Classical music - is it elitist?

This question has been posed recently in the debate about public spending cut-backs in Northern Ireland.  

Following several years of reduced financial support, the Ulster Orchestra is in danger of closure.   

The argument goes that spending on culture is a low priority and the music of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky benefits an elite group only.

Define elitism

Is it the orchestra which is elite, is it the music, or could it be the audience?

A respected newspaper describes the Northern Ireland Assembly’s elected representatives as “exceedingly well paid,” “the political elite[1].” 
They hold the purse strings.

For the purposes of this article and because it is governed by the same Department as culture, sport provides a better definitional clue.

In the professional era of twenty-first century competitiveness, there is microscopic focus on the miniscule margins which determine success, what separates winners from losers.  Large sums are invested in programmes devised by elite coaches to hone teams of elite athletes.

There is nothing pejorative in this usage.  The word contains no connotation of poshness or exclusivity.  The financial backers as well as the supporters of such athletes aspire to have teams and individuals who represent their town, region or nation to be the best, to be elite performers.

Investors and fans take pride in new players recruited from exotic foreign destinations.  They are flattered that their team and city are good enough to attract quality players.  

The civic pride that wells up when, for example, our elite boxers win gold medals at major championships justifies the investment.

Is there any reason why this principle should not apply equally to our musical performers?  Investors, management and supporters want our orchestra - the team of professional musicians - to be the very best they can present, to perform well on their field of play, the big stage.

The orchestra

The Ulster Orchestra’s team is multi-national, with players from countries such as Spain, Italy and Hungary teaming up with Irish and British musicians, and led by international maestros.  

Its chief conductor Rafael Payere began his career in the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra (Venezuela’s El Sistema education project) whose musicians grew up in Bogota’s deprived favellas.

The Ulster Orchestra has received standing ovations at recent sold-out concerts featuring the Tchaikovsky prize-winning pianist from Belfast, Barry Douglas; and again at St Anne’s Cathedral performing Benjamin Britten’s War requiem alongside Dublin’s RTE Concert Orchestra as well as three choirs.  

It performed to a nationwide audience at the Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall in September.   

Live music at its very best.  

The Ulster Orchestra projects a positive image of an outward-looking creative Northern Ireland and brings people together as one community.

The Orchestra’s musicians benefit 25,000 school-children annually.  They work on schemes in disadvantaged communities.  They deliver music therapy to special needs schools and care homes.  

Chief conductor Rafael Payere with the Paper Orchestra

As senior management has been holding intensive discussions with funders, an Ulster Orchestra campaign (Hands Up for the Orchestra) has produced many thousands of painted hands, an artistic petition from the children of Northern Ireland to save their orchestra[2].

 

The orchestra's little-heralded education and outreach work has been operating for a few decades.   

It is the antithesis of elitism.

The music

If it’s not the orchestra that is elitist, could it be the music?  

Perhaps the impression may be that classical music is elitist compared to rock and pop, jazz, or folk music.   

That proposition deserves closer examination.

Classical music deals with the same themes as country and western, blues, rock, jazz, R&B, and folk music.  Each form interprets them in their own distinctive ways.   

They are the perennial topics of love, sorrow, war, peace, protest, beauty, horror, triumph, despair, betrayal, hope, joy.   

Music is about story-telling, through songs and tunes about the age-old concerns that preoccupy everybody, rich and poor, old and young.  Television soap operas, films in the cinema, stage plays, books, opera, art all do the same thing in order to communicate emotions to anybody who will listen.  

Nobody is excluded.

Rock and pop

Some of the most popular songs, mega-hits, going right back to the early days of rock 'n’ roll have been inspired by classical music.  Examples will prove the point.

The melody of Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” bears an uncanny resemblance to “O Sole Mio.”  This classical aria was composed by Eduardo di Capua and made famous by the opera singers Mario Lanza and Enrico Caruso.  

The same melody was used in a popular television advertisement for ice-cream – Just one cornetto.  Sing it now.

Procul Harum’s haunting number one hit from 1967, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” takes its lead from J S Bach’s Air on a G String.   

The Beach Boys 1979 song “Lady Lynda” starts and finishes with the Bach cantata Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.

