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Arts

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn. I have the greatest enjoyment of and interest in jazz, but I want to confine my remarks to the crucial role of classical music to the well-being and reputation of this country. I use the term ““classical music”” to cover a wide field, but centrally I use it to designate music in a mainly European tradition, the performance of which requires certain formal skills that must be taught and learnt and the enjoyment of which is enhanced by some understanding of its history. In other words, I am speaking of music founded on a traditional music education. I am old enough to remember classical music before the Second World War, when the British were deemed the most unmusical nation in Europe, if not in the world, and when to be accepted as a serious performer in music or in dance, one had to be foreign or adopt a foreign name. In many schools, music was class singing and hymn practice. It is sad that those features have now gone, and I wish they had not. All that had changed by the 1950s, largely because of the discovery during the war years of the value of classical music as a source of deep and almost universal pleasure and as a reminder of civilisation. It is the civilizing concept of music that, in my view, is now in danger of being lost. In the 1950s, and for 30 years thereafter, we enjoyed a golden age of serious music education. There were instrumental lessons financed by local education authorities, county or borough directors of music exercised real influence and talent was discovered at primary school and encouraged whatever a child’s ability to pay. Class music, with the help of BBC radio, was imaginative and inspiring. We are largely still living on the capital accumulated in those years. Classical music cannot flourish without being built on an early start for everyone. In this way, it is like sport: outstanding talent must be cultivated, but the less talented must also be encouraged in the enjoyment they can get from their own efforts and their own listening. Like sport, school music also forms behaviour—although that is not its purpose, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, eloquently pointed out. At school level, music—whether classical or jazz—exercises its own civilizing influence. Keen singers or players turn up when required, properly dressed and taking pride in their skills. They will not let down their co-players. There is a discipline inherent in the subject that spills over outside its confines, although that is not the point of the undertaking. Classical music is often thought to be elitist, exclusive and fit only for the middle classes. I can only say that it was not so during the war, nor in the golden age that followed. If one considers the phenomenon of the Proms, it does not seem to be elitist today. It is exclusive only in the sense that sport is exclusive: not everybody can reach the top. But it should not become elitist and exclusive by being pursued to a high standard in only a few specialist schools. I fear that there is some evidence that that is the way music education is going at present. I have nothing against specialist music schools, but music needs to be much more widely spread. The reputation of British choirs and orchestras is still very high. We still hang on, though by a thread, to the great tradition of cathedral music, for example. Some of our orchestras are the equals of the best in the world, with a well deserved reputation for being able, unlike many, to sight-read—to play new, difficult music at first sight without spending hours learning it first. This comes from a sound musical education. High standards of performance cannot come out of nothing. There is a desperate shortage of primary school teachers who are able to start children off on their musical education. I hope that the Minister will say whether there are any plans to remedy this situation, having regard to all schools, especially primary schools, not merely to specialist schools. I hope that we as a country can remedy this situation by encouraging the teaching of music to children before the high regard in which British music is held becomes simply a memory.