I despair!

Frank Renton reflects on the current debate regarding young composers and their exposure in the band contest marketplace.

The first ten years of the new millennium behind us, it only seems like yesterday that we were crammed into the brand spanking new dome to witness Tony Blair’s celebration on behalf of the nation, with him pumping Her Majesty’s arms up and down in a frenetic performance of Auld Lang Syne... I just knew it would all end in tears and another ten years of possible development for the brass band are gone with hardly a flicker of interest from the world at large. I don’t think I can remember a time when the brass band as a musical entity was in such decline - audiences are diminishing except where there is a particular following, bands are going out of existence and I have never known so much infighting between the various factions. There seem to be several areas of real conflict, with one faction of the brass fraternity working against another. I cannot remember how many times I have written articles about the need for good music, or at least music written for bands by established and respected composers, and here we are again discussing the same subject, only this time it seems that it’s personal, with several emergent composers demanding attention and wondering why they are not getting the exposure they obviously think they deserve.

Ninety or so years ago, when the repertoire began to develop and the first original music began to be written for bands, there was no such thing as ‘brass band’ composers - there were only composers. Most couldn’t make a good living out of composing, so did a variety of jobs like teaching, conducting amateur orchestras or simply taking whatever jobs came about from the emergent music industry. Some were involved in the music theatre of the day as composers of popular music or music directors of theatres, where they were expected to make arrangements for the shows they were involved in, and generally were not expected to be original, but they were experienced orchestrators nevertheless. It was to this crosssection of musical life that John Henry Iles turned when he took control of the ‘National’ and Belle Vue contests, and began to create a repertoire of original music for the bands to play at his competitions. I don’t suppose that JHI had any idea what he was going to get when he commissioned his first pieces, but he was a canny and successful businessman and I guess that he took considerable advice. He turned first to good, middle-of-the-road professional writers that he knew would do a solid job without frightening the horses. However, he gambled massively when he commissioned Gustav Holst to write the testpiece for the 1928 National Championships. While we all know about Holst’s music now, in his lifetime he never received the recognition that perhaps he deserved and, despite the acclamation he received for his suite, The Planets, he was never able to earn a living as a composer and retained the job of Director of Music at St. Paul’s School in London until the end of his life. He never stopped working, however, no matter what the setbacks, and we now have some wonderful treasures for both the brass band and the wind band.