Is London best?
As the September evenings began to draw in, that amazing musical cornucopia, the Proms, rose to its climax, with two concerts each from the Vienna Philharmonic and the Bavarian State Orchestra in the final week. As long as the Proms are on, London's boast that it is the centre of the musical world seems justified. The rest of the year, it's not so clear-cut. There are more concerts in a day in London than you might get in a week in Paris. But why do Londoners so rarely see conductors such as Muti, Barenboim, Ozawa or Mehta? The answer is that these conductors won't work for London orchestras because we can't afford to give them adequate rehearsal time. This hones the world-famous sight-reading skills of London's orchestral players-but it also prevents them soaring to the level of Vienna or Boston. Shortage of money means that London has to rely on its status as a cultural cynosure to attract foreign artists. Many artists and groups include London on their touring schedules, although their fee might be half what they'll receive in Munich or Rome. But how long before London's attractions fail to outweigh the paucity of its fees? Even the mighty South Bank Centre, self-proclaimed "world's greatest arts centre," was once reduced to haggling for Jessye Norman's services. "I don't negotiate," was her tart response.
MacMillan and public music
What does it take to get a living composer on to the front pages? Certainly not their music; these days that barely makes it on to the arts pages. Only three things can do it: a death, a knighthood, or-best of all-a scandal. But given that these days the most outr? piece of avant-gardism arouses only a yawn of boredom, scandals are in short supply. The brief furore over the "hecklers" who disrupted a piece by Harrison Birtwistle a few years back was the first anyone could remember for years, but compared to the fist-fights at The Rite of Spring premiere in 1913, it was very small beer. So it was a shock to see, on 15th August, the name "James MacMillan" blazing on a Guardian headline. Could this really be the same James MacMillan who writes earnestly catholic music with titles like Seven Last Words from the Cross, and who has become Scotland's best musical export since the Bay City Rollers? What scandal could his inoffensive modernism have engendered? It turned out that MacMillan had made a speech denouncing the anti-catholic bigotry of his native Scotland, saying that it was "like Ulster without the guns." The torrent of denials from the Scottish press showed that he had touched a raw nerve. But that brief furore will be the least of his troubles. MacMillan is a successful composer, probably the most played and recorded of his generation, and arouses a fair bit of envy among his peers. That his speech came only days before the premiere of his orchestral trilogy at the Edinburgh festival led to whispers that he did the whole thing as a publicity stunt.
MacMillan's Edinburgh festival piece, Triduum, might have been designed to rebut such charges. Earnest, long, replete with catholic plainchant, it oozed sincerity from every bar. But as Stravinsky once put it: "Most art is sincere and most art is bad... sincerity guarantees nothing." MacMillan makes the opposite mistake to his critics. They are cynical-he is sentimental. He makes the error of equating integrity with histrionic displays of feeling on some big theme-which makes him the perfect composer for these Diana-worshipping times. It is not surprising that he has become the acceptable face of modern music, with a whole festival devoted to his music at the South Bank Centre. But the MacMillan issue points up a wider problem: the decay of public musical idioms for collective emotions. Gone are the marches, the pompous French overtures, the dances which once articulated and focussed public events. Just as the very notion of a public space is disappearing, so too are the musical idioms appropriate to it.
Devolution Arts Council style
For decades it has been said that the northwest and London have too many full-time state-funded orchestras (three and four respectively) while other areas are a virtual desert (East Anglia and the southwest particularly). Every few years the Arts Council buckles on its armour, raises its lance and charges full-tilt at the problem. But the resulting outcry has always led to a hasty retreat. Now, apparently, it's going to be different. Funding of English orchestras is being devolved to the Regional Arts Boards which, in theory, will be free to reallocate the resources according to local priorities. If that means the Northwest Arts Board ditching the Hall? orchestra in favour of community music workshops, then so be it. Interesting, then, to see how remarkably firm in support of the status quo is Sue Harrison, head of Northwest Arts. Similarly, the London Arts Board seems set meekly to distribute the new monies to the "big four" orchestras, just as before. Could it be that, despite all the Arts Council of England's protestations about devolving decision-making to the grass-roots, there are strings attached to the new monies? Indeed there are. The regional arts boards have to submit their spending plans to the Arts Council of England, which retains its power of veto.
Digital piracy comes to Hawaii
Internet music piracy may only be a cottage industry, but it has rattled the giants of the recording industry. A committee of industry heavyweights has dreamed up something called SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) to ward off the geeks in student bedsits who download tracks illegally and send them via the net to their friends. The British representative, Paul Jessop, is just back from a gruelling round of talks in Florence. The next one is in Hawaii. "The sessions run over the weekend, so I expect there'll be lots of wives and girlfriends along for the ride," he says. SDMI may not save the record industry, but it is good for the hotel trade.
