Musicians have always had to struggle and make sacrifices for their art. In previous times, commercial and political pressures helped to create a climate of insecurity in the world of music. Today the problem is a little different. Outwardly, music and art are celebrated as never before - but they also face relentless pressure to serve causes that have little to do with their inner meaning. As former UK prime minister Tony Blair said last year, part of his project was to make ‘the arts and culture part of our “core script”’. Music that is composed and played to someone else’s script is unlikely to inspire the kind of inarticulate revelation of Truth that so stirred Browning.
Indeed, the current focus on who sits in the audience and on the therapeutic value of music represents a demotion of music’s status and its truth. That is why the current trend for subordinating music to someone else’s script should be loudly challenged. And that can be done only if we have more confidence in people than those populist snobs do, who imagine that children must make do with second-rate ‘music-making opportunities’. Classical insights into the status of art - beauty is truth and truth is beauty - have long roused the human imagination. They will do so yet again, especially if we have the courage to confront the current obsession with the composition of the audience and instead allow the sound of music to speak for itself.
