A MUSICAL NATION

Written and presented by Howard Goodall for the South Bank Show, produced and directed by Mathew Tucker; Series editor & presenter Melvyn Bragg.

Transmission 19th December 2004 on ITV1

A portrait of the state of music provision amongst Britain's young people, in particular at school

[Howard's Financial Times preview article about the show, his February 2005 article in The Times on the subject and his Spectator online summary of the electoral differences between the two potential governments on this issue in the UK Election 2005 can all be found on the ARTICLES page]

[Howard speaking to students at Egglescliffe School, Stockton-on-Tees; Coloma Junior Chamber Choir at the Schools Prom]

 

Press comment:

Radio Times 18-31 December 2004 TODAY'S CHOICES: ARTS - David Butcher

THE SOUTH BANK SHOW 11.05 pm ITV1

Prepare for some good news. In 1998 Simon Rattle made a gloomy film about the decline of music education in Britain. Back then, local authorities spent just £30 million on music provision, down from £100 million in 1990. The film chimed with a sense of crisis: struggling symphony orchestras seemed to reflect a fine tradition that was being pushed to the sidelines.

But we can all take heart, because this update by Howard Goodall paints a much cheerier picture. The funding has largely been restored and there's a new energy abroad in music education. You only have to listen to the 78-piece orchestra of Egglescliffe School in Teesside to feel optimistic. Or the school's classy soul band. Or its superb folk group. Fifty thousand pupils take music GCSE every year and most of them will happily straddle musical genres, with little of the pigeonholing of the past. Not only is the picture Goodall paints very encouraging but throughout the film there are also terrific performances to enjoy.

Time Out London TV Guide, Dec 15th-22nd 2004, Pick of the Day:

In 1998 a TV documentary presented by conductor Sir Simon Rattle entitled 'Don't Stop the Music' dished out loads of statistics detailing the imminent death of music in schools and the lack of funding for music departments across the country. Tonight's South Bank Show is composer Howard Goodall's effort to revisit Rattle's film and see if the predicted doom has come to pass. Thankfully, it hasn't. This is an uplifting hour, with Goodall travelling far and wide to examine specific initiatives and discovering that things are not all wailing recorders and hanging out at the back of the class with a bent triangle. This should be compulsory viewing for parents who worry about the provision of music lessons in state schools.

Now that's what I call music: Mark Lawson. Monday December 13, 2004 The Guardian

Rowan Atkinson's stage-show in the late 80s was not his most successful venture - suffering a notably vicious New York Times notice - but, paradoxically, it turns out to have been a formidable academy for talent. It's like discovering that the Titanic disaster created three champion Olympic swimmers.

The co-writer, Richard Curtis, is now Britain's most recognisable scriptwriter; the acting sidekick, Angus Deayton, graduated to become one of television's highest-paid presenters; and now the composer for the show, Howard Goodall, has established himself as the David Attenborough of classical music.

Goodall claims two hours of television this weekend across two channels for his personable but rigorous notes on music: on Saturday, he concludes his Channel 4 series Howard Goodall's Twentieth Century Greats with an essay on Leonard Bernstein and, the following night, hosts an authored documentary for The South Bank Show on music teaching in schools.

The SBS project is a response to a television film made six years ago in which Sir Simon Rattle lamented the silencing of music teaching in British schools. Beginning - inevitably but sweetly - with the Purcell School Orchestra playing Lloyd Webber's Variations On a Theme of Paganini (also known as Herald to Melvyn), Goodall offers his own variations on Rattle's 1998 conclusions.

The shift in tone is so great that it's as if a piece by Schoenberg has been transposed into Puccini: where Rattle was rattled, Goodall can find only good. He stands in a hard hat on building sites where new musical schools are being built, while banners dash across the screen revealing that £60m a year of new government money has gone into music teaching or that six times as many teachers are in training. In classrooms across the nation, Goodall finds bright-eyed children tackling Shostakovich or knocking out their own string quartets.

