ARTICLES

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Howard's keynote address to the Music Learning Live conference at the Sage, Gateshead on January 3oth 2008 [transcription] is here

Interview/profile in The Times Body & Soul Saturday 28th April 2007 (follow link):

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/b...

Interview in The Financial Times Saturday April 21st 2007 (follow link):

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9cf5de80-efa5-11db-a64e-000b5df10621.html

Interview in The Sunday Times April 8th 2007 (follow link):

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article1622645.ece

Backbeat column in The Teacher April 2007:

'Planting the seeds of song' by Howard Goodall

There is an ethnic group of tribes who live on the Hunan-Guizhou-Guangxi region borders in China called the Dong. They are many fascinating aspects of their culture, like the fact that their indigenous language was only written down for the first time in 1949 after the Maoist Revolution, or that they have constructed huge 'drum towers' that act as ritual centres of their communities (a resident Stomp! for every village).

But there are two particular fatures of their lifestyle that seem to me to be incredibly pertinent right now. One is that for every child that is born a fir tree sapling is planted, so that when the child becomes 18 the wood can be made into a house for the new adult when they marry. Even though nowadays a fir tree can be matured in as few as 10 years, they are still called '18-year trees'. Talk about a neutral carbon footprint.

The second wonderful characteristic of the Dong people's lifestyle is that singing is absolutely central to their existence. Singing is not something they do just to let off steam after a tough week down at the logging plant. It is an everyday alternative method of communication, used in some villages more widely than speech. When a boy woos his chosen girl, he must do so by singing. Poor singers are often coached by expert elders to improve the boy or girl's chances of a good match. This is a world where Leona from the X-Factor would be significantly more important than Simon Cowell or where Norah Jones might be London's mayor, so crucial to one's status is the quality of one's singing voice. All communal occasions are marked by singing, including ceremonial and decision-making gatherings. Imagine county council meetings or the opening of parliament in the UK beginning with a sing-song! Elizabeth II would have to abdicate in favour of Lesley Garrett and Tony would have to brush down his old Ugly Rumours set.

Singing is about as good for you as a thing can be and in my new role as singing 'ambassador' I hope to able to persuade many more schools that starting the day with it would do wonders for the self-esteem, concentration, morale and behaviour of the young people in them. Never mind that it is a wholly positive, non-competitive, team-building, community-cohering activity, it is actually hugely enjoyable when led by someone who knows what they are doing and when the choice of songs is cleverly made.

Asthmatics do not have trouble breathing when they sing nor, for some reason I do not understand, do people with speech impediments always carry that impediment over into singing lyrics - stammering doesn't occur in singing, for example.

Singing makes you feel good about yourself even if you are just bellowing along with others in a rough and ready way. It is as natural to us as laughing and yet it is possible for many thousands of young Britons to get through a whole week at school without doing it once. This can't be right. Indeed it is perverse, like saying no student will be allowed to smile for a week.

Whilst it may be a challenge to persuade a half-asleep 15-year old to sing at 9am on a Tuesday morning it is not hard to get primary age children to sing and so our recently-announced national singing campaign will begin with the primary sector and move upwards, as it were, from there. A habit of singing acquired at primary school is a gift that stays with a young person throughout their lives, even if it becomes less 'public' an activity during adolescence.

For teenage boys, though, the apparent reluctance to want to sing, or the labelling of it as something girlie, is only attached to certain types of group singing and certain types of song. Not many teenage boys would label the singing of Lemar or Gnarls Barkley as 'girlie', nor would many turn down the opportunity of joining a band like The Feeling or The Darkness, both of whose sound relies on high quality, uninhibited lead and close-harmony backing vocals.

So. How about one song every morning, for everyone, staff included? Get the students to suggest the songs as well. You may find that what feels like a strange idea today will probably be perfectly normal tomorrow and anyway, you have to start somewhere. Like planting a sapling at the birth of a child.

*

Interview in MasterSinger, the journal of the Association of British Chorla Directors, Spring 2007, with Kathryn Knight:

How would you describe Howard Goodall? 'Composer of TV theme tunes to Vicar of Dibley/Blackadder/Red Dwarf'; 'choral composer'; 'Channel 4 presenter and writer of various music series ( How music works/Big bangs );' 'BBC TV presenter for Choir of the Year;' 'Compere of the School Proms'...the list goes on! His energy, passion and commitment to music and music education has made Howard one of British music's greatest assets, and in January 2007 he was named as 'Singing Ambassador', with a brief to lead the Government's national singing campaign for primary schools.

I caught up with Howard to talk about his exciting news...in the middle of recording his score for the next Bean film, Mr Bean's Holiday.

Kathryn Knight: Your new role as 'Singing Ambassador' came out of your work on the Music Manifesto's Singing Workstream. What motivated you to get involved initially, and what do you believe can be achieved through the singing campaign?

HG: My musical experience began with singing at a very young age and I believe that singing is both a basic human activity as fundamental to our well-being as, say, laughter, and it is also most children's first access to music. Even if, within a few years, the young person will hve migrated from singing to some other musical activity like playing an instrument by preference, that first opening door through their own voice is vital. Everyone reading this article will know the many benefits to a child that singing can give, but often outside our choral silo it can be reduced to the function of a learning accelerator (which it is, undoubtedly) and therefore a carrot for aspirational headteachers, or as something 'nice' for children to do that looks good at the school showcase. For me it is far more than these things and I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that the three key ministers behind our initiative, David Lammy, Andrew Adonis and Alan Johnson wholeheartedly agree. This is therefore an historic opportunity for singing and I would have been mad not to want to do my bit if at all possible. Singing enhances self-esteem and improves group behaviour - it teaches concentration, performance and focus without feeling like it is teaching, since primary-age children really enjoy it. It coheres communities (what other communal, non competitive activities do we have at our disposal to effect this?) and it can be a safe place for self-expression and the letting off of emotional steam. What drives me on, most of all, is a sense that music can be about social justice as much as it is about notes, rhythms and chords, and if by giving every child a rewarding experience of music through singing at an early age we have helped to compensate in some way for the total lack of it in too many homes, then this will have been worthwhile. My aim is not to fill future concert halls with passive listeners but to give all children a musical toolbox that is at their disposal for the rest of their lives, a gift that they too can pass on to their children.

KK: The abcd membership is made up of choral directors up and down the country, with a massive variety of experience and contexts. What's your vision for how they might get involved with the singing campaign?

HG: One of the things which makes me confident our national singing campaign can make a difference is that the leadership in singing has modernised and improved dramatically in the last 10-15 years or so. abcd can take considerable credit for this. Only a halfwit would now tell a 6 year old they 'couldn't sing', that they were 'tone deaf',or that they should 'mime at the back of the choir.' The repertoire and methodology of singing has become much more focussed on the needs of the child, at last. Choir Schools have begun to see that a creative, open-hearted relationship with primary schools in their area could possibly hold the key to their own futures as well as being of great benefit to those primaries, and also understand that their particular expertise may need to be widened further to get maximum benefit from the enterprise. Accepting and embracing these challenges will be key to the success of such outreach projects. Many abcd members will know that persuading young women to sing is easier than persuading young men. If we can, through the campaign, enable the very best practice in this field, whether it be Berkshire's various boys' choirs or the extraordinary 'Bring on the boys' programme run by The Sage Gateshead, to be shared and better understood by the singing leadership at large, that will be a job well done. What I have learnt over the last two or so years researching the field is that no one conductor, no one choir, no one music service, no one school or college has all the answers to all these challenges, but that some of them do have some of the solutions, some of the time. If abcd members can count themselves in the 'still lots to learn' category rather than the 'expert knows it all' category then we have reason to be very optimistic about what will unfold in the next few years, since wherever I have encountered charismatic, versatile, dynamic singing leadership it has always been in the former category, not the latter.

KK: Tell us more about the National Songbook, and how we all might get involved.

HG: Every good singing leader, animateur, choral director or class music teacher working with primary school children has a collection of favourite songs in their back pocket that they know work with young people of this age. They are fun, connect well with the children, generally avoid the overt promotion of one religion over others and may include movement, games or some flexible component that suits the group or the time or place. Crucially these favourite songs are pitched to suit the young voices concerned and are not simply regurgitations of songs written for, by and about adults. Often these mini-collections have a strongly regional feel to them; dialect, local colour and recognisable place names all feature. They are songs for groups, not solo songs (there seems to be a widely-held misconception that our 21st century song book will be a compendium of pop songs - even if it were desirable on some level and clearable on another, most of the hits of the last 50 years are suited to an individual performance and would therefore disqualify themselves). The idea of our proposed song book is to collate all these back-pocket collections into one mammoth, update-able resource for all singing leaders and teachers at primary level. It should be cheap, easy to access and simply presented, with an online version as well as hard copy. My colleagues and I in the Manifesto vocal strategy group were hugely impressed by Maurice Walsh's Singing School books that are used in all the primaries in Greater Manchester and to some extent the Manchester model is an inspiration for ours. The widely-reported figure of 30 songs for our song book, by the way, is wrong by a factor of ten: I am after something equivalent to a hymnal - 300 songs at least!

KK: Composing and broadcasting has been your full-time profession - making you a household name. How will you be able to juggle your new role with your existing work, and do you think they are complementary?

HG: Well it's going to be tough, since I'm not exactly sitting around looking for ways of filling my days as it is! However, there is no doubt that my profile as a composer and broadcaster has been part of the reason we are having this conversation. I have direct access to two ministers and a secretary of state - when before has singing had that kind of governmental interest? I doubt even Raph Vaughan Williams or Charles Stanford had that kind of access so I am determined that I must seize the opportunity and act as an advocate and supporter of my colleagues up and down the country who actually do the singing work with young people. Call me a megaphone. I can also say with some pride that two of my best-known theme tunes, The Vicar of Dibley and Mr Bean, feature SATB choirs as their main sound (and there's another that pops up from time to time in the new Mr Bean's Holiday score too!) so I do practise what I preach, so to speak.

KK: You've recently published Winter Lullabies - a six-movement suite for upper voices and harp - with Faber Music and are in the middle of writing two new musicals - King Cotton with Jimmy McGovern, and an adaptation of Erich Segal's blockbuster novella Love Story, both for production at the end of this year - and revising your recent Two Cities for a UK tour in 2008. What are your feelings about getting new music performed - getting choirs and their audiences to be sufficiently confident to 'try something new'?

