Reflections on organising online concerts during lockdown

The Swan Lake Bath Ballet brought it home - how lockdown, the closure of performing spaces and loss of live audience contact has been so devastating to our cultural life, that artists have been forced into entirely unforeseen outlets for their creativity. Here was something beautiful that simply wouldn't have existed in any other circumstances. 

This month, indoor live performances were supposed to resume, under tight restrictions, but this has been postponed. Still, the first major music venues are hoping to stage concerts soon - including Snape Maltings and Wigmore Hall. With reduced audiences and limited duration, it's a long way from normal, but it's a start and it's hopeful.

And it's being watched anxiously by the thousands of musicians whose working lives have been convulsed. Hopefully, they will benefit from the Government's £1.57bn arts package, indirectly at least. In the meantime, let's not forget to encourage all those who have picked themselves up and found an innovative responses, especially if they don't have a big organisation behind them.

For me, running a small and entirely self-funding chamber music series, the difficulties faced by professional music venues are unimaginable. I don't rely on external income and don't have bills to pay. But I've been able to facilitate a little of this innovation, and learnt a few lessons along the way - primarily, I've learnt that there's a huge value in doing something live, even if it can be rather scary. 

Following the example of performers who turned their homes into venues for online concerts, I invited some local professional musicians to present a short recital over a video conference (Zoom webinar), which I would promote as part of a little series. Because of the vaguaries of internet quality and the level of technology risk we were prepared to accept, I decided that the performances would be recorded in advance and also hosted on Vimeo for reliability, but the event was still live on Zoom, with a conversation between me and the performers to introduce the music, and the opportunity for the audience to type in comments and to donate.  

Zoom is quite well designed for this, and it's nowadays a familiar tool for most of our audience, but critically it required use of one of Zoom's paid-for accounts to give presenters an active role separate from the audience. We used the 'pro' account, which allows up to 100 participants - so you can see that our ambitions are modest.

Still, the response has been overwhelming. Admittedly, there haven't been lots of people watching: our four events were watched by dozens of people not hundreds, and views of the recordings number a few hundred. But people have been so generous and enthusiastic to see a local initiative up and running, while the players have also been cheered on by friends and family, pleased to see them back performing. 

For a properly professional version of what I've been doing, take a look at (and do support) Stage-Hub.

Is this the way forward now? When our little series returns to the church that gives it its name, we could broadcast from there instead of having a live audience - or as well as having a socially-distanced one. It's hardly a new idea, as many venues have streamed concerts online before this crisis, but it could easily become the norm.

And of course that allows for people to attend from all over the world. Even we had viewers from America, Italy and South Korea.

It's given me a lot of satisfaction to dabble in concert promotion and in new ways of doing things through necessity. I'm enormously impressed by the tenacity and enthusiasm of the performers, who have had to overcome a number of technological difficulties. Our audience has generously responded to an invitaton to donate. It's been a fun project for us together.

But it is very, very far from a sustainable model for earning a living.

Sorry not sorry

Dominic Cummings refusing to apologise

Do people apologise less than they used to? 

Recently, the King of Belgium expressed "deepest regrets" for his country's colonial abuses. And his brother, Prince Laurent, said that he "always apologises" to African heads of state when they meet.  

This is good and meaningful. The more so, I feel, because saying sorry is rather going out of fashion. No matter how many unfulfilled promises and u-turns are made by governments, they never apologise. Formerly, wouldn't there have been more embarrassment about errors? Now they just ignore them and hope they will go away - which, unfortunately, is what seems to happen. 

As the UK started to emerge from lockdown in July, Boris Johnson was accused of "cowardly" language when saying that care homes "didn't really follow the procedures" and shifting blame onto the sector. The next day, no-one was apologising. Instead they claimed he meant something different, which journalists at the briefing found hard to swallow. And when challenged further, the spokesperson just refused to answer the question and kept on repeating the agreed explanation. Or lie. 

I suppose that's because there is no longer any pretence at there being a single official record of anything. And indeed Johnson's team was accused of rewriting history by repeatedly claiming he had said something he hadn't. 

President Trump is currently reckoned to tell 23 lies every day  (up from 12 last year), but that doesn't seem to matter because enough people are happy with one of the myriad alternative versions of reality that they can inhabit, populated by "alternative facts". Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear just sometimes a nod in the direction of regret? 

I'm grateful to my MP for replying to my complaint about Dominic Cummings' notorious trip to Durham. He was inclined to give Cummings the benefit of the doubt, but he thought he should nonetheless have apologised. Quite! Yes indeed he should. But that would, I suppose, not be his way, which is to be uncompromising. For those of us who expect and like compromise, his obstinacy afterwards was even worse than the infringement itself. 

Actually, King Philippe's "regrets" were noted to fall short of a proper apology, and that's no doubt because there's an immediate implication that reparations would be made. At a personal level as well, of course, an apology starts to look a bit thin if you're not prepared to back it up with action. 

And there's a technique to being sorry in Western culture, thanks to centuries of intellectualising in Christianity, which has apology and forgiveness at its heart. It provides four useful steps: being genuinely sorry and wanting to do better (contrition), fully expressing that regret (confession), being released (absolution) and making up for it (satisfaction or penance). 

Now it seems to me that these really are useful, because they make you properly consider whether you really are sorry for something, and how you're going to repair the relationship with whoever you may have injured. 

I know it's a typical British habit to apologise first and establish any blame afterwards. It's just polite - although it's often passive-aggressive ("I'm saying sorry but really it's your fault so you'd better say sorry, too"). A recent poll found that British people apologise eight times a day. 