After about half an hour of this, there were horns sounding loudly in my head. While it is hard to argue that music teaching in schools has improved, the political dissonance of Rattle's film seemed to have been entirely replaced by New Labour harmony. This is worrying - especially as the editor of the South Bank Show is Lord Bragg, a Labour peer - but, after the overture of blowing trumpets for Blairism, the film gets much tougher.

Goodall raises the possibility that the new state cash for music teaching is more interested in brass-bands playing Hollywood theme tunes than teaching classical tradition. There are other, even harder points he could have explored - such as parents in some state schools being pressured to buy expensive instruments from the school's commercial partner - but this is a typically passionate and informative film in which the presenter demonstrates his eye for a quirky statistic: such as the fact that there are 44 dedicated choir schools in Britain, 43 more than in Italy.

But the problem is that the South Bank Show documentary leaves you thinking that the solution to music education in Britain is a mass cloning programme so that every child can have Howard Goodall as a personal tutor.

His Channel 4 series Twentieth Century Greats is an even more impressive piece of intelligent storytelling than his previous four series for 4: Organ Works, Choir Works, Big Bangs and Great Dates.

19.12.04 - Evening Standard - Metro Life Television - Pick of the Day - Pete Clark

Howard Goodall has appeared from nowhere - at least as far as this writer is concerned - to become, in a short space of time, the great music man of our times. First, there was his series on 20th Century Greats, in which he charmingly and effortlessly explained the genius of the greatest songwriters of the last century. Never one to miss a cultural trick, Melvyn "The Braggster" Bragg now devotes a South Bank Show to this great populariser. A few years ago, Simon Rattle delivered a gloomy verdict on the state of the nation's musical health. In short, finance for music in schools had been dramatically reduced, to the point where that education was effectively drying up. Goodall conducts his own examination and finds the body to be in surprisingly rude health, reports of its corpse-like status having been greatly exaggerated. In this gloomy world, a reason to be cheerful.

Evening Standard 17.12.04 Sunday Choice The South Bank Show

Following his superb series about 20th century musical greats on Channel 4 (the last episode is on Saturday at 7.20 pm, see page 53), surely the ranks of Howard Goodall Fan Club members must be swelling like the Thames at Old Windsor every winter. Unless, of course, you missed his programmes because 7.20 pm on a Saturday is picking-up-the-takeaway time. Shame. The choral-epics-to-TV-theme-tunes composer's brainy yet non-condescending style allowed him to impart his musical knowledge without giving rise to "we're being lectured, let's change channel" syndrome. Of course, the scheduling of Goodall's film for the South Bank Show probably won't help him win many new viewers either; occupying as it does the tail end of ITV1's Sunday-night schedule. Another shame, because it is a positive, celebratory look at the status of musical education in Britain's schools.

Back in 1998, Sir Simon Rattle (genius conductor, complete stranger to Frizz-Ease) made a programme for Channel 4 lamenting the state of musical education in Britain. Goodall's film aims to show that, six years later, music in schools is in fact experiencing a huge revival. And we're talking real schools here; this is not a hour's worth of public-school types playing the harpsichord. Goodall dashes around Britain in order to show how competent and diverse musical education is right now. At Egglescliffe School in Stockton-on-Tees, for example, there is an orchestra, a folk band and a soul band, and the teenagers involved speak with passion about their music. One shaven-headed lad flies in the face of the sterotype suggested by his haircut with a stunning turn on the xylophone. At the other end of the age spectrum, the kids at Ilderton Primary School in Bermondsey are learning to sing thanks to interactive games staged by a specialist who also teaches the staff about pitch and notes. This is an upbeat film, but undoubtedly for every brilliant band or orchestra showcased here, there'll be mums and dads at home yelling: "That's all very well, but my Conor/Megan/other fashionably named children, can't get piano lessons, and their school has no money at all".

Perhaps Goodall's documentary will serve as inspiration/a kick up the bottom for certain local education authorities so that more kids can experience similar musical opportunities.

