Rhiannon Mathias’s book aims to bring to wider attention three 20th Century composers who continue to suffer varying degrees of unjustifiable neglect. Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-1983), Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994) and Grace Williams (1906-1977) have very little in common musically, but were contemporary, pioneering students at the Royal College of Music in the 1920s; each, however, going on to experience difficulties as a woman in gaining professional recognition despite their acknowledged talents. Mathias argues that, although ‘these women were rightly held in high esteem in the musical world’, they never quite got the opportunities or recognition they deserved, and her survey is intended to help end at last the continuing lack of public awareness of their music and their important contributions to British 20th Century musical life.
Clearly, their gender has been central to their neglect. Mathias points to crude and pervasive sexism from the ‘20s and later, typified by critic and composer Cecil Gray’s paraphrasing of Dr Johnson’s infamous dictum: ‘Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog walking on its hind legs; it is not done well but you are surprised to see it done at all’. Alas, such attitudes have been slow to change within the classical music establishment; as recently as the mid-1980s, I myself heard the then Artistic Director of the London Sinfonietta Michael Vyner opining (not to mention whining) on national radio that ‘women can’t compose’. So - and despite her book striking a somewhat awkward balance between sociological study, biographical survey and musical analysis - Mathias is to be applauded for opening a wider debate by putting in plain terms gender issues that ultimately concern not just these three composers, but which go to the heart of musical culture well beyond the narrow enclaves of historical musicology.
Moreover, Mathias rightly contextualises the gender prejudices experienced by all three within a broader parochialism that largely prevailed throughout their lives (and, it could be argued, in many regards still exists today). She shows how attitudes within British musical institutions tended to reflect a cultural insecurity and snobbery, veering from a conservative horror of contemporary music on the one hand, to a self-conscious obedience to fashion on the other - and taking in a sentimentalised nationalism along the way. Williams, for instance, lamented that ‘when people see my...folk song arrangements and Fantasias...it is so easy for them to forget that I also write full scale serious works’. At the other end of the stylistic spectrum, Lutyens - an important pioneer of much-maligned and misunderstood serial techniques in Britain - was first perceived as too ‘advanced’, then too ‘behind’ vis-à-vis European compositional developments. Meanwhile, Maconchy simply suffered from a lack of ‘modishness - for saying the right things to the right person, or for being in the right place at the right time’ , as the composer (and, coincidentally, her daughter) Nicola LeFanu put it.
This raises all sorts of important, still wider issues about how we decide - and, indeed, about who gets to decide - questions of what constitutes cultural and artistic value in society, and thence to shape the practice, distribution and history of art itself. Mathias steers well away from deeper probing of this kind and is careful even to avoid comparative musical judgements, writing in a very neutral prose and giving the three composers distinctly equal consideration. What she does do is manage to discuss a large amount of music amidst a wealth of background information, interlacing monographs of each composer within three historical periods; Part I 1926-1935 narrating student experiences, whilst Part II 1935-1955 and Part III 1955-1994 consider each composer in turn, surveying key works within their respective biographical frameworks. This approach serves well for the introduction she intended - so it is a pity that Ashgate’s ungenerous Index hardly does justice to her painstaking research and is, moreover, unforgivable in a volume priced for institutional libraries.
But there is a difficulty lurking within Mathias’s book, which no amount of diplomatic treading and balanced musical and biographical attention can circumvent, and which remains an issue for anyone daring to broach considerations of gender bias in music; and that is the thorny problem of how one gets away from the tiresome pidgeon-holing of women composers as ‘women composers’ when one has chosen to write a book that groups three composers together on the basis that they are...women composers - however sympathetic and sensitive the angle.
Of the three, arguably, the one who detested such pidgeon-holing the most - or, at any rate, the one who protested the loudest and in the ripest language to anyone who did it to her - was Lutyens; she who happened at her best - arguably again - to have composed by far the most interesting and influential music. However, what Lutyens would no doubt have appreciated about this book, is Mathias’s determination to discuss her music rather than her famously acid persona, which has hitherto inevitably proved the greater talking point. Notwithstanding feminist quibbles, for that reason alone, Mathias’s survey deserves to be widely read. Not only that, but she succeeds in placing Williams in a wider, British - as well as a Welsh - context and mounts a serious challenge of the music-historical ‘backwater’ category to which Maconchy in particular, but all three to varying extent, have unjustifiably been consigned for too long.
Published by Wales Arts Review 2/11/12
http://www.walesartsreview.org/lutyens,%20maconchy,%20williams%20and%20twentieth-century%20british%20music%20-%20a%20blest%20trio%20of%20sirens%20by%20rhiannon%20mathias.html
About Me
- steph power
- Twitter: @spower_steph, Wales, United Kingdom
- composer, poet, critic, essayist
Friday, 5 October 2012
Interview with Composer Lynne Plowman
Composer Lynne Plowman’s operas have won critical acclaim. Her fourth premieres at the Brighton Festival next spring and she is a recipient of an Arts Council of Wales 2012-13 Creative Wales award. The following conversation will be published in Issue 1 of the new Cyfansoddwyr Cymru/Composers of Wales Quarterly of which I am Contributing Editor:
Can you tell me about your current, fourth operatic project?
It’s for Glyndebourne. We are creating an interactive pirates opera for a children’s and family audience [with Martin Riley, librettist of Lynne’s previous operas - Ed]. It’s very fast-paced, with sword fighting, slapstick and spoken theatre underscored by the band, who are on stage and in character; quite anarchic, with an ‘end-of-the-pier’ comedy and a dark edge. The audience dresses up as pirates and the performing space is a pub where they come for a drink; they take part, singing along in places and interacting with the characters. At one point children come up to conduct the band.
This opera is for a professional cast whereas the previous one was for young people to perform. That was The Face in the Mirror for Welsh National Opera Max and written for WNO’s Singing Club, a chorus of 10-15 year olds. But it was for an adult audience and probably the most serious piece of work Martin and I have made, being based on the Second World War.
Your music - including your concert music - is strikingly direct.
Yes, it’s really important for me that the music communicates directly to the audience. But I work so intuitively it takes me a long time so one of the things I’d like to do with the ACW Creative Wales award is to speed up my creative process.
Does that intuitiveness account for some of the freshness and vitality of your work? Your piece Hall of Mirrors, for Piano Circus, was described as “irrepressibly eclectic”. What do you think about that?
I like to use existing musical ideas. By using little moments of pastiche, you can instantly sum up a place or a time or an atmosphere which speaks beyond the music. That’s how music functions theatrically, so I suppose that comes into my concert music too. Six pianos is such a bonkers combination of instruments! So I came up with pianists from six different times and places, throwing them together in a melting pot of fragments. That’s how that piece patchwork-ed itself together.
