FEATURE
CHALLENGING THE THREATS TO MUSIC EDUCATION Lord Black of Brentwood, the Chairman of the RCM’s Council and a keen musician, makes a defiant case for the importance of music education – and explains how we all have a vital role to play in ensuring its future.
Opposite Lord Black addresses Council (top) and students (bottom), and visits the More Music building development
These are extraordinary times and it is up to us all to explain how vital music is for the well being and education of young people, as well as for the success of the UK’s economy. Lord Black of Brentwood
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UPBEAT AUTUMN 2019
When I went to my first meeting of the RCM Council ten years ago, I never dreamed that a decade on I would hear myself having to utter these words - that we are now in a pitched battle to secure the future of music itself. How on earth has this happened? My own musical journey in some ways illustrates the profound change that has taken place. It began when I was at Brentwood School in Essex. I remember to this day the electrifying moment when I started for the first time to make music – as so many do – on a recorder. I was hooked. The piano, which I still play, followed, along with the trumpet, clarinet and organ. Music dominated much of my time at school – making me, I think, a more rounded and happier pupil who did better in other subjects as a result. I took ABRSM exams, I did GCSE and A level, I played in orchestras and sang in choirs. My parents encouraged me – taking me to concerts in London and buying me records (wonderfully now back in fashion). That was how, listening for the first time to the Great C Major – which will be performed at the College
this term – I fell in love with Schubert, whose music has been the enduring passion of my life. And, of course, I took all this for granted – because music then was an opportunity that all children, no matter what school they went to or what their background, enjoyed. Tragically, that is no longer the case in state schools, where music is under sustained and brutal attack. An understanding and appreciation of music, and the ability to take part in it, should be the birth-right of all children, not just the privilege of those who can afford it. But because of short-sighted changes to the curriculum and funding cuts for local authorities, music in many places is dying out. In many schools, there is no music provision at all. The numbers taking GCSE and A level music are plummeting. The number of teachers is declining, as is music outside the classroom. And, as a study commissioned by the RCM and others earlier this year showed, it is the most disadvantaged – who need music the most – who are suffering.