The Sunday Telegraph 19.12.04 Television Choice - Arts - CM The South Bank Show

Composer Howard Goodall, whose recent Twentieth Century Greats series on C4 was such a delight, is also passionate about music education. Here, he assesses how certain schools (which featured in Simon Rattle's 1998 programme) have fared after millions of pounds of government and EC funding. Goodall finds virtuoso xylophone players, primary school rappers and thousands of motivated musical pupils without a baseball cap in sight.

The Independent on Sunday 19.12.04 CHOICE * The South Bank Show

In 1998 Simon Rattle made a depressing documentary about the decline of music education in Britain's schools, which had been hit by massive cuts in funding. Now Howard Goodall revisits the same territory with a much brighter and cheering report. In the past few years, music in schools has been getting stronger and better funded, as Goodall discovers on his tour around them.

Mail on Sunday; Night & Day TV 19.12.04 MUST SEE The South Bank Show: Howard Goodall's Musical Nation

In 1998, Simon Rattle made a film claiming musical education was in dire straits, thanks to government spending cuts. Howard Goodall is far cheerier, showing funding has been largely restored, and with impressive results. At the start it feels like a paean to New Labour, as he selects the cream of non-selective schools for praise, but gradually it becomes a joyful celebration of genuine young musical talent and a real antidote to The X Factor and Pop Idol. ****

Sunday Times Culture CHOICE The South Bank Show Pick of the Day Howard Goodall's Musical Nation. Martin James

The composer visits schools where music education is undergoing a revival (see critics' choice). Following his excellent Channel 4 series on the popular-music greats of the 20th century, the composer and broadcaster Howard Goodall presents the results of a personal survey of the state of musical education in Britain. And his film, beginning wittily with a school orchestra's interpretation of the SBS theme tune, strikes a number of very positive notes. Sir Simon Rattle conducted a similar exercise in a 1998 feature called Don't Stop the Music, but his conclusions were gloomier, virtually predicting that within a couple of years one triangle would be shared between several schools, and no teacher would be available who knew how to play it. Six years on, Goodall's impressive statistics, the testimonies of teachers and pupils and vibrant scholastic performances combine to show a turnaround in attitudes and funding. The science labs of Britain's schools may be a bit quiet, but the music rooms are booming.

The Saturday Times:18.12.04, The Eye TV Choice The South Bank Show

Sir Simon Rattle made a programme six years ago about the dire state of music education in Britain. In the eight years prior to his programme, spending by local education authorities on music teaching had fallen from £100 million in 1990 to £30 million in 1998 That situation, says composer Howard Goodall, has now been reversed. There are nine state-funded music academies; five junior conservatories; 44 dedicated choir schools, 2000 young orchestras and an imaginative range of initiatives - starting at primary school - that teach a wide variety of musical styles. We've never had it so good.

Observer TV 19.12.04 PICK OF THE DAY The South Bank Show

Composer Howard Goodall begins this thought-provoking, topical edition of the SBS by describing how in the late 1990's he was deeply affected by a documentary made by Sir Simon Rattle, which highlighted the deepening crisis of music education in Britain's schools. He goes on to show that music education in this country is far from being in terminal decline, as some are predicting, but that music in schools is undergoing a revival. "I believe that Britain is one of the most musically active, diverse and skilled communities anywhere in the world," he says.

This is a list of research sources Howard used for the programme's content:

Film locations: Egglescliffe School Stockton-on-Tees; Smithills School Bolton; The Purcell School; Ilderton Primary School London Borough of Southwark; Springwell Community School Staveley Derbyshire; Heworth Grange Comprehensive School Gateshead; Durham Cathedral Choristers' School; Carr Hill Community Primary School Deckham Gateshead; Brandling Primary School Gateshead; The Sage Gateshead; Music for Youth Schools Proms at the Royal Albert Hall;

Other schools/groups featured: Oxfordshire Youth Percussion Ensemble, Coloma School Croydon, BYMT Berkshire Youth Orchestra, Exmouth Community College Balalaika Ensemble, Peak District Jazz Orchestra, Isca Linea Caravan Ensemble (Newport Caerleon Music Centre), Birmingham Schools Bhangra Ensemble, St Dominic's Grammar School Belfast, Norton Knatchbull School Ashford, Hampshire County Youth Band, St Mary's RC Primary Clapham.