Is that how you work - in patchwork - or do you develop ideas from a to b?
It depends on the piece. With opera the music has to serve the drama so in some ways it’s written from the beginning to the end although I’ll pick out certain moments to write the music for separately. Concert pieces are more of a jigsaw; I’ll create sections then play with the structure. I find it easier to write long pieces of music than short ones because it’s much freer somehow.
With Martin, do you work together, producing libretto and music simultaneously?
It starts with us together, coming up with the idea and the scenario, then he writes a first draft of the libretto. But section by section so I start writing the music before he’s finished. Once I start composing, I find there are sections where the music leads and I make decisions about what’s going to be spoken, what’s going to be sung, where there might be a song. Then I ask for re-writes so there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing!
We have a lot of joint experience of the audience we’re writing for. We understand how bright children are - that they don’t need to be written down for - and how, if a ten year old enjoys this piece, so will an adult. The music has to tell the story well and if it does that then it’s successful - and kids don’t have those musical prejudices that we acquire as grown-ups; if you get a scrunchy chord that’s fine, that’s the sound.
So how will you take this into your orchestral experiments?
Well this will be a challenge - the idea of Creative Wales is to take myself out of my comfort zone and gather techniques. I’m not intending to write a finished piece but to make orchestral sketches exploring different harmonic and orchestration sound-worlds. I’m not so concerned about structure
because I feel confident with that but I want to push my harmonic and textural languages. And that’s why I’ve chosen to use full symphony orchestra. I probably won’t use the whole orchestra for each of the sketches, but I’ve got that unlimited canvas to work with.
How will the project work?
There’ll be a closed workshop next September with BBCNoW. We’ll record the session, then I can use the material in a piece at a later stage. When I’ve finished the pirates opera, I’ll take some time to do some listening, thinking and reading, then the sketches will gradually emerge. I don’t know what musical direction that’s going to take me in! But if you stand still as a composer it stops being creative and starts becoming a production line, which I don’t want! I think it’s so important for artists to have that breathing space so I feel really lucky that we have this funding scheme in Wales.
Many thanks Lynne.
www.lynneplowman.co.uk
Can you tell me about your current, fourth operatic project?
It’s for Glyndebourne. We are creating an interactive pirates opera for a children’s and family audience [with Martin Riley, librettist of Lynne’s previous operas - Ed]. It’s very fast-paced, with sword fighting, slapstick and spoken theatre underscored by the band, who are on stage and in character; quite anarchic, with an ‘end-of-the-pier’ comedy and a dark edge. The audience dresses up as pirates and the performing space is a pub where they come for a drink; they take part, singing along in places and interacting with the characters. At one point children come up to conduct the band.
This opera is for a professional cast whereas the previous one was for young people to perform. That was The Face in the Mirror for Welsh National Opera Max and written for WNO’s Singing Club, a chorus of 10-15 year olds. But it was for an adult audience and probably the most serious piece of work Martin and I have made, being based on the Second World War.
Your music - including your concert music - is strikingly direct.
Yes, it’s really important for me that the music communicates directly to the audience. But I work so intuitively it takes me a long time so one of the things I’d like to do with the ACW Creative Wales award is to speed up my creative process.
Does that intuitiveness account for some of the freshness and vitality of your work? Your piece Hall of Mirrors, for Piano Circus, was described as “irrepressibly eclectic”. What do you think about that?
I like to use existing musical ideas. By using little moments of pastiche, you can instantly sum up a place or a time or an atmosphere which speaks beyond the music. That’s how music functions theatrically, so I suppose that comes into my concert music too. Six pianos is such a bonkers combination of instruments! So I came up with pianists from six different times and places, throwing them together in a melting pot of fragments. That’s how that piece patchwork-ed itself together.
Is that how you work - in patchwork - or do you develop ideas from a to b?
It depends on the piece. With opera the music has to serve the drama so in some ways it’s written from the beginning to the end although I’ll pick out certain moments to write the music for separately. Concert pieces are more of a jigsaw; I’ll create sections then play with the structure. I find it easier to write long pieces of music than short ones because it’s much freer somehow.
With Martin, do you work together, producing libretto and music simultaneously?
It starts with us together, coming up with the idea and the scenario, then he writes a first draft of the libretto. But section by section so I start writing the music before he’s finished. Once I start composing, I find there are sections where the music leads and I make decisions about what’s going to be spoken, what’s going to be sung, where there might be a song. Then I ask for re-writes so there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing!
We have a lot of joint experience of the audience we’re writing for. We understand how bright children are - that they don’t need to be written down for - and how, if a ten year old enjoys this piece, so will an adult. The music has to tell the story well and if it does that then it’s successful - and kids don’t have those musical prejudices that we acquire as grown-ups; if you get a scrunchy chord that’s fine, that’s the sound.
So how will you take this into your orchestral experiments?
Well this will be a challenge - the idea of Creative Wales is to take myself out of my comfort zone and gather techniques. I’m not intending to write a finished piece but to make orchestral sketches exploring different harmonic and orchestration sound-worlds. I’m not so concerned about structure
because I feel confident with that but I want to push my harmonic and textural languages. And that’s why I’ve chosen to use full symphony orchestra. I probably won’t use the whole orchestra for each of the sketches, but I’ve got that unlimited canvas to work with.
How will the project work?
There’ll be a closed workshop next September with BBCNoW. We’ll record the session, then I can use the material in a piece at a later stage. When I’ve finished the pirates opera, I’ll take some time to do some listening, thinking and reading, then the sketches will gradually emerge. I don’t know what musical direction that’s going to take me in! But if you stand still as a composer it stops being creative and starts becoming a production line, which I don’t want! I think it’s so important for artists to have that breathing space so I feel really lucky that we have this funding scheme in Wales.
Many thanks Lynne.
www.lynneplowman.co.uk
Monday, 9 July 2012
TOURISTS
Tourists II
There's a poor eagle looking lost up at the farm by the fords.
He's not lost, he belongs to Charlie who lives there.
Oh, but he looked all lost.
He's not lost, he belongs to Charlie who lives there. Did you see the ID rings?
Ooh yes, but he looked all lost. Who did you say he belonged to?
Charlie.
Where?
There, by the fords.
Oh, but he looked all lost. Thanks for clearing that up.
Think nothing of it.
Tourists I
Today a silver car
slowed by the house.
An arm reached out of the
driver's window, taking
snapshots.
Of what?
Whose life?
What possible trophy,
what triumphant proof of
existence might thus have
been obtained?
