You might have gathered from some of my Twitter updates, my profile and a previous article of mine on The Daily Waffle (about Mozart) that I am a big fan of music and in particular Classical.
I am by no means part of the younger generation, nor the older generation. I am bang in the middle, sometimes known as generation X (listen to Green Day’s album “21st Century Breakdown” and you will get to know what that is!). The relevance of mentioning this is that when I go to Classical music concerts, the majority of the crowd is the older or very old generation. The “baby boomers” and older. Occasionally, we see the very young or the late teens/mid-20s in the audience, but that has a lot to do with the fact that Manchester has the Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s school of music within it’s centre, and also we often get the famous “star” soloists visiting which brings in enthusiastic young followers. But in general the majority of audience are baby boomer and older. Apart from making me feel young (the upside), the downside is that it does bring into stark realisation that amongst my generation, dedicated lovers of classical music are few and far between.
I look back and see that it stems from the education system that was eroded by underfunding for arts under the Thatcher years (this is as political as this essay will get!) when I was in secondary school. I did play in the school orchestra and played solos in school concerts, but I was part of an uncool, dwindling crowd of people and had to encourage myself to be part of this. Our music teacher was good, but overall in the school it was not considered a cool subject. Which also explains why as a career I ended up in the Sciences, leaving me forever wondering what if I stuck with music…. So that gives you a picture of my generation’s lack of interest in classical music, I am sure many others had the same experience in those years, unless you were rich and sent to a private school (mine was a NW London Comprehensive).
Now since it was like that in the 80s, I am sure it didn’t really reverse the trend much after that, even when funding for schools increased in the late 90s through 2000s. Once a trend sets in curricula, it seems to stick.
Some people might think it’s just the way it is and let’s not worry about it. But we should because the arts, and in particular music, not only have a beneficial impact in terms of continuing the long tradition of musical excellence that has been a hallmark of our Country for centuries, there is also the beneficial impact that music brings to local communities in cities like Manchester and London, which have lots of concerts (not just classical) which bring in the money and investment from attendance and from becoming cultural centres.
The worry for me is that if ignorance of a proper musical education and treating it as “uncool” in schools continues, then eventually as the older generation audiences of classical music dwindle away, those few remaining from mine and younger generations will not be enough to sustain the ticket sales to supplement the dwindling government funds, and all but the most major orchestras in the UK will be disbanded through lack of revenues. Then the effect is that as music, already tough for permanent jobs, becomes less of a steady route to employment, we are left with just the few that make it through the short term but hugely wealth making (for individuals) route of pop music and a handful of the classical star soloists that record companies deem to be saleable for CD/mp3 profits. This will eventually lead to lack of choice and then we will be left wondering how we get back from that point, and become nostalgic about the time when we had all those great orchestras and musicians that enriched our lives.
There is a glimmer of hope, if it could attract continued funding and spread to the rest of the UK: that is the piloted Sistema Scotland which is one derived from a Venezuelan universal children’s education system in music, by ensuring that every child has access to an instrument and is taught to play from a young age. The benefits in the piloted areas in Scotland are already showing, and not only it helps the musical abilities, but inherently the mental capacity for learning other subjects too and ensuring a future which would be less bright without the essential music education.
Ultimately musical appreciation is part of being human. The fact that pop music is so successful, and profitable, is because it appeals to the psyche by satisfying a basic human need, even if as a more effortless fix than classical music but still very important. Classical music provides the same for those of us who love it, with the added pleasure of being able to get under the skin of history through the music of composers from previous centuries, but also through contemporary composers it brings an excitement of discovery of new developments in the art.
I have already explained how Mozart, over two centuries after his death, still appeals to the modern consciousness and the subconscious, so through early years education both he and other composers old and new can remain and prosper in our future generations too, ensuring our groups, orchestras, solo artists and our classical music concerts remain the envy of the world.