Others not included in final version of film: Gallions School Newham East London; Youth Music Big Gig at Symphony Hall Birmingham; The Music Manifesto Launch at Abbey Road Studios.

[Howard interviewing Vanisha Gangiyani, principal cornet of Smithills Senior Brass Band]

Research source documents: 'Saving a place for the arts?' National Foundation for Educational Research LGA Educational research programme report 41 June 2003 Authors Dick Downing, Fiona Johnson, Satpal Kaur; Arts Council England Music Education Report March 2004 Author Penny King; 'Setting the scene - The Arts and Young People' Dept of National Heritage report July 1996 DNHJO146NJ; 'Classical Music and Social Result' Authors Ruth Rennie & Ruth Levitt, Office for Public Management report September 1999; 'Singing Schools' Development programme report, Author Michael Stocks for the Voices Foundation September 1999; 'Transforming Children through Singing' report, March 1998 Voices Foundation; 'Creating a land with music' Project report for Youth Music September 2002; 'Exploring the Way Ahead for Family Theatre' research paper and 'Older Younger' seminar report for Sainsbury's Arts Panel November 1997; 'Government and the Value of Culture' paper by Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture May 2004; 'Music - healing the Rift' Author Ivan Hewett Continuum Books London 2003; BBC Annual Report & Accounts 2003/2004; 'Building Public Value - renewing the BBC for a digital world' BBC report June 2004; 'England, whose England?' by Mike Sutton, University of Northumbria article MT083; 'When the music stops' Norman Lebrecht; 'Das Land ohne Musik' by Oskar Adolf Hermann Schmitz, Munich 1904; DfES Music & Dance Scheme Report for Academic Years 2001/2 and 2002/3; Arts Council England Spending Plan 2003-6 for regularly funded organisations; DfES lists of Specialist schools 2003-4; 'Excellence and Enjoyment - a strategy for primary schools' DfES 2003; 'Tuning in: wider opportunities in specialist instrumental tuition for pupils in KS2, an evaluation of pilot programmes in 12 LEAs' Offsted/DfES, March 2004; DfES National Survey of LEA Music Services 2002; DfES National Statistics GCSE/GNVQ results 2002/3 (Final) June 2004; John Sloboda response to & Sue Hallam's original 'The Power of Music' July 2001 (musiced.org.uk); 'Survey of Local Education Authorities Music Services 2002' ed. Susan Hallam & Lynne Rogers Research Report RR478; DfES National Statistics 'Schools in England' 2004; 'Sounding out the future - key skills, training and education in the music industry' Authors Allan Dumbreck, Kwela Sabine Hermanns, Kate McBain Paisley, commissioned by the National Music Council 2003; 'Impact - 2003 Community Partnership Report' for JPMorganChase Philanthropic Projects (JPMorgan Makes Music); DCMS 'Creative Partnerships' progress reports 2003 & 2004; 'Initiatives to stimulate uptake of GCSE & A level music' by Robert Hammersley November 1995; 'Music & Education - towards a non-philistine society' RSA lecture by Sir Claus Moser 23/10/00; 'Will technology be the death of professional musicians?' RSA Lecture, Gavin Barrett, David Bedford, Neil Mellor, Clive Gillinson 5/2/03; 2002 Classic FM children and music poll; QCA Initiative 'Arts Alive!' report 2004; PRS Annual reports 1977-2004; 'Don't stop the Music' Simon Rattle 1998 documentary for Channel 4;

