Britain is said to be suffering a gradual decline in musicality. The conductor John Eliot Gardiner recently told the Guardian that Britain's musical culture was "getting worse." The director of King's College choir, Stephen Cleobury, complained about sightreading standards among choristers and the fact that students no longer have to study harmony or counterpoint at A-level. Composer and conductor James MacMillan spoke of a "monumental dumbing-down in Scottish music education." Last year, Exeter University closed its music department. And, worst of all, runs the argument, music teaching in state schools remains in crisis. Our status as the listening nation is unchallenged—on average, we each buy three CDs a year, more than anyone else—and our big-name professional musicians are thriving, responsible for up to 15 per cent of global music sales, second only to the US (and a bigger global market share than any other sector of British industry). But out on the British streets, polo-necked bohemians are no longer seen lugging double basses off buses for the love of jazz, no more do local folk musicians play the "Bells of Rhymney" for a free pint—the pub now needs a licence for any live performance—and the dust thickens on family pianos across the land. Is this the end for British musicality?
Yet while parts of the musical establishment offer one kind of evidence, another is to be found in the terraces and cul-de-sacs of secret Britain. It only takes a trip to the local village hall or a knock on your neighbour's door to discover that millions of Britons are still getting together to make music. Folk groups, rock bands, religious choirs, samba troupes, a cappella singers, programmers, rappers and DJs are all performing somewhere near you. Far from forgetting how to play, it appears that Britain is experiencing a musical renaissance, albeit a very amateur one.
Making music is not, however, what it used to be. A gradual accumulation of technological innovations and changes in taste have led to an evolution in the meaning of musicality. Establishment figures and critics have admitted as much. John Tavener recently said that "western classical music has lost its way." The broadening of Radio 3's output to include more world and new music suggests that classical music's relevance to the public is steadily diminishing. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music has developed a website, SoundJunction, which allows students to explore different kinds of music using online technology, demonstrating that even the most conservative institutions are moving on. Traditional benchmarks of musicality are eroding as fast as new ones are defined. Musical literacy no longer means a pass at Grade 5 theory. It can also mean the ability to compose using digital tools, such as Midi sequencers—software which allows the user to build up complex electronic compositions—or to play twin turntables to a party of friends.
Thanks to Chinese manufacturers, instruments like cellos and violas that were once prohibitively expensive are now in reach of even low-income families. And the variety of instruments on offer has expanded. Exotic drums like the west African djembe can now be ordered in bulk as part of a school percussion pack. The range of music software is vast, enabling composers to listen back to their own orchestral scores or to recreate the distortion of a cherished valve guitar amp. Given the right guidance, a child of five could multitrack "Wheels on the Bus." To meet these new demands, the number of music societies, institutions and charities has grown, providing funding and support for all kinds of musical adventures. We may consume more recorded music than any other country, but this passive habit is accompanied by a vast range of musical activity. Britain is becoming one of the most musically sophisticated societies in the world.
Music educators give us many good reasons for playing. It is said to feed our intelligence and to bolster our self-esteem. It removes us from the anxieties of daily life, placing us in the curious world of self-expression, where the linear passage of time seems to vanish.
Of course, the roots of British musicianship go far deeper than a list of healthy lifestyle tips. Britain's history has shaped a great diversity of musical traditions, many of which still flourish. The patchwork of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic nations, the myths of a rural idyll created by rapid urbanisation, the close relationship with America and the recent waves of immigration from the West Indies, south Asia and Africa—all have contributed to the wealth of music literature and recordings. Britain's role as a European power and its relative freedom have for centuries brought the finest composers here, their simpler works finding a place in the piano stools of the middle classes. More recently, immigration and the cult of pop celebrity have influenced the kinds of music we are likely to hear on our shores. And since the Pop Idol format was first televised five years ago, the popularity of the cover version has soared, rivalling Japan's karaoke obsession.
Of the many styles of music now played in Britain, none tells us more about who we think we are—or thought we were—than folk. Often regarded as "national" music, its melodies and rhythms still provide the basic foundations for British musicality. Toddlers in the nursery, little girls at the piano, grown men on guitars—all explore simple ditties of folk-song while learning the rudiments of music.
The cliché still holds true that nowhere are you more likely to have a good craic than in a pub full of Celtic musicians. Central Scotland has the most musical population in the British Isles, with 28 per cent of adults able to play an instrument (southwest England is the least musical). In Wales, the annual Eisteddfod festivals still attract the best amateur folk talent from the surrounding valleys and beyond.
