HOME PAGE: OCTOBER 2005

   Greetings from the City of London.

This is a very short note to introduce once again the gala concert at the Barbican to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the founding of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. We shall repeat the programme at the BASBWE Conference and RNCM International Wind Festival on Sunday November 6th at 4.pm. Details of the Conference from the webpage BASBWE/RNCM International Wind Festival.

Below is an interview I gave to Luke Harley, Assistant Editor of Classical Music, with thoughts on BASBWE and its development t over the last quarter of a century. These ideas were featured in the October 8th edition of Classical Music and the interview is reprinted by kind permission of the Editor, Keith Clarke.

LUKE HARLEY INTERVIEW

BASBE is approaching its 24th conference since you set it up. What would you identify as the goals of the Nov 4-6 conference this year?

Principally, the College is aiming to move wind music performance in all its forms into the mainstream of public acceptance. In the future, I am sure we shall see authentic performance by classical ensembles, alongside the established great works of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and a wide range of contemporary music from the 20th and 21st with far more professional groups from round the world.

For some years, the experiment was tried of combining the festival and conference with the non-competitive festival of bands, sponsored by Boosey and Hawkes, but the mix was not right. Conductors, teachers and administrators brought their players in, gave their concert, received their adjudication and got everyone back onto the bus and off home. Classes by players and teachers of world renown, clinics by leading conductors, concerts by internationally rated ensembles were ignored in the rush to have coca cola, a butty and a clear run down the M6.

This year aims to bring back to conference the regulars who used to fill the concerts and the exhibition and who came each year to hear and discuss new works, debate new teaching methods, and look at the latest publications or advances in instrument technology.

Are you happy with the progress that has been made in terms of establishing a solid and constantly evolving wind repertoire?

Yes, to a certain extent an enormous amount has been achieved. A quarter of a century ago, I think that the only composers writing regularly for the concert band were Philip Sparke, Stephen Dodgson, Adrian Cruft, and the doyen of them all, Gordon Jacob. Happily Philip and Stephen are still active, and they have been joined by dozens of others, some self-publishing, many published by reputable companies. It is so encouraging to see firms like Boosey and Hawkes, Schotts, OUP and Faber coming back into the field, sometimes after a gap of years.

ORGANISATIONAL WEAKNESSES

What do you see as the weaknesses of the organisation that need addressing?

BASBWE, like WASBE, seems beset by organisational problems. As a result, neither is making any real contact with the “music profession”, soloists, conductors, ensembles, agents, festivals, competitions, critics, media.

“They” need to know what has been so far achieved……thank goodness for Classical Music, which has always taken a lively interest.

But the most important gift for future generations is the music we create, and I would like to see both associations, and others, commissioning the best possible composers in a wide range of music. The days of commissioning composers like Richard Rodney Bennett, Thea Musgrave, Nicholas Maw, James MacMillan, David Bedford, seem to be passed, and recent commissions have not even been published, recorded or readily available. Both BASBWE and WASBE are there to provide a service of information about “art” music, Gebrauchsmusik, music for entertainment and education, and the leadership must then help us in rejecting what is meretricious, and in cultivating what is creative.

Would you like to see a professional wind ensemble in the UK, or does music work best with amateurs, uncorrupted by money?

It is unrealistic to think of a professional civilian wind ensemble. But we already have a number of professional wind bands with incredible potential. The Band of HM Royal Marines, the Central Band of the Royal Air Force, the Guards Bands and many less well known, are full of excellent players, many of whom will join the profession as players, teachers, composers or conductors. Listen to the recent recording by the Coldstream Guards or the Royal Marines for some really great playing. I would love to see the massed bands of the Royal Marines playing not only at the Edinburgh Tattoo but also at the BBC Proms, playing Corigliano’s huge Symphony No 3, Circus Maximus, or Michael Colgrass’ Winds of Nagual.

The US Marines are programming the Corigliano for next season, with Leonard Slatkin conducting, while here the military will continue to play what they fondly imagine the public wants - Phantom of the Opera, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, or Pink Panther Meets the Wizard of Oz. I hate the thought of these very expert players playing rubbish day after day.

Of course they need to play for ceremonial, and for entertainment, but there is great original light music for band by contemporary composers, Malcolm Arnold’s Water Music, Frank Bridge’s Pageant of London, John Gardner’s English Suite, Martin Ellerby’s Paris Sketches, Adam Gorb’s Yiddish Dances, Kenneth Hesketh’s Danseries, Ernest Tomlinson’s Suite of English Dances, Guy Woolfenden’s Illyrian Dances or Gallimaufry.