Newspaper articles (warning: many of these articles are shockingly inaccurate): 'Opera for innocents' by Alasdair Palmer for the Sunday Telegraph 4/4/04; 'Music lessons for Labour' by Julian Lloyd Webber for the Daily Telegraph 8/7/04; 'Can we learn from Chinese Schools?' by John Clare for the Daily Telegraph 12/11/03; 'Music fails to strike a chord' by Liz Lightfoot for the Daily Telegraph 11/10/00; 'Music Manifesto is short of notes' by Liz Lightfoot for the Daily Telegraph 7/7/04; '2 in 3 pupils fail to name one classical composer' by Nigel Reynolds for the Daily Telegraph 2/9/02; 'Failing to hit the right note' by Anne-Marie Spasted for the Daily Telegraph 5/6/03; 'Any questions?' by John Clare for the Daily Telegraph 10/7/02; 'Arts squeezed out' by Liz Lightfoot for the Daily Telegraph 24/6/03; 'Italy educated our children' by Nina Keay for the Daily Telegraph 12/9/04; 'When the music stops' Daily Telegraph Opinion 2/9/02; 'My Crazy Plan' Martin Kettle interviews Rattle for the Guardian 30/8/02; 'The day the music died' by Stuart Jeffries for the Guardian 4/10/02; 'Music back on timetable' by Toby Helm and Liz Lightfoot for the Daily Telegraph 3/7/04; 'Alex Kapranos goes back to school' Pascal Wyse for the Guardian 19/4/04; BBC News 'Theatre boss warns of arts divide' report on speech by Nicholas Hytner, 4/11/02.

Newspaper articles by Norman Lebrecht (for the Telegraph, Evening Standard and others): 'Disgrace of a South Bank Show Going Nowhere' 30/8/01; 'Can these youngsters beat time?' 28/11/01; 'Look who's been dumped' 31/12/03; 'Funding is for Fools' 11/09/03; 'Gambling with the Lottery' 9/7/03; 'Why BBC4 Will Fail' 30/8/00; 'The declining importance of the Arts' 19/7/00; 'The Floundering state of the Arts' 29/9/00; 'Set the Arts free' 21/3/01; 'PC in the Arts' 11/3/01; 'How the PC brigade is ruining our orchestras' 8/10/03; 'Prommers ruin the Proms' 6/8/03; 'My manifesto' 3/1/01; 'Chaos reigns at the South Bank' 29/11/00; 'The problem with Chris Smith' 14/6/01; 'How Smith has crippled the Arts' 7/6/00; 'Tessa Blackstone, the red baroness swoops in' 27/6/01; 'Banging the drum for art' 28/3/01; 'Bong go the classics' 1/5/03; 'Striking a false note' 19/3/03; 'The new disorder' 12/3/03; 'Drawing the Classical Line' 23/10/02; 'Whose music is it anyway?' 10/10/02; 'Too popular by half' 6/8/02; 'The Age of Unenlightenment' 5/6/02; 'The Classical Brit- it's one big classical charade' 22/5/02; 'Probably the worst time for recording' 20/2/02; 'Culture slips through the net' 31/1/02; 'Only one man can save the South Bank' 16/01/02; 'A crescendo of cash crises' 7/11/01; 'Generosity Gap' 6/12/00; 'One more knell for classical recording' 26/4/00; 'Record industry goes into terminal phase' 20/3/02; 'Requiem for the classical record' 4/7/01; 'Music's missing faces' 26/11/03; 'Composers fall off the radar' 26/6/02.

Consulted/interviewed organisations: The Music Industries Association; The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music; The London College of Music Exam Board at Thames Valley University; Trinity-Guildhall Examination Board at Greenwich University; The National Association of Music Educators; The Federation of Music Services; The National Council for Music; CAGAC Wales; SAMYO; Department for Education and Skills; Department of Culture, Media and Sport; Creative Partnerships; Arts Council England; QCA Arts Alive!; Ofsted; Caerphilly Music Services; Gwent Music Services; LEA Music Awards Panel; Cornwall Music Services; Pembrokeshire Music Services; Derby City & County Music Services Partnership; Blackpool Music Services; Rochdale Music Services; Northampton Music Services; Southampton Music Services; Surrey County Music Services; The Voices Foundation; Choir Schools' Association; Music Education Council; Schools Music Association; Youth Music; Music for Youth; National Federation of Music Societies (Making Music); National Association of Youth Orchestras; Music for Change; NUT, Educationalists.co.uk, Musicians' Union, RSA.

[Howard, Smithills Senior Brass Band, Bolton, with conductor Chris Wormald]

 

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