Without stopping, the
car slid gently past,
occupants obscured by
branches dappled across the
windscreen.
Friday, 25 May 2012
resolve
patience
awareness catching shallow breath tense
muscle of hiatus the transition moment
pinned expanded stretched
refracted
sharp edges of a hot sun glaring squeezing
light to closely angled corners filling
space as well as time with scrutiny with
pressure under day by day duress of
waiting
stillness
bright colours buzzing speculation in the ear the
when and how of next step inconclusive in
abeyance in no hurry to reveal itself or simply
happen
purpose nonetheless enshrined in lists of
things to do in squinting at the sky and
holding out for news of change to
hear of better things to
come
awareness catching shallow breath tense
muscle of hiatus the transition moment
pinned expanded stretched
refracted
sharp edges of a hot sun glaring squeezing
light to closely angled corners filling
space as well as time with scrutiny with
pressure under day by day duress of
waiting
stillness
bright colours buzzing speculation in the ear the
when and how of next step inconclusive in
abeyance in no hurry to reveal itself or simply
happen
purpose nonetheless enshrined in lists of
things to do in squinting at the sky and
holding out for news of change to
hear of better things to
come
Saturday, 19 May 2012
"Symphony": Music Appreciation for Middle England
The closing focus of BBC4’s recently repeated series Symphony is on Dmitri Shostakovich’s 9th. Written in 1945, it incensed the authorities with its sardonic, untriumphalist character contrary to the great outpouring they are said to have expected as Soviet riposte to Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental 9th Choral Symphony at the end of World War II. There is ongoing speculation about Shostakovich’s two-fingered gesture and at whom it may have been aimed (if it was such a gesture, consciously aimed or otherwise). But it is hardly likely that, as suggested here, he intended the 9th to be a ‘goodbye’ to the ‘great symphonic tradition in Germany’ which had ‘come to an end’. There are many cultural assumptions embedded in this statement, which interprets music history along very particular lines. Even so, German composers did continue to write symphonies after the war (Hans Werner Henze alone produced ten between 1947 and 2000). Moreover, Shostakovich himself wrote a further six symphonies, completing his 15th in 1971 and thereby refuting any supposed death of the symphony itself despite the series’s abrupt halt at 1945 with murky hints of ‘new forms’. So why might Symphony choose to ignore post-war and contemporary composers, despite the genre’s continuing importance today (Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies being just three, high-profile contemporary symphonic composers)? We might answer this by exploring some ways in which the series is a product of those very cultural assumptions contained within the statement about Shostakovich and the German tradition.
An initial perusal of Symphony reveals little investigation in any generic or formal sense; rather, we are taken on a journey through the symphonic canon of works from an imagined start to finish through biographical and historical surveys of the ‘great composers’ and some of the better-known ‘great masterpieces’ they composed. As cultural sightseers, we visit places of interest including museums preserving a totemised bric-a-brac of daily life alongside venerated autograph scores. We see many gravestones and hear many eulogies; conductors, musicologists, curators and living composers (although whether themselves symphonists we are never told), offer glowing descriptions of these past, iconic figures and their music. We hear numerous symphonic extracts, performed as tantalising sound-bites in a dramatic narrative charting the apparent progress of the symphony through the ages. Glimpses are shown of the workings of the orchestra. Yet more emphasis is placed on the role of the conductor as interpreter supreme. This is high gloss, ‘high culture’, stripped of nuance and meaningful critique; beautifully presented, but hollowed out for a passive, unquestioning audience.
This might seem harshly dismissive of what is, on one level, a fun and informative entertainment programme. But the very blandness of Symphony arises from its particular ideology; a smoothly unchallenging approach to music history which raises concerns about the place of classical music in society today. There is ongoing questioning as to why classical music has become a museum culture largely comprising ritualistic performances of familiar works from the past to ever-shrinking niche audiences of ever-increasing average age*. This series not only fails to address any of these issues, but is itself a product of the museum culture, pandering to an archetypically genteel classical music audience and inviting others to join through a kind of highbrow marketing. By constructing a narrative within the blinkered confines of post-imperial Home Counties values, Symphony merely succeeds in reinforcing cultural myths about symphonic music. Alas, in so doing, it confirms the reality that classical music today is simply - beyond a tiny minority interest and bar the occasional, fleeting exception - no longer a part of serious cultural discourse or debate.
Myths of Genius and Transcendence
The cultural myth most central to the series and, indeed, to most thinking about classical music, is a continued acceptance of Romantic assumptions about ‘genius’ and the transcendence of art as expressed through the ‘work’. According to this view, the work itself becomes a cultural icon; it is lifted through the ‘vision’ of its creator from its localised, historical context to attain independent universality and timelessness. The composer himself becomes a god-like figure (this is a masculine ideal, which may help to explain why so few women have been given the opportunity to write symphonies), imbued with super-human intellect and emotional sensitivity; often a brooding, difficult personality at odds with society and certainly ahead of his time. It is the job of the listener to seek to understand the vision of the composer; not necessarily through the acquisition of technical, formalist knowledge (although this helps), but ultimately through a combination of emotional sympathy and spiritual aspiration.
These notions are inherited from a combination of post-Enlightenment thinking about the importance of creative freedom and emotional self-expression with what amounts to a cult-like worship of Beethoven. Whilst they may be pertinent to many 19th Century European composers, therefore, they are anachronistic when applied to music written before (certainly mid) Beethoven and questionable as a contemporary cultural ideal. In the 19th Century, such thinking was applied to the music of the time or very recent past, whereas today it exists largely as a form of rose-tinted nostalgia for ‘great composers’ and works from more distant eras. So it is not surprising that Symphony should avoid contemporary music because descriptions of ‘genius’ and ‘transcendence’ applied to living composers - whilst they certainly occur - can begin to feel socially inappropriate. Such discomfort might risk the museum culture in turn by throwing a more critical light on those very notions of genius revealing them to be, in fact, a particular ideology; a distinct set of values regarding not just ideas about ‘greatness’ - which, strangely, never quite gets defined - but relying on particular assumptions about the very nature of music and creativity.