The story of English folk is less happy. Its history is a rich one, stretching as far into the mists of time as the Celts. But it survives largely thanks to early 20th-century collectors such as Cecil Sharp and Annie Gilchrist, who transcribed and published English folk songs and dances in the 1900s. Yet despite their attempts to rekindle interest in folk, its popularity among English music-makers today is marginal.
An attempted revival, modelled on the didactic methods of Sharp and his followers, recently took place in my own village of Porlock in Somerset. One Monday morning, two young men in corduroy jackets entered the village primary school armed with lutes, pear-shaped stringed instruments and percussion boxes. Their mission was to teach the children a selection of folk songs and dances, to culminate in a folk evening in the village hall at the end of the week. What made the project so poignant was that some of the songs had been sung in Porlock 100 years earlier. Cecil Sharp had acquired them from farm workers and fishermen on his way down the Exmoor coast. So as residents and children gathered on Friday night to enjoy the week's work, there was a sense of reconnection, that a music interrupted a century ago had found its voice again. Yet in the following weeks, the pubs of Porlock did not ignite with fireside balladry. If anything, the hollow ring of pocketed pool balls and sports commentators grew louder. English folk is part of a history with which many can no longer identify. Thanks to Cecil Sharp and his followers, English folk music will endure, in the library if not the pub—which for many English people is a cause for relief.
The one drawback to musicality is that it must be learned. Yet contrary to popular myth, playing an instrument is easy; it is reaching a high standard that takes years. Another myth is tone deafness, the favourite excuse of reluctant singers. Known as dysmelodia or amusia, this is a rare condition hardly anyone suffers from. On the face of it, then, there are no excuses for shirking, unless, of course, you lack motivation. Fortunately, this is a quality the British do not lack. We are reminded daily of musicianship's dubious rewards—wealth, fame, sex. Like property ownership, musicianship satisfies the quest for status in an age when it is no longer fixed at birth. The annual audition queues for television shows like X Factor and Pop Idol have become a national spectacle. And each year thousands form bands in the search for meaning.
For instrument retailers, this is good news. The last decade has seen a big swing towards contemporary instruments. As the endangered species—oboe, double bass, french horn, tuba and trombone—continue their decline, thousands of guitars, basses, drums and synthesisers are sold every week. All manner of new instruments are available too. New keyboards like Yamaha's Tyros range, which house large hard drives and flat-screen displays, allow you to learn, record and score music with full orchestral backing (a third of all musicians, including half of all female musicians, play keyboards and pianos). Electronic drum kits are back, but this time with top-quality facsimile samples of the real thing, as well as the crucial headphone socket. And last year the electric guitar accounted for one fifth of all musical instruments bought in Britain. Guitar sales have doubled over the last five years. A third of all British musicians, and half of all male musicians, play guitar. Its versatility, and its tonal range, made possible by pedals, amplifiers and now computer modelling, have boosted interest. But the perennially fashionable guitar band probably accounts for the instrument's mass appeal.
Along with this sales boom comes the demand for teaching. Contemporary music schools and academies are springing up around the country, overwhelmed by pupils eager to learn the rudiments of pop music. The Guildford Academy of Contemporary Music has over 700 students learning paradiddles, guitar tunings and pitch bending, with degrees and diplomas validated by Middlesex University. In Taunton, a small, family-run music shop crams 400 pupils a week into upstairs rooms to learn. Some of them take graded exams, provided by the Rockschool syllabus of contemporary music, whose certificates are accredited by Trinity College of Music in London. As part of a joint initiative to bring contemporary music teaching to the mainstream, Rockschool is beginning to rival the Associated Board exams in popularity. In the media, Sky has launched a musicians' channel with half-hourly tuition slots. Online teaching packages, fronted by unnaturally calm Christians from Wisconsin, litter the search engines. This evolution in musical culture is seldom noticed by the mainstream media.
