Primary Music Matters - Playing Your Part

The conference on primary school music education took place on the day of the tube strike (Wednesday 10 June 2009) but eighty per cent of the delegates arrived in good time at the Wigmore Hall. JLC chair Nick Stuart welcomed the assembly and threaded the proceedings with appropriate and helpful remarks.

 

The tone for a highly successful morning was set by composer and creative director Hannah Conway, who got us all on our feet stomping, clapping, clicking and singing together with Year 3 pupils from St Vincent’s RC Primary, Westminster; we developed a whole vocal performance in three parts. As the conference proceeded, Hannah disappeared with the children and within two hours they returned to give an onstage performance, complete with drums, conches, xylophones and other instruments, accompanied by Hannah on piano.

 

She then played back to us the classical piece on which her exercise was based: Rachmaninov’s 2^nd Symphony and the kids were amazed. So were we: it was a brilliant demonstration of how musical education, appreciation and creativity can mesh.

 

In his keynote address, Times music critic Richard Morrison – who conducts a choir in his spare time – advocated beating the drum about primary school music more loudly and also the need for sustainability; we were in danger of becoming a passive society – not cooking, not playing sport, not making music. He emphasised the latent talent in all of us and quoted Dame Liz Forgan, new chair of the Arts Council, on being exposed to Tristan at the age of six and being hooked for life: throwing children into a boiling vat of great music did them no harm at all.

 

Morrison said that he had seen Janet Baker, David Oistrakh and Jaqueline Du Pre on this same Wigmore Hall stage and said it was no different a world from a Year 3 recorder lesson: no man is an island, nor is a classroom. The talent for making music is inside all of us, and is the most exciting thing you can do.

 

He said there should be more link-up between schools and outside voluntary musical activity, something echoed later by Suzi Digby of the Voices Foundation who said that music was the centre of the culture on the streets and why should that be different in the classroom? She, too, put us through our paces in a really interesting way – and a chorus of “Pease pudding hot” – and explained the basics of working on rhythm, pitch, the inner voice and notation with Year 6.

 

Ursula Crickmay of the Wigmore Hall Community and Education Department, together with Matthew Glen of the nearby St Marylebone School, explained long term partnerships and planning in school and gave a vivid illustration of a German lieder project with the great international soprano Anne Murray.

 

Two of the speakers breezed in right on cue from traffic delays and made infectiously enthusiastic contributions: Cherry Forbes, Education Manager of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, who also plays in the band, made it clear that education is not an add-on with them, it’s core. All the musicians take part. She explained how she introduces children to the idea of something like sonata form: first subject and second subject as characters who mingle in a development section, acquire characteristics of each other in the recapitulation section and have a party in the coda: we had a twelve year old cheeky Haydn meeting an 88 year-old chap called Bartholomew in the Swiss Alps where the latter had gone to a spa. She reported a particularly good working relationship with Camden Music Service.  

 

Then came Annie Williams, Head of Holy Trinity and St Silas Primary in Camden, probably the star of the show. She made all her pupils play an instrument – and the teachers, too! The school has an orchestra, a jazz band and two choirs. The jazz band regaled us with three wonderful items, the faces of the small trumpet players a real picture. Annie said the cost was not enormous; getting money for the activities was not a problem. Each spring term is an arts term, with no cramming for Sats. Yet the results are very good. If every primary school had an Annie Williams, this country would be transformed. She was inspirational, no other word for it, and she spoke beautifully, explaining that she was Welsh but couldn’t sing very well herself. That, too was not the point: “You can talk,” she said, “therefore you can sing.” It was nothing to do with doing something well, necessarily, it was doing it at all.

 

Tom Campbell from the Mayor’s Office, standing in for a tonsilitis-afflicted Munira Mirza at the GLA, itemised five areas of possible strategy, pending a statement next year: a scholarship fund, a large “Expo” style event, initiatives around the Olympics, help with on-line media, and help with Transport for London.  Then James Devaney, Music Services Coordinator at Hammersmith and Fulham, quoted the importance of the Music Manifesto and other key documents in emphasising the need for national policy to link with local needs. He sounded very hands-on and convincing.

 

Martin Neary, the John Lyon's Charity music advisor, then led a panel discussion, re-visiting many of the key points and raising some submitted written questions from the delegates.  The conversation was full of hints, pointers and provocations.

 

Before we adjourned for lunch downstairs, we were entertained by three students from the Centre for Young Musicians playing a rare little gem, a piano trio by Donizetti. Art had the last word, and quite right too. A terrific success all round, very enlightening and encouraging.