HG: Audiences before about 1920 used to hear mostly new music when they went to a concert. The obsession with old stuff, the heritage repertoire, really took a grip as a reaction to modernist music that scared the living daylights out of ordinary folk. As it happens, most contemporary music these days isn't at all scary but it will take a few decades for that fact to sink in and for the old fear of new music to recede (which it will). In my experience most choirs do actually perform and commission quite a lot of new music, but probably rather too much of that body of work is targeted at competitions where the needs of the audience are zero and the need to impress expert judges paramount. Consequently, it can sometimes be absurdly difficult or tricksy and unlikely to win over new audiences. Pieces that are enjoyable to sing, that are unafraid to be beautiful or that might not be allergic to melody don't seem to have as much trouble getting performed, but I don't pretend that it is easy for younger composers to get their careers of the ground. It never was!

KK: You're in the final stages of recording your score for the latest Mr Bean film. Have you enjoyed the process, and should we be rushing out to buy tickets to see the film?!

HG: It's a very charming, feel-good movie set in the sunshine of a summer holiday in France. Rowan is very funny too. I would have thought it was the perfect antidote to a late winter evening in the UK, but I'm too close to it now (and too exhausted!) to be of much objective use,. Take your (young) kids; they'll love it, that's for sure.

KK: Thank you, Howard, and we look forward to watching how the singing campaign develops!

[Kathryn Knight is Editorial Director at Faber Music]

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'Sweet dreams are made of this', Sunday Times Culture: Comment, 12 November 2006 by Howard Goodall

The weight of history hangs heavily upon classical music's shoulders. In the carefree, people-friendly world of popular music, Sandi Thom can sing 'Oh, I wish I was a punk rocker (with flowers in my hair)', not batting en eyelid at the absurdity or the historical inaccuracy of the statement. It mars no-one's enjoyment of the catchy hit. But no such easy forgiveness is available in the classical world, where opus numbers, arcane Italian terms, obscure jargon and - let's face it - pedantry, can interfere with one's enjoyment of the actual music. Which is why I feel it is partly my job on television to blur these boundaries and to remove the mystique that can prevent a normal listener from surrendering to 'older' music.

However, it is has also been my aim to remind those whose first love is classical music that much popular, folk and world music is worthy of their respect, interest and investigation. In my forthcoming Channel 4 series, How Music Works, it has been my priority to demonstrate the techniques, tricks and rudiments of music through examples in every conceivable style of music. A rhythmic device might be heard in a rap by Twista, or an Invention by Bach. My hope is that musical complexity, cleverness and sophistication should henceforth never again be seen to 'belong' to western classical music, nor that uncomplicated, fun, easy listening should be seen to be the sole province of popular music. I do not believe there is, in fact, so mighty a gulf between the music of the classical masters and their modern successors in the popular field, but the gap in public perception of the two genres is canyon-like. And it is widening with every year.

Any survey of classical music's place in contemporary culture is hampered by an endless supply of myths surrounding the subject. One such piece of hokum is the notion that 'youngsters these days don't like, understand or appreciate classical music'. First of all, there was never a time when all young people were into the music beloved of their parents, grandparents or distant ancestors. It is part of the point of being young to find your own music, preferably distinct from and definitely louder than that enjoyed by the previous generation. This was as true for Beethoven and his contemporaries as it is today. Still commentators bemoan the lack of classical music in the daily diet of contemporary youth. This is odd, since roughly ten times more young people take GCSE, AS and A level Music than they did 40 years ago and a fairly hefty slice of the syllabus is devoted to listening skills associated with western classical music. More young people play in orchestras, bands and other ensembles than ever in our history - by a long chalk - and much if not most of what they play is classical music. In 1960 the UK had one specialist school for music. Now there are over thirty, as well as roughly 300 performing arts colleges and academies. I would go as far as saying the current generation of young people are probably the most musical who ever lived. That they like music from every genre is to their very great credit. Whilst classical music enjoys - overwhelmingly - the lion's share of public subsidy to music, it is but one branch of the musical family and modern youngsters are right to see it as such. Given that the tax payers' millions are mostly soaked up by preserving this, the heritage department of the music world, it is hardly surprising that young musicians are attracted to the grungier, more spontaneous parts of the contemporary live music scene. Just because a teenager doesn't like Jane Eyre doesn't mean she doesn't like reading; Malorie Blackman, Philip Pullman or Tolkein will do fine. Bronte's always there for later in life. So is Mozart.

This brings me on to my second myth, that the public at large have 'gone off' classical music. In the 1960s, between 300 and 600 thousand listeners might on average tune into the BBC Third Programme to hear a classical concert. Nowadays the loyal weekly audience for Radio 3 and Classic FM combined is in excess of 8 million. The idea, then, that fewer people listen to classical music these days is quite a big, absurd, out-of-all-proportion myth. Never mind that a third of the population hear Carl Orff providing climactic moments for the X-Factor week-in, week-out. Orchestral managers worry that the average age of audience members at classical concerts is either dwindling, or aging, or both. But they dare not confront one of the reasons for this.

To put it bluntly, in the 1950s going to an orchestral concert was one of only a few things you could do of an evening, so people who wanted a night out, who liked music but didn't enjoy scratchy records, tinny gramophones or their claustrophobic sitting rooms, trooped off to the Town Hall to get a fix. Now there are loads of things to do with your evenings, thank God. But here's the rub. There are more orchestras now than then, playing the same pieces to the same constituency, vying for the same celebrity soloists, competing with high-quality sound systems in every home. London has 5 professional symphony orchestras. Five. It is a myth that only old people like classical concerts, anyway, as you will find at any Steve Reich, John Adams or Philip Glass performance. Younger audiences prefer younger music, that's all.

There has been a trend in recent years to think of a new name for classical music, because advocates for it sense that the label sounds old-fashioned and frumpy. Alternatives such as 'concert' or 'art' music have been put forward from time to time, but one current favourite is 'serious' music. This is the third myth and it is a dangerous one. There is a streak of snobbery running through much discourse on classical music, a snobbery that looks down its nose at the whole paraphenalia of popular culture - its mp3s, downloads, walkmans, samples - as well as the kind of folk who enjoy it, and it is this snobbery that has tried to claim that classical music is more 'serious' than all those other frivolous forms - jazz, hip-hop, pop, world, musicals and so on. It is an insult to the brilliantly skilled and committed musicians in all these other genres but it is an insult that most of all damages classical music's own reputation, since it confirms the prejudices of many - that classical music is an exclusive, lah-di-dah, Members Only club. A club that apparently decides what is musically serious and what is not. It saddens me that the beautiful, thrilling works of, say, Gustav Mahler, Gabriel Faure or Igor Stravinsky are tarred with this hoity-toity attitude. They are quite capable of standing on their own two feet; they do not need to be granted some badge of seriousness by anyone else.

People are afraid of the 'insider knowledge' that seems to be attached to the classical repertoire. I have done my best to chip away at this misconception in my TV programmes over the past decade or so, but it is an illuminating and refreshing experience watching, at the Schools Proms every year (Monday to Wednesday of this coming week* at the Royal Albert Hall) hundreds of young musicians playing and hearing pieces of dizzying variety, back to back, devoid of historical or intellectual 'context'. They experience the music without its programme-notey baggage: its opus numbers, its 'schools of' and its isms. Because the concerts are a deliberate mish-mash of classical and non-classical, the boundaries between styles lose their meaning. For a composer like myself it is a liberating reminder of what music at its best can be - abstract, emotional, free and endlessly surprising.

The Schools Proms are the best antidote I know to the grumpy resentment that occasionally attaches itself to discussions about classical music. More often than not when a major figure from the classical world pops up in the news it is to complain. Funding for the arts has doubled under Blair but the general public would never know it, the way famous conductors go on. Don't get me wrong, complaint has its place in the world and many arts organisations do struggle to make ends meet, but the litany of woes that we too frequently hear about marginalisation, about how the British are not as interested in 'high art' as the Germans, about the Prime Minister liking rock (Oh, Crikes, crime beyond imagination!) and so on, only reinforce the public perception of a group of privileged artists for whom nothing is ever quite good enough. By contrast, pop, jazz and world musicians appear just to get on with the job in hand and - frankly - seem to be enjoying themselves rather more. This is what I have tried to capture in my latest Channel 4 series, How Music Works.

At its simplest it is an everyman/woman's rudiments of music theory - the nuts and bolts of musical technique. But I wanted very much to demonstrate that these techniques are common to many different forms and traditions of music. I wanted someone whose passion was Hendrix to see what links Jimi's chords with medieval church music, and for someone whose passion was Wagner to see that unresolved suspensions, his trademark, were still alive and well in the songs of Coldplay. Above all, I want music to be celebrated as a universal gift and, especially now, a common language whose magical vocabulary is still in vigorous use from Soweto to Salzburg, from Mumbai to the Rockies. Howard Goodall

[* 13,14,15 Nov.]

*

Editorial essay in the Music Manifesto Report no.2: Olympic Chorus

Singing is as natural and enjoyable to human beings as laughing. It is easy and universal, bonding us first to our mothers and then to each other. It complements our grasp of language and communication and accelerates our learning processes. It does not belong exclusively to one culture or another and cannot be traced, like musical instruments, through some distant family tree back to one place, time or tribe. It is the cheapest form of musical expression and where most children's musical journey begins. So why is it that every child in Britain does not sing every day?

Although I do not subscribe to the risible notion that there was once a golden age of music education in the UK, there was without doubt a time when a great many children began their school day with some singing: hymns, usually. The nostalgia that surrounds this phenomenon relates less to religious edification (for the most part those obtuse Victorian texts washed through us) than to singing regularly in a large group, albeit often badly or in off-putting circumstances. I remember the headmaster of my school caning a boy for 'singing an octave down in assembly' - some golden age. Nevertheless, the singing did happen and there is a definite sense of loss associated with the widespread abandonment of the singing assembly.

In all our deliberations in the Music Manifesto singing work-stream, led by Youth Music, it has become clear that some kind of regular singing event in the young person's day is highly desirable, possibly even essential. How do we achieve this goal?

There are a great many diverse and inspirational models to draw on. Manchester Music Service's Singing Schools initiative in 95% of all their local primary schools is led brilliantly by Sue Berry, complete with a whole set of bespoke song books and methods. The Sage Gateshead's partnership with no less than nine music services in their Vocal Union programme, pioneers singing work with large groups of boys, with whole families and infants and with children in transition between schools, as well as promoting whole-school singing. The Voices Foundation now operates in 62 schools using a modern, British twist on the Kodály method and Youth Music's Singing Communities reaches the kind of young people who might never have imagined they would get involved in group singing.

These large-scale projects are certainly replicable, and they need to be, more rapidly and in more places. Areas that benefit from someone to coordinate, enthuse and guide singing achieve far more than those without one. Kate Courage in Bristol, Ed Milner in Northumberland, Jamie Lewis in Rochdale, Carolyn Baxendale in Bolton, Cathy Dew in Worcestershire and Caroline Cox in West Sussex are a few of the charismatic vocal champions that we would like to see everywhere.