Nonetheless, Symphony adopts Romantic values wholesale, even applying them to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn to whom such concepts would have been entirely alien. Mozart, we are told in the first programme (tellingly named Genesis and Genius), was so in thrall to a symphonic ideal that he felt ‘inspired’ to ‘give something to the form’ through his last three symphonies. What he might have given beyond his ‘palate of emotional intensity’ is not, alas, made clear. Likewise Haydn, whose life and music are described in terms of ‘epic journeys’, is said to have ‘taken the idea of what the symphony could be further and further down the path’. This assertion is based on his deepening self-expression as symphonic music increasingly appealed to individual as well as to public reception. Might such ‘expressiveness’ be what is meant by the ‘idea’ of the symphony? We are left with no way of knowing, let alone what it might mean to take the symphony down some path. It would have been intriguing to explore this in light of the later point that Richard Wagner was an essentially symphonic ‘composer of ideas’ (albeit almost exclusively utilising opera or Gesmantkunstwerk) but this latter is merely given as information, leaving us really none the wiser.
Indeed, little of substance is said about symphonic composing. We are told that the symphony is generally a work with four (or so) movements of contrasting character and an allusion is made to the use of sonata form in opening movements as taking a motif on a ‘journey’. There are points made regarding orchestration and some time is spent distinguishing absolute from programmatic music in the form of the symphonic poem. But throughout, the commentary is shallow and ultimately reliant on the audience having a fair degree of pre-knowledge; a newcomer to classical music would surely be lost among the superlatives. For all the featured composers are lavished with quasi-Romantic phrases which, as well as being value-laden, actually tell us nothing about the composers’ work beyond its being in some way ‘great’. Music may be notoriously difficult to describe in words but this does not deter the Symphony team, who litter the commentary with effusive descriptions like so much verbal confetti. By the time we get to the ‘incredible visionary’ Charles Ives, the devotional tone is so pervasive that his being said to be ‘so ahead of his time, his music still isn’t known today’, amounts to more of the same dreary adulation.
The Myth of History as Progress
In the series’s march forward through the ages, we see another cultural myth central to Symphony’s narrative; that is the presentation of music history as progress. The history of the symphony is described as the relentless advance of Enlightenment ideals through Europe and beyond in a gathering crescendo of modernity from Haydn’s post-French Revolution London Symphonies to Shostakovich’s 9th at the end of World War II. As already noted, this amounts to the authoritative view of Western music history familiar to ‘educated’ listeners. However, not only does this narrative constitute a particular interpretation of history rather than being fact as presented here, but it also presupposes some deep contradictions; not least, in relation to the music itself. Every composer discussed is said to have been pushing the symphony ‘forward’, ‘turning the page of symphonic history’, and ‘breaking rules’ (although these ‘rules’ are never explained, let alone how they are broken). Certainly, each of the featured composers develops a profoundly individual voice and, of course, approaches to and methods of symphonic writing change over time and according to fashion. But the implication that history is, therefore, in some way causal or goal-directed entails huge ideological leaps.
In any case, there lies a problem in the towering figure of Beethoven, around whom both the series and received music history, pivots (the second episode is the only one of the four to bear a single composer’s name, Beethoven and Beyond). If Beethoven is the ‘indisputable hero’ against whom all other composers are measured, what does it mean for later composers to be nonetheless ‘developing’ the symphony, ‘taking it forward’ ‘beyond’ Beethoven and becoming ‘great’ in their own right? Progress, it seems, is something to be strived for but which is, ultimately, unattainable. With this paradox we arrive firmly at post-Enlightenment, Romantic ideals, but with the disturbing addendum that no composer has managed - or, by implication, ever will manage - to surpass Beethoven’s nine symphonies as these continue to be held as the utopian pinnacle of Western musical achievement. It turns out that a strong belief underlying current mainstream music-history is actually a contradiction; for, on the one hand, Romantic ideals are still held to be supreme but, on the other, they have failed and, moreover, must fail. Musical ‘progress’ has not been, and cannot be, made and the age of the ‘great’ composer is, therefore, dead. In light of this conundrum, it is perhaps not so surprising that a museum culture obsessed with the past should have taken hold regarding classical music.
More problematic is a question regarding Romantic ideas of the transcendent work: for how can a symphony be at once a timeless masterpiece and yet continually surpassed in greatness by later works by the same composer (a point made most vociferously in the series about the symphonies of Sibelius)? Unless, that is, some masterpieces are more masterful than others. These contradictions are, clearly, difficult to reconcile but Symphony merely presents us with swathes of interpretation on the familiar yet ludicrous sliding-scale of genius; a system of indefinable value judgements based on arcane and culturally out-moded criteria. That late-Romantic composers such as Johannes Brahms were intimidated by Beethoven coming from behind with the ‘tramp of a giant’ is no reason for us to continue to view music history, or to judge musical ‘greatness’, through that particular lens. Similarly, the fact that many composers after Beethoven (like Hector Berlioz) idolised him, is no reason for contemporary discourse about classical music still to be dominated by the cult of personality as demonstrated, alas, by this very series.
The Twentieth Century Neglected
Nevertheless, it is instructive to note some personalities absent from the narrative as this throws further light on Symphony’s cultural bias and returns us to the series’s lack of exploration of recent and contemporary music. For, as well as ignoring post-war music entirely, the programme avoids any mention of key modernists from the first half of the Twentieth Century beyond a curt dismissal of the avant-garde. The contention in programme four, Revolution and Rebirth, is that composers writing in late-Romantic idioms such as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams were ‘actually more important than the avant-garde because they were saying very important things about modernity to a large audience’. This opens an intriguing line of enquiry which, however, remains unexplored, as are the implied assumptions about value and modernity. Elgar and Vaughan Williams undoubtedly were - and remain - important but not all modernists rejected the symphony by any means. Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, for instance, wrote chamber symphonies and a symphony respectively that were very much taken to be saying something important about modernity which continues to reverberate today. But if audience size is the real arbiter of importance, it seems downright odd also to ignore Igor Stravinsky, whose several symphonies placed issues of modernity (as well as specific aspects of modernism) before very large audiences, including via the gramophone, which technological advance the programme rightly deems important.
What cultural value-system might be lurking here to explain the total absence of these and other major Twentieth Century figures (like Carl Nielsen and Serge Prokofiev) from Symphony? A look at the preceding, third episode, New Nations and New Worlds, might offer a clue. For here we discover that it is nationalism that supposedly propelled the symphony from Austria and Germany across late-Romantic Europe, forward into the Twentieth Century and across the Atlantic to the USA. Before we examine this particular narrative more closely, it is worth noting that, whatever aims the many, contrasting avant-garde composers may have had, they were certainly not nationalist in any Romantic sense. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that they should be excluded from this particular version of history regardless of their actual contribution as symphonic composers.
