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Helen Lawrence |
Classical music is ‘accessible’
The success of the Sun newspaper’s sponsorship of a night at the opera contradicts our ideas of cultural elitism, writes Helen Lawrence
AMONG the amusing coverage of Don Giovanni at Covent Garden in the Sun newspaper, was the question: “Who said opera is boring?” Who indeed? It set me thinking.
The old Labour Party view, that the arts were ennobling, was part of the 19th-century progressive movement challenging the ruling-class attitude that ordinary working people should be “kept in their place”.
Great efforts were made to provide subsidised education, concerts and lectures for people who had been denied these things.
For people like my parents, poor east Londoners who left school at 14, the discovery of these treasures through Toynbee Hall and similar organisations was their route to a better life.
That has now been turned on its head. Opera cannot be mentioned without the pejorative adjective “elitist”.
Why? It is not accidental. A new and influential post-war, left-wing generation espoused an old Soviet Marxist dogma that dismissed the arts, and education generally, as “bourgeois culture” and therefore “not relevant” to the working people of today. This was typified by conceptual artist Su Braden who wrote in 1978: “The so-called cultural heritage which made Europe great – the Bachs and Beethovens, the Shakespeares and Dantes, the Constables and Titians – is no longer communicating anything to the vast majority of Europe’s population. It is not that these cultural forms are above people’s heads but that it is a bourgeois culture and therefore only meaningful to that group.”
But this drive towards more “popular” and “accessible” culture simply created a vacuum which predatory capitalism has exploited.
The real driving force is money. Hugh Jenkins, the 1970s Labour culture minister, warned of “merchandisers” in search of maximum profit who “identify their markets and serve them with products which must be easily assimilable, widely acceptable and highly profitable” (The Culture Gap, An experience of government and the arts, 1979).
Bill Holland of Decca spelt it out in a 2003 interview in The Times: “We’re in the business of turning a profit for the shareholders. Working in the business teaches you that your favourite music shouldn’t be based on genre, it should be based on sales.”
Classical music is “accessible” to anyone who wants to listen to it. The cheap seats at the opera houses are cheaper than those at football matches. When allowed the sort of exposure given to pop music, demand rises: Nessun Dorma after the 1990 Football World Cup, and, most recently, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony after Maestro on BBC2.
The truth is that people have been deliberately warned off opera: if you continually insist that something is “irrelevant” and “inaccessible”, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And people like Margaret Hodge are still at it, with her recent ludicrous criticism of the Proms. Interestingly, her comments drew unanimous condemnation from Sun readers.
In deciding for others what they may or may not appreciate, the populist trend-setters are themselves patronising and elitist.
They are also ignorant. The justification that pop culture is somehow “revolutionary” while classical music is part of the establishment is pure nonsense.
Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven and Mozart were the real revolutionaries. All came from humble backgrounds and constantly struggled for financial survival. They challenged the establishment, dealing with prejudice, injustice and the great controversial social and political issues of the day, confronting censorship by oppressive regimes.
Their work has eternal significance, and is as relevant today as ever. Yes, there is “sex, death and booze”, as the Sun puts it, in opera. The difference is that it does not glorify these things – it examines them in a moral context.
The hand-wringing by politicians over the rising alcoholism and violence that accompany pop culture is pure hypocrisy; it has been facilitated by government policies.
It is a betrayal of everything the Labour movement stood for. Generations of children have been cut off from a cultural heritage, and the discipline, respect and teamwork of playing European classical music that could have immensely enriched their lives.
Contrast that with the profit-driven culture of “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” that has taken its place, some of which overtly extols misogyny, homophobia and violence.
Why are people surprised at the problems afflicting today’s youth when such role models are promoted to them and their exponents given honours?
It is a testimony to the enduring power and appeal of truly great art that it survives everything its detractors throw at it. Perhaps the Sun conversion marks the start of a new era.
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