But we must face some realities. Young people do love singing, but they do not always love the kind of repertoire that has been historically associated with choirs. Vocal tutors will tell you that teenagers want to learn how to sing musical theatre, jazz, cabaret, gospel or soul better, but not necessarily classical lieder or operatic arias. Adolescents who are keen enough to sing and dance in a boy or girl band can feel awkward about joining more formal choral groups where they personally feel less in control.

This does not reflect an aversion to discipline and hard work. Music teachers will testify to the willingness of young people to concentrate and learn when they are focused and motivated. They are part of a new, forward-looking generation — why should they not have preferences in repertoire and style? This is not to say that young people do not embrace ‘old’ music with a freshness and passion that humbles professionals: the National Youth Choirs take a bow. But we must not fall into a lazy assumption that what we had to do when we were young is what they should do now. I would personally love it if young people experienced music because they wanted to, not because they were supposed, cajoled or obliged to.

We have had debates about what constitutes 'proper' singing, good pedagogy and appropriate challenges for the young voice. While I respect the experience and wise counsel that informs these discussions, there is also a sense in which we must walk before we can run: get them singing first, worry about the pedagogy later.

We have agreed that the best practice, in all genres, is not daunted by the challenge of peer group pressure against singing, but confronts it head on. It is generous and open-minded towards the musical tastes of young people and usually involves some surrendering of the traditional hierarchy that choirs have tended toward in the past. Hilary Mayer is the head of music at Coloma Convent Girls‚ School in Croydon, a comprehensive now with specialist status in music. She has over half the entire school in one or other of her many outstanding choirs. I am absolutely convinced she has achieved this through warmth and acceptance of young people's interests, not by pretending it is still 1950.

The work of two other specialist music schools could provide excellent templates for singing work. The Rochester Grammar School appointed a new member of music staff to run choirs at the school, which she has done admirably. She has also begun choirs elsewhere in the town and trained her own older teenagers to take their expertise and enthusiasm for singing into their local and feeder primary schools. This peer-to-peer mentoring is also a feature of the work of Northampton School for Girls and an approach that we would like to see spread.

Indeed, fully opening up the potential for the specialist schools and colleges to fit actively and creatively into local 'hubs', which would also include music services, Youth Music Action Zones, other federated schools and musical organisations, is a tantalising prospect if these trail-blazers are anything to go by. In a truly child-centred singing offer, opera companies, non-classical vocal groups in the community and music theatre organisations, for example, would all participate in the delivery of singing projects in a given area.

Britain's 48 choir schools have much to offer in this respect, too. It is my firm belief that in reaching out into their local primary schools they will reap rewards that are as yet untapped, not least connected with recruitment. Some already participate in this kind of outreach, and others are looking to expand their capabilities and establish new local partnerships.

We must appreciate that singing is a habit, and that once we have acquired an aptitude for it, we can apply it to any genre, any style, any performance environment we like. The massed teenage ranks of Alnwick's Duchess’s Community High School raising the roof with a perfect close harmony arrangement of a Tamla Motown song is, in my mind, entirely compatible with the choir of Lichfield Cathedral filling its vaulted ceilings with William Byrd, or for that matter the cast of Youth Music Theatre UK's new musical Frankenstein, or the Cantamus Girls' Choir from Mansfield defending their gold medal this summer by performing at the Beijing Choir Olympics. Our own capital city will host the Olympics in 2012. It should be our determined aim by those games to have reintroduced group singing in every primary school in the UK, in a kind of pre-Olympiad roar. What this actually means is the immediate replication everywhere of the best practice to be found in Greater Manchester, at The Sage Gateshead, in the Voices Foundation's primary school strategy and Youth Music's Singing Communities. We do not ask to be left musical stadiums after 2012, but if children are given back their right to raise their voices in uninhibited harmony it will be a magnificent, lasting legacy worthy of the event.

[Howard Goodall, Chair of the singing work-stream August 2006]

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Bibliophilia: an article by Howard Goodall for Portrait of the House, a compilation of reminiscences and ruminations on the subject of Christ, Church, Oxford:

I didn't use Christ Church's magnificent high Baroque library much in my first or second years as an undergraduate. In those days (the late 70s), Peckwater Quad had the unmistakeable ambience of an expensive boys' public school and since I had escaped from just such a place to attend my excellent local comprehensive earlier in my teens I found its Hooray swagger evoked unhappy memories. One late summer evening in my first term I chose to write my essay in the library only to be assailed by an inebriated, pantless toff in a 'toga' (pillowcase) who had strayed from a party in Peck. That pretty much did it for me until Finals year, when, with proper exams looming, I fell in love with the polished tranquillity of the library and took up residence therein. An added bonus was that the woman to whom I am now married would stroll pass every afternoon on her way to her then boyfriend's rooms, or a tutorial, or perhaps both.

I vaguely knew that the college library contained somewhere a dusty collection of manuscripts, sheet music and early music publications but assumed that it was no match for the glories of the Old Bod. I have since discovered my mistake. Twenty years after I'd left the House, whilst researching for a Channel 4 TV series, Howard Goodall's Big Bangs, I found myself desperately in need of an original manuscript of Monteverdi's opera Orfeo, the piece to which we more or less owe the form. The great composer's old haunts, the Ducal Palace at Mantua and St Mark's Basilica in Venice, where we had been filming, yielded nothing, as did the Italian State Archives and the mighty Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (the French have been ransacking Italy's written treasures for centuries). My assistant (also a Christ Church graduate, as it happened) gleefully told me, however, that one priceless copy of the authentic 1609 edition - the one Monteverdi himself worked from - was in Christ Church library, of all places.

I booked an appointment and the carefully glooved librarian kindly left me with the amazing manuscript to peruse. It was as if the intervening 400 years simply hadn't existed. I was looking directly - composer to composer - at Monteverdi's own instructions, unfiltered, unedited, unchanged. My questions, for example on his use of the band, on his 'figured' bass lines, on how much ornamentation he offered to, or expected from, his singers were all answered within an hour. No amount of scholarship or expertise by someone else, however brilliant, can substitute for the direct contact with a composer's own score. This extraordinary booklet of yellowing pages, still completely legible after 400 years, is opera's Holy Grail, more significant than all of Wagner's frenzied jottings or even Mozart and Da Ponte's revelatory correspondence, since without Orfeo the fledgling form of opera might never have taken flight at all. If this weren't enough, I recently noticed that Christ Church also have an original 1602 printed edition of Vicenzo Galilei's seminal treatise, Dialogo della musica antica e moderna, which formed the intellectual 'plan of action' for the invention of the first operas.

The library's music collection houses substantial amounts of work by virtually every European composer from the Early Renaissance to the Treaty of Utrecht, including Henry Purcell's Funeral Music for the Death of Queen Mary, Handel's Zadok the Priest , John Dowland's Flow my teares, possibly the most famous (and beautiful) song of the entire Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and no less than five operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully, Louis XIV's court composer and friend. Now those two really did know how to host a toga party.

[Howard Goodall 9th September 2005]

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Howard's speech to the Music Manifesto Signatories' conference, 18th May 2005

Over the last year, as Fergal mentioned, I have been doing an enormous amount of research into the state of music education in Britain for a South Bank Show Special that was broadcast last December. I followed that up with a shorter piece for the BBC's Choir of the Year broadcast about Wider Opportunities and singing in Greater Manchester. On top of that I am making another film at the moment for the Music Manifesto, a compilation of young musicians' vox pops from all over the country - their likes and dislikes, the instruments they play and why, what they would do if they were in charge of music policy, their favourite music - that kind of thing. It has been a grand voyage of discovery for me. Obviously I haven't been able to get around to every school in the country, but I have been able to gather my observations together into some kind of overview. The process for me has been absolutely fascinating, not least because there seems to me to have developed a mismatch between public perception of the state of music education and the reality of it.

One of the reasons I wanted to do a South Bank Show on this subject in the first place was because I suspected that a lot of the public discussion in this area is either absurdly exaggerated, based on dinner-party gossip and hearsay, informed by antiquated prejudices, or plain wrong. Moreover, I felt there was a deficit in all our discussions in terms of what young people themselves think, because, after all, they are the reason for what we are all trying to achieve. Hence this latest film of their voices on music which will be revealed at a Music Manifesto event on the 30th July at the Royal Geographical Society, connected with the BBC Proms.

Travelling round hearing teenagers talk about their music has been extremely instructive and challenging for me, indeed I think for some of their teachers it has been too - many of them have said at the end of the filming sessions, “I never knew my students thought these things”. Sometimes a stranger with a camera can elicit more candid responses from youngsters than even their own teachers or parents. I would like to share with you in a moment some of what I have learnt from this process.

I should say, first, that when we put the South Bank Show out - Musical Nation - generally speaking my tone was positive, since I discovered there were lots of very good things going on all over the place and that there is the potential out there for our music in schools to be outstanding. I realise that by saying so I was being unfashionably positive about music education. Those of you who know about TV-land will know that generally speaking the people who write or phone in to the broadcaster after the programme, or who send you emails or go on internet message boards are the people who are either extremely angry or extremely happy with what you've done, there's not much between the two. Plus the nutters, of course. But the other truism about viewer reaction is that the people who actually bother to write in are a minute percentage of the whole audience. It is well known that you will always have many more negative comments about a programme that is even slightly topical, or political, or controversial, than you will positive.

After the transmission of our South Bank Show I received about 100 letters or emails, of which three were negative. Perhaps my positivity, then, is not so far out of line with the actual teachers, parents and students involved in music-making in the country at large, after all. What was most moving to me was that I received letters and emails from teachers who said “I can’t believe I have just seen a TV programme that was positive about teachers”, or, “yes, we have fantastic music in our school - why didn't you come to film us?”, or, “I had no idea that standards as high as I saw on your programme were possible in ordinary schools”.

Many viewers were shocked that the normal media presentation of the situation seemed so at odds with what was actually going on in at least some schools. I do not pretend the situation, by the way, is ideal or perfect by any means, but negativity and criticism is infectious, and you have to be very careful, since if you say one critical thing, it will be that that gets reported, not the hundred positive things you may say. So I am on a mission to reinstate some positivity into this area. Apart from anything else, we as adults need to set a tone of enthusiasm around the idea of music for the sake of our children. Imagine the scene in the school playground, a boy goes up to another boy, “do you want to join our band - it’s crap”? If we go round saying music in schools is a disaster area, that’s what the next generation will believe is the truth. It's not just dangerous because it is an inaccurate portrayal of the scene, but because it doesn't help a single child, it doesn't put a single new teacher in place or launch a single new band or orchestra or choir in any school, anywhere.