European Nationalism and Germanic Decline
Looking more closely at the third episode and issues of nationalism, it is true that many Romantic composers sought to establish an individual style that also reflected the music of their birth country. Antonín Dvořák was one such, but it is questionable how far Jean Sibelius continued to be nationalist beyond his youth as distinct from getting stuck with the label; indeed, in terms of his overall career, Sibelius might more accurately be described as a modernist. What is clear, however, is that nationalism has long been a catch-all term to describe music (symphonic or otherwise) which incorporates features of indigenous folk or popular music. Music, that is, of any nation besides Austria or Germany. Because, in keeping with music-historical orthodoxy, the central pillar of the musical establishment as described in Symphony is assumed to be Austro-German (and, incidentally, ‘serious’ as distinct from ‘popular’). Indeed we are told with astonishing assurance that ‘German music was international’. What might this actually mean?
Similar to the phenomenon of individual composers being subject to comparison with Beethoven, in today’s symphonic cultural museum, past Austro-German ‘tradition’ is still taken to be the cultural norm against which other nations are viewed. The resulting double-standards are breath-taking. When Franz Schubert or Brahms, say, are shown to utilise indigenous folk or popular music, their motivation is rarely described in terms of nationalist sentiment. But when Dvořák, Vaughan Williams or Aaron Copland do the same, the talk instantly focuses on ‘national identity’, representations of ‘native soil’ and ‘popularisation’. That such blatantly unbalanced cultural analysis should still be a feature of Western classical music thinking - post-modernism notwithstanding - is an irony that would surely not be lost on those symphonic nationalists who attempted to establish their music in its own right and to challenge the constant comparisons to hegemonic Austro-German ideals that they themselves suffered.
Let us return, then, in the light of these uncomfortable issues around nationalism, to the notion of symphonic decline from the fourth episode with which we started. If the ‘great symphonic tradition in Germany’ is held to have ‘come to an end’ around 1945, it appears we should take this to indicate the loss of some supposedly international cultural custodian. An awful lot of ‘keening’ is described in this final episode, from Shostakovich bassoons to Vaughan Williams bugles and Elgarian oboes. The implication beyond the actual horrors of death and war is clear (as if this were not enough) in a larger sense of cultural decline absolutely at odds with the ‘rebirth’ of the title which, in any case, is never seen actually to materialise. Might this loss of German tradition and ensuing downward slide reveal another underlying reason to end the series at 1945 as if the symphony itself stops there? One would hope not as the implied reliance on Germanic culture to lead the way would be distasteful to say the least. Even within the series’s own dubious terms, further mileage could have been made of the Revolution and Rebirth title with a post-war shift of focus to the Soviet Bloc and refugees from there, if only to bring the narrative closer to the present day. For a clear and continued commitment to the symphony as a genre was palpable post-war in Communist countries such as Poland, to name just one example; there, coming after Karol Szymanowski, with Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki and Andrzej Panufnik.
A great deal more could - and probably should - be said about Symphony as the smooth jolliness of its tone is a cover for so much blithe parochialism. To say the series misses an opportunity is a huge understatement - and not only to discuss contemporary composers and works. For the prevailing museum culture must be overcome if classical music is to re-gain relevance in wider contemporary life as a living art form. Indeed, a contemporary perspective of the symphony as a living genre could have been made a base from which to present a history; by all means including a review of orthodox notions of music-history, but described as such and placed in a framework of critical exploration. The irony of setting so much store by historical interpretation of the unquestioning type we see in Symphony is that it ultimately falls foul of the very issue discussed in episode two with regard to wildly contrasting uses of Beethoven’s 9th (firstly in Nazi Germany, then later at the fall of the Berlin Wall and lastly as an honouring of victims of 9/11); and that is propaganda. There is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ history, and this is as true of music-history as any other. This series demonstrates that how we view history tells us more about who we are in the present than the past times to which we refer. As such, beneath the glossy exterior, it paints a sadly impoverished picture of mainstream classical music culture today.
* See, for example, Lydia Goehr’s enormously influential: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music published by OUP 2007
An initial perusal of Symphony reveals little investigation in any generic or formal sense; rather, we are taken on a journey through the symphonic canon of works from an imagined start to finish through biographical and historical surveys of the ‘great composers’ and some of the better-known ‘great masterpieces’ they composed. As cultural sightseers, we visit places of interest including museums preserving a totemised bric-a-brac of daily life alongside venerated autograph scores. We see many gravestones and hear many eulogies; conductors, musicologists, curators and living composers (although whether themselves symphonists we are never told), offer glowing descriptions of these past, iconic figures and their music. We hear numerous symphonic extracts, performed as tantalising sound-bites in a dramatic narrative charting the apparent progress of the symphony through the ages. Glimpses are shown of the workings of the orchestra. Yet more emphasis is placed on the role of the conductor as interpreter supreme. This is high gloss, ‘high culture’, stripped of nuance and meaningful critique; beautifully presented, but hollowed out for a passive, unquestioning audience.
This might seem harshly dismissive of what is, on one level, a fun and informative entertainment programme. But the very blandness of Symphony arises from its particular ideology; a smoothly unchallenging approach to music history which raises concerns about the place of classical music in society today. There is ongoing questioning as to why classical music has become a museum culture largely comprising ritualistic performances of familiar works from the past to ever-shrinking niche audiences of ever-increasing average age*. This series not only fails to address any of these issues, but is itself a product of the museum culture, pandering to an archetypically genteel classical music audience and inviting others to join through a kind of highbrow marketing. By constructing a narrative within the blinkered confines of post-imperial Home Counties values, Symphony merely succeeds in reinforcing cultural myths about symphonic music. Alas, in so doing, it confirms the reality that classical music today is simply - beyond a tiny minority interest and bar the occasional, fleeting exception - no longer a part of serious cultural discourse or debate.
Myths of Genius and Transcendence
The cultural myth most central to the series and, indeed, to most thinking about classical music, is a continued acceptance of Romantic assumptions about ‘genius’ and the transcendence of art as expressed through the ‘work’. According to this view, the work itself becomes a cultural icon; it is lifted through the ‘vision’ of its creator from its localised, historical context to attain independent universality and timelessness. The composer himself becomes a god-like figure (this is a masculine ideal, which may help to explain why so few women have been given the opportunity to write symphonies), imbued with super-human intellect and emotional sensitivity; often a brooding, difficult personality at odds with society and certainly ahead of his time. It is the job of the listener to seek to understand the vision of the composer; not necessarily through the acquisition of technical, formalist knowledge (although this helps), but ultimately through a combination of emotional sympathy and spiritual aspiration.
