equally they are the right ones for the future. Great classical music should be available and accessible to everyone, and we’re confident these measures will ensure more people will engage with music, have better access to it, and that we’ll be able to play a greater role in developing and nurturing the musicians and music lovers of tomorrow.”
Future-proofing BBC Ensembles
Building on the founding principles of the BBC orchestras as flexible and adaptable, we are creating agile ensembles that can work creatively, bringing in more musicians when needed and broadcasting from more venues in different parts of the country. This flexibility will enable our orchestras to perform the full range of repertoire, from intimate smaller scale works to the largest full-scale symphonic and choral pieces. A voluntary redundancy programme will open across salaried posts in the English Orchestras (BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra), aiming to reduce salaried orchestral posts across the BBC orchestras by around 20%.
Across the nations, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and The Ulster Orchestra will continue to play an essential broadcast role for the BBC, delivering distinctive orchestral performances and education programmes. As the changes are made across the English groups, the Head of Orchestras and Choirs will work with the Orchestra Directors of the Nations’ Orchestras to consider whether there could be any lessons for the Nations’ Orchestras.
With increased agility and flexibility, all BBC Orchestras will bring the best of classical music to a wider range of venues, performing and broadcasting from up to 50 new performance venues from the 2024/25 season.
Investing in music education
Working closely with external and internal BBC partners, including BBC Radio 3, Autumn 2023 will see the launch of a major nationwide music education offer which aims to reach every school in the UK through online, broadcast and live performance. The BBC is doubling its current investment in music education to kickstart the process and further details of the offer will be announced later this year.
Investing in a new digital home
The BBC will create a new single digital home for its orchestras, giving audiences access to the full range of high-quality orchestral content. This will include new and archive performances, educational content and concert listings.
Investing in choral singing across the UK
Choirs, from amateur to professional, form an integral part of the UK’s thriving music scene. It is essential that the BBC invests in more broadcast opportunities from a greater range of high-quality ensembles, and therefore the BBC has made the difficult decision to close the BBC Singers (20 posts) and invest resources in a wider pool of choral groups from across the UK. Enhancing and enabling emerging and diverse choirs is also key to engaging a wider and a future audience, so the BBC will establish a new nationwide choral development programme.
Championing the distinctive five BBC Orchestras
The BBC Orchestras hold a special place in the cultural landscape of the UK, with many concerts across the country featuring the world’s best soloists and conductors. They are at the heart of the world’s biggest classical music festival, the BBC Proms, and they deliver a range of music and repertoire at the highest possible level. The BBC will build on the success of its orchestras, increasing agility and flexibility through its new working model which puts access and visibility at the fore.
East Bank will be the new home for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus from 2025, with tailored flexible studios being built on the site of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as part of new cultural quarter in East London, alongside the V&A, UCL, London College of Fashion and Sadler’s Wells. The BBC Concert Orchestra’s administrative base will be at East Bank, and discussions are ongoing to find a home for them outside the M25. The BBC Philharmonic continues to have its home in Salford, alongside a raft of Radio 3 programmes which will move there in 2024/25, further strengthening a new hub of excellence for classical music rooted in the North. We are committed as ever to perform and broadcast from all corners of the UK.
As part of the delivery of these ambitious plans, Simon Webb, the BBC’s Head of Orchestras and Choirs, will convene a new Classical Advisory Group of industry leaders from across the classical music sector outside of the BBC. The group will advise on strategic decisions and sector-wide engagement, as the BBC orchestras fulfil their public service remit supporting a thriving classical music sector in the UK.
The strategy builds on insights pulled together as part of the 2022 Classical Review, and that can be accessed here.
“New Strategy for Classical Music Prioritises Quality, Agility and Impact.”
Brave New World Speak. Nothing more, nothing less. Dumbing down, nothing more, nothing less.
Who does Simon Webb think he is kidding?
How strange.
We hear from
Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s Chief Content Officer.
But nothing from Lorna Clarke the BBC’s Head of Music.
Whoever she is or whatever her responsibilities are .
How many layers of management have been needed to produce this waffle?
How appalling! The finest of choirs, and at least 80 years (I believe, from memory) of work. John, just before he died, was asked to join a birthday celebration, and he wrote, with great difficulty a letter of praise and commendation.
