Over the decades, the Proms have become one of the great British cultural rituals. And here they come again—72 classical music concerts at the Albert Hall over eight weeks, starting on 13th July, all broadcast on the BBC, plus the assorted spinoff series of chamber concerts, matinees, talks and open-air events. It was ever thus—and probably always will be.
Except that it wasn't ever thus at all. In the 40 years I've been attending, much has changed—and all for the better—in terms of programming, repertoire and performance quality. The earliest Proms of the late Victorian years—the series began in 1895—seem like concerts from another musical planet altogether. A typical programme contained 15 or even 20 items—most of them long-forgotten songs, arrangements and dances that most music lovers today would find insufferably light.
And yet the mission statement of the Proms, as expounded by their founder Robert Newman, is still recognisable 112 years on. Newman's intention was to run "nightly concerts and train the public by easy stages… gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music." These were consciously concerts for a democratic age, a project of popular enlightenment for which tickets would be accessibly priced and the formalities of more established concert seasons done away with.
More than a century on, Newman's vision can still be seen in this year's season of what are now officially known as the BBC Proms. The concerts take place nightly (sometimes more often than that), are accessibly priced (tickets start at £5) and formalities are non-existent. Add in the nightly radio relays (and repeats), the televising of almost half of the concerts and the increasing online presence, and the sense of the Proms as a democratic project unlike any other concert series in Britain is difficult to dispute.
But the snobbishness is still there, as recognisable today as it was in Forster's time. Michael Ball's appearance in this year's August bank holiday Monday Prom—"an evening of musical theatre hits and popular highlights from his wide-ranging repertory"—has already offended purists. Although it is but one concert among 72, Ball's appearance has become a lightning rod for modernists who look back to William Glock's era in charge of the Proms (1960-73) as a golden age of innovation (which it was) and a lost model for later generations (which, in the sense that they imply, it wasn't).
The Proms today continue to develop, as shown clearly by a recent British Library conference on the Proms in British musical life, as well as The Proms: A New History, a new illustrated book on the series. When the current Proms director Nicholas Kenyon writes, in the New History, that the Proms are "one of the most thorough and consistent attempts to democratise classical music and make it part of the mainstream of British cultural life," my only reservation is to question whether, with the exception of Radio 3, there are any others.
And yet you only have to go to the Proms to sense the worm in the bud. Newman's idea that he was creating a classical music audience which, once established, would reproduce and grow organically is in much worse shape than the concerts. Classical music as an innovator like Wood understood it has ceased to replenish the repertoire as it did in his lifetime (Wood died in 1944). As a consequence, the audience is ageing and in decline. The truth is that if the music dies, so does the audience. Adaptation is inescapable, as Kenyon found during his 11 years in charge. The Ball concert may be the shape of things to come. For if the Proms do not adapt, they may eventually join Wakes weeks and the travelling circus as popular entertainments that suddenly aren't around any more.
Asbos for audiences
At the risk of appearing a complete fogey, I do wonder why concert audiences can't listen quietly any more. When I was at the Carnegie Hall last autumn, Krystian Zimerman nearly walked off the platform because someone was using their phone to film his concert with Gidon Kremer. At the Royal Festival Hall's recent gala reopening in London, Vladimir Jurowski had to stop the London Philharmonic in full flight because of a phone going off. Another started ringing in Alfred Brendel's recital a couple of days later, as did a watch alarm, every hour. And the coughing was so loud that Brendel gave the fiercest glare to an audience I've seen since Lou Reed on a bad day. Ticketing systems are so sophisticated these days that halls could easily identify, warn and ban phone users, bad coughers and sweet unwrappers. Football clubs can do it for racist chants, so why not Asbos for antisocial concert audiences?