These notions are inherited from a combination of post-Enlightenment thinking about the importance of creative freedom and emotional self-expression with what amounts to a cult-like worship of Beethoven. Whilst they may be pertinent to many 19th Century European composers, therefore, they are anachronistic when applied to music written before (certainly mid) Beethoven and questionable as a contemporary cultural ideal. In the 19th Century, such thinking was applied to the music of the time or very recent past, whereas today it exists largely as a form of rose-tinted nostalgia for ‘great composers’ and works from more distant eras. So it is not surprising that Symphony should avoid contemporary music because descriptions of ‘genius’ and ‘transcendence’ applied to living composers - whilst they certainly occur - can begin to feel socially inappropriate. Such discomfort might risk the museum culture in turn by throwing a more critical light on those very notions of genius revealing them to be, in fact, a particular ideology; a distinct set of values regarding not just ideas about ‘greatness’ - which, strangely, never quite gets defined - but relying on particular assumptions about the very nature of music and creativity.
Nonetheless, Symphony adopts Romantic values wholesale, even applying them to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn to whom such concepts would have been entirely alien. Mozart, we are told in the first programme (tellingly named Genesis and Genius), was so in thrall to a symphonic ideal that he felt ‘inspired’ to ‘give something to the form’ through his last three symphonies. What he might have given beyond his ‘palate of emotional intensity’ is not, alas, made clear. Likewise Haydn, whose life and music are described in terms of ‘epic journeys’, is said to have ‘taken the idea of what the symphony could be further and further down the path’. This assertion is based on his deepening self-expression as symphonic music increasingly appealed to individual as well as to public reception. Might such ‘expressiveness’ be what is meant by the ‘idea’ of the symphony? We are left with no way of knowing, let alone what it might mean to take the symphony down some path. It would have been intriguing to explore this in light of the later point that Richard Wagner was an essentially symphonic ‘composer of ideas’ (albeit almost exclusively utilising opera or Gesmantkunstwerk) but this latter is merely given as information, leaving us really none the wiser.
Indeed, little of substance is said about symphonic composing. We are told that the symphony is generally a work with four (or so) movements of contrasting character and an allusion is made to the use of sonata form in opening movements as taking a motif on a ‘journey’. There are points made regarding orchestration and some time is spent distinguishing absolute from programmatic music in the form of the symphonic poem. But throughout, the commentary is shallow and ultimately reliant on the audience having a fair degree of pre-knowledge; a newcomer to classical music would surely be lost among the superlatives. For all the featured composers are lavished with quasi-Romantic phrases which, as well as being value-laden, actually tell us nothing about the composers’ work beyond its being in some way ‘great’. Music may be notoriously difficult to describe in words but this does not deter the Symphony team, who litter the commentary with effusive descriptions like so much verbal confetti. By the time we get to the ‘incredible visionary’ Charles Ives, the devotional tone is so pervasive that his being said to be ‘so ahead of his time, his music still isn’t known today’, amounts to more of the same dreary adulation.
The Myth of History as Progress
In the series’s march forward through the ages, we see another cultural myth central to Symphony’s narrative; that is the presentation of music history as progress. The history of the symphony is described as the relentless advance of Enlightenment ideals through Europe and beyond in a gathering crescendo of modernity from Haydn’s post-French Revolution London Symphonies to Shostakovich’s 9th at the end of World War II. As already noted, this amounts to the authoritative view of Western music history familiar to ‘educated’ listeners. However, not only does this narrative constitute a particular interpretation of history rather than being fact as presented here, but it also presupposes some deep contradictions; not least, in relation to the music itself. Every composer discussed is said to have been pushing the symphony ‘forward’, ‘turning the page of symphonic history’, and ‘breaking rules’ (although these ‘rules’ are never explained, let alone how they are broken). Certainly, each of the featured composers develops a profoundly individual voice and, of course, approaches to and methods of symphonic writing change over time and according to fashion. But the implication that history is, therefore, in some way causal or goal-directed entails huge ideological leaps.
In any case, there lies a problem in the towering figure of Beethoven, around whom both the series and received music history, pivots (the second episode is the only one of the four to bear a single composer’s name, Beethoven and Beyond). If Beethoven is the ‘indisputable hero’ against whom all other composers are measured, what does it mean for later composers to be nonetheless ‘developing’ the symphony, ‘taking it forward’ ‘beyond’ Beethoven and becoming ‘great’ in their own right? Progress, it seems, is something to be strived for but which is, ultimately, unattainable. With this paradox we arrive firmly at post-Enlightenment, Romantic ideals, but with the disturbing addendum that no composer has managed - or, by implication, ever will manage - to surpass Beethoven’s nine symphonies as these continue to be held as the utopian pinnacle of Western musical achievement. It turns out that a strong belief underlying current mainstream music-history is actually a contradiction; for, on the one hand, Romantic ideals are still held to be supreme but, on the other, they have failed and, moreover, must fail. Musical ‘progress’ has not been, and cannot be, made and the age of the ‘great’ composer is, therefore, dead. In light of this conundrum, it is perhaps not so surprising that a museum culture obsessed with the past should have taken hold regarding classical music.
More problematic is a question regarding Romantic ideas of the transcendent work: for how can a symphony be at once a timeless masterpiece and yet continually surpassed in greatness by later works by the same composer (a point made most vociferously in the series about the symphonies of Sibelius)? Unless, that is, some masterpieces are more masterful than others. These contradictions are, clearly, difficult to reconcile but Symphony merely presents us with swathes of interpretation on the familiar yet ludicrous sliding-scale of genius; a system of indefinable value judgements based on arcane and culturally out-moded criteria. That late-Romantic composers such as Johannes Brahms were intimidated by Beethoven coming from behind with the ‘tramp of a giant’ is no reason for us to continue to view music history, or to judge musical ‘greatness’, through that particular lens. Similarly, the fact that many composers after Beethoven (like Hector Berlioz) idolised him, is no reason for contemporary discourse about classical music still to be dominated by the cult of personality as demonstrated, alas, by this very series.
The Twentieth Century Neglected
Nevertheless, it is instructive to note some personalities absent from the narrative as this throws further light on Symphony’s cultural bias and returns us to the series’s lack of exploration of recent and contemporary music. For, as well as ignoring post-war music entirely, the programme avoids any mention of key modernists from the first half of the Twentieth Century beyond a curt dismissal of the avant-garde. The contention in programme four, Revolution and Rebirth, is that composers writing in late-Romantic idioms such as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams were ‘actually more important than the avant-garde because they were saying very important things about modernity to a large audience’. This opens an intriguing line of enquiry which, however, remains unexplored, as are the implied assumptions about value and modernity. Elgar and Vaughan Williams undoubtedly were - and remain - important but not all modernists rejected the symphony by any means. Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, for instance, wrote chamber symphonies and a symphony respectively that were very much taken to be saying something important about modernity which continues to reverberate today. But if audience size is the real arbiter of importance, it seems downright odd also to ignore Igor Stravinsky, whose several symphonies placed issues of modernity (as well as specific aspects of modernism) before very large audiences, including via the gramophone, which technological advance the programme rightly deems important.