It was 90 years, not 80. And here is the text of the letter that John wrote, as part of the 90th anniversary celebrations. It was written in draft, and I typed it for him: It is undated but it was written about a month before he died, around Christmas 2014.
‘To reach the pinnacle of your profession at the start of your career is a remarkable achievement. To stay at the top and see off the competition is astonishing. Longevity in choirs is more astonishing still. There are ways in which this can be achieved, of course, but it requires eagle-eyed (and I suppose eagle-eared) supervision and quality control, or the sensitive changing of personnel – singers and guest musicians, conductors and managements.
In all these respects the BBC Singers have been pre-eminently successful in recent decades. And from the first conductor (Leslie Woodgate) onwards to David Hill they have had outstanding directors for whom the word “genius” would not be extravagant. Their musical and technical expertise enables them to perform the most difficult new music as if it were standard repertoire.
As a result of these skills, their vast and all-encompassing repertoire enables them to give possibly the most exciting performances and programmes on the planet, introducing audiences to music of rare quality, and often supreme virtuosity – and always of communicative power.
Happy Birthday.’
And this is what is being go rid of….
Europe’s broadcasting stations nourish the arts and invest generously. The BBC used to. I look at the current decision makers and have to question their qualifications, practical arts experience, and intellectual capacity to rule in matters concerning anything to do with ‘Classical Music Priorities’. Charlotte Moore, Chief Content Officer. A career executive, in more recent years Controller of Radio 1. Lorna Clarke, Director Music. News reporter, commercial radio, Radios 1, 2, 6, Electric Proms, Controller of Pop. Sam Jackson, Controller Radio 3. Classic FM, Pop/Global Classics at Universal. Such people and backgrounds don’t fill me with confidence – though I fully respect their skills in generating hot air, cliche and blustering political speech. “This new strategy,” we are told, “is bold, ambitious, and good for the sector and for audiences who love classical music”. Really? Does anyone believe that? What about practitioners, composers? ‘This is good for you’ – by implication ‘this is not’, corporate rulings sending a dictatorial message – is a repressive dynamic to live with. History shows that. Time was when for years Radio 3 was my refuge – indeed for a time my work base. People of culture, thinkers, experienced highly trained musicians and writers ran the place. No longer. For good reason, I spend most of my time these days listening to or watching the main German stations (WDR, NDR, SWR), France Musique, the Scandinavian channels. This latest BBC move is a disgrace, a stab in the back. Has anyone stopped for a moment to appreciate what “a voluntary redundancy programme [aimed] to reduce salaried orchestral posts across the BBC orchestras by around 20%” will represent to musicians across the country? “Voluntary”? Not a bit of it. “You’re fired”. A disgraceful day.
This document is a load of baloney, if in keeping with Radio 3 and the proms having already gone to the dogs. What a way to treat its orchestras: redundancy. Shameful. Perhaps the BBC orchestras will now go on strike.
Regarding Webb’s advisory group (why anyway?), this is worth sharing, from the slipped disc site:
1 Stuart Murphy, ENO’s sinking chief
2 Lord Nick Kenyon, committee member for life
3 Chi-chi Nwanoku, obvs
4 Anna Lapwood, ‘classical music’s dream ambassador’
5 Nicholas Collon, so that all meetings will be held standing and without sheets
6 Lord Tony Hall, ex-Covent Garden chief with impeccable hiring record
7 Erik Ten Hag (or anyone from Manchester)
8 Claudia Winkelman and her street pianists (pictured)
9 Barren Henley from the Arts Council
10 Asylum seeker to play the ‘oud
If the BBC wished to save money with regard to its responsibilities for classical music broadcasting – which it manifestly does not – it could start with appointing a Controller of Radio 3 who also retains within their job description the wholesale planning of the Proms – as was the case from 1945 until 2012, when Roger Wright, the last holder of that post, walked out on realising what the utterly unnecessary and prodigiously costly internal reorganisation of the BBC was going to mean with regard to classical music planning and broadcasting – lumped under BBC Sounds.
