I never intended to write these Posts every day. There is, however, good reason why I should write this one. In the words of Oliver Cromwell, “Strike while the iron is hot but make it hot by striking.”

Last night, as luck would have it, and this was real luck, Channel 4 again entered my life, this time at the Sage, Gateshead. This is the wonderful concert hall that Norman Foster designed for all those fortunate enough to be able to enjoy its presence on the bank of the river Tyne. Gateshead Local Authority had the vision to provide it. I may criticise bureaucracy in my writing. I must also give fulsome praise where praise is certainly due.

The Concert created by RDF Television for Channel 4

Let me get back to my theme. Once again I was confronted by children who were “born to be different.” This time they were “musical prodigies”: Alexander Prior, born in London to a Russian mother and a British father and, at the advanced age of 16, a composer of no less than 40 works and a conductor, and now a third year student at the St.Petersburg Conservatory; Zhang Xiaoming, all of 10 years old from Shanghai China, and already a concert pianist; Michael Province, 13, already studying the violin for eight years, and a student at Lynn University; Simone Porter, age 12, from Seattle playing the violin with the kind of sensitivity you normally expect from someone much, much older; and Nathan Chan, Cello, age 15, who made his first public appearance at the age of three with the San Jose Chamber Orchestra,and is due to perform later this year with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

I have seen the future, and this bit of it, unlike much else today, is truly beautiful. What a responsibility the world has to ensure it continues to exist.

It will have to rid itself of some of its termites, and kill a few holy cows to do so.

Last night I listened to the music played by these exceptional soloists – supported by the Northern Sinfonia who must share their glow, as must Channel 4, their sponsors *- to Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Haydn, Dvorak and the World Premier of the Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins, Cello and Orchestra ‘Velesslavitsa’, composed and conducted by Alexander Prior himself.

Standing ovations are a rare thing at the Sage Gateshead. This performance received one.

‘Velesslavitsa’ by the way translates to ‘Glory to Veles’ the God of Music, a synthesis of pagan and Christian tradition.

Now let me get back to my book, and share with you the end of a music lesson.

Act One Scene 4

Emma Kirk, the music teacher, is discussing the spiritual side of music with her pupils.

EMMA KIRK Gossip. Some people have nothing better to do than wag their tongues. There’s a job going, and I’ve put in for it. I don’t think I’ll get it. I’ve got a life sentence here bringing music to you kids, a life sentence with hard labour. Now what was I saying before I was rudely interrupted? I pray for this School, and I pray for all schools. Music’s gone missing from many of them these days.

TRACY Maybe they didn’t have anyone like you to teach them when they were at school.

EMMA KIRK Yes that must be it. Seriously the more our political wonder kids assert the national curriculum, targets and league tables, the more music loses out. Now, let’s get back to the spiritual side of music, music that’s the same the world over, like people are. Folk music, the same rhythms you’ll find in every little village wedding over centuries of time. It’s not clever to give up on those weddings, you know. Anyway, folk music’s now in the soul. Now I remember my Daddyo recounting how he heard the great Black American singer Paul Robeson deliver that same message in Peekskill, a little town in New York State, at a big open air concert. Now, not everyone likes being told that they are all God’s children. There’s always some that don’t. And on that day those folk came out in force with their clubs, their rocks and their stones, and they rained them down on those peaceful concert goers, on little children too, as they made their way home.

TRACY No. Why did they do a terrible thing like that?

EMMA KIRK Well, some people just don’t believe in a universal creator. They believe in their own tribal God. That’s always making for trouble and suffering. Anyway, that’s all half a century ago. I’m sure times have changed in Westchester County. But what Paul Robeson said about folk music fifty years ago is just as true today. Let’s get back to it. You see, one of the earliest gifts God gave to mankind was music.

TERRY Was it a Christmas present Miss?

EMMA KIRK Oh for heaven’s sake, Terry, it was a gift to Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, and to non-believer from that day to this; no-one any different. It was a gift then, and it’s a gift today to every new born child, even before it’s born, when it’s still in the womb.

TRACY Can they hear it?

EMMA KIRK Yes they sure can. And when they grow up, they’ll sing it, they’ll dance to it and maybe they’ll play it. Have you heard of the Israeli Violinist Yitzhak Perlman? He plays in concerts all round the world. Do you know something? He goes on to every stage he plays on, on crutches. He got polio as a child. Didn’t stop him playing. Just listen to this, from Eastern Europe. Some say that its origins go way back to Bible times. It’s called Klezmer – Honga Encore. I’d love it if you played a musical instrument. You’d love it. In an ideal world you’d even get free tuition. They say they are concerned about “the have nots.” They should call them “the never haves.” And never will have, the way things are going.

TERRY I think that people should have a right to learn music at school.

EMMA KIRK People talk a lot about human rights these days. But you never hear them talk about the right to music. It is as important as any.

TRACY What if you are deaf?