What cultural value-system might be lurking here to explain the total absence of these and other major Twentieth Century figures (like Carl Nielsen and Serge Prokofiev) from Symphony? A look at the preceding, third episode, New Nations and New Worlds, might offer a clue. For here we discover that it is nationalism that supposedly propelled the symphony from Austria and Germany across late-Romantic Europe, forward into the Twentieth Century and across the Atlantic to the USA. Before we examine this particular narrative more closely, it is worth noting that, whatever aims the many, contrasting avant-garde composers may have had, they were certainly not nationalist in any Romantic sense. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that they should be excluded from this particular version of history regardless of their actual contribution as symphonic composers.
European Nationalism and Germanic Decline
Looking more closely at the third episode and issues of nationalism, it is true that many Romantic composers sought to establish an individual style that also reflected the music of their birth country. Antonín Dvořák was one such, but it is questionable how far Jean Sibelius continued to be nationalist beyond his youth as distinct from getting stuck with the label; indeed, in terms of his overall career, Sibelius might more accurately be described as a modernist. What is clear, however, is that nationalism has long been a catch-all term to describe music (symphonic or otherwise) which incorporates features of indigenous folk or popular music. Music, that is, of any nation besides Austria or Germany. Because, in keeping with music-historical orthodoxy, the central pillar of the musical establishment as described in Symphony is assumed to be Austro-German (and, incidentally, ‘serious’ as distinct from ‘popular’). Indeed we are told with astonishing assurance that ‘German music was international’. What might this actually mean?
Similar to the phenomenon of individual composers being subject to comparison with Beethoven, in today’s symphonic cultural museum, past Austro-German ‘tradition’ is still taken to be the cultural norm against which other nations are viewed. The resulting double-standards are breath-taking. When Franz Schubert or Brahms, say, are shown to utilise indigenous folk or popular music, their motivation is rarely described in terms of nationalist sentiment. But when Dvořák, Vaughan Williams or Aaron Copland do the same, the talk instantly focuses on ‘national identity’, representations of ‘native soil’ and ‘popularisation’. That such blatantly unbalanced cultural analysis should still be a feature of Western classical music thinking - post-modernism notwithstanding - is an irony that would surely not be lost on those symphonic nationalists who attempted to establish their music in its own right and to challenge the constant comparisons to hegemonic Austro-German ideals that they themselves suffered.
Let us return, then, in the light of these uncomfortable issues around nationalism, to the notion of symphonic decline from the fourth episode with which we started. If the ‘great symphonic tradition in Germany’ is held to have ‘come to an end’ around 1945, it appears we should take this to indicate the loss of some supposedly international cultural custodian. An awful lot of ‘keening’ is described in this final episode, from Shostakovich bassoons to Vaughan Williams bugles and Elgarian oboes. The implication beyond the actual horrors of death and war is clear (as if this were not enough) in a larger sense of cultural decline absolutely at odds with the ‘rebirth’ of the title which, in any case, is never seen actually to materialise. Might this loss of German tradition and ensuing downward slide reveal another underlying reason to end the series at 1945 as if the symphony itself stops there? One would hope not as the implied reliance on Germanic culture to lead the way would be distasteful to say the least. Even within the series’s own dubious terms, further mileage could have been made of the Revolution and Rebirth title with a post-war shift of focus to the Soviet Bloc and refugees from there, if only to bring the narrative closer to the present day. For a clear and continued commitment to the symphony as a genre was palpable post-war in Communist countries such as Poland, to name just one example; there, coming after Karol Szymanowski, with Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki and Andrzej Panufnik.
A great deal more could - and probably should - be said about Symphony as the smooth jolliness of its tone is a cover for so much blithe parochialism. To say the series misses an opportunity is a huge understatement - and not only to discuss contemporary composers and works. For the prevailing museum culture must be overcome if classical music is to re-gain relevance in wider contemporary life as a living art form. Indeed, a contemporary perspective of the symphony as a living genre could have been made a base from which to present a history; by all means including a review of orthodox notions of music-history, but described as such and placed in a framework of critical exploration. The irony of setting so much store by historical interpretation of the unquestioning type we see in Symphony is that it ultimately falls foul of the very issue discussed in episode two with regard to wildly contrasting uses of Beethoven’s 9th (firstly in Nazi Germany, then later at the fall of the Berlin Wall and lastly as an honouring of victims of 9/11); and that is propaganda. There is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ history, and this is as true of music-history as any other. This series demonstrates that how we view history tells us more about who we are in the present than the past times to which we refer. As such, beneath the glossy exterior, it paints a sadly impoverished picture of mainstream classical music culture today.
* See, for example, Lydia Goehr’s enormously influential: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music published by OUP 2007
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Response to Weekend Magazine Gay Special: Guardian 21/4/12
It is hard to know quite who the ‘Gay special’ edition of last Saturday’s Guardian Weekend Magazine was aimed at. Evidently it was felt at the newspaper that a focus on gay culture and gay people was required but why and for whom was not made clear by the resulting publication, which was a kind of ‘rough guide’ verging on titillation for the straight, liberal mainstream. With some bravado, the magazine offered a 'life and style’ perspective on ‘everything gay, from comedy and fashion to family and politics’. Whilst this was never likely to amount to more than a cultural snap-shot it was, however, crudely done and, in places, ill-judged.
Overall, it seemed an exercise in box-ticking that pulled out all the clichés. An interview with Alan Carr supplied the obligatory celebrity tv comic (with the added frisson of his being criticised in some gay quarters for being ‘too’ camp). There was a serious article which purported to be about gay parenting but which was actually about the legal difficulties around international surrogacy affecting straight as well as gay parents (amended online on 23rd April to clarify that the British couple reported as using a Ukrainian surrogacy service were not actually gay).
A sad first-person portrait of a man struggling to reconcile his homosexuality with his Christian beliefs contrasted with an article investigating the apparently contradictory phenomenon of gay (male) Tories; the lame conclusion here being that - shock - Tories can be as diverse as gays! Alongside the pop psychology, careful gender and political balance was ensured through an otherwise banal Q and A with Labour MP Angela Eagle, whilst further entertainment was provided with a ‘special’ gay version of the familiar Weekend Blind Date which was, however, no less inane than usual.