During the past decade, the Proms alone has descended into a God-knows-what mish-mash of fashion and the irredeemably second-and-third-rate, couched in the ludicrous language of BBC-speak, with Radio 3 becoming a shocking example of the triumph of ignorance over civilised behaviour. The wilful and downright wicked abandonment of core values of broadcasting – a true ‘levelling-up’, to use a current (often misplaced) phrase – in the past decade has seen those who care about the retention and spreading of the highest manifestations of human intellect being made available to all through radio broadcasting alone, witness the rise of worthless, downright ill-educated, ‘statements’, reminiscent of a fascistic, ‘we-admit-no-alternative-view’ attitude, a consequence of placing the fate of classical music broadcasting in the hands of people who are manifestly incapable of providing it to the standards it once possessed, but good at covering their backsides with the latest woke-ridden Civil-Service-speak to justify to the majority of the population (who, because music has been removed from the National Curriculum – thank you, Michael Gove – have no knowledge or precious little understanding of the wilful destruction of one of the highest manifestations of human artistic creativity of the last half-millennium) in a manner that implies those who have taken these decisions know best.
The BBC, with eight national daily television channels, and eight regional daily television channels, alongside around sixty local radio stations (all of whom are covered by local commercial radio stations) is now the epitome of bloated ignorance in so many areas – that distant rumble of discontent we heard was the sound of Lord Reith turning in his grave. The BBC has now outlived any usefulness it once possessed, and should be closed down. Its continued existence is quite meaningless in a civilised society, and its decisions – the latest of which has prompted this flurry of opposition – consistently couched in pathetic media-speak language, might just as well have come from the Vladimir Putin Speech Writer’s Handbook.
“A shocking example of the triumph of ignorance over civilised behaviour”. Excellently said, Bob. And one could go further, much further.
Doesn’t the BBC Singers have 24 members?
I notice they are on Radio 3 tonight. My protest will be to not listen.
Yes 24, the BBC couldn’t even get that right!
According to this, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1z5RGJRM0Cx2vxJ7JHhHpc9/whos-who-in-the-bbc-singers, the Singers are 21 in number. Colin
I have become aware of the following letter to BBC management signed by illustrious musicians who hold BBC positions. Well done to them for making a principled stand. Maybe they should now refuse to conduct. Frank Pritchard.
To Tim Davie, Charlotte Moore, Lorna Clarke and Simon Webb:
We, the undersigned, read with disbelief Tuesday’s press release outlining the BBC’s plans to disband the BBC Singers and instigate 20% cuts across the English BBC orchestras.
The worldwide renown of the BBC Singers – the UK’s only full-time, professional choir – has been built over 99 years of groundbreaking, innovative work. To kill it off takes no time at all, but the ramifications of such shortsightedness are incalculable. This decision, if carried out, will be devastating not just to the choir’s present, uniquely-skilled members, but also to future generations of singers. And
even a quick glance at the list of world premieres given by the group begs the question – for which professional choir will our composers now compose? Wherever culture is taken seriously the BBC Singers are regarded as exemplars of what dedication, versatility and slowly-built foundations can achieve. To be willing to consign all this to the dustheap in favour of greater “agility” and “flexibility” displays a shocking disregard not only of how artistic excellence takes root but, furthermore, how the BBC’s great legacy across the arts is viewed and envied around the world.
Rewarding the outstanding work of our orchestras with bit-by-bit erosion is equally calamitous. Aside from the jargon, to claim that by cutting jobs you are somehow “reinforcing the distinctiveness of the BBC’s unique orchestras” is nonsensical. And what is the use of “doubling funding for music education and launching new training initiatives” if at the same time you reduce the number of secure jobs
available? Telling our best young instrumentalists that hard graft will gain them only freelance scraps is to misunderstand both their aspirations as well as the nature of a top-class symphony orchestra. The latter can only produce its best work in a stable environment – an environment forged by mutual understanding and a shared vision. To perform the widest repertoire to the highest standard cannot be
achieved otherwise. And so we beg you to reconsider making these irreversible, catastrophically damaging cuts.
Excellence must be fought for, and lovers of classical music must be prepared to fight with fierce determination for what they hold dear. Hence we would greatly welcome the opportunity to discuss the proposed plans in person and to enter into a real and genuine dialogue. Together, as guardians of the BBC’s legacy, we can surely forge a path forward – a path which secures the ability of the BBC’s
ensembles to deliver excellence for our present and future audiences. This is no less than they expect and deserve.
