Only the rich will be able to learn an instrument, fears Proms composer
Errollyn Wallen, MBE & CBE, is the first black woman to receive the prestigious Ivor Novello award for classical music, and the first to have her work featured in The Proms.
She initially trained as a dancer, has appeared on Top of The Pops as a session musician, composed over 20 Operas and recently appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. The article below summarises her episode;
The composer Errollyn Wallen said she feels “abject despair” that only children whose parents can afford to pay for music lessons will be able to play a classical instrument in the future.
Wallen, 66, who composed the music for Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilees, said the lack of free music teaching at state schools – from which she benefited as a child – will have devastating consequences.
She told Desert Island Discs on BBC radio 4: “The only reason I can sit here and talk to you is that at school we had free music lessons. We had a fantastic music teacher who taught us all in Tottenham, [at] nine years old, to read and write music and to love orchestral music. There wasn’t this hierarchy. My absolute abject despair is that soon it will only be people with money who will be playing classical music.”
Fewer than 5 per cent of undergraduates at the Royal Academy of Music come from a working-class background, according to official figures. The data highlights the lack of music at many state schools, and the high cost of private music lessons. There is no obligation for a state school to hire a music teacher, and many do not.
At school, Wallen learned to play the piano. A weekly piano lesson at the average cost of £36 an hour adds up to about £1,900 a year, according to the Independent Society of Musicians.
“I don’t know how we have got to this point where it’s perceived as this elite thing, just for some people.” Said Wallen, who studied music at Goldsmiths, University of London, Kings College London and Cambridge University.” It’s this culture we’ve got to create of not being suspicious of things that are really good for us.”
Author: Dominic Hauschild, Published by The Times
