The Jubilee concert shows how Classical is being sidelined in the UK

Hi Vic:

My experience of teaching music in the 90's doesn't exactly chime with what Jeff is saying is happening now and for that reason I am shocked by what Jeff is saying.

My own bigger concern is with youth culture and attitudes in general. The bigger picture if you like.

Mark

My own experience of music at school back in the 70's (Adrian your post rang some bells) was that we had a great choral tradition in school but if you wanted to study music that was a different issue.

We had a music director, and slightly mad visionary he was. Ah! happy childhood memories of him stamping his feet and screaming at us that we were all village idiots, which I thought was rather unfair as I came from a small town. Anyway we had about a 200 strong choir of boys and masters. Religiously he rehearsed the choir sections separately just about every lunch time. We did three concerts a year - a Christmas carol concert in the Cathedral, a musical evening in school mid-way though the academic year, and a major work in the cathedral at the end. Good amateur or semi-professional soloists were drafted in, and an orchestra that used to come I think from music students at the RNCM, the second music master on the organ, and I thus got to sing in Verdi, Bruckner, Handel and Bach meisterwerke.

But if you wanted to study music at school it was a different ball game entirely. You had to play at least one if not two instruments, and be in the choir of course, with the result that only six of us did music o-level and that I was the solitary music A-level student. The A-level syllabus was quite demanding: 4 parts. 1) I had to play Schubert's Moment Musicaux no. 1 and Debussy's Arabesque 1 2) A History of Music paper which included set works and a set composer, which was Britten 3) A Harmony and Counterpoint paper - finish this string trio in 45 mins. and a Bach chorale to harmonize and 4) The dreaded ear-test paper - write this melody down for trumpet. Harmonize this, do that. But we'll be kind to you and we'll play each bit twice.

Elsewhere compulsory music lessons up to and including third year often resulted in the 2nd music master allowing us to read boy's adventure story books rather than bother. Occasionally he felt brave enough to put a record on.

In other words Music was a bit of an exclusive club really.

But I found to my joy that when doing my post-grad teacher training in the mid-80's that the emphasis was changing dramatically. It was now all about getting kids involved in practical music-making; classroom orchestra -  music teachers were actively encouraged to make arrangements for whole class, including both those who could play instruments and those who could be entrusted with a triangle -  classroom choir, doing graphic pieces based on star constellations and all sorts of wonderful stuff. What was so liberating was that music was becoming inclusive not exclusive in state schools.

As I said above, we had a fairly thriving music department in the RC School I taught music in and managed wind band, orchestra and choir and singing was done often in lessons.
We used a variety of music as should be to listen to.

There is a very interesting report which has been recently published by OFSTED in March this year which doesn't make for particularly happy reading. What stands out is that music teaching compares poorly to other subjects in terms of those schools rated good or outstanding for music provision, and an obvious inadequate use of practical music-making and singing which was the norm in the 80's and 90's from what I saw.

The OFSTED report though does not make any judgements about the genres of music used in schools. There are, however, some good practice examples given.

Music in schools wider still, and wider report - summary.doc

It's on the OFSTED website.

Mark

By the way, there are plenty of schools specialising in Music - the Prom brochure every year is full of them!

Hi Ubr - ne1 cn pas in cultcha 'seezi al u do is wtch mtv. mi disrtn izon beyonce n' rhianna 500 wrds bt ofa strugl but izl be orite. the practicl exm is an improv rap on a subjct chosn by the exmbored but ms sez itl be on the olympcks. bithwy me likes that geeza brendl he is wickd on bethovn. ee is wl bad i mn good.

sorry dude me has put 2 mny full.s n

I think we also got to see Keith Lockhart in profile for a few seconds conducting what I suppose was the BBC Concert Orchestra. If you blinked you missed it.

So Gary Barlow is already a lord? Good for him! Living abroad I hadn't heard his Jubilee song but have looked it up on You Tube. Granted it's no masterpiece - but which "classical" composer of today would have come up with anything better? In fact Barlow's song is distinctly inferior to the last song he wrote for Take That in their original incarnation in 1996, Back for Good. Criticise the current pop music scene by all means - but equally propose a viable alternative that doesn't depend on music written decades or centuries ago. So just who are the great contemporary "classical"'composers?

Jeff - I applaud your bravery in posting that link to your piano pieces. Thankyou. I hope you get some decent comments back! Myself I will have a listen as soon as I can figure out why my computer speakers aren't working. Sounds like a dodgy wire/lead.

Mark