(signed)
Ryan Bancroft – Principal Conductor, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Jules Buckley – Creative Artist in Residence, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov – Günter Wand Conducting Chair, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Alpesh Chauhan OBE – Associate Conductor, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Bob Chilcott – Principal Guest Conductor, BBC Singers
Sofi Jeannin – Chief Conductor, BBC Singers
Anna Lapwood – Artist in Association, BBC Singers
Sakari Oramo OBE – Chief Conductor, BBC Symphony Orchestra (pictured)
Dalia Stasevska – Principal Guest Conductor, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov – Principal Guest Conductor, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth – Chief Conductor, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Yes, these maestros should refuse to conduct their BBC orchestras, especially during the proms when headlines will be made and the BBC management vultures, circling around the orchestras wanting blood for their crazy misguided actions, might just sit up and acknowledge that they have it ignorantly wrong.
It was encouraging the way Gary Lineker’s colleagues supported him. Now the conductors who wrote to Davie and others need to start cancelling their BBC concerts in order to support the singers and their own orchestras.
Last night I had the bad luck to hear an interview with Tim Davie, a man with all the charisma of a limp lettuce leaf, on the BBC news channel, made worse by the interviewer then telling us again what he said: are we really considered that thick as to have not understood the first time??? Davie’s responses were inadequate. We know he loves sport and that he regrets the Lineker incident – well he would now that it’s made the headlines and buggered the schedules – but does he love music, does he know who the BBC Singers are, and does he understand that reducing orchestras restricts the repertoire as well as causing hardship to individuals? The BBC’s press release above is rubbish. Of greater meaning is the conductors’ response shared by Mr Pritchard. They should indeed now down batons until the Singers are saved and the orchestras are given stays of execution. But why target English ensembles only and leave the Welsh and Scottish alone? And, why didn’t John Storgards, BBC Philharmonic, sign the letter to Davie and his cohorts as well? Did his boss Simon Webb get to him first?
Also signing the letter are Anna-Maria Helsing, Ludovic Morlot, Sir Donald Runnicles and Barry Wordsworth.
The above comments on the proposed actions clothed in meaningless designer jargon say it all. Words fail me.
Much as I like football, and admire the profound and gradual changes that Gareth Southgate has brought to the management of the English national squad over the past five years, I do not feel that Gary Lineker’s chairmanship of the Saturday-night Match of the Day Programme is in any way more insightful or better than those of his fellow-commentators. After all, the next-day, Sunday-evening, similarly-titled programme is chaired not by Lineker but by another experienced pundit who is, I venture to guess, not paid anything like the £million-plus salary that the part-time crisp salesman is.
By not renewing Gary Lineker’s contract – thereby saving the Corporation over one-and-a-half million pounds annually – and placing the chairmanship of the Saturday-evening Premiership programme in the hands of another experienced person (might one even suggest David Mellor?) or intelligent, educated ex-footballer – such as Peter Crouch – part of the outrageous salary currently paid to Lineker by the BBC could be transferred to the consequences of the media-speak garbage enshrined in the opening paragraph of the BBC statement regarding the proposed (the decision’s already been made, I’m sure) disbanding of the BBC Singers that: ‘Following last year’s classical review [what ‘classical review’, and why was one considered necessary?] looking at the sector [?sector] and the BBC’s role within it [you mean it was not merely the BBC that was being looked at? Or why?], the BBC today sets out a new strategy to strengthen its public purpose for classical music [the ‘new strategy’ is one of artistic destruction], the best music to a wider audience, with a significant new investment in music education [the details of how this exciting ‘new strategy’ is to be delivered is not explained – it simply does not exist at present, but to continue – ].’ ‘The new strategy ensures every pound of licence fee funding works harder for the sector and for our audiences now, and in the future’ [how on earth, in this gobbled dream-world that BBC has become, does a pound (one assumes this figure: £) ‘work. harder’? The Statement is illiterate.
Gary Lineker is not a fool, and is a good presenter of a programme built around a sport of which he is an excellent ambassador per se, but in the last analysis nowadays in BBC terms he is merely a presenter, whose position in the programme could be taken over by someone else at half the salary the BBC currently pays him. By reducing the annual salary of the presenter of Match of the Day by one million pounds, so that he or she is only paid half-a-million for 38 weeks’ work, my own suggested ‘new strategy ensures every pound of licence fee funding works harder for the sector and for our audiences now, and in the future.’
