{"id":1686,"date":"2009-09-10T11:02:32","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T15:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=1686"},"modified":"2009-09-10T11:02:32","modified_gmt":"2009-09-10T15:02:32","slug":"things-that-are-a-little-better-in-britain-music-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2009\/09\/things-that-are-a-little-better-in-britain-music-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Things That Are a Little Better in Britain: Music Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

I already addressed the differences in national appreciation of art between the UK and US in my post last week about the theatre, but recently I\u2019ve been thinking about it again. Although I didn\u2019t get to catch all of what\u00a0Sir Peter Maxwell Davies<\/a> said in his preconcert interview Tuesday, I was struck by a topic he and the interviewer both seemed anxious to discuss: music education. More specifically, that it is not requisite and rather is sometimes absent from the UK curriculum. For those of you who didn\u2019t go to the talk, Sir Peter holds the title of Master of the Queen’s Music<\/a>, conducted the first two pieces last night, and was the composer of the violin concerto which had its premiere last night. He made the important point that British schools do a disservice to the youth of the country when they underestimate their ability to be intellectually challenged, particularly by the seemingly more abstract fields of art and music. He said that youth want to be challenged and, cynical though I am about a lot, I absolutely agree. I feel, as I imagine Davies would, that there needs to be some mechanism (through schooling or some other way) for forcing (for lack of a better word) art, music, science and discussion and debate of relevant issues on the public. This kind of thing may be scarce in Britain, but it seems absolutely extinct in America.<\/p>\n

After all, on Tuesday night we saw a great Proms concert that (if it wasn\u2019t live last night) will be rebroadcast on one of the lower number BBC Channels in the next few days. That would be like me going to a challenging but enjoyable Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert and it being broadcast for the entire country on NBC the next night. I wouldn\u2019t expect every Brit flipping through the channels to stop and be transfixed by contemporary classical music, but at least a conscious effort is being made to offer quality programming and I\u2019m sure that has some effect (look at the crowd a Tuesday night concert with mostly unfamiliar pieces drew). I\u2019m sure there\u2019s much worse programming that would have appealed to a much greater audience that the BBC can show rather than the Proms, but the\u00a0BBC<\/a> is lucky enough to not be funded by advertisers and so it doesn\u2019t have to cater to the lowest common denominator the way networks in the US often have to. Davies may be right that the British public in general and youth in particular are not being challenged, but at least the Proms broadcast is a small sign that those with the power to control programming in Britain have some inclination towards placing art and music front and centre.<\/p>\n

My father told me that when he was in elementary school, once in a while everyone would be shepherded down to the auditorium to watch film of Leonard Bernstein\u2019s Young People\u2019s Concerts together. I imagine there were people in his class that had no interest in classical music then or today, but I imagine the films struck an interest in music in at least a few. If there were efforts to expose me to art and music when I was young it was always cursory (more cursory even than watching film of full concerts), underfunded or both. I support Sir Peter\u2019s cause of really making an effort to expose kids to a wider range of great art and music at a young age, and think that the Proms is a good example of how an effort on an even larger scale can really pay off.<\/p>\n

I briefly wanted to mention that I really enjoyed Tuesday night\u2019s concert. I thought it was actually the perfect program for us in that it included a fine romantic overture, a challenging piece of contemporary British music (in its UK premiere) and an also interesting Sibelius symphony, with a finale that\u2019s hard not to love (and which, strangely enough, was mentioned in one of the London poems we all read). While I\u2019m still not sure I understand everything about the structure of the Proms<\/a>, it does seem like a very unusual and impressive event, and I\u2019m glad to say I had the chance to go. I\u2019m starting to conclude that for all the amazing opportunities we\u2019ve had in London, down the road I\u2019ll most appreciate the chance to see so many great performances (both theatrical and musical) for free (well, free for me, anyway).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I already addressed the differences in national appreciation of art between the UK and US in my post last week about the theatre, but recently I\u2019ve been thinking about it again. Although I didn\u2019t get to catch all of what\u00a0Sir Peter Maxwell Davies said in his preconcert interview Tuesday, I was struck by a topic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[728],"tags":[1214,1298,36,1259],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aidan","tag-bbc","tag-britain-and-art","tag-music","tag-proms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}