The early nineteenth century violinist Niccolo Paginini’s Caprice in A Minor has inspired classical composers including Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, and Rachmaninov.  

In 1978, a rock’n roll version was released in an album entitled “Variations” composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  He did this as a bet with his brother, the classical cellist Julian.  

He had promised to do so if their local football team Leyton Orient were relegated down a division.  They were and he did.  

One of the Lloyd Webber rock variations became the signature tune for the popular television programme The Southbank Show. 

Variations LP album cover 1978

Examples of pop music’s inspiration by classical music from recent years include:- 

·         the chorus chord progression of Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” borrows from Pachelbel’s Canon;

·         On Muse‘s song “Plug in baby,” the guitar riff resembles Bach’s organ music Toccata and Fugue in D minor;

·         Radiohead’s Exit music for a film on their album “OK Computer” weaves in the theme from Chopin’s Prelude no.4 in E minor; and

·         The American R&B singer Janelle Monae’s 6 minute song “Say You’ll Go” references Debussy’s Claire de Lune.  It does so by finishing with a beautiful musical quotation straight from the French composer’s melody.[3]

The progressive rock band, Emerson Lake and Palmer devoted a whole album to an interpretation of the Russian composer with the least elite first name I can think of, Modest Mussorgsky, and his Pictures at an Exhibition.  

They also recorded a double LP entitled “Works” in 1977.   

This prog rock album included a full piano concerto in three movements composed by Keith Emerson playing the piano and accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.  Another track entitled “The Enemy God” includes an excerpt from the second movement of Prokofiev’s “The Scythian Suite.”

“Works” best known track is “Fanfare for the Common Man.”  ELP’s rock version is an arrangement of the classical American composer Aaron Copeland’s symphony of the same name.  
What could be further removed from elitism than a fanfare for the common man?

Folk music and jazz

Many classical composers have taken their inspiration from their nations' folk songs.  Smetana for example was

“an ardent advocate of Czech culture...he returned home from Sweden to devote himself to the cultural revival that was sweeping through Bohemia.... His opera The Bartered Bride was full of folk-like melody...and the melody in Ma Vlast’s Vltava is often thought to be a Czech folksong and was published in folksong collections.”[4]  

The Slavonic Dances of his compatriot Dvorak

 

“reinvented and restyled Czech melodies symphonically.  It includes Czech as well as Ukrainian, Slovak, Polish and Serb dances.”[5]

Other examples of folk music's influence on classical composers include:

·         Chopin’s polonaises and his mazurkas derive from the folk dancing traditions of Poland[6];

·         the Karelia Suite and Finlandia composed by Sibelius were influenced by Finland’s folk songs;

·         Ralph Vaughan Williams “travelled into the countryside to collect folk songs and carols from singers, notating them for future generations...[7]”was a collector of English folk music which influenced his compositions;

·         Aaron Copeland’s Appalacian Spring is derived from an American folk hymn.

·         Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies originate in the country’s “folk music as it was taken up and developed by Gypsy bands for uproarious town entertainment.[8]”

·         Brahms used German student drinking songs in his Academic Festival Overture.

If classical music is so elitist, why do Cockneys refer to classical composers in describing someone who has drunk too much?  Brahms and Liszt.

In the Americas, Astor Piazzola's compostions, such as the infectious Libertango (9), spring from the rhythms of Argentinean street music.  
USA composers have been strongly influenced by jazz. George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess derive from New Orleans jazz.  
This has worked both ways as virtuosic jazzmen like Oscar Petersen and Duke Ellington have jazzed up Gershwin's classical originals.

In the same reversal, the jazz pianist Jacques Loussier made his living from recording jazz arrangements of many of J S Bach's works.  And Chopin's music has been brilliantly jazzified by the Andrzej Jagodzinski Trio (10) on several albums.

There are instances of European composers being inspired by jazz and/or by the folk music of countries other than their own.  Examples include:-

·         Jazz and Spanish folk music influenced Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (used by Torvill and Dean when skating to a gold medal in the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics and it played an climactic part in the film “10” starring Dudley Moore and Bo Derek).