Perhaps, in the interests of transparency, we could be told if the decision taken was unanimous, and, if not, who the dissenting figures were.
Another fine proposal Bob.
Keep them coming.
Match of the Day was fun last night, no commentary, no punditry, it can stay like that, the fortune saved keeping the BBC Singers and the BBC orchestras whole, such soft targets for the BBC’s philistines and backstabbers.
What a good idea, stop wasting money on talking heads, however insightful their football knowledge, and give the money to the BBC Singers and Orchestras; oh and send the foolish Davie and Webb to the job centre.
A job centre date too for the faceless Moore and Clarke, whatever it is they do. Get rid of them, that’s more money saved to put to much better causes, such as the badly treated singers and orchestras.
Colin Anderson has approved my sending to this site, as part of its now on-going campaign against the announced BBC cuts, my Editorial which is to appear in the April 2023 issue of Musical Opinion, of which I am editor. I apologise in advance as one or two points are covered above, but here it is in full:-
EDITORIAL Musical Opinion APRIL 2023 Published March 31st
The Ideas of March
For those whose work takes place in the public eye, it often seems that no matter what one does, somebody, somewhere, will complain. Such criticism may indeed be justified, and those who work in what is euphemistically termed ‘the media’ willingly place their efforts before the public, and indeed have to do so when the public pays for them.
A broadcasting organisation such as the BBC often finds itself on the receiving end of criticism from all quarters, especially when its funding is taken by law from the pockets of the population for just that purpose, and does not come out of general taxation. This is neither the time, nor the place, to recite again the many advantages the Corporation’s programme planners have offered to the public over the virtual one hundred years since it began from such relatively small beginnings. In our world of classical music, we have much to be grateful for – from surviving recordings of broadcasts from the 1930s to those from relatively recent times the BBC has been a beacon of interest and often of compelling content.
This was because the dissemination of information, entertainment and educational subjects (in the last case making available worthwhile subject-matter with which the average person would not necessarily have come into contact, as well as explaining such matters in a readily-assimilated manner) was set out by its first Director-General – Lord Reith – and fully understood and followed by executives, producers and presenters for many years.
One of those worthwhile subjects was what is now (and has been almost for as long as the BBC has existed) euphemistically-termed ‘classical music’. Broadcast talks, such as those given in the 1930s by Sir Henry Walford Davies (then, Master of the King’s Music in succession to Elgar) and later in the 1950s and 60s by Anthony Hopkins (a weekly programme, Talking About Music, aimed at the general music-loving listener, not the specialist), were part and parcel of the BBC’s output, reinforced by Programmes for Schools (we recall a brilliant Schools Programme talk on Aaron Copland’s El Salon Mexico’ by the popular dance-band leader Edmundo Ros) – such programmes were not only part of the bedrock of musical education and edification for those lucky enough to have heard them, but were also considered normal, unexceptional broadcast-matter – a part of everyday life: one was not obliged to listen, but the manifest worth of their content, of their very existence, was never in doubt. After all, if the listener was not attracted by the Third Programme or the Home Service, there was always the Light Programme for more ephemeral music (including programmes by Edmundo Ros’s band).
The BBC had its own orchestras – of all kinds, from the BBC Symphony (founded 93 years ago) to the BBC Show Band – which latter group, at one memorable Royal Festival Hall concert in the 1950s, was conducted by Hans Werner Henze in the British premiere of his Dance Marathon for two jazz bands and symphony orchestra, and, for choral works, the BBC Choral Society and BBC Singers would join the BBC’s orchestras to perform throughout the annual Henry Wood Promenade Concerts – in the hands of the BBC from the late 1920s.
Today, of course, it’s all different. The BBC and its remits have naturally expanded as the population of Britain has increased from 47 million in 1945 to over 67 million in 2023: whilst the BBC’s scope is far wider than it was almost eighty years ago, as it naturally reflects the demographic changes in population, it may justly be claimed that the underlying nature of the country’s national broadcaster has changed – often unnecessarily, and with no good justification.
For reasons which defy objective observation, instead of informing (still less ‘educating’) the population it serves, those within the Corporation charged with (what we must assume to be) broadcasting policy today, have elected to pay Gary Lineker, an ex-England professional footballer, £1.35 million annually to present a 90-minute weekly programme of highlights from that very day’s Premiership matches (with very few exceptions) for around 38 weeks of the year. Mr Lineker is not actually an employee of the Corporation, but a freelance pundit who also advertises potato crisps.
