We lack a strong enough workforce of professional 'portfolio' musicians
Why, despite the acclaimed National Music Plan in 2011 and the subsequent establishment of the music hubs in 2012, are we still struggling to establish a 21st-century music education system in this country that not only reflects the pursuit of excellence, but also meets the needs of young people and their contemporary cultural landscape?
The launch of Arts Council England’s cultural education challenge last week provides a welcome focus on the importance of partnerships in delivering a consistent, high-quality cultural education for all young people. This approach is something we at the Barbican and Guildhall School of Music and Drama strongly endorse; it reflects the approach we’re taking with our East London Cultural Education Partnership.
However, alongside the lack of high-quality education partnerships across the country, I’d argue that a major reason for inconsistency in provision, particularly in classical music, is that we still do not have a strong enough workforce of professional “portfolio” musicians. As 21st-century professional practitioners, a musician must not only excel as a performer, but also as a teacher, leader and creative collaborator across a range of styles and genres.
Music education is out of tune with how young people learn
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I’m talking about a workforce that is capable of reaching the widest possible public through inspirational performance and giving people from all walks of life the ability to engage with and play music of the past and present with confidence and joy. A critical part of a professional musician’s portfolio is to be able to encourage musical curiosity in participants, equipping them with the skills to create the music of the future.
Artists and musicians are increasingly engaging with people, places and digital technology, creating different types of environments for creation and performance, with ever-greater blurring of boundaries between artforms.
However, the professional development of classically trained musicians still primarily focuses on the pursuit of excellence in relatively narrow terms: interpreting and performing great works of the past at the expense of experimenting and progressing musical skills relevant to the needs of today’s society.
Highly trained classical musicians bring an artistic, educational, social and economic value to our society. The skills and expertise they gain through years of specialist coaching and training are of the highest order and easily transferrable. But we still struggle to articulate and quantify the genuine value, joy and inspiration these specialist practitioners bring to people and society at large. It feels that we are somewhat bound by an unspoken hierarchy of what constitutes excellence and a “real job” in the classical music sector.
We need to get beyond the notion that classical musicians who don’t make it as performers must take the “second/third-best” option as a teacher, community musician, creative workshop leader, music therapist, music administrator or even a career pathway outside the music/arts sector.
These roles are essential to the wellbeing and mental health of our society and should be celebrated. Doing this would also highlight just how employable classically trained musicians are and what an important contribution they make to our thriving creative and cultural industries, as well as the economy at large.
Conservatoires, from which hundreds of highly trained musicians graduate each year across the UK, have a core business of training students primarily as performers or composers.
As part of this core business, I believe students should learn how to teach from the outset of their training, how to pass on their knowledge and engage with musical discourse on as many levels as possible.
It shouldn’t be seen as a distraction or compromise to music-making. Instead it should be seen to enhance the development of one’s overall musicianship. At the Guildhall School and Barbican Centre we are continually looking to support this, including through our new BA honours degree in performance and creative enterprise, which encourages artists from a range of music and theatre backgrounds to develop their performance, production, collaboration and leadership skills for employment in the arts industry.
Training a musician to pass on music to others by playing, singing, leading ensembles, improvising, composing and even dancing makes them not only more employable, but also more fulfilled and confident about how their skills can be deployed in a variety of contexts.
In many ways JS Bach was the ultimate portfolio musician of the 18th century. Employed primarily as a teacher, he – as we all know – also found time to compose and perform. This quote about Bach by musician and music theorist Johann Nikolaus Forkel says a lot:
Besides Bach’s great merit as so accomplished a performer, composer and teacher of music, he had also the merit of being an excellent father, friend and citizen. His virtues as a father he showed by the care for the education of his children, and the others by his conscientious performance of his social and civic duties. His acquaintance was agreeable to everyone.
Would Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Brandenburg Concertos or Art of Fugue have been any better without the “distraction” of his other commitments? I’d say: highly unlikely.
Sean Gregory is director of creative learning at the Barbican and
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
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