EMMA KIRK Haven’t you heard of Evelyn Glennie? She can’t hear a thing she plays, not a single note. And yet she plays the marimba in concerts all over the world, sometimes with an orchestra. She feels the vibrations in her feet. Just listen to this. I’ve got a great CD here if I can find it. Don’t you underestimate the power of the human spirit. Just listen to how she greets the Millennium. Now remember she cannot hear a thing she is playing. Just listen to her rendering of Rag of Colts from the Sugar Factory. I just don’t know whether Evelyn Glennie has a faith or not, but there’s a place reserved for her at God’s table.

TERRY Make a change from those Heavenly voices, Miss.

EMMA KIRK I’ll ignore that. But you’re right, Tracy, for most people hard of hearing, the loss of music is probably the most awful, awful thing. Then you’ve got to try and find something else to take its place. Maybe you can enjoy Art even more than those who can see and hear. You have got to nurture the senses that God’s given you. And if you try real hard, God will help you along the way. There’s folks that have got ears to hear with and eyes to see with, but they have never heard of Johan Sebastian Bach, and they’ve never seen a Botticelli. They are the ones that are really deprived.

TRACY Do you think music makes for a better world, because it’s holy?

EMMA KIRK It’s better for the people who listen to it and enjoy it, but they won’t necessarily be better people. But I firmly believe that it does help to make a country that’s good to be in. Now let’s round this lesson off with two pieces of fine spiritual music. It’s appropriate that one comes from my part of the world, the other from yours. The voices you’ll hear carry the spirit of God in them or, if you want, simply the human spirit. Take your pick. Either way enjoy, enjoy. First my childhood hero, Paul Robeson, singing that famous spiritual Deep River .
And to finish, just listen to this: Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

TRACY Wow

EMMA KIRK You guys will never be alone in life when you have found music.

Let me also remind you of some other children, El Sistema, the youth orchestra from Venezuela and its conductor Gustavo Dudamel. I have already mentioned them in post 9. These children were not born to be different, but have become so. Let me quote Ed Vulliami in the Observer on 29th July 2007.

This is more than the story of one prodigy, himself from a poor family on the outskirts of Barquisimeto in the Venezuelan interior. This is about what Dudamel calls ‘music as social saviour’. He and his orchestra are but the apex of a unique enterprise; the zenith of something deeply rooted in Venezuela, formally entitled the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela, but known simply as El Sistema.

Inspired and founded in 1975 under the slogan ‘Play and fight!’ by the extraordinary social crusader Jose Antonio Abreu, El Sistema flourished with a simple dictum: that in the poorest slums of the world, where the pitfalls of drug addiction, crime and despair are many, life can be changed and fulfilled if children can be brought into an orchestra to play the overwhelmingly European classical repertoire.

And that is what happened. The road taken by Dudamel and his orchestra is one along which some 270,000 young Venezuelans are now registered to aspire, playing music across a land seeded with 220 youth orchestras from the Andes to the Caribbean. Rattle, music director of the mighty Berlin Philharmonic, describes El Sistema as ‘nothing less than a miracle… From here, I see the future of music for the whole world.’ But, adds Sir Simon, ‘I see this programme not only as a question of art, but deep down as a social initiative. It has saved many lives, and will continue to save them.’

Across Venezuela, young barrio-dwellers now spend their afternoons practising Beethoven and Brahms. They learn the ‘Trauermarsch‘ from Mahler’s fifth symphony while their peers learn to steal and shoot. They are teenagers like Renee Arias, practising Bizet’s Carmen Suite at a home for abandoned and abused children, who when asked what he would be doing if he had not taken up the French horn, replies straightforwardly: ‘I’d be where I was, only further down the line – either dead or still living on the streets smoking crack, like when I was eight.‘ Or children like Aluisa Patino, 11, who states plainly that she learns the viola ‘to get myself and my mother out of the barrio. It’s got to the point around here,‘ she chirps as she leads us through a maze of alleyways to her humble home, ‘where it’s much cooler to like Strauss than salsa.’

So, music is not just for the gifted, nor just for the affluent. It is music for everyone from childhood onwards. It is where Inclusion really works; but it comes up from the ground, it is not imposed; and it sits alongside a quest for excellence and an acceptance of discipline. That was the message that Gustavo Dudamel and Jose Antonio Abreu delivered in a recent Symposium at South Bank after their orchestra’s trail blazing and quite spectacular performance there.

What are my conclusions from all this?

When you talk about equality of opportunity think more about fairness than equality. It respects individual difference, and it is much more appropriate. When you think about opportunity, think more about deprivation than disability. Deprivation provides an even greater need. And, when you think about universal human rights, spare a thought for a right to music. In the words of the song by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, “Music has no boundaries.”

Next time I shall deal with the pursuit of excellence, and again I shall argue for fairness not equality in the quest for it.

* Channel 4 will be broadcasting this concert on Monday, 8 June 2009. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-worlds-greatest-musical-prodigies

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