I would like to see some of our commissions, perhaps those without saxophones and euphoniums, going into the orchestral repertoire, alongside the great works of Mozart, Dvorak, Strauss, Stravinsky and Messiaen.

Does the passion involved with amateur playing assist the wind movement, or is it limited by a lack of employment opportunities?

Curiously there is a lack of real passion in the wind band world. We know how crazy instrumentalists get about new feats of virtuosity, new realms of technology, new demands of compositional craft, and even British players meet up at conferences, sometimes the other side of the world, to argue about the merits and demerits of new works. One of the old quarrels in BASBWE has been about elitism, and our journal has over the years attacked elitism. Now for me, the elite is the best, the flower, the chosen.

CORONATION STREET OR WILLIAM BYRD?

I want to experience and possibly conduct the best music from round the world whether for junior, middle or senior school bands, for amateurs, professional military players or conservatoire players. It is so important not to fob band players off with dross. When I began teaching over forty years ago, the first thing I did was to go to watch Peter Maxwell Davies at work in Cirencester, with a class of thirteen year olds reading a Byrd Mass, composing music theatre piece, or singing and playing a piece of “avant garde” music by Max himself. This was creative music making of the highest order.

The last class I saw recently in school was of 16 year olds preparing for GCSE, picking out the theme from Coronation Street on Orff instruments. Max attacked with gusto the dumbing down of our music education. I suspect that the dumbing down of the aims of BASBWE can only encourage apathy. Coronation Street or William Byrd – there is no choice in my book.

Has BASBWE Education Trust succeeded in training conductors and forming new bands?

Wind band conducting has always had something of a stigma attached to it in the UK since Beecham turned his back on it at the beginning of the 20th century. Are you worried about the quality of wind band conducting in the future? 

Who are the up-and-coming conductors and wind ensembles to look out for?

I think more might be done. At one time each region was pledged to hold a conducting clinic and a new repertoire clinic each year. We have run an international conducting course in association with Canford Summer School, and that has done much to help conductors in terms of technical development and knowledge of repertoire.

Outstanding amongst the younger conductors are Mark Heron, recently appointed musical director of the Liverpool Mozart Players, who is conducting a great deal in Finland and Israel, Russell Cowieson who is working at the RSAMD in Scotland and is conductor of the Cambridge Youth Wind Orchestra, Tim Redmond who has been working on Thomas Ades’ The Tempest at Covent Garden, but recently conducted performances of Bennett’s Morning Music and Maw’s American Games with youth orchestras.

However, it is worth acknowledging that the wind band or ensemble is a difficult beast to tame. Having a good technique and making the band start and stop together does not mean that a conductor can sort out the problems of balance and voicing, and control of dynamics and tone. Two very successful conductors of today began with the wind band, Sian Edwards and Martyn Brabbins, and we need them back in the field as role models.

ENCOURAGE GROWTH MUSICALLY, INTELLECTUALLY, TECHNICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY

Should wind music push the avant-garde envelope, or should it provide laymen audiences with instant gratification, or both?

We have wasted too much time on “instant gratification”; a conductor who merely wants to entertain does not need WASBE or BASBWE, but the conductor who wants to help his players develop probably needs information from them. My own programming philosophy is to encourage the players, and audience, to grow musically, intellectually, technically and emotionally. As far as “avant-garde”, I think it has its place if it has an emotional content. 

Luckily those dim days of thirty years or so ago when composers wrote in a post-Schoenberg or post-Hindemith lingua franca called contemporary, enjoyed by nobody, are a distant memory. Now composers can employ any “ism” they want to, anything is fair game. The danger is that composers, especially across the Atlantic, are writing as if it were 1905, ignoring what has happened in the past century.

Composer, Diana Burrell, spoke of her perception of the job of a composer today:

Try and find a language which doesn’t disregard everything which has happened in the twentieth century, that does acknowledge Stravinsky and Schoenberg and Boulez, while being simple enough to work for the concert hall, or church, or for young people - the wider community in some way, but which acknowledges that this is where we are - we can’t go back. We can’t unpick the twentieth century.

How strong is the avant-garde movement?

Weak, I would say. In ten WASBE Conferences, I think I have heard one avant-garde work, none in BASBWE, perhaps a handful in the College Band Directors National Association conferences. Most American music is absolutely anondyne – Simon Rattle sums up so much American music: “Don’t frighten the horses”. British composers like Adam Gorb, Stephen McNeff and Kenneth Hesketh, have much more to say. Even though they would be considered conservative in their language, they can turn a phrase and slide through a modulation with wit, elegance and charm.

HI-JACKED BY COMMERCIALISM

How does the American and Japanese model for wind music differ in terms of what's happening in the UK?