All of us involved in bringing music to young people believe, don't we, that music is good for the whole person, that it boosts your self confidence, your self-esteem, that it makes you happy and focussed and centred. Why is it then, that so often the public face of music in the press is one of famous professional musicians complaining, whinging, warning of disaster and catastrophe, Jeremiahs gnashing their teeth at the lack of support, lack of money, lack of respect? What is a young person to make of this image? They'd conclude, surely, that music hadn't done much for that musician's self-esteem and confidence, hadn't made them happy, or whole, or full of joy. If a career in music makes you a serial whinger, makes you angry at the world and full of bitterness and resentment, then don't ask me to get involved with it, they might reasonably argue.

So I am unapologetic about stressing the good things that are going on. I am now going to talk about some of the things that I have learnt from talking to young people about their experience of music.

The first thing to say is that diversity is not something that politically-correct adults like us, politicians, pedagogues or consultants are imposing upon young people. Diversity is the normal state for young people in Britain today, it is their cultural and social norm and their everyday musical state as well. They don’t really get this idea that there was once a time when you only played one sort of music. If you ask them who their favourite composers are, they will give you - without hesitation or qualification - lists of names that are picked from every corner of the musical firmament. I wrote down a few from the other day from some 16-year old girls, they said Bach, Tchaikovsky, Coldplay. Frank Sinatra, Purcell, Blue. Or one marvellous response was 'Eliza Fitzgerald, Mozart and Eddie Mercury'.

When asked what piece of music might be set for analysis at GCSE, one student suggested Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and The 1812 Overture.

By the same token, the business buzzword 'cross-over' is the natural musical habitat of young musicians, so much so, that they find a question about it baffling - as if being asked what crossover music is is like being asked what music is. This is, subconsciously, incredibly perceptive since music has always been a 'crossover' phenomenon. What is Stravinsky's Rite of Spring if it isn't a fusion of Western Classical Late Romanticism (and Impressionism), Modernist atonality, African polyrhythm and primitive Russian folk music?

The other day I took part in a 45 minute session with young composers studying AS Music Technology at the Purcell School. Now Purcell School students are highly trained classical musicians, they have been classical musicians since they were tiny and they have been given fast-track, specialised tuition with immense expertise, so you could say these were the next generation of classical music's high-fliers. They showed me their work, one by one, and we discussed it in a mini-masterclass way. The works in question were short films which they had made collaboratively and set to music individually. The point is that not one of the pieces of music that these classically-trained musicians composed would be described by a member of the general public as 'western classical music'. What they were writing was a hybrid contemporary style, an eclectic mix of urban, world, electronic music. It was highly sophisticated, imaginative and interesting, but it was a million miles away from the music that Birtwistle, Adès, Maxwell Davies or Macmillan would write. This was a wake-up call for me. These youngsters were choosing to write in what you'd have to call 'non-classical' styles. They were redefining the term 'contemporary music' as they composed. They have abandoned the musical frontiers that once seemed a fact of life for many musicians.

When classical critics, composers, conductors and virtuosi make public statements about the 'decline and fall' of classical music as a distinct form, enveloped on all sides by the oceans of popular culture, they seem to be directing their ire and anxiety at forces outside the classical world - television, the internet, government, commerce, as if collectively they are destroying the precious, fragile jewel of the western art music tradition. What my sessions with the young composers of the Purcell School and elsewhere have taught me is that classical music's transformation, modernisation, acceleration towards the popular mainstream - what you will - is being enacted from within, by its most talented and skilled practitioners. We can either embrace the tendency towards fusion and crossover amongst the young and go with it, or we can resist it, King Canute-like, hoping that somehow we can divert the tide of the next generation's taste by intervention of some kind.

The fact is we can't halt this change, even if we wanted to. Music's ability to develop with society is an unstoppable force and young people are already to some extent driving that movement forward. One final point about diversity is this. There are some people over 40, many over 50 and even more over 60, who grew up with a musical diet of mainly western classical music, for whom popular music of previous eras was merely a pleasant, leisure-time add-on to their lives. No-one under 40 has grown up with this perspective. Imagine how odd it must be for a young Briton who has grown up in a multi-cultural community, at ease with a musical landscape of overwhelmingly popular styles of music, who listens to a piece of classical music by, say, Harrison Birtwistle. The so-called 'modern' music of European composers like Sir Harry seems to emanate from a world that has all but completely passed by - musically speaking - 100 years of the influence of black music. It takes up where white European masters of the early 20th century left off. To most young people the weirdness of this stylistic niche is not simply a question of musical literacy - it is a cultural chasm.

It struck me powerfully during my discussions with young musicians that for them, music is an emotional, not a cerebral activity. Almost without exception, when they talk about music they talk about its sensual and spiritual power, its ‘wow factor’, its ability to move one to tears or make one want to get up and dance. Boys, especially, refer to the sheer muscular power and physical energy of pieces like Orff's Carmina Burana. They describe it as having an almost tangible effect on one's body. Whilst they might be amused, tickled or intrigued by the challenges and the concepts of the experimental music of the mid-20th century, something - incidentally - all GCSE students are familiar with these days, they don't actually hear it as music. For them, what John Cage or Pierre Boulez does is of tangential, non-musical interest - like a science experiment. It does not engage with their senses or their emotions at all.

To some extent this explains their passionate distaste - one might even say loathing - for avant-garde modernism. Make no mistake about this. Theirs is not - as is sometimes alleged - an antipathy born of ignorance or even of a squeamishness about dissonance (towards which they are entirely neutral), it is a mistrust of things that seem to be 'clever-clever', music for a PhD's sake, you might say. Music without emotion for them is non-music. I have read comments by music experts saying that young people's antipathy to modernist classical music is all about lack of education and familiarity, that it is all the fault of teachers, parents, the media, that this music is not more appreciated. It's funny, isn't it, how it is never apparently the fault of the music, or the composer, or the performers? It's always someone else's responsibility. No-one who writes film scores or popular songs or musicals or Indian dance music or ceilidh jigs or brass band pieces ever expects someone else to make it popular or accessible or enjoyable for them. It is a given in all forms of music - except western classical - that it is the responsibility of the creators themselves to win their audience's emotional engagement. It makes classical music seem, if I may use a therapists' term, needy. No emotionally switched-on young person is going to find that an attractive or beguiling image.

When asked what they got out of participating in music-making themselves the immediate response was always that music was a great social activity. Being in an orchestra, a choir, a band is always linked with friendship and a lot of fun. This may seem like a trivial detail but to young people it is of tremendous importance, especially as these days, thank goodness, they are pretty well all doing it because they want and choose to, in their free time. In terms of recruitment and involvement, an emphasis on the social rewards of playing music may be the most powerful lure that any teacher or group leader may have at their disposal.

It was certainly one of the solutions sixth-formers gave to the problem of making music more palatable an activity for younger children. Another was that music should seem to be a 'normal' activity, not a freakish or 'special' one. Many children who are drawn easily to music do so because they come from homes where music is valued and where there is lots of it around. The priority given in the Wider Opportunities programme to group instrumental teaching within the normal school timetable would seem to bear out what the older teenagers are saying: instead of a child being pulled out of a class to go to a specialised one-on-one lesson, thereby underlining the unusualness of the tuition, he or she learns it with everyone else. Indeed, the research materials from the Wider Opportunities pilots shows that not only is group experience of music more desirable for the above reasons, it is also more effective in terms of the swift progress the KS2 children make on their instruments.

Young people are surprisingly open-minded about which style or genre of music they will concentrate on, at least initially. What is quite clear in schools is that where the teacher's passion is jazz, that's what the majority of the students get into, where it's brass band, they all join the band, where their teacher's mad about singing, they have loads of excellent choirs, and so on. This is of course mainly to do with the fact that a wonderful teacher could get you interested in practically anything and that the youngsters identify with the person well before they identify with the subject. This may seem so obvious to be almost a cliché, but there are urgent lessons to be learnt from it nonetheless.

It is often complained that young people are not getting enough exposure to classical music from lack of leadership and advocacy at school level. Well, anyone who'd like to see more classical music in school is first of all going to have to persuade the leading conservatoires, university music departments and colleges to encourage more classically-trained graduates to go into school teaching. It's as simple as that. With some honourable exceptions, like the Birmingham Conservatoire or Trinity College at Greenwich, the thinking at further education level in music is dangerously out of date. There are plenty of brilliant young musicians coming out of these institutions, but at the moment a snobbery persists within them that teaching is what you do if you've failed to become the next Evgeny Kissin or Joshua Bell.

This attitude, still fairly prevalent I'm sad to say, is potentially disastrous for classical music's place in young people's lives, because jazz, folk, rock, gospel and brass band teachers have no such chips on their shoulder about teaching. Every enthusiastic new teacher who arrives at a school with their own burning passion for Broadway or Blues or Bhangra will recruit hundreds more exponents of those styles. Nor will they be carrying around with them the baggage of failure and disappointment because they didn't end up on the stage of the Festival Hall getting rave reviews from Norman Lebrecht.

Geordie genius songwriter Sting once wrote, 'people go crazy in congregations, they only get better one by one'. This is demonstrably true when it comes to music and the young. If you want them to share your love of music you are going to have to roll your sleeves up and go and share it with them yourself, person to person. There are no shortcuts and absolutely no exceptions: no music is so grand, so meaningful or so precious that it can afford to have its best players shut away from the world, unable or unwilling to show a child why it is all those things.

Showing by doing isn't just a trendy educational mantra, it is more or less the only way to win the respect of today's youngsters. They want their musical experience to be active, not passive.

Now, there will be people here who wonder whether a generation of young people whose entertainment is to watch TV programmes made by someone else on TVs manufactured by someone else, listening to music created and recorded by someone else on iPods designed by someone else, or sending messages on internet chat forums with the merest flick of the wrist could really be described as lovers of active rather than passive pastimes. But I challenge this cynical perspective of our young people.

For a start, their relationship to technology generally is far more hands-on, fearless and experimental than that of their parents' generation. They want technology to interract with them, not simply to present itself to them. I saw this demonstrated with devastating clarity on a visit to Vienna two weeks ago. There's a terrific new museum recently opened there called the House of Music which, like the Cité de la Musique in Paris and the magnificent Hornimans in South London, is an attempt to make the experience of musical history as interractive as possible for young and old. There are many fine exhibits on three floors. Children and adults wander about looking with varying degrees of interest at the different displays on offer but the one room where absolutely everyone stops to have a go is one where by brandishing a baton with an infrared sensor you can conduct a 'virtual' Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on a DVD-style screen. If you speed up, they do. If you slow down, they do. If you go so manically fast they can't play it, they come crashing to a halt and one of the wind players gets up and complains at you. I'm not sure what would happen if you rehearsed them for more than two hours without a union-regulation coffee break, but my guess is that there'd even be a virtual walk-out, led by the brass section. Anyway, not a single person passing through the House of Music does so without trying this interractive sport.

