Creating a public for classical music means challenging and not patronising listeners
The “world’s greatest classical music festival”. Such has been the tagline for the BBC Proms for as long as I, at least, can remember. But is their weight to this claim?
Founded by the musical impresario Robert Newman, the Proms has run continuously since 1895 — save for short wartime interruptions — and, on balance, its audience size, duration, global reach, prestige, access, and cost are unrivalled. Speaking as the first non-native English conductor of the Last Night of the Proms, in 2007, Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as “the world’s largest and most democratic musical festival”. Today, tickets cost £8, including fees, regardless of whether you book online or in person. In an age of ticket touts and masters, the Proms continues to bring the chalice of high culture to “the people”: world-leading orchestras for the price of a London lager.
The use of the word “democratic”, however, has gained momentum in academic musicology over the last two decades. How it might refer to pricing strategy is relatively straightforward, but how it might pertain to programming and marketing is a source of contention. My heart accordingly sank when news broke of the three headline proms, put on sale before the rest: The Traitors Prom (26 July), the Relaxed Prom (10 August), and the CBeebies Prom: A Magical Bedtime Story (25 August).
Newman’s vision in 1894 was thus: “I am going to run nightly concerts and train the public by easy stages. Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.” 130 years later, and one is left scratching their head as to why a magical bedtime story (no doubt, part of a well-meaning drive to increase youth engagement), a reality television series (no doubt, a creative idea for appealing to new audiences), and a soporific prom (no doubt, ideal for those who feel sleepy) were heralded with such fanfare, instead of the roster of musical gems on offer.
Prom 6 (22 July) pairs Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with Mark Simpson’s sci-fi inspired ZEBRA (or, 2-3-74: The Divine Invasion of Philip K. Dick). Prom 8 features Berio’s Sequenza V for solo trombone: a piece requiring the performer to use multiphonics, plunger mutes, inhalation, and mime, before turning to the audience to ask “Why?”. Prom 17 presents two clarinet concerti: Copland’s virtuosic stalwart alongside Artie Shaw’s 8-minute offering. And then there is Prom 19, the late-night celebration of Arvo Pärt at 90. Surely this is more enticing than the chance to attend a “relaxed prom”?
The Relaxing Prom is particularly irksome insofar as it perpetuates the myth that classical music is perfect background filler before going to bed. Granted, some classical music was created with this in mind (Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Richter’s eight-and-a-half-hour Sleep, etc.), but a programme containing John William’s Star Wars and Holst’s Mars: The Bringer of War?. The clues are in the names. This is music to arrest, to thrill. Notionally, “audience members are free to leave and re-enter the auditorium at any point. Chill-out areas offer a space for anyone who needs some quiet time before or during the performance.” The same is true of any Prom. If you really need to pee, no one is stopping you, and Hyde Park is a stone’s throw away, literally. What is trying to be achieved by reducing the bombast of Duel of the Fates to a soundscape that plays second fiddle to the whims of the individual? There is nothing, especially in an increasingly atomised world, that compares to a performance, musical or otherwise, around which we might orient ourselves in order to propel upwards.
The democratisation intended by Newman’s vision implies that the musical culture is elevated and the people are elevated to it
Nigel Kennedy’s recent performance with The Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall (1 June) was a masterclass in inventive programming. The concert was built around five self-composed classical-jazz works in the first half, and the entirety of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in the second. A notionally incongruous concoction amidst academic circles, but harmonising perfectly once peppered with free improvisations and whimsical, relational and referential, interconnected interludes (the Handel/Halvorsen Passacaglia, Charlie Chaplin’s Smile, Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime, Ryūichi Sakamoto’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and Bach’s Partita in E Major). This was forward-thinking, intelligent, zany, and, dare I say it, brave musical curation as its zenith. The nadir is characterised by the Proms cherry-picking lollipops (a standalone Summer from the Four Seasons in Prom 3) or inserting entire concerts (as with the Soul Revolution of Prom 22) which depart entirely from what it might mean to be the “world’s greatest classical music festival”. Such manifestations of “democratising the canon” (overlooking the erroneous nature of being able to decentre something that is both inherently centred and impervious to social engineering) amount to canonical atomisation at best, or cultural nebulisation at worst.
The democratisation intended by Newman’s vision implies that the musical culture is elevated and the people are elevated to it. There is always the risk of the cultural achievements of the past being broken up so that they can be treated like goods on a conveyor belt. This means, in fact, that the audience will not experience democratisation, but rather a degraded experience that is less likely to be appreciated, respected, or kept.
This year’s Proms features Birtwistle dancing with Beethoven, the world’s only professional one-handed concert pianist, the “father of Holy Minimalism”, and numerous other nocturnal treats. I simply lament the fact that relaxation and a reality television series are placed front and centre. Let us revisit Newman’s vision in 2095.
The BBC Proms 2025 started this week and runs until Saturday 13 September.