·         Shostakovitch’s work includes a Suite for Jazz Orchestra;

·         his compatriot Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capricio Espagnol is a set of “tunes firmly founded on Spanish folk idioms.[11]”

·         Max Bruch’s Scottish symphony and Mendelssohn’s the Scottish Symphony and the Hebrides or Fingal’s cave (on the Isle of Staffa) Overture reflect Gaelic Scottish airs.

Mozart likewise is claimed to have an Irish Gaelic influence.  
Paddy Moloney is the uileann piper of the Chieftains folk group.  
He tells an amusing story about the late seventeenth century harpist and composer Turlough Carolan, described as the Irish Mozart (12).

Turlough Carolan

Mr Moloney says that Carolan's 40 minute Concerto resonates in the Concerto for Flute Harp and Orchestra.  The Austrian Mozart was born 18 years after Carolan's death (13) and he wrote his concerto when he was 22 years old (14).

Ulster Orchestra at the Proms playing The Riverdance Suite, Royal Albert Hall 2014

As folk music and jazz are the traditional melodies of everyday people, what can be the justification to describe its classical derivatives as elitist?

Television and advertising

Examples of the use of classical music on television include:

·         Alan Sugar’s “The Apprentice” uses Prokofiev’s “The Dance of the Knights” from the Romeo & Juliet ballet suite as its signature tune;

·         Handel’s “Zadok the Priest” chorus is heard throughout Europe as the theme for The Champions League, the elite football competition;

·         the annual Eurovision Song Contest is introduced with the seventeenth century motet “Te Deum” composed by Marc Antoine Charpentier

·         the aria “Nessan Dorma” from Puccini’s opera Turandot and sung by Pavorotti was the theme for the World Cup in Italy in 1998;

·         Bach’s Air on a G String played by Jacques Loussier advertised Hamlet cigars;[15]

·         Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana O Fortuna has been used in various advertisements including Carlton draught beer.

If classical music is elitist, why do advertisers use it lavishly to sell all sorts of products?

Cinema

Films are replete with selections of classical music. Examples include:-

·         Apocalypse Now makes effective use of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries;

·         2001 A Space Odyssey plays Johann Strauss II’s The Blue Danube to emphasise the trajectory of a space ship waltzing through space;

·         Beethoven’s Ode to Joy plays an atmospheric role in A Clockwork Orange;

·         the Oscar-nominated animated film Johann Mouse, Tom and Jerry, was inspired and accompanied by Johann Strauss II composition; and

·         Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is an important part of the movie Ace Ventura.

Some films use a whole array of classical music.   
For instance, the 1999 film The Runaway Bride used JS Bach’s Orchestral Suite number 3 as well as his Cantata “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring;” Handel’s Messiah Hallelujah chorus; Haydn’s piano sonata number 33; Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Wedding March; Mozart’s overture and aria to Le Nozze di Figaro; Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major; Schubert’s Ave Maria; and Wagner’s Wedding March from Lohengrin.

Movie-makers love classical music – could it be because its audiences do too?

The audience

If accusations of elitism against classical music find no support in the work of the Orchestra or in classical music’s closeness with other musical forms or in its prevalent use by film-makers and advertisers, could it be that elitism applies to the audience?

If elitism means affordability, consider this.  

No professional symphony orchestra in Europe charges less for seats than The Ulster Orchestra.  For example, the cheapest tickets in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw[16] are dearer than the Ulster Orchestra’s dearest (£25).  The Dutch orchestra’s most expensive seats cost over £100.

Students can attend Ulster Orchestra concerts for £5, lunchtime concerts cost £6, choir seats cost £10, there are concession prices for pensioners, discounts are available in a “pick and mix” scheme for purchases of four or more events on a rising scale, and concert programmes are free.   

Moreover, the concerts produced by the BBC cost nothing to attend.

The Ulster Orchestra aims to appeal to a wide audience, to exclude nobody.   

That is why its programme includes the popular New Year Viennese concert featuring dancers from Strictly Come Dancing; the annual concert celebrating of Burns Night features folk-rock singers like Eddi Reader and the Gaelic strains of Scottish pipes and drums; other concerts feature movie music; the free BBC concert on St Patricks Day headlines with musicians like Clannad, Sinéad O’Connor, and Phil Coulter.  

