Acts of cultural supremacy

The Guardian,
Thursday March 6 2008


This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday March 06 2008 on p35 of the Leaders & reply section. It was last updated at 00:07 on March 06 2008.

Margaret Hodge is to be congratulated for having chosen the least appropriate of all musical events for her ill-advised attack (Hodge attacks Proms, March 4). The Proms are celebrated worldwide for their appeal to all possible audiences, from the most dedicated classical music anorak to the first-time concert-goer of any age or background. Had she singled out one of the opera houses where a dinner-jacket and bottle of champagne are required audience accessories, there might have been some point to her claims; but to attack the world's most popular classical music festival is ridiculous.

I very much doubt she has ever stood with the dedicated Prommers, listening intently to music ranging from medieval to hard-line contemporary. Having played several times at the Proms, I can testify to the unique atmosphere engendered by such open-minded concentration; every year, the festival reaffirms the joy that music can bring to people everywhere.

Interesting, too - and wearily predictable - that the minister should choose to attack a classical-music institution. She wouldn't dare attack a concert by a rap artist for failing to appeal to the vast majority of British listeners for fear that it might lose her votes. We classical musicians resent having the art that we love assigned to one particular class of society. It is neither the players nor the promoters - and certainly not the music itself - who are responsible for this; it is a position thrust upon us by the mindless twitterings of people who understand absolutely nothing about music.
Steven Isserlis, London

Poor show for using a picture of a bunch of white, mainly male, black-tied punters with the caption "the audience at the Royal Opera House" (All white on the night?, G2, March 5). I always sit in the stalls, often wearing jeans. This is probably a gala evening and so not repesentative of "the audience".
Ciarán O'Meara, London

Margaret Hodge's attack is ill-informed. The BBC has significantly widened the range of music in the Proms each year and the audiences it attracts, but it remains first and foremost a festival of western classical music and probably the most accessible one in the world, of which our culture minister should be proud. The Notting Hill carnival is a wonderfully vibrant celebration of street performance, music and costume reflecting another aspect of British life. Neither is diminished by the fact that its appeal is only to a section of the community.

Events at the Albert Hall this year include not just the party high-jinks of the last night of the Proms (unrepresentative incidentally of the Proms as a whole), but concerts of Asian music, jazz, world music, rock and pop, ballet, circus, celebrations by the Sikh community, and performances by schoolchildren from every kind of background. The essence of culture is its diversity and distinctive quality, and the essential British value that Margaret Hodge seems to have forgotten is liberty: our freedom to enjoy and participate in whatever form of cultural expression we choose.
David Elliott, chief executive, Royal Albert Hall

I don't always agree with Margaret Hodge, but The Last Night of the Proms demeans the world class festival of music that has gone before and denigrates British classical music and composers. It retained Rule Britannia last year, ignoring appeals that in the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade it was a gross anachronism.
Dr Graham Ullathorne , Chesterfield, Derbyshire

First, Margaret Hodge seems to think that the kind of people who attend the Proms - middle-class, law-abiding, mostly employed, culturally engaged - are not good examples of British identity. Second, she thinks that Henry VIII - an English, not British, king - is.
Iain Hill, Glasgow

Henry did quite a bit of separating, as we know, but not of state and religion - indeed, quite the opposite. The Acts of Submission and Supremacy established the king as governor of the church.
John Stilwell, Penzance, Cornwall



guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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Who says nationalism can't make good art?

Mark Ravenhill
Monday March 17, 2008

Guardian


I remember 1975. Rows of men on British Rail platforms wearing bowler hats and waiting for the 7.52 to Victoria, looking no different from their Edwardian grandfathers. Theatre audiences standing unthinkingly as a crackling record played the national anthem after the performance. Strange to think it was Margaret Thatcher who got rid of that world. Maybe she never meant to. Certainly, she eagerly wrapped herself in the British flag for the Falklands conflict and spoke fervently of the need to return to Victorian values, even if she did have another, stronger impulse: to kick away the cosy insularity of British economic life and expose us to the monetary storms of the global market.

Like almost every artist of the time, I despised Thatcher. But I also despised the obedient docility that, as the national anthem began, saw us all stand staring proudly ahead, as though we still ruled over that mighty empire - even though it had actually crumbled away. Indifference or hostility to nationalism was a mark of the artist then, and is largely so now. Of late, though, we're starting to feel a little more conflicted about it all - but not as conflicted as our current government. Earlier this month, Margaret Hodge, one of our culture ministers, attacked the great British institution that is the Proms, while ideas were floated by her colleagues for school-leavers to pledge allegiance to the Queen. Waving the flag on telly once a year to Land of Hope and Glory is wrong, it seems, while inculcating young people into the outdated rhetoric of monarchy is right.

In all the reporting of Hodge's clumsy comments, I saw little that drew a distinction between the hugely popular, diverse music that makes up the bulk of the Proms and its crassly triumphant Last Night. Maybe Hodge herself doesn't know the difference. But whatever's wrong with the Proms is right there in those final hours. Anyone brave enough to kill off that behemoth would reveal the Proms in all their glory: excellent programming, diverse live audiences and a huge national following on radio and TV. It's a model that any arts organisation would be eager to emulate, if only Land of Hope and Glory didn't come along and defecate messily on everything that had come before.

Nationalism hasn't always produced bad art. In fact, it has created some of the very best. Recently, I read The Maid of Orleans, the great German playwright Schiller's drama about Joan of Arc. It swept me along. Coming from the people, Joan has the visionary ability to lead them, when the monarchy and the aristocracy have failed. National heroes were a great draw for Schiller: his William Tell defends his people against invaders just as Joan does, while his Mary Stuart is more fired by her patriotic Scottish spirit than by her ties to family and royalty, in the form of Elizabeth, her cousin and queen.

Schiller was writing at a time when nationalism was a radical idea. In Schiller's world, monarchs are an untrustworthy breed, always looking over the heads of their people to the supranational interests of an elite. The way forward, Schiller implies, is for the people to identify their national spirit and unite. No wonder the composer Verdi, dreaming of uniting Italian city states just as Germany's principalities were being united, so often used Schiller's work.

Earlier this month, I saw Eisenstein's epic film Alexander Nevsky, with Prokofiev's thunderous score performed live by the London Symphony Orchestra. So little was known about the real Nevsky, Eisenstein once said, that he could make up almost anything about him. And so he created the story of a prince who lives among his people as a fisherman and - imbued with their national spirit - gives them the strength to see off German invaders. Although a clear call to arms for the Russian people, as Hitler's army set its sights on Stalin's Russia, it is nevertheless a wonderful film. Propaganda it may be, yet it is realistic, never flinching from showing us the butchery of medieval warfare into which the almost godlike Nevsky leads the people. Eisenstein's film proved to be a major inspiration for Olivier's screen adaptation of Henry V, even if Olivier never offered such an honest portrait of war's horrors.

We on the political and cultural left have come to think of the nationalistic urge as a necessarily bad starting point for making decent art. And yet international art can be just as terrible: the film with so many international co-producers that it becomes an unwatchable mulch, the vaguely "one world" impulses of some world music and fusion. It's time to re-examine our attitude. We need to look at what being British really means and end all this talk of oaths to a redundant monarch. The result could be something truly progressive and radical - and artists could lead the way.


guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

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