Of the millions of contemporary musicians playing in Britain today, professional songwriters among them, many can't play a note. Instead, they use the modern equivalent of an instrument—a computer. Music-making is no longer just about performance. One can build up complex compositions simply by uploading sampled instruments into a computer and rearranging them with a mouse. But the advance of musical software also allows the subtlest manipulation of every aspect of sound, from velocity and sustain to timbre and tempo. Sophisticated graphic notations allow one to pick out any point in musical time, and to fix, patch, alter or cut at will. The peaks, troughs and colour blocks of high-end audio software such as Cubase, Logic and Pro Tools take the representation of recorded music to the limits of accuracy. These software packages, originally designed to control synthesisers and samplers, are now capable of recording at professional levels. Users can view the different characteristics of recorded sound as waves, unfolding on a screen before them. They can tweak amplitudes, iron out glitches or send waveforms through effect processors such as reverbs or compressors. A voice recorded sharp can be gently lowered into tune; a sloppy drumbeat shifted into time. Meanwhile, new forms of online distribution, such as the popular website mySpace, have reduced the distance between the producers and consumers of music.
The scope and price of this new technology has given rise to a new breed of music-maker: the amateur producer. Musicians are emerging from bedrooms across the country, focused on producing the next hit. While the recording of acoustic instruments on to hard drives is well established, the capacity to mess with these recordings—digital audio manipulation—has for many become the desideratum of music-making. Consequently, the once disparate roles of producer and musician are merging.
The new technology has also affected the music itself. Genres which thrive on strict tempos and layered soundscapes, like techno, hip hop and electronica, have enjoyed the majority of the benefits—not always to good effect. Whereas once the natural rubato of continuous performance may have enhanced the appeal of a recording—listen to any early Rolling Stones record—the advent of computers has seen the ideal of precision slowly creep into both our listening and playing expectations, often sacrificing feeling for the empty sound of accuracy.
In this post-performance era, questions of musicianship and aesthetics inevitably arise. Isn't fiddling around with a computer closer to playing a CD than a piano? But one only has to listen to some of the pop classics of the last decade to find an answer. As with all music, the quality of the new digital music remains a function of discipline, motivation and talent rather than tools and technique. Making a hit record has become no less difficult since the drummer was replaced by a 2GHz processor. A new paradigm of musical literacy has evolved to meet the demands of the new technology.
Despite pop culture and the computer, formal styles of music-making remain popular among British amateurs. Hundreds of thousand of musicians form amateur symphony orchestras, chamber music groups, brass bands, choral societies, male voice choirs, gospel choirs, Gilbert and Sullivan choirs and barbershop quartets. Many don't audition, allowing all-comers the chance to shine.
The interests of more than 2,000 of these societies are represented by the Making Music organisation. Founded in 1935 by George Dyson, the composer and director of the Royal College of Music, Making Music has promoted and funded all manner of musical events over the years. According to the group's own research, an average year sees members stage 8,093 concerts, nearly 160 a week; 3,600 of these contain 20th-century music and 2,230 music by living composers. An average year sees over 1.5m attendances, most on Saturday nights. One figure, however, stands out and it worries governments, arts councils, teachers and patrons everywhere: most of the organisation's membership are on the wrong side of 40.
Despite all kinds of initiatives, it seems the younger generation is still rejecting "serious" music. A series of funding reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s damaged instrumental tuition in schools, and although the last few years have seen a slight uptick, only 8 per cent of schoolchildren in the state sector are learning to play an instrument, despite the fact that over 90 per cent of parents want their children to learn. In the better-funded independent sector, almost half of pupils receive instrumental tuition. Why are the educators still failing to get it right?
A battle between traditional and progressive educators has raged since the 1930s, when modern approaches to musical teaching were first proposed. Stephanie Pitts, author and editor of the British Journal of Music Education, charts the course of this battle in her book A Century of Change in Music Education. Both camps argued for music's inclusion on the school curriculum, but their justifications, and proposed teaching methods, conflicted. On the one hand, declared the traditionalists, music was a body of knowledge, made up of the great symphonies and folk songs of Britain's repertoire. Students could be taught to appreciate and sing this "national songbook" as part of a cultural education. This method dominated the classroom for decades, and is still part of the primary school approach. On the other hand, retorted the progressives, if music was an expression of our inner psyche, then children should be encouraged to play and experiment in order to learn about themselves. Bring out the tambourines, they clamoured.
Over the years, educationalists have come up with hundreds of new reasons for the annual investment in 32 recorders. When he was education secretary, David Blunkett highlighted the value of music education in preparing students for careers in the music industry, which employs 130,000 people (though fewer than half are actual musicians). But current provision in schools is very patchy. Some have extracurricular jazz bands, others choirs, some merely the occasional singsong at assembly. Style and content often depend on teachers' tastes, and these can clash with those of the pupils. In secondary schools, the rare pupils who opt for music at GCSE level are often ridiculed for being square—trying to hide a harp under a duffle coat is not easy.