This year’s free BBC concert at the Titanic Slipway for the BBC’s Last Night at the Proms attracted 50,000 applications for 11,000 tickets.

The orchestra provides workshops for special needs children, it teaches the musicians of the future at the City of Belfast College of Music and at Queens University Belfast.  

On top of this, it plays music by all of the great composers to inspire and entertain its other audience, our citizens and welcoming visitors back to our long-suffering city.

Supporters began a campaign to Save The Ulster Orchestra when news of the closure threat was revealed by an Assemblyman at Stormont in October.   

This audience-led initiative has extracted 14,000 messages of support from many famous musicians, playwrights  - as well as everyday citizens, from a young busker to elderly pensioners.  People power when crisis hits.[17]

 

Culture Minister Carál NíChuilín receiving photobook&petition 

from Bee Riddell of STUO

Petitioners' comments provide compelling evidence of audience support, moving and eloquent testimony which rebuts allegations of elitism.

One comment in the petition says

“I grew up in Turf Lodge.... We were not well off.  The Ulster Orchestra has never been elitist:  when I was at primary school the Orchestra played in St Teresa’s Parochial Hall on the Glen Road in west Belfast in the 1960s...”

A rural person talked about his upbringing living in a Council house in a small village, his introduction to music (which was hearing the Sash and God Save the Queen), and being instructed at school by Ulster Orchestra musicians until, in his words:-

“On my 35th birthday I conducted the Orchestra - my own piece to celebrate the millennium, and the same year went on to be musical director of Riverdance, touring the world....”

Another supporter refers to her organisation of a concert following the Omagh bomb in 1998.  She recounts how the event snowballed when she secured the Waterfront Hall and:-

“I contacted the Ulster Orchestra to ask if they would perform.  The answer was an unequivocal Yes.  All the musicians who took part in the Concert for Omagh performed gratis so that as much money as possible would go to the fund for the victims and survivors of the atrocity.  And this is how they are rewarded in their turn?  I think not.”

The Ulster Orchestra has done all of this invaluable work for some 48 years, never once cancelling a concert through all the years of the Troubles. 

  

Looking at all of the evidence, it is impossible to believe that any of this melodious activity - the orchestra, its music, the audience - could be classed as elitist.

©Michael McSorley 2014

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[1]Belfast Telegraph Comment editorial 27 Nov 2014p3-4. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/probe-as-expenses-scandal-rocks-stormont-if-politicians-were-tradesmen-no-one-would-want-their-shoddy-work-and-inflated-costs-30778119.html

[2] http://ulsterorchestra.com/news/children-across-northern-ireland-take-part-in-their-own-save-the-ulster-orc

[3] http://www.classicfm.com/discover/fast-and-friendly-guides/classical-music-pop-songs

[4] 3 CD set, sleeve-notes.  Smetana Ma Vlast complete orchestral works, Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra. 2007

[5] Dvorak Slavonic Dances Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Antal Dorati 1999 CD.

[6] QUB Arts Festival 23/4 Oct 2010 played in full by Joanna MacGregor

[7] http://www.rvwsociety.com/bio_expanded.html

[8] Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies LP sleevenotes Vienna State Opera Orchestra. Philips 1958.

[9] UO flash mob St Georges Market Belfast, filmed by Chrissie Harris Productions http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/article/6822/ulster-orchestra-flash-mob

[10] Chopin “Les Brillantes” double CD Andrzej Jagodzinski Trio. Belfast Festival at Queens concert 27 Oct 2010

[11] Programme notes Moscow State Symphony Orchestra concert Waterfront Hall Belfast 22 May 1997

[12] Janet Harbinson’s CD Feasting with Carolan (The Irish Harp Orchestra)

[13] You Tube Extract of Carolan’s Concerto played by The Chieftains led by Belfast flautist James Galway:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MtXjjIcjWE

[14] CD sleeve-notes James Galway Mozart Concerto for Flute & Harp K299. Marisa Robles harp. Academy of St Martin in the Fields

[15] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbdxm8Ia0Wc

[16] http://michaelmcsorleytravel.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-netherlands.html

[17] https://www.facebook.com/SaveTheUlsterOrchestra?pnref=lhc