So it is with live musical experiences. I mentioned the research that came out of the Wider Opportunities pilot scheme earlier. Another unequivocal message that came out of that data was that the classes which really worked most effectively were the ones where the children were involved in playing the instruments themselves relatively soon after the session has begun. In cases where the musicians - usually classical - spent a long time talking, then playing themselves, before handing over to the children in the last few minutes of the session, the experience was much less successful all round.

When you go to schools and ask the students who their favourite classical composers are, they invariably list the ones whose music they themselves have played. There may once have been a time when you could sit a class of young people down and tell them how good a piece of music was, without any active participation from the youngsters themselves, but I suspect those days are well and truly over now. Young people today who love, say, the music of Shostakovich, or Purcell, have almost always played it or sung in it.

In 1999 I was involved in a seminar sponsored by Sainsbury's Arts Panel called Older, Younger which was trying to address the issue of why it was that young people between the ages of 10 and 15 didn't have a very positive response to live theatre, what it was about it that put them off, why it was they preferred the cinema, and so on. The best bit of the conference was a presentation made by a woman who had been commissioned to do some fairly extensive market research amongst children of this age range to find out what they thought about theatre. Much of it came as a shock to the theatre practitioners, directors, writers and administrators in the room. One of the children said something that struck a chord with me at the time and which I feel has as much relevance to our field of music as it did then to theatre. An 11-year old girl from Birmingham described the play she'd just been to as unsatisfactory for the reason that “the actors on stage seemed to be having more fun than we were”. This says it all, doesn't it? Any teacher will identify with the situation whereby it's much easier to get pupils to audition to be in a musical or play than to sit and be told about it, sat in a classroom. The message from that young woman was the same. Active participation yes, sitting around watching others have a great time, no.

There were, incidentally, some other revealing results of that survey into what children thought about theatre. Boys in particular were very bothered by the fact that on the stage it wasn’t really very realistic. They'd say things like “he was supposed to be dead but then he came back on”, or, “You can’t really kill someone on stage”. And by far the largest number of critical comments were directed at the lamentably poor choice of confectionery in the foyer: they were disgusted by the total absence in theatres of Pick and Mix, that they only had the big bags of Minstrels not the small, that they didn’t sell popcorn, and - horror of horrors - the sweets kiosk was shut when they left the building!

One of the other observations that emerged from this theatre seminar which I believe impacts upon us in music, is to do with the different ages of young people and the fact that we as adults often lump them all together as children, when in fact an 11-year old's taste and interests may be radically different from that of a 6-year old or a 15-year old's. The young teenagers complained bitterly that the theatre they were taken to see was either very babyish and silly or it was basically mature adult theatre that they were supposed to sit through. They pointed out - quite correctly - that there was almost no theatre writing targeted specifically at their age group.

This gaping hole in the market is doubly puzzling since so much literature has developed over the past 10 to 15 years that is specifically written for young teenagers, from Philip Pullman and Michael Malpurgo to Jacqueline Wilson and J.K. Rowling. Concert music has not responded well to the throwing down of this gauntlet either. Why are there so few musical equivalents of Eoin Colfer and Anne Fine, Garth Nix and Anthony Horowitz? Where are the well-known composers writing major concert works specifically for young people?

I feel ashamed I have to say, I don’t really understand why every composer in Britain hasn’t signed this Music Manifesto, it’s a disgrace that they are not even engaged in this dialogue about music's future with young people. Is this down to the same snobbery that causes conservatoire students to regard teaching children as a second class kind of career? If composers aren't going to write music for teenagers with the same verve and imagination as the novelists I have mentioned, then those young people will have every right to dismiss concert music as something that isn't 'for them', like toddlers' theatre or a bunch of grown-ups banging on about their mortgages and affairs in an Aykbourn comedy. And when you see 'family or children's concerts' advertised, it's always Peter and the sodding Wolf, isn't it? It may be charming music but Peter and the Wolf is a rubbish story and children know full well it's a rubbish, infantile story.

While we are on this subject, I'd like to tackle the complaint from some quarters that there's no point in teaching children the popular music they already know and like, since the aim of teaching is supposed to be to tell you something you don't already know. This argument is rather haughty. Imagine it being applied to other subjects in the school timetable. 'For our first lesson in woodwork, class, instead of making an attractive bookend, we are going to study the structure and design of 18th century Austrian furniture. In Maths, instead of adding, subtracting, division and multiplication we are going to look at the seminal mathematical theories of Descartes. In French, instead of conversation practice for the school trip to Boulogne, Marie, elle va à la piscine; Claude il va au disco, we are going to analyse instead the philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau'. It may sound absurd, but this is more or less what some people loftily suggest we should be doing with music. Beginning a young person's journey with a culture and style wildly at odds from their own experience seems to me to be extremely counter-productive.

My 14 year old step daughter reads an enormous amount, she has always read an enormous amount, I mean thousands and thousands of books, and is a bright, perceptive person to talk to about the authors and stories she has read over the years. This year, as part of her GCSE coursework in English, she is finally encountering through the syllabus some of the 'classic' authors of yesteryear and since her literature training, as it were, was on modern writers for teenagers like those I listed earlier I was fascinated to hear, for example, her response to Jane Austen. What comes across is that wonderful though Austen is, she is writing about an English society that may be only 200 years ago but to a modern teenager it's more like it's 2000 years ago. The sexual politics, the claustrophobia and petty provincialism of Austen's world are as strange to a young Briton in the early 21st century as a story set on Mars. When Pride and Prejudice was famously dramatised on TV ten or so years ago, the casting of modern actors, the subtle toning of the dialogue and the deft playing of the roles made it seem much more like our society than in fact it was. Whilst the costumes and sets were purposefully antiquated, there was a modernity to the atmosphere of the story which Jane Austen would no doubt have found peculiar. When my stepdaughter's class watched Colin Firth on video the story came alive for them. This, in a nutshell, is why the teaching of music needs to be open-minded with respect to its own Jane Austens.

Since there is an awful amount of music that children do already like, why not start with that and gradually move on as they mature into more distant musical cultures - by distant I mean both geographical and chronological? Are there other aspects of the classical repertoire that can pose a difficulty to young people other than the fact of its age?

I believe another stumbling block to its easy acceptance can be that it appears to be too prepared, too finished, too meticulously polished. Children live in the present. They are not antagonistic towards the past, they simply do not revere it as older people do. Music-making for them needs to feel spontaneous, even if in reality it has been meticulously prepared in advance. One reason that community musicians have been so successful in winning over young people to an enjoyment of music is they are able to make music immediately, in the here and now, with whatever or whoever is in the room.

The sense that music is being made for the first time, now, is instantly compelling to youngsters (as it is to everyone). They are often slightly bemused by the lengthy, rather ponderous preparation and hushed moodiness to the music-making of professionals who come from a tradition where everything has to be done exactly as it is on the page, or else. If you sit in on the ensemble playing of talented young musicians it is clear that they are increasingly attracted to the idea of communicating without notation, of improvisation and interplay that is more intuitive and spontaneous than the stricter regime of reading from parts that is the staple of the classical tradition. Here, their instincts are closer to the traditions of jazz and folk music, both western and eastern.

I went to a comprehensive school three days ago, in South London, with an outstanding music department. Since there may be journalists in this room who are about to go away and write an article about how crap music is in British schools, I will repeat that last sentence. ‘I went to a comprehensive school in South London with an outstanding music department’. By outstanding I mean they have got 400 students in their senior choir: four hundred. They have three award-winning, foreign-touring choirs, they have 200 children learning musical instruments and 25 students taking A and AS music. Their facilities are good, but they're about to become much better thanks to their imminent transition to music college status and the package of extra funding that comes with it. One of the things that happened at this school was that one of the girls, aged 15, said that her favourite composers were Debussy, Bach and Mozart, adding apologetically that “I don't really like pop music which shows just how much of a loser I am”. This made me pause to reflect on why she felt she should say this rather sad statement.

Some would say it is because of the relentless power of the commercial popular music machine, aided and abetted by TV, ramming cheap, lowest common denominator music product down young people's throats so they feel they have no real choice to make. Pop, they say, is cool and everything else is uncool. It is a view of the world that sees everything from Nike to Coldplay as a potential threat to civilised values. I am uneasy about it as an argument for a number of reasons.

First, it absolves us all in music from any responsibility for the state we're in, it piles the guilt onto other shoulders and turns us into powerless victims, into 'losers'. Second, it assumes that young people are dumb recipients of advertising and hype and have neither the intelligence nor discrimination to make their own mind up about anything: what if they like Coldplay and eminem because they're really good and worthy of admiration? Third, worst of all, it once again paints the non-pop sector of music as an angry rump, happier with a cosy past than a noisy present, uncomfortable with the reality of modern urban life, implausibly expecting the rest of society to change rather than accept change themselves.

Surely this caricature of the musical ancien regime is part and parcel of the image problem for classical music that the girl in the music class reluctantly identified? Even she, who loves classical music, sees that it is a world that comes across as 'sad'. The culture of grumpy complaint, of awkwardness with many aspects of contemporary life that characterises much discourse in the classical world does not help this girl in her school community one iota.

I feel strongly that one of the things this Music Manifesto can usefully do with its large coalition of organisations and partners is to allow music as a whole to speak with one voice, as far as the outside world is concerned. To say collectively that we have had enough carping from the touchline, now is the moment for some positive, collaborative thinking. If we are going to have differences of opinion in the musical community let us do so with more discretion and sensitivity to others' positions than we have had hitherto.

It was very sad to me that it was, predictably, two classical celebrities who chose to speak out critically at the launch of the Music Manifesto a year ago, in the press. Classical music's best hope of general social acceptance, of not being seen as terminally uncool, is to find common purpose with the rest of the musical community. It needs to join this Manifesto wholeheartedly, not see itself as the self-appointed guardian of something the pop industry is trying to destroy. I would much rather those people who were critical of the Music Manifesto when it was launched had come in and joined in with us and worked out common solutions to their complaints, rather than say from the sidelines, “we're better than this”. Young people will have been failed if this impressive new alliance of interested parties does not gather into its ranks all corners of our musical community.