Inevitably, there were shots of gay fashion icons (‘gay’ apparently equaling ‘fashion’ in popular parlance; at least, regarding gay men) and photographs of witty protesters’ slogans were on hand to reassure that gay activism has a cuddlier side. But, veering to a sharply different tone, perhaps the creepiest offering was a confessional article on lesbian lust which, by casting the author in a predatory light, unfortunately only served to showcase that particular lesbian stereotype.
How much more nuanced and genuinely thought-provoking about contemporary gay life were pieces from other mainstream media outlets that same weekend. In the Times (Saturday) Matthew Parris considered the fluidity of male sexuality against a backdrop of bisexual taboo whilst in Sunday’s Observer, Barbara Ellen questioned the pressure on gay women pop singers to present themselves as bisexual rather than be openly lesbian. Both these pieces engaged with issues of sexual politics in a way which, unlike the Guardian’s patronising offering, presupposed a readership capable of subtle thinking. By all means, let’s have a lighthearted look at gay culture - but can we please find a way of doing so which doesn’t marginalise and over-simplify what is a hugely diverse LGBT community at a time when calls for equal rights (regarding marriage, for example) are revealing continued homophobia in many quarters?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/weekend-magazine-gay-special
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/ (subscription viewing only)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/barbara-ellen-lesbian-popstars-very-rare?INTCMP=SRCH
http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html
Overall, it seemed an exercise in box-ticking that pulled out all the clichés. An interview with Alan Carr supplied the obligatory celebrity tv comic (with the added frisson of his being criticised in some gay quarters for being ‘too’ camp). There was a serious article which purported to be about gay parenting but which was actually about the legal difficulties around international surrogacy affecting straight as well as gay parents (amended online on 23rd April to clarify that the British couple reported as using a Ukrainian surrogacy service were not actually gay).
A sad first-person portrait of a man struggling to reconcile his homosexuality with his Christian beliefs contrasted with an article investigating the apparently contradictory phenomenon of gay (male) Tories; the lame conclusion here being that - shock - Tories can be as diverse as gays! Alongside the pop psychology, careful gender and political balance was ensured through an otherwise banal Q and A with Labour MP Angela Eagle, whilst further entertainment was provided with a ‘special’ gay version of the familiar Weekend Blind Date which was, however, no less inane than usual.
Inevitably, there were shots of gay fashion icons (‘gay’ apparently equaling ‘fashion’ in popular parlance; at least, regarding gay men) and photographs of witty protesters’ slogans were on hand to reassure that gay activism has a cuddlier side. But, veering to a sharply different tone, perhaps the creepiest offering was a confessional article on lesbian lust which, by casting the author in a predatory light, unfortunately only served to showcase that particular lesbian stereotype.
How much more nuanced and genuinely thought-provoking about contemporary gay life were pieces from other mainstream media outlets that same weekend. In the Times (Saturday) Matthew Parris considered the fluidity of male sexuality against a backdrop of bisexual taboo whilst in Sunday’s Observer, Barbara Ellen questioned the pressure on gay women pop singers to present themselves as bisexual rather than be openly lesbian. Both these pieces engaged with issues of sexual politics in a way which, unlike the Guardian’s patronising offering, presupposed a readership capable of subtle thinking. By all means, let’s have a lighthearted look at gay culture - but can we please find a way of doing so which doesn’t marginalise and over-simplify what is a hugely diverse LGBT community at a time when calls for equal rights (regarding marriage, for example) are revealing continued homophobia in many quarters?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/weekend-magazine-gay-special
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/ (subscription viewing only)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/barbara-ellen-lesbian-popstars-very-rare?INTCMP=SRCH
http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html
Monday, 9 April 2012
Letter to Eleanor Mills re "Cuddling Schoolboys Kiss Homophobia Goodbye", Sunday Times 8/4/12
I read your column about the decline of homophobia amongst teenage boys in yesterday's Sunday Times with great interest but some dismay. I would love to believe that you are right in suggesting that we have come from "homo-hysteria to homo-acceptance in a quarter of a century" but, alas, I think you are looking at the issue through very rose-tinted spectacles. The increased tactility you describe amongst some teenage boys is clearly a good thing and might indeed be indicative of positive changes in acceptable masculine behaviour among those groups - but I would suggest this is not as indicative of wider changes in attitude towards LGBT people as you might hope.
Mark McCormack's study is only based on three secondary schools in one town and Ruth Hunt of Stonewall has therefore urged caution with regard to his findings:
"I think it matches what we know in that some schools which are good on this are very, very good. But plenty are not......we still see many schools with significant problems."
Indeed, the youth support charity Allsorts found in a 2010 survey of Brighton schools that 16% of bullied primary school children and 23% of bullied secondary school children reported that the bullying was homophobic in nature. Of LGBT pupils, half reported they had been subject to homophobic bullying. Allsorts spokesperson Jess Ward commented regarding McCormack's study: "It is definitely not our experience, I'm afraid. It remains the second-highest reason children give for bullying." The problem is greater still in Wales, where a 2009 Welsh assembly Government survey found that by far the most prevalent from of bullying in Welsh schools was homophobic. I am sure you will recall the recent tragic suicide of 15 year old Dominic Crouch after homophobic bullying. Sadly, suicide rates for LGBT teens are far higher than for other groups; Dominic wasn't even gay, but subject to gay abuse nonetheless.
Regarding the negative use of the word "gay", do please read my article (published in Planet magazine 205 in February and available to read here: http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html) for a very different view of this change in the language.
http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html
Mark McCormack's study is only based on three secondary schools in one town and Ruth Hunt of Stonewall has therefore urged caution with regard to his findings:
"I think it matches what we know in that some schools which are good on this are very, very good. But plenty are not......we still see many schools with significant problems."
Indeed, the youth support charity Allsorts found in a 2010 survey of Brighton schools that 16% of bullied primary school children and 23% of bullied secondary school children reported that the bullying was homophobic in nature. Of LGBT pupils, half reported they had been subject to homophobic bullying. Allsorts spokesperson Jess Ward commented regarding McCormack's study: "It is definitely not our experience, I'm afraid. It remains the second-highest reason children give for bullying." The problem is greater still in Wales, where a 2009 Welsh assembly Government survey found that by far the most prevalent from of bullying in Welsh schools was homophobic. I am sure you will recall the recent tragic suicide of 15 year old Dominic Crouch after homophobic bullying. Sadly, suicide rates for LGBT teens are far higher than for other groups; Dominic wasn't even gay, but subject to gay abuse nonetheless.
Regarding the negative use of the word "gay", do please read my article (published in Planet magazine 205 in February and available to read here: http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html) for a very different view of this change in the language.
http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)