As spring froze in early March, Gary Lineker’s absence from Match of the Day was not the only furore in which the BBC had a hand. In the same week that the football commentator was briefly suspended for tweeting truth to power, devastating cuts were announced to the corporation’s live classical music offering. It is the largest employer of musicians in the UK—and the profession was left reeling.
The BBC Singers should have been enjoying the run-up to its centenary in 2024. Instead, in a bizarre decision, the BBC announced that it was being closed down. This is the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir, the prime vehicle for secular choral music and especially for new works. It has premiered pieces by Benjamin Britten, Francis Poulenc and John Tavener, among many others. It has also nurtured the careers of British singers such as the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and the bass Brindley Sherratt. And yet: this unique entity was to be prevented even from performing at this year’s Proms.
It can take a hundred years to build a great choir. The BBC’s management team of Simon Webb (director of orchestras and choirs), Lorna Clarke (director of music, formerly director of pop), Charlotte Moore (chief content officer) and director general Tim Davie—whether individually or collectively—appear to have been prepared to destroy one, at the stroke of a pen. The press announcement wittered about “creating agile ensembles that can work flexibly and creatively” and “investing in choral singing across the UK”. The spin fooled no one: this was an act of musical sadomasochism.
The result was an international protest on an astounding scale. A petition to save the BBC Singers gathered more than 150,000 signatures. An open letter to the BBC’s senior management, signed by 700 composers including Thomas Adès, Kaija Saariaho and Betsy Jolas, observed archly: “You say you are looking for agility and flexibility in your future choral provision: you already have it.” Many more such letters followed.
In parliament, too, MPs from across the political spectrum voiced their objections. In cabinet, the former culture secretary Oliver Dowden raised the matter and found support among his colleagues; although, with irony worthy of Yes Minister, these cuts had originated with the decision taken by another former culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, to impose a two-year freeze on the BBC licence fee in January 2022.
And so we came to the end of March, when the BBC was hurriedly trying to save face. Another press release was put out, this one confirming that the BBC Singers is to remain—for now. The choir will be allowed to perform at the Proms. Its closure will be suspended to provide time for the BBC to—more witter—“fully explore the options... to see if there is another way forward”.
Oh, wait: had nobody fully explored the options before? Possibly not. On 13th March, the blogger and critic Norman Lebrecht published on his site, Slipped Disc, an incendiary letter to the BBC’s chair, Richard Sharp, from the BBC Singers’ acting co-directors, Jonathan Manners and Rob Johnston. It alleged “a recurring narrative of toxic culture” reflected in “the working environment from the director general downwards,” of “aggressive and confrontational dialogue,” and “seismic decisions… taken at speed without any proper analysis or meaningful consultation”.
It appears that the decision to close the BBC Singers was made without a considered plan or detailed costings—“In our meeting with Lorna and Simon on 09/03/23, Lorna admitted that she doesn’t know what the exact savings will be from these cuts”—and that few BBC senior managers other than Sharp himself had heard the ensemble in action. Moreover, “During a meeting with Rachel Jupp [who wrote the BBC’s review of its classical music activities] she informed us that she had spoken to just two people about the UK choral industry, both outside the BBC, and that one of those was a child.”
In other words, the BBC Singers had been condemned by people who had no idea of its national and international significance. The one manager who possibly does understand this—Webb, a former orchestral cellist—is said to have wept during discussions with the choir.
Pound by pound, the flesh of musical life in Britain is being sliced away
So to the BBC’s orchestras. The BBC Singers may have gained a reprieve, but others aren’t so lucky. Cuts of 20 per cent—some 46 jobs—have been announced in the membership of the BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic and BBC Concert orchestras, with ominous suggestions of later “lessons” for the orchestras in Scotland and Wales. The BBC says it wishes to replace salaried musicians (through “voluntary redundancy”) with freelance extras.
Paul Hughes, the retired former director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC Singers, tells me: “If you suddenly remove 20 per cent of the permanent musicians and bring in freelancers, however good they are, that orchestra will become a lesser entity.
“The BBC has a duty of care and responsibility, as a publicly funded corporation, to manage, promote and look after these groups,” he adds. “It’s a fundamental requirement of the BBC that it provides that which others can’t.”
The anger goes deeper still. These cuts compound Arts Council England’s (ACE) recent slashes to its National Portfolio Organisations, including a chaotic plan to defund English National Opera and shunt it out of London—initially mooting Manchester without any serious consultation.
Without indulging in joined-up thinking, ACE waved one hand and demanded musical activity be spread more evenly around the country, but, with the other hand, it pulled funding from organisations that do exactly that. The Britten Sinfonia, which tours from eastern England and works in hospitals, schools and community centres, has been dropped. Glyndebourne and Welsh National Opera have lost their touring grants—leaving, for example, Liverpool with no opera whatsoever.
Orchestras and opera companies are expected to prioritise equal representation, but simultaneously music is being marginalised in schools. Musical training starts in childhood and there can be no truly equal representation until free musical instruments and tuition are provided for all children, regardless of their families’ ability to pay.
Pound by pound, the flesh of musical life in Britain is being sliced away, despite its proven value to the country’s soft power and economy. It is the musical equivalent of France knocking down the Musée d’Orsay after glancing once at the back door.
The arts industry—worth £10.8bn a year to the UK economy—has been battered by the pandemic and by Brexit, which excised artists’ rights to work in 27 other countries. A survey by Encore Musicians (the UK’s largest musician booking platform) revealed that 26 per cent of British musicians skipped a meal in the past year due to the cost of living.
In 1980, musicians went on strike in support of BBC ensembles threatened with closure—and forced the cancellation of a fortnight of the Proms. Speculation is rife that the current semi-climbdown may be designed to avoid a threatened boycott of this year’s Proms, not least, allegedly, by the beloved conductor Simon Rattle. Yet we should remember: the BBC Singers’ reprieve is only temporary. These planned cuts need to be fully reversed soon—the orchestras, too—and heads should roll.
The ultimate blame for the mess lies in an incoherent government policy rooted in ignorance, misunderstanding and stupidity. Classical music in Britain is genuinely “world-beating”, yet it is being vandalised by know-nothings with a confection of crackpot ideologies. There’s time to stop the rot. Music’s professionals and fans alike need to step up their fight for the art they love. Because, sometimes, it works.