And a good start would be the revision of some of the terminology being bandied about in the debate, if we are to show young people that we are on their side, not dismissive or bad-tempered about their lifestyles. I would like to take issue with the word ‘serious’. The Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davis, made a speech recently to the Royal Philharmonic Society whose title was, ‘is serious music becoming extinct?’. How patronising. As if - unilaterally - he has decided that only Western Classical music is worthy of the adjective 'serious'. I could introduce him to hundreds if not thousands of young musicians who are very serious about what they do. They play their music - their jazz, their folk, their electronica, their blues - seriously. It is composed seriously, their rock, their bhangra, their music theatre. It is every bit as serious to them as Max's Strathclyde concertos are to him. But, no, it could not be described as classical music and the idea that there is a superior form of music and an inferior form of music is to me utterly offensive and I am 47. Heaven knows how this comes across to someone who is 17.

At least there is a kind of arrogance and swagger to the assumption that his music is more serious than someone else's. It is almost preferable to the paranoia that plagues the classical establishment and which is the other legacy of the European musical heritage. It is more than useless to the musical future of our country to think we can replicate the glorious period of symphonic composition and operatic development of 19th century Europe simply by spending millions on kids learning violins or taking them to hear Berlioz. Are we really happier as a nation, I wonder, when we're dissing ourselves than when we are sticking up for our achievements?

We are good at lots of things in Britain and music education happens to be one of them. There is not enough of it, nowhere near enough yet, too few children are involved in it so far, but what there is is world class and it is - after the setbacks of the 80s and 90s - growing in competence and breadth with every month. The majority of county and borough music services are doing a terrific job. Youth Music has made a big impact in its first five years and builds in expertise and confidence. Most music teachers are excellent and doing a heroic job with relatively modest resources. Schools are getting their biggest overhaul of new facilities, including for the arts and music, in British history. So the idea that we are reduced to comparing ourselves unfavourably with Germany, as is frequently the case in the classical community, is tedious, unhelpful and negative. It breeds an insecurity that, frankly, isn't even merited.

In 2002 when Sir Simon Rattle took over the job of musical director of the Berlin Philharmonic, he said publicly in a newspaper article that Germany was the only country that took high culture seriously. Michael Berkeley just a few months ago, said on the front page of The Times that Simon Rattle had had to escape to Berlin because Germany was the only country that took high culture seriously. It was the only place he could go to stop worrying about money. Well I mean what an extraordinary thing to say. The City of Berlin is bankrupt. They have closed an Opera House and the financial stability of the Berlin Philharmonic is by no means safe. When he was in Birmingham, Simon Rattle had an entire concert hall built for him and his superb orchestra's funding was well supported by the City of Birmingham and Arts Council England. He went to Berlin to conduct a great, world-famous orchestra. The idea that he went to avoid worrying about funding seems to me to be incomprehensible.

But this chip on the shoulder that on the continent they are better at culture than us is quite a long-standing complaint and it has to be disposed of once and for all. I am going to start with the 19th century.

In 1855 Richard Wagner conducted the Philharmonic orchestra in London and said they “played like machines” and that “all British music was stifled by the ethos of the tradesman”. Oscar Schmitz, in 1904, wrote a very famous article, later known as 'das Land ohne Musik', saying that “Britain was the only civilised nation without its own music”. One year later, in 1905, Edward Elgar - by the way, not a German - Edward Elgar said, that the British music scene was “vulgar, mediocre, chaotic and insipid”. These are harsh words, so I would just like to say a few things about 19th century Britain.

It is true Germany had Wagner and Bayreuth, Italy had Verdi and La Scala, and France had Berlioz and Meyerbeer. We in Britain had Gilbert and Sullivan, the butt of much snobbery I may say. Clever, sophisticated, witty, likeable music, but not - it's true - Tristan und Isolde. They had 14 premieres in the West End between 1875 and 1896. I make that 5005 performances, which works out as roughly 5 million people who saw their works in their first runs alone. In The Mikado’s first year of production there were a 150 other productions going on around the world. 150. This, from 'a land without music'.

It is widely believed that Germany invented the concept of music conservatoires, however our own Royal Academy of Music pre-dates Berlin by 7 years and Leipzig by 20 - in 'a land without music', apparently.

Similarly, it is widely believed that Germans, Poles and Austrians had a monopoly on the piano in the 19th century. In 1850 there were over 200 piano builders and distributors in London alone - in 'a land without music'.

Samuel Coleridge Taylor, the highly successful Croydon-born composer of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, was admitted to the Royal College of Music aged 15, later became professor of composition at Trinity College in 1883 and at the Guildhall in 1910. He went on three American conducting tours to tremendous acclaim, though being a black man he couldn’t stay in the same hotel or eat at the same restaurant tables as the orchestra musicians he was conducting whilst in the States. In England, on the other hand, he was celebrated and respected.

In 1872 the legendary Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Tennessee visited Britain. The Jubilees were freed slaves who formed a small choir singing negro spirituals to raise money for a college in Nashville to educate newly emancipated African Americans. They are of immense cultural significance in African American history, though perhaps not well known in this country these days. Routine humiliation and discrimination of black people at that time meant that they couldn't even find an American liner company who was prepared to find them cabin space for their Atlantic crossing. In the end a British ferry company agreed to provide them with passage. They performed for Queen Victoria, were entertained by Prime Minister Gladstone and gave performances to packed halls, churches and even high streets to vast audiences across the UK in a trip that lasted a year. They raised the unbelievable sum of £10,000 - perhaps the equivalent of a million pounds by today's standards. When you read their story of the trip it is humbling and deeply moving that they could not believe they had arrived in a country where they could stay in any hotel, travel on any bus, walk along any street, attend any public event, eat at any table they pleased, and where they were spoken to with respect and consideration by all who encountered them. They became celebrities and returned a few years later to a second, equally tumultuous reception. All this, in 'a land without music'. Whose music?

If you were writing the history of western music of the 19th century you might think that Bruckner's Mass in F minor is a more important landmark from 1872 than the Jubilee Singers' tour of the UK, or that Brahms' Third Symphony of 1883 is more significant than Coleridge Taylor's appointment at the Trinity College of Music. But I believe you'd be wrong to highlight one and ignore the other. You might compare these events to what was going on in Germany or Austria at the time. Wagner was, admittedly, composing titanic operatic masterworks, but, the year that Coleridge Taylor became professor of composition at Trinity, Wagner's two best-selling publications were his book Jewishness in Music and his article Know Yourself, in which he memorably coined the term 'degenerate' to describe Jewish culture and proposed the purging of German blood of its Semitic poison. That's high culture for you.

Coleridge Taylor is a huge figure in our musical history and what's more, if we were keen as a musical community to engage more young black Britons in classical music, he'd be a perfect starting point as a role model. It wouldn't do any harm for music students to know who the Jubilee Singers were either, and what they represented to their people.

In the mid-19th century, two Britons, John Curwen and Sarah Glover, invented 'tonic sol-fa', which introduced millions of people to singing without having to read conventional notation. The impact of this was such that when the composer Zoltán Kodály visited Britain in the 1920s he was so impressed by the widespread application of sol-fa that he was inspired to set up his own method for use in his native Hungary. Now, in a history of 19th century music, it's possible that you might not rate the invention of tonic sol-fa as highly as, say, Liszt's B minor Sonata for piano, but in terms of its ability to encourage the participation of millions of ordinary people in music-making, sol-fa might actually have had rather more impact than the Liszt. Weekly performances at the Crystal Palace in the Victorian era were attended by audiences of up to 80,000 people, with sometimes a further 5,000 performers on stage. This was a time of unprecedented involvement in choral societies, brass bands, male voice choirs, amateur orchestras and church singing. Thousands of them. In a land, supposedly, 'without music'.

Now there is a pattern developing here. What seems to be the case is that Britain has always valued mass participation in music-making, almost above anything else. We're not the only ones. I mentioned Kodály's efforts to widen access to music for ordinary Hungarians, a movement that became official government policy in 1945 when the Communists seized power, making Kodály-method singing for children compulsory in all schools. Carl Orff also worked tirelessly on music education for all, his Schulwerk programme being given added impetus by its adoption by the Third Reich, from whom he enjoyed favoured status, in the 30s and 40s. The fact that he also wrote incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1939 to replace that of the unacceptably Jewish Mendelssohn somewhat takes the shine off his other achievements, however laudable.

The British way is to be as inclusive as possible and at the same time to make musical involvement primarily about enjoyment, even if it does open us up to accusations of 'dumbing-down' or frivolity, from the many jibes aimed at Gilbert & Sullivan in the 19th century to Oasis in the National Curriculum, in the 21st.

The fact is, Britain never was a 'land without music': that snide accusation was as hollow and ignorant in 1904 as it would be now. We have a mass participation movement of our own being rolled out in primary and junior schools everywhere, as we speak. Wider Opportunities is the boldest, most ambitious programme of universal music induction being attempted anywhere in the world at the moment. It is being monitored with some fascination, hopeful expectation and admiration by our colleagues abroad, although because it's good news, about an already highly successful scheme, supported by an enlightened government policy, you won't read about it in our own newspapers.

At the launch of the Music Manifesto a year ago at Abbey Road Studios the fact that Jamelia performed alongside choristers from Salisbury Cathedral, that members of the South Asian Music Youth Orchestra performed alongside students from the Yehudi Menuhin School made it a very typically British event. Welcoming, open-hearted and culturally diverse. Bravo. Much the same happened at the Big Gig which celebrated the 5th birthday of Youth Music at Birmingham's Symphony Hall - one moment we had a Latin American carnival group, the next the Sinfonietta of the National Youth Orchestra, we had a Taiko ensemble from Exeter followed by a Jazz group from Scotland. The Schools' Proms and National Festival for Youth Music every year showcase extraordinary diversity and excellence of musical achievement throughout our country. If you take someone to a Schools' Prom who's never been before - a parent, a teacher, a youngster - they are always gob-smacked by what they see: the amazing talent, energy and dedication of our young musicians and the joyful, egalitarian juxtapositioning of one style after another on the same stage. This is our way of doing things, and it is what we have always done and that is why the Music Manifesto, this drawing-together of every possible musical voice, is a very British enterprise.

Every morning this week I have cycled or driven past three different, giant-sized billboards proclaiming the Lloyds-TSB 'Note for Note' initiative in partnership with the Music Manifesto. My heart leapt with pride that at last our passion - music for young people - is opening out into the broader community, into the public arena, thanks to this bank's commitment. They join a wonderfully varied group of companies, organisations, associations, educational establishments, project leaders and individuals in this daring and admirable collective endeavour - the Music Manifesto.