This might not be considered such a negative matter were it not for the fact that in the same week Mr Lineker’s political comments led to him forgoing his appearance on Match of the Day on March 11th, the BBC announced the disbandment of the BBC Singers and reducing the permanent strength of the Corporation’s three symphony orchestras by 20%, a statement couched in the modern-day language of media-speak, and a decision that has led those who care about retaining, and spreading, as the BBC once did, the finer manifestations of creativity of the human spirit to protest.
We join them. We shall not repeat the worthless illiterate drivel in which this decision was couched, but – with permission – quote from a letter sent by Siva Oke, founder and managing director of SOMM Records, to her Member of Parliament, the Deputy Prime-Minister, Dominic Raab:
‘If implemented, this strategy will be catastrophic for classical music in the UK. The BBC is the biggest employer of musicians in the UK, and to lose one in five of their salaried orchestral positions will be disastrous for the sector. It exposes more musicians to the precarious world of freelance work and will damage the quality of the ensembles themselves. Musicians develop artistic excellence by working together long-term, something that ensembles performing on an ad-hoc basis cannot replicate, no matter how talented.
The loss of the BBC Singers, one of the finest chamber choirs in the world, is a particular act of cultural vandalism. It makes no sense, financially or culturally.
‘The UK is rightly renowned internationally for the quality of its classical music. However, the sector is struggling to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the barriers to touring created by the UK’s departure from the EU. The BBC’s announcement also follows the recent cuts announced by Arts Council England to many of our finest classical music organisations, including several of London’s leading orchestras, English National Opera, the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, the Britten Sinfonia and Welsh National Opera.’
We believe that the decisions of the BBC Committee and Arts Council England (it is claimed that some individuals serve on both decision-making bodies) are a consequence of what has arisen during the ten years which have now passed since Michael Gove, appointed Secretary of State for Education in the Cameron–Clegg Coalition, terminated the previous Labour government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, and removed Music from the National Curriculum, whilst reforming A Level and GCSE qualifications.
Michael Gove’s decisions were at the time opposed by the National Association of Head Teachers, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Union of Teachers and the NASUWT, who all passed motions of no confidence in his policies at their conferences in 2013. It is our belief that, a decade later, we are witnessing the consequences of Gove’s decision.
Principal amongst those consequences has been the recent announcement of cuts to long-established arts organisations in England and Wales. We have reported that Arts Council England announced the removal of English National Opera’s NPO (National Portfolio Organisation) status and consequential funding cut. The ENO was set up to bring opera for everyone and has been doing this very successfully for nearly 92 years: following this recent decision, Sir Bryn Terfel launched a petition to whomsoever was the incumbent head of the Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport. We pray Sir Bryn’s petition will succeed.
The greatly significant German-Swiss psychoanalyst Arno Gruen challenged Sigmund Freud’s belief that humans possess an innate tendency to destruction and violence, holding instead that the root of evil lies in self-hatred, arising from a self-betrayal that begins in childhood, when autonomy is surrendered in exchange for accepting the ‘love’ of those who wield power over us. Whether true or not – often, the results of psychoanalysis are, at first, difficult to accept by the patient – it may well be the case that that which we observe in the decisions of the BBC and Arts Council Committee members have shown Gruen’s conclusion to be (and will continue to be, unless rescinded) proved true, and – very regrettably – not solely in the United Kingdom, for, as the ultimate consequence of national self-hatred, we reprint a report published in Musical America Worldwide on October 21, 2022:
“Russian troops murdered conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko in his home in Kherson, a port city occupied in March 2022 by Russian forces. The 46-year-old maestro had refused to participate in a concert to propagandize the ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in the city under Russian control.”
Clearly, the art that inspired Yuriy Kerpatenko’s ‘grasp for freedom’ led to his self-sacrificial murder. His life and death stand as present-day exemplars that Art is Civilisation, the removal and ultimate absence of which reveals a profoundly uncivilised society.
…………….
It’s not a “campaign”, Bob; rather a number of readers have independently responded to the BBC’s press release. Colin
https://www.colinscolumn.com/bbc-singers-the-bbcs-english-orchestras-symphony-concert-philharmonic-update/