M us ic
Festival Finance
By DAVID CAIRNS
A COUNTRY whose idea of the
place of Art in its life is to write
letters to the Times, subscribe
to appeals signed .by the most sonorous names in Church and State and generally work up a high air of Moral resolution
more normally associated with Dunkirk or the sexual failings of the young, in order to 'save for the nation' a drawing that the nation had till. then never heard of and in any case, if properly organised, would not have been in danger of losing,- while at the same time neglecting to make provision for its finest theatre company, which • in consequence threatens to close down, is a philistine country in the strict application of the word. That is to say, in its day- to-day running Art is not taken into account; and any extra-ordinary manifestation of Art, how- ever trivial, snobbish or sham,. should be seen against that melancholy but unassailable fact.
Consider the present vogue for music as an adjunct of gracious living, music on the expense account and in the stately home. How easy to be provoked by the ridiculous atmosphere of ex- clusiveness, the appeal to snobbery, the horror (which patrons are apparently not even civilised enough to notice) of the catering, the inflated prices, the feeble conservatism of the pro- grammes. But the strategy of criticism demands that nothing be despised which may lead, un- knowing and in spite of itself, to enlightenment. However artificial the exercise of listening to the Amadeus Quartet in the Long Gallery by kind permission of Mrs. Cholmondeley-Codpiece at three guineas a head inclusive of refreshments (luncheon meat sandwiches and a half-spilled glass of champagne at room temperature), it is better than nothing at all. Something may rub off on them. Art would not have got anywhere without the people who pretended to like it; what begins as affectation may turn into habit. It is national habit, created by a multitude of non-musical factors and reflected in an estab- lished system of State and municipal subsidy, that distinguishes Germany from England in musical matters, rather than an indigenous pas- sion for the art.
The Top People's festival (assiduously puffed by public relations) has become so suspect that the first City of London Festival received a somewhat grudging press. But on the above grounds alone I would welcome it. The mere fact of the City giving some £15,000, quite apart from how it was spent, is in itself something to be prized and exploited. It could be wonderfully habit-forming. The quality of refreshment at the three-guinea sprees may indeed have been on the
level of the wine waiter's comment to me at one of them, as I hesitated before the proffered
bottle ('It's 1949, sir, you can't go wrong'), and it did not say much for the material culture of those who can afford three guineas; but it was not a national scandal like the price of food at the Festival Hall. The Festival had its quota of pseudo-historical hocus-pocus familiar in a society whose history has lost almost all signi- ficance except the sentimental and the commer- cial. But the City, with the river which bounds it on the south, is of all our national institutions the one in most living continuity with its past, and makes rather a good setting for a festival.
Besides, the programmes were planned with imagination and an unusual sense of artistic responsibility. Any festival which puts on L'Enfance du Christ is of course giving self- evident proof of its right-mindedness, and the performance conducted by Colin Davis, in St. Bartholomew the Great, was memorable, ideal in almost everything except that the string band of the English Chamber Orchestra was too small (8-6-4-4-2) to mould the more slow- moving melodies with the firmness they require (for instance, the first violins' beautiful counter- point in Herod's aria at the words 'Et desirer de suivre le chevrier au fond des hots,' the full effect of which depends on an unwavering tone Sus- tained throughout the held notes). But what should acquit the organisers of all charges of frivolity was the large number of commissions and first performances. The £15,000 were spent not only on Rubinstein and Chopin, 'In Praise of Wine' Can entertainment and wine tasting for connoisseurs') and The Yeoman of the Guard . in the Tower, but on bringing into existence works by Rawsthorne, Richard Rodney Bennett, Arnold Cooke, Walton and Phyllis Tate, and paying for the first performance of Peter Maxwell Davies's Leopardi Fragments. The Maxwell Davies, like the Berlioz performance, was the sort of thing that by itself makes a festival worth while. Scored for soprano and contralto and single woodwind, trumpet, trombone, harp and cello, it is a lyrical and inventive meditation on sentences from the prose jottings of the great Italian poet. The instrumental colour is strik- ingly beautiful and the angularities of the vocal line are warmed and shaped into a real melodic flow. More than his recent Quartet and Sinfonia it seems to me to mark the maturing of a gifted and individual talent, a composer who is English but not provincial, romantic but modern, avant- garde but free, original but speaking a language which, with patience and effort, we may all come to understand. The admirable performers, Dorothy Dorow and Rosemary Phillips and the New Music Ensemble conducted by John Carewe, should be encouraged to repeat it soon.
There remains the question of exclusiveness. The tickets are too expensive for the .mass of regular concert-goers. Since the _demand for seats, even in the three-guinea range, greatly exceeded the supply, the management are under no direct pressure to do anything about it. But it would be indirectly to their advantage to make the festival a more broadly popular event. As I see it, the task of the organisers of the next festival (which is apparently planned to take place in 1964) is to persuade the City to give even more money and, while encouraging it to feel that this is the City's own festival and re- taining the smart Guild-sponsored occasions, to use the extra money to offset the loss in revenue which will result from halving the price of ad- mission to the major events—some of which, as for instance the St. Bartholomew L'Enfance du Christ, should be given twice to satisfy the de- mand and help subsidise the cheaper tickets. No one w ho has observed the experiment of serving Glyndebourne Mozart in concert performance at Prom prices to as many people in a single even- ing as hear it at Glyndebourne in a season, and pondered its lessons, can doubt the immense long-term benefit to music's spiritual and econo- mic health in making the best available to the greatest number. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than the prospect of a tremendous but virtually unknown masterpiece like Poppea becoming a familiar Promenade work.
There have been one or two critical mutterings over the artistic propriety of this particular ex- periment. But the public has a much more robust attitude to so-called hybrids in musical presenta- tion than the experts (as the splendid reception of the LSO's unorthodox dramatised concert version of Beatrice and Benedict significantly showed). While the experts are busy taking up wsthetic positions, the public is equally busy responding directly to the experience, without bothering to consider whether singers in evening dress ought to indulge in dramatic gesture. And in this, as in many things, the public knows better. Cosi seemed to me (for I presume to side with the public in the matter) more enjoyable than it had been at Glyndebourne not because the ensemble had a tightness and assurance it lacked at the beginning of the season, but simply because of the lively action and reaction of stimulating audience and in-consequence-stimu- lated performers; and to the critic who said that such works as Cosi do not belong at the Proms and should be heard by ears attuned to them, I can only suggest that if this principle were applied, Glyndebourne would go out of business.
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