I heartily applaud Marc and everyone in this room involved with it, since it is already living out its mission of inclusion, accessibility, popularity, and an end to the risible, outdated notion of one music's superiority to another. If this is our national contribution to the musical future then we have much to be proud of and much to celebrate here today.

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Howard's Times article responding to Richard Morrison's 'All Washed up: Down the Tubas' piece on the state of music education in Britain. [February 2005]

I spent eight months of last year researching the current state of music education in the UK for a South Bank Show shown just before Christmas. I visited schools all over the country and talked at length with teachers and music service leaders. What emerged most powerfully for me was a disparity between what the spokespeople for classical music would like to see in schools, what they believe it to be and what it actually is.

Richard Morrison's article Down the Tubas revealed many of these discrepancies, even down to the language used. Music isn't 'dying' in our schools, it is changing. When classical commentators use the words 'new music', they are referring to the complex orchestral soundscapes of living composers like Harrison Birtwistle or James MacMillan. For everyone else in the country, 'new music' means Franz Ferdinand, The Zutons or Dizzee Rascal. The musical equivalents of Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst are not Thomas Adès or Judith Weir but Ms Dynamite and Damien Rice. To many classical enthusiasts there is a value system which ranks the Western art music written between 1600 and 1960 in a different league from everything else: to the public at large, this distinction is increasingly meaningless.

A few weeks ago the exam board EdExcel announced that Britpop was to be added to their analysis modules for GCSE music, provoking outrage from the classical elite. What they failed to point out was that well over 50% of the syllabus is devoted exclusively to European classical music already and that the Britpop module was merely replacing the reggae module as an option. To most parents this is a detail and not a particularly alarming one either. Good teachers know that you can introduce music to youngsters through a wide variety of styles. They also know that literacy and numeracy targets can be enhanced by application of music across the curriculum and that the fears for music being 'squeezed out' of the timetable by maths - or sport - are exaggerated and outmoded. In psychoanalytical terms, the classical music establishment, faced with the observation that many young people find what they do uncool and archaic, believe that it is everyone else's fault - teachers, parents, politicians - but theirs. Isn't it time to reassess the role of the classics beyond asserting that their appreciation is some kind of inalienable right, to be compulsorily imposed on the next generation come what may?

To most people, classical music seems to enjoy a privileged position in our culture, not that it is under seige. A lot of their money is spent on it, for a start. In London alone, both opera houses have been expensively refurbished in the last few years at a total cost of around £250million and the South Bank Centre's £41m rebuild is underway. The reward for this government being the most generous towards the arts in British history is serial complaint from the classical world and patronising jibes about the Prime Minister's enjoyment of pop music. Arts Council England will fund this year 32 (classical) orchestras and 11 (classical) opera companies, a handful of ethnic & folk ensembles but no rock or brass bands. Whose musical style will the public think is hard done by in that exchange, I wonder?

The British culturati have always been inexplicably envious of our Continental neighbours when it comes to 'high art'. Elgar's gloomy assessment of the Edwardian music scene was fuelled by adoration of Germany. There is much gnashing of teeth at the content of our GCSE music syllabus, for example, but little celebration of the unprecedented numbers of students now taking it, nor for that matter the excellent AS in Music Technology, by far the fastest growing course in any subject. It may surprise parents to read that there is no classroom music of any kind on offer in France, Italy, Germany or Spain. Such music tuition as youngsters receive takes place out of school. The situation isn't perfect, but there are hundreds if not thousands of inspiring, imaginative projects underway across the UK engaging young people in music. What's more, all the young classical musicians I meet have a broad musical appetite, respecting and enjoying popular forms alongside the classical. In this respect, perhaps it is they who should be doing the teaching.

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'The Chorister Thing' (various publications, November 2005)

Forty years ago I became a chorister at New College, Oxford, not really knowing what to expect or what I could contribute, other than I knew I could hold a tune, I could learn the ropes from my older brother who was already there and I knew too that I loved Christmas Carols (which seemed to have more connection with 'choristers' than anything else I could think of then, on my relatively limited musical horizon). The surplus (white, girlie overgarment), cassock (black, secretive, monkish robe) and ruff (Elizabethan, crinkled and starched collar) we had to wear made us feel different and special from the other - sometimes jeering, sometimes envious - boys at school, as did our gowns (black, demonic) and mortar boards (square, wobbly to wear, eccentric) in which we crocodiled to the chapel each morning and evening. Nowadays you might call it Hogworts Chic. Then, in the heyday of the Beatles, Hendrix and Twiggy, it was merely far out.

Aged 12 : Photo A Thomas (Oxford)

Beyond the fancy frocks, being a chorister began as a series of fairly rigorous vocal excercises and ended, at 13 years old, with us all being able to sight-read any piece of music they put in front of us, pretty well note perfect. For me, too, I caught a lifelong bug for the pipe organ, the musicians' equivalent of trainspotting. It wasn't until I subsequently went to a secondary school that didn't have choristers singing in chapel every day that I realised that what we had been doing was a somewhat out of the ordinary experience for a 7-13 year old boy. Up till then I had assumed, naively, that it was 'normal' to sing Tomkins, Tallis or Tye in between football, hockey and athletics or maths, history and science. I thought that the quirky Brit church composers I sang every day of my life at choir school (Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Charles Stanford, Kenneth Leighton, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Edmund Rubbra, for example) were the great composers. I knew Bach was a giant and that Mozart and Beethoven were up there too, but Beethoven didn't do a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis so he was pretty much off our musical radar. Wagner- who the hell was he?

We got to sing centre stage in the most atmospheric and theatrical religious rituals of the year (Christmas, the Passion and Remembrance stick out), occasions I can still recall as vividly as if they were yesterday, almost down to the smell of the chapel - beeswax pew polish (pungent, comforting), underseat oil-heating (sweet, rank) and 400 soaked duffle and raincoats (overpowering). We terrified each other in the dormitory after evensong with ghost stories and conspiracy theories about unspeakable college students ("expelled for gross moral terpitude, apparently") or spectral priests lurking up the haunted bell tower. Gruesome tales of 18th century castrati or the practice of chorister-snatching from the 17th century were recounted as if they had happened a few weeks before. We were singing 17th century music as if it was just off the shelf - so why not the yarns?

But most of all, the experience embedded music in the fibre of my being from an early age, not as a solo pursuit in lonely practice rooms, or as a series of graded exam hurdles, of individual trophies and prizes, anxious parents and traumatic competitions, but as a thoroughly communal, team effort. We were better - miles better - as an ensemble than any of us could have hoped to have been individually. We sang as group, we played and worked and joked and fought and caught 'flu as a group. Collectively, we soared. There's no other word for it. The sound of 16 trained boys or girls scaling some great musical height in the echoey grandeur of a cathedral, abbey or college chapel is thrilling. It's one of the things we do as a nation that is quite unique, musically outstanding and culturally without price. The French closed down the last of their once-numerous cathedral choirs in the early 20th century and the sound they made, those choirs, has never been recaptured since, despite strenuous government efforts in recent decades to breathe life back into their lost tradition. Every time I hear Fauré's or Duruflé's Requiems, which were written for French cathedral choirs not unlike ours, I feel sadness at their casual extinction.

The choristers I sang with in Oxford back in the late 60s nearly all went on to jobs in music and the arts. Big, responsible jobs. The experience was simply too powerful to put in a box and forget about. We had learnt how to perform, how to communicate, how to put our best foot forward as a team, how to organise our time, how to concentrate for long spells, how to discern between the excellent and the mediocre and how to breathe life into pieces of music that had been lying around or neglected, yellowing manuscript paper for hundreds of years. Thanks to the DfES' Music and dance scheme, any British child can now have this amazing, life-changing experience no matter what their background. We can be immensely proud of this tradition and its extraordinary rewards. Isn't it time we shouted it from the rooftops?

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Howard's article on composing music for the Church in the 21st Century is now included in a newly-published book, edited by Stephen Darlington and Alan Kreider, along with articles by other leading composers in the genre. The book is published by Canterbury Press and can be found (and ordered) by clicking here.

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Review in Oxford's Daily Info of An Evening with Howard Goodall at the Oxford Playhouse, March 2001, by Jacqui Mulville

From Blackadders to Big Bangs

Howard Goodall is an engaging, amusing and extremely talented man. This benefit evening at the Playhouse acknowledged his talent and in an informal setting of one man and a piano, gave us a glimpse into his world. Not knowing what to expect, it turned out he has been responsible for a number of well known tunes and TV shows. Blackadder, Red Dwarf and the Vicar of Dibley are amongst his credits, as are programs on organs and choral works. Musical talent aside, Howard's other skill is in talking and making people laugh. Playing and singing only five pieces of music to demonstrate his skills, the best part of the night was listening to him express his enthusiasm for music of all sorts. In contrast to those who present music in dense and difficult terms, his mission was to talk to us about music as it is lived. He started with his meeting with Rowan Atkinson in his first few days of studying in Oxford and his subsequent involvement in the revue. At that time music at the revues was all jazz, and lost in something of a timewarp. Howard sought to change this by introducing contemporary tunes, a trend which continued in his work on 'Not the 9 o'clock News'. This ex-chorister has continued to engage with all forms of music, which brings a relevance and immediacy to his work.

On TV he presents music as a topic for study in its own right. Howard is not interested in watching folk performing great works, but sees music as a living, breathing, essential force in our lives. Describing the spine tingling sensation of examining an original musical manuscript, he helped to bring music alive as history, as culture and as a rhythm for life. The conversation ranged from Germans in Lederhosen to the Dong tribe of China. A question and answer session let the audience further into the composer's mind. Asked about authenticity in music, Howard playfully replied that it had a place, but to hear music as Handel had experienced it would involve reintroducing castration!

As a person who has little knowledge of classical or choral work, I found it refreshing to hear an expert speak in such an inclusive manner about all forms of music. This was an immensely enjoyable evening, even to a musical ignoramus, and I am glad I heard this stimulating man speak. Go along to the Sheldonian Theatre on 29th June for his selection of romantic choral works, or failing that, watch out for his TV programs to be fired up by his musical enthusiasm.

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Article for the Mail on Sunday Travel Pages about Howard's visit to the Marciac Jazz Festival 2001

LAID BACK IN MARCIAC

Everybody knows that for a holiday steeped in world-class jazz you get on a jumbo jet and head for New Orleans. Well that’s what I always thought, anyway, but it turns out that there is a wonderful alternative much closer to home. You may never have heard of the tiny town of Marciac in Gascony, but jazzers the world over do, since for two weeks every year it gives itself over to a huge feast of le jazz, le blues and le fusion. Paying homage to this remarkable, if somewhat incongruous, festival in one of France’s least discovered regions also gave me and my travelling companions a chance to explore this intensely rural corner of my favourite country for the first time.