Even where school music teaching is available, it is not always wanted. Seeking out music has often been seen as a liberation from the regimented life of school. Many of us remember Saturday afternoons spent poring over the racks in Our Price, or Sunday mornings flicking through boxes of vinyl at the local car boot sale. Those lucky enough to have a guitar or keyboard lying around at home were the envy of the neighbourhood. Through these instruments, new passions were born, and chord progressions, rhythms and dynamics were absorbed without interference from music teachers. Tens of thousands of children have the same experience today, albeit with MP3s and computers.
The ability to entice this passionate and often sophisticated musicality into schools, or at least recognise and encourage it, has eluded teachers for years. Music education is usually out of step with the ever-changing tastes of pupils. The GCSE syllabus is quite impressive in scope, providing a gateway to most contemporary and historical genres, but the formal atmosphere of the classroom is not always the place for the transcendent experience of music.
The Music Manifesto (MM) seeks to answer this predicament. Launched in 2004 by the then schools minister David Miliband—whose wife is a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra—the manifesto is a collaboration of music educators, the music industry, musicians and arts groups, and is the driving force behind music reform in England. Its key aim is to provide "more opportunities in music for more young people." The government has set the MM the task of finding the most effective model for music education—£2m of government funds has already been allocated to Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, the Sage in Gateshead and the Roundhouse in north London to come up with the scheme that could best be replicated around the country. While the manifesto faces a huge challenge, its main strength is in recognising all forms of music as valid. It welcomes aspiring rappers as warmly as future divas.
In further education, Britain undoubtedly has some of the best facilities in the world. The Royal College of Music boasts students from 49 countries. The Guildhall School of Music and Drama collaborates with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, while the Royal Northern College of Music holds contemporary masterclasses with Harrison Birtwistle and Louis Andriessen. Its graduates end up in the world's best orchestras and ensembles.
Yet the musical world they are being trained for has changed. Classical music now accounts for little more than 2 per cent of music sales in Britain. Guardian critic Martin Kettle put it succinctly: "[Classical music] endures overwhelmingly on the strength of its back catalogue and performance tradition, not of any new creativity… Solo performers remain of a high standard, but sound less and less like the bearers of a living tradition."
To suggest that the conservatoires turn themselves into fame academies or open pop music departments is not the answer. Many pop musicians and producers were classically educated—Charlotte Church, for example—and if it wasn't for George Martin's time at Guildhall in the 1940s, the Beatles would not have left the legacy they did. At the same time, our conservatoires need to ensure they are not left behind by changes in culture and tastes; yet aside from opening the token jazz department 50 years too late, there are few signs of evolution. The Birmingham Conservatoire may be teaming up with South Birmingham College to provide a pop music course. And the Royal Northern may be teaching a business skills module to help students "survive in a demanding and rapidly changing environment." But if, like Exeter University's ill-fated music department, they are not to face calamity when interest in the narrow field of classical music fades further, more changes are needed.
The Leeds College of Music (LCM) could provide a model. Founded in 1965 as the Leeds Music Centre, the LCM is now the largest music college in Britain, with over 3,000 full and part-time students. One of the nine members of the Federation of British Conservatoires, its approach to music education sets it apart from its fellows. Undergraduates need not have taken graded exams, but must have the equivalent proficiency in their chosen instrument. They can choose to study performance, composition and technology in genres ranging from classical, contemporary, pop to jazz, with Indian music and Latin rhythms adding to the mix. They can compose for the moving image, for new media and computer games, or experiment with playlists for DJ sets. They can record their work in state-of-the-art production suites, and perform before an audience in the college's new venue near the West Yorkshire Playhouse. They are taught how to knock off a demo CD, and how to protect it by learning about copyright law. On campus, vocalists can mix with violinists, Latin percussionists with tabla players. Clearly, this kind of cross-genre musical education reflects the cultural aspirations and diversity not only of its students, but of Britain itself.
A healthy British musicality, one which reflects our heritage, the changes in our environment and the quirks of our inner world, should be free to evolve, unconstrained by too many regulations. Traditional musical literacy is in decline because its theory is way behind the realities of contemporary music practice. If today's music needs to discard outmoded theory, let it. Help it along. Shape it. Start playing today.
