Richard Morrison

The the post-viral struggle to bring music back will be hard and grim

The other day I came across some old photos of family holidays when I was a child. My goodness, they look grim. In all of them we seemed to be huddled against a biting wind, usually with black clouds overhead. Possibly the person holding the camera was shaking with cold, because the pictures are so blurry that our faces are almost unrecognisable. And at the very moment the shutter clicks, invariably a stray dog wanders into the shot to urinate against a deckchair.

I was reminded of them because the editor of this eminent journal asked me to provide a ‘snapshot’ of how the classical music world is dealing with coronavirus. I fear that it will be just like those ancient holiday photos: hopelessly blurred, yet evoking a miserable scene out of which unpredictable and almost certainly unpleasant events could spring at any moment. Right now, towards the end of July, the news is so topsy-turvy, hopeful signs so tangled with bleak predictions, that any summary is bound to be fragmentary and out-of-date within hours. Nevertheless, here goes.

Confounding many expectations, the government has revealed what seems like a reasonable rescue package for cultural organisations, amounting to £1.57 billion. However, it will take months to be distributed, and won’t immediately address the biggest issue facing classical music: the fact that so many performers are self-employed. Even if they’ve been helped financially by the government (and thousands haven’t), that scheme ends in August, at which point the furloughing of employed musicians will also start being tapered out.

That wouldn’t be so bad if orchestras and opera companies could start performing again in early autumn. But all the signs are that they won’t be able to. Social-distancing guidelines remain in place for the public, meaning muchreduced audience sizes, while performers (especially wind players and singers) are governed by different spacing rules that seem to change by the week.

There’s worse. Even if orchestras could devise ways of performing safely, and of persuading some of their loyal audiences to buy tickets, the chances are that the venues they normally perform in will refuse to open their doors. London’s

Southbank Centre, for instance – Britain’s biggest arts centre and home to eight orchestras – announced several weeks ago that it probably won’t reopen until next April and is now making 400 of its staff redundant. That seems oddly defeatist at a time when musicians are so desperate to perform again. Why throw in the towel so early in the fight?

Set against that is a mass of creative thinking and doing, often coming from individual performers. Ad hoc concerts, usually outdoors, are springing up all over the country and musicians and composers are exploring the possibilities of streaming in enterprising ways. The BBC will offer at least a fortnight of live Proms as this weird summer ends, even though there will be no audience in the Albert Hall. These are encouraging signs that all is not yet lost – and I’m sorry I can’t put it more optimistically.

And of course if you look abroad, to countries that seem to have tackled the pandemic more efficiently than us, there are many more indications of normality returning. Madrid is staging operas again. The Salzburg, Lucerne and Ravenna festivals are still happening, even with reduced programmes and audiences. And in Scandinavia some orchestras never stopped.

Compared with those lucky places we still have a mountain to climb, and not just to save our professional musicians. Two million amateur singers still wait to hear whether they can return to their choirs this year, or ever. Don’t underestimate the spiritual loss they feel. Britain’s wonderful brass bands are also silenced. And there are big worries among music teachers that when schools return in September the government will impose an emergency ‘catch-up’ curriculum that will concentrate on the so-called ‘core’ subjects, making music in schools even more precarious.

One of three things will now happen. Either a reliable vaccine will be developed soon and solve everyone’s problems (though still leaving an arts landscape scarred with bankrupt organisations). Or people will get a lot braver about venturing into venues again, and live concerts and operas will return – albeit by fits and starts.

Or we will be helpless witnesses to the death of musical life as we know it. Which, although it might be journalistically fascinating, is such a heartbreaking prospect that I don’t want to contemplate it.

London’s Southbank Centre has announced that it probably won’t reopen until April 2021