Gascony doesn’t exist as a political entity any longer within France, but once it was a mini-country all of its own, given to the English crown for 300 years as a dowry in the Middle Ages. It is a sleepy, forgotten wedge of territory south of the Lot and Dordogne with the Basque country to its West and the Pyrenees running along its bottom edge. To its East lies Toulouse and the parched magnificence of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, and its capital is the fabulous but totally unknown city of Auch, major stopping-off point for medieval pilgrims en route for Santiago de Compostella. The two most celebrated Gascons in history are semi-fictional Musketeer D’Artagnan and teenage Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, whose healing intercession is still sought by 4 million Catholics a year. Since the 19th century, though, it seems as if Gascony has gone into hibernation, which is as good a justification as any for a holiday there at the beginning of the 21st. The region is so tranquil even the creamy-chestnut cows look like they could do with a good shot of café noir to get them on their feet of a morning. The village architecture is reminiscent of Normandy and the countryside is a lush, sunflowered version of Ireland enjoying a permanent heatwave.

The English made the Gascons build hundreds of fortified towers (many of which still proudly stand) since they were a thousand miles from home and surrounded, not altogether surprisingly, by a large number of hostile Frenchies with a much better command of the language and absolutely no fear of the local food. Gascon food is hearty, simple and rustic with an emphasis on duck, duck and more duck. I would hazard a guess that there are more ducks in Gascony than people. Practically every field and farm you pass displays a ‘foie gras sold here’ sign, market stalls bend under the weight of duck-related tins and jars (Pãté de canard, Fritons de canard, Confit de canard, Gésiers de canard, Rillettes de canard, Coeurs de canard farcis, Daube de canard, Cassoulet de canard, Cou de canard farci, Osillettes de canard, Civet de canard, Manchons de canard, Magret fourré), and we were passionately exhorted to try a popular delicacy of duck neck stuffed with mashed up bits of duck head. I adore Magret de Canard, but I think I may have had my ration for the decade after my delicious week in Marciac.

Lovers of unspoilt countryside and wildlife would find the area somewhat overwhelming- mass tourism hasn’t made any impact here at all- and one finds oneself wandering round villages that are like pristine period-drama sets, with all visual evidence of the modern age removed, not quite believing that in high season you have the place to yourselves. The fortified village of Bassoues d’Armagnac, for example, would in any other part of Europe be Essential Itinerary for coach parties, festooned with car parks and postcard kiosks. Here it is deserted- a small Café des Sports serving bowls of steaming duck surprise to the locals, blissfully unaware of the staggering beauty that surrounds it. Long may it last. My Irish friend Garrett was so taken with the verdant calm of the place, he immediately began looking in estate agents’ windows for a ruined farmhouse (of which there are plenty). As Garrett runs the Gourmet Mushroom Company back in Eire, one can only hope he will in due course introduce the Gascons to a new culinary experience, Mushroom and Duck Soup. After daily coffee and croissant sessions with him there is nothing I do not know about cultivating exotic shitake from pulverised oak, and nothing he cannot tell you about the superb baroque organs in the churches of Mirande and Auch.

One thing I can tell you about Gascony, though, apart from the fact that almost every town has its own lake providing nautical sports to suit every taste, is that in the unlucky event of you putting your back out water-ski-ing you will find no such thing as an osteopath. This is true of France as a whole, apparently. Normal doctors turn their noses up at what they call charlatans, and the only people with osteopathic qualifications have acquired them in the USA. I only discovered this because my wife Val had a sudden recurrence of earlier back trouble and needed urgent attention. In London she sees an osteopath for this condition who manipulates and adjusts her sacroiliac so expertly she is as right as rain an hour or so later. However, in deepest rural France they have everything but a straightforward osteo. Generally, the French medical system is extremely good (the previous year French doctors had successfully treated me for salmonella poisoning and an infected giant termite bite in the same week!) so we were puzzled at their old-fashioned attitude to my wife’s condition. Having made an appointment with a man described as a rheumatologue, the next best thing the French offer, we stopped in Marciac for a distracting coffee, where we found the jazz festival in full flow and, amazingly, an entire church hall full of alternative health stalls. Quelle chance.

The first stall that caught our eye was one demonstrating ‘The Cushion of Health’. Though you may by now have an image of this church hall which is all hippies and assorted nutters promising Elixirs of Life and Miracle De-Ageing Creams, bear with me. We were happy to take any comfort or alleviation of pain mankind could offer at this point- Val was in agony, and the appointment with Bone Man was still hours away. ‘The Cushion of Health’ turned out to be a rubber device with nine spaced-out bumps on it that vibrated automatically if you sat on it. In the excitement of the moment all six of us gave it a test sit, and all three couples purchased one at £22, imagining cold winter evenings in front of the telly with the throbbing cushion to calm one’s aching spine.

Later that night, around the dinner table, in the quiet cool of the evening, we encountered The Cushion of Health’s limitations. The vibrating noise it made sounded like the neighbours were attending to a little night time tractor-mowing, or that we were playing our Perudo game on the deck of the QE2 as it pulled out of Southampton harbour. It was impossible to concentrate on any social activity, however trivial, with the Cushion of Health in full sail. Still, it was a nice thought. Back in the bustling hall, our next port of call was Veronique and her ‘Seated Relaxation- With Pleasure’ therapy. Veronique was a charming and kindly woman who gave Val a thorough Seated Relaxation session (in full view of the assembled throng, mind) for about 20 minutes. This entailed an unusual orthopaedic-style crouching-sitting contraption (jolly comfortable, by all accounts) and much massaging and pressing. The blurb said it was an ancient Japanese art (l’acupression) that would lead to well-being, efficiency, tone, vitality, suppleness and joy. Sadly by this point Val was well beyond joy, with her back practically collapsing in on her discs, but Veronique’s efforts nevertheless were a welcome relief and her sympathetic attention at least made us feel as if the hour’s car journey ahead, to meet Bone Man, was going to be slightly less traumatic for poor Val.

As we set off for Auch we worked out we had three options if Bone Man were to prove ineffective. Option one was a man in the thermal spa town of Lectoure (“town of water”), another hour or so North, where healing treatments of all kinds were advertised. This was my favourite option on the grounds that we could have had tea in the town’s poshest hotel, the Hôtel de Bastard, I kid you not. The second option was rather more drastic and involved asking Saint Bernadette if she would make an exception for a couple of Prods (“Huguenots to you, your saintliness”) and the third option was flying home to Proper Back Man in London. After our usual dispute about my parking skills (or lack of them) outside Dr Large’s surgery, and my accidentally slamming Val’s fingers in the car door (when it rains….), we finally made it to the rheumatological reception room. To the back ailments novice like me, Dr Large’s surgery looked like a torture chamber. Luckily, he was the kindest, sweetest man in Gascony, and you wouldn’t wish for a nicer bloke to strap you up in traction or wire you up to an ultrasonic dalek. Elsewhere in the clinic, Toulouse’s world-famous rugby stars were having their sports injuries tackled, while my wife was braver than I’ve ever seen her, being mangled, stretched and pummelled. An hour or so later she was packed off back to the outside world, her legs now looking almost the same length. Dr Large may have had old-fashioned kit and may have turned his nose up at osteopaths and chiropractors but his stuff did the trick. I think even Bernadette would have been impressed.

That night Val courageously sat through a whole concert in Marciac- legend and icon Nina Simone live on stage to 8000 people in a vast tented arena. Ms Simone knows a thing or two about pain herself, and frankly looked like a live gig was more than she could manage on a sweltering night like this. For many in the audience simply seeing her was probably going to be enough, which was just as well, since the legend herself seemed out of sorts. The highlight of the show was a heart-breaking rendition of ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’.

The Marciac festival is approaching its first quarter-century and has attracted in that period every single living legend in the jazz and blues field. Around these landmark acts there orbits a plethora of other artists catering for every possible jazz taste. The town’s population is more than doubled by buffs from all over the world, and every nook and cranny is taken over by le jazz. I have not seen so many young men with long flowing hair since the mid-70s, nor so many beards within which one could mount a pretty serious truffle hunt. The atmosphere is incredibly friendly- visitors from the UK would find the total absence of drunken yobbery at a major public festival bewildering. More Gascogne then Gascoigne, you might say. Perhaps the yobs are all up at the Hôtel de Bastard. This year alone you could have seen performers as diverse as Wynton Marsalis, Dr John, Toots Thielemans, the Mississippi Jazz Band, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Richard Galliano, McCoy Tyner, The Stars of Faith gospel group, Tania Maria Viva Brazil Quartet or the Phil Woods Big Band. Many of the concerts are free and open-air. We enjoyed enormously the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Jazz Orchestra from Washington D.C. accompanying our morning coffees in the town square.

Perhaps it isn’t after all so surprising that a remote farming town in Gascony should host this Jazz Paradise. Even when jazz is at its most frenetic and rhythmically neurotic, there is a mellowness and coolness at the heart of it. The folk who love jazz have a live-and-let-live attitude to the world and many of the greatest exponents of the style have a maturity and seniority that is rare in other types of popular music. Gascony has a relaxed, unhurried air about it as well, and its lack of modernity is all part of its gentle charm. Dr Large and his bones (good name for a big band) liked le jazz too: “you know, Val, what you must do now is take it easy…...”.

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An article about 'crossover' music by Howard Goodall for The Independent (2000)

"If it ain't got that swing- it's classical!"

In the autumn of 1996 Marianne Faithfull's album 20th Century Blues, which contained nine songs by the pre-war German composer Kurt Weill, was barred from the Classical Charts. The chart compilers' selection panel said the album wasn't 100% Weill and Weill wasn't 100% classical. This year, William Orbit's Pieces in a Modern Style became another celebrated refusenik: this time, the 'Classical Advisory Panel' (clutching at straws I fear), said the pieces (100% of them from 100% classical composers, by the way) were unsuitable 'for live performance in a concert setting' and that Madonna's producer had 'totally altered' the 'tonal colours' of the original works.

Meanwhile, the classical music world has worked itself up into a frightful lather over the first 'Brit' awards for Classical music, held in the Albert Hall on May 21st. The main complaint seems to have been that these awards are merely a marketing ploy by the record industry to beef up sales of already-popular classical names like Vanessa-Mae or Charlotte Church. The fact is, though, no-one is pretending otherwise: the pop 'Brit' awards are held by pop purists to be just as commercially-driven, just as tacky, just as unrepresentative of interesting contemporary music. How can you describe Boyzone, they scoff, as 'best band'? All that has happened is that classical music has developed its own stable of tabloid celebrities and is busy exploiting them.