Wind music in both countries is largely hi-jacked by commercial considerations. Earlier this year, Stephen Budiansky wrote in the Washington Post.

If there is a medal awarded for conspicuous bravery in the form of sitting through countless elementary, middle and high-school concerts above and beyond the call of duty, I'd like the authorities to know that I am eligible for it.

Unflinchingly, I have kept my face rigid through the most trying of musical ordeals. My kids are both in high school now, but every now and then my jaw muscles still hurt from the effects of one fourth-grade chorus concert. I think only once in all those years did I give way to temptation and relate to the person next to me that bit from one of the Marx brothers' movies, where Chico is playing the piano and a man sitting next to Groucho says, "I love good music," and Groucho replies, "So do I. Let's get out of here."

For many band conductors in USA band music is essentially a social activity, keeping kids busy who are not good enough yet for the orchestra, entertaining parents with selections from the shows, entertaining rotary, or a football crowd. Here it is not comparable, and we could still develop along the right lines if we get the vision right.

Are British orchestras proving amenable enough to performing wind music, or does the hassle of using saxophones and/or euphoniums get in the way?

I suspect that the big problem is not so much the extra instruments, but simply ignorance of the repertoire. For instance one of the great emotional tunes is the slow movement to the Richard Rodney Bennett Trumpet Concerto, Tribute to Miles Davis, in which Bennett melds his post-Schoenberg serial technique with his love of the jazz greats. How many orchestral managers or conductors know this magic piece, and would consider programming it in Richard’s 70th year?

TRASH A FISH AND CHIP SHOP

Would you like to see more leading composers write for wind, a la Stravinsky?

Yes, but why should they without media coverage? In America and throughout Europe, the same circle of composers write each year for wind, and only but rarely are composers outside that closed circle approached. This year saw premieres in New York by Danielpour and Corigliano. There was no critical coverage whatever.

Last year, a new work for choirs, soloists and wind by Joseph Phibbs was performed in the Albert Hall by well over 1,000 performers. His BBC Prom commission received rave reviews.

In the first five years after the introduction of ASBOS, 4649 orders were issued, with a corresponding yards of editorial print. Rainland was experienced by more than 5,000 performers and audience, and was ignored by the critics, but yet if a couple of those kids had trashed a fish and chip shop, they would have got an ASBO and a headline in the press.

You're conducting Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Wind Orchestra and Chetham's Symphonic Wind Band at the IWF. What are the premieres like?

With Guildhall I shall be conducting Michael Berkeley’s Slow Dawn which I commissioned, a beautiful evocative gentle piece, with a virtuoso companion Shooting Star. I started writing to Michael back in 1982, so there has been a gestation of 23 years, well worth the wait. We shall also give the world premiere of Kenneth Hesketh’s Vranjanka, which I commissioned for school and community bands. We are desperately in need of good composers of today doing what Britten, Maxwell Davies and Bennett used to do, writing for less experienced performers, and I am delighted that Ken has taken up the challenge.

At Chethams I shall conduct Awake You Sleepers, which is based on the ceremonial calls of the shofar in the Jewish liturgy, a wild trumpet concerto, I suppose our equivalent to Bloch’s Schelomo. I think it is a gripping, unusual piece, very exciting.

MAINSTAYS OF FUTURE REPERTOIRE

Which of the works do you think could become mainstays of the wind repertoire?

I am not sure yet about any of the new works for this conference, since I have not heard them, but from the past five years, I think a number of works will be played frequently. Two of my most recent commissions I find have hidden depths, are open to a variety of interpretations and, perhaps most importantly, make an immediate contact with both players and audiences. These are Adam Gorb’s Dances from Crete and Christopher Marshall’s L’Homme Armé, while Kenneth Hesketh’s Diaghilev Dances is a wonderfully rich score, Stephen McNeff’s Ghosts never fails to amuse me and at school band level Bill Connor’s Tails aus dem Voods Viennoise is a twenty two minute symphony which will give the average player with Associated Board Grade 5 the feeling that (s)he is playing a Mahler Symphony. It is that emotional experience which we need to give our players if we are to survive.

LEAP OF FAITH

In the 18th century Vienna went through a golden age of wind music, with divertimentos, serenades etc written for military ensembles. Has BASBWE gone some way towards establishing a wind renaissance, or is its time yet to come?

Way to go, as our transatlantic friends put it, but we are ready intellectually – there is a huge repertoire of great chamber and wind orchestral music, ready for the public and performers. We desperately need to make real contact with the movers and shakers of the music business, composers, conductors, agents, festival administrators, critics, media moguls, but more especially we need a leap of faith from the Directors of our Military Bands, the conductors of our amateur and school bands, from Professors at our Universities and from Principals of our Conservatoires.