Calling classical music by any other name is just rebranding

The director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, James Williams, has suggested that we should rename classical music “orchestral music” to widen its appeal, especially for young people. Classical music has “a certain stigma attached to it”, he says – and so should be rebranded.

If only it were that easy. This is fiddling with words; it’s semantics, when getting young people to appreciate classical (or orchestral) music is really about education. Teaching them about Bach and Mozart is as important as teaching them Rembrandt or Shakespeare. It’s as fundamental as that.

In fact, audiences for our concerts – performances by the BBC singers and the Bach Choir – have got younger over the past few years. That is really heartening. But there is no getting away from it: in Britain we’re way behind other European countries in popularising classical music.

The Germans, French and Scandinavians are just so much better than we are in this respect. In Berlin concerts have to be played three times to meet demand; there are queues round the block. Going to concerts, joining choirs or orchestras, is just something people do. There are many wonderful new concert halls being built in Europe; here, there’s a proposal for one in London and not much else.

We do manage to attract huge audiences once a year with the Proms – arguably the most successful music festival in the world – which goes to enormous effort to attract young people. But its success only highlights the extent to which attitudes here are so different from elsewhere.

The way to change things is through education. Why is it that if you go to a private school in Britain you’ll be given the opportunity to join orchestras and choirs and learn music, but if you don’t go to one, you won’t?

To me, that is socially divisive. State school music provision in Britain was incredibly strong during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, but Thatcherism changed all that. The county and city orchestras, the amazing things we had in this country, don’t exist any more. So where are we building new audiences?

The facile answer is that it’s all about outreach – by choirs such as mine, or institutions like the Royal Opera house, or the Proms. But it’s not. Creating new and wider audiences is about training music teachers and sending them into schools on the same basis as maths teachers, not just engaging peripatetic instrument teachers when schools can afford them. Teaching children music is as important as teaching them a new language. Everyone should be able to get tuition in an instrument.

We need to treat music as fundamental to our culture, every bit as much as art or literature. Great music such as Beethoven’s symphonies or Schubert’s songs are unquestionable masterpieces. We should be taught about them. We don’t have to be precious about this – there’s room for every kind of music – but our Western culture rests on these elements of greatness and our children should experience them – to be edified as well as educated.

That’s the real way to broaden audiences. But that would take political will and investment, and it’s a long time since we’ve had politicians who are really interested in the arts.

That’s our challenge, not trying to rebrand classical music. As far as I’m concerned you can call it what you like.

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