But the older I get (and, no doubt, the stuffier) the more often I find a bit of a dislocation here. I'm not saying that people are meaner or less polite. That British apology reflex is still there, but not so much in work situations. It seems a deliberate behaviour change. 

There's a positive side to this. Maybe we shouldn't go round being sorry all the time. For example, studies have shown that women are more inclined than men to apologise and to expect apologies, but that this can be to their disadvantage because it signifies not just politeness but deference. And in a professional environment that can be tactically sensible or not, depending on the situation. 

This article puts it nicely, with a reference to a study in the journal of applied social psychology. The article concludes that apologies make most impact when they're unexpected, and the most unexpected and therefore most effective apology would be from a senior to a junior, and from a male to a female within a workplace. How concisely does that capture our whole history of the male-dominated workplace! No wonder young women might be encouraged to resist unnecessary apologies, even never to apologise. 

But I'm not 100% convinced by the idea in this Ted Talk that we can generally say "thank you" instead. 

In the end, I suppose I just have a lower 'apology threshold'. I do think that expressing regret for things is a good and necessary thing for us to do. It's not just for the benefit of the recipient. It might not be intended for their benefit at all. Understanding responsibility for an error and wishing to do better next time is something we teach our children as soon as they learn they find themselves making deliberate choices. 

I dare say anthropologists can explain that all societies involve a measure of expected apology as part of the social glue of justice. It’s about confirming, re-establishing a common set of values, and in these times we need that more than ever.

When Keats met Wordsworth

John Keats idolised William Wordsworth before he met him. But then disillusion set in.

It was December 1817. Keats, aged 22, was a promising young poet who had just seen his poetry in publication for the first time and was in the middle of writing Endymion, which came out the following year. Wordsworth was well-established by then, and Keats admired him, emulating his style in his first published poem, 'To Solitude' (1816), speaking of:

...the sweet converse of an innocent mind
Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd

And Wordsworth is one of the three heroes in Keats’s sonnet “Great Spirits Now on Earth Are Sojourning”, written and sent to the artist Robert Haydon in November 1816.

He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn’s summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel’s wing;

Their first meeting was arranged by Haydon, in December 1817, who described it as follows in a letter to a friend:

"When Wordsworth came to Town, I brought Keats to him, by his Wordsworth’s desire - Keats expressed to me as we walked to Queen Anne St East where Mr Monkhouse lodged, the greatest, the purest, the most unalloyed pleasure at the prospect. Wordsworth received him kindly, & after a few minutes, Wordsworth asked him what he had been lately doing. I said he has just finished an exquisite ode to Pan - and as he had not a copy I begged Keats to repeat it - which he did in his usual half chant, (most touching) walking up & down the room - when he had done I felt really, as if I had heard a young Apollo - Wordsworth drily said “a very pretty piece of Paganism” - This was unfeeling, & unworthy of his high Genius to a young Whorshipper like Keats - & Keats felt it deeply - so that if Keats has said any thing severe about our Friend; it was because he was wounded - and though he dined with Wordsworth after at my table -- he never forgave him."

One of these further meetings with Wordsworth gets a mention in a letter to Keats's brothers George and Tom a few weeks later (5 January 1818). Keats also refers to the dinner at Haydon's, but there is little sign of enthusiasm for the older poet.

"This day I promised to dine with Wordsworth and the weather is so bad that I am undecided for he lives at Mortimer Street. i had an invitation to meet him at Kingstons - but not liking that place i sent my excus... On Saturday I called on Wordsworth before he went to Kingston's and was surprised to find him with a stiff collar. I saw his spouse and I think his daughter - I forget whether I had written my last before my Sunday evening at Haydon's - no I did not or I should have told you of a young man you met at Paris at Scott's of the name of Richer [Joseph Ricthie] I think - he is going to Fezan in Africa there to proceed if possible like Mungo Park - he was very polite to me and enquired very particularly after you - then there was Wordsworth, Lamb, Monkhouse, Landeer, Kingston and your humble servant. Lamb got tipsey and blew up Kingston..."

Then in a letter to Benjamin Bailey, 23 January 1818, Keats writes "I have seen a great deal of Wordsworth" without providing any further details - so perhaps he didn't find the meetings very inspiring. And then writing to the brothers again in February, he says: "I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited in Town - by his egotism, vanity and bigotry - yet he is a great poet if not a philosopher."

There's also a missed meeting to record. Later that year, Keats toured the Lakes, writing to his brother Tom (25-27 June) that "Lord Wordsworth, instead of being in retirement, has himself and his house full in the thick of fashionable visitors quite convenient to be pointed at all the summer long."

Yet he was not at home for Keats on this occasion.

"We slept at Ambleside not above two miles from Rydal the residence of Wordsworth... We ate a monstrous breakfast on our return and after it proceeded to Wordsworth's. He was not at home nor was any member of his family. I was much disappointed. I wrote a note for him and stuck it up over what I knew must be Miss Wordsworth's portrait and set forth again." (Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 27-28 June 1818)

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See also: http://johnkeats.uvic.ca/resources/DesperatelySeekingColeridge.pdf for an account of the only meeting between Keats and Coleridge 

References
https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2014/10/25/wordsworth-and-keats/#!
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2106314.The_Immortal_Dinner
http://keats-poems.com/letters/

When Shaw met Kipling

George Bernard Shaw and Rudyard Kipling met each other for the first and probably only time on a momentous occasion - the funeral of Thomas Hardy on 16th January 1928. They didn't get on.

The story was told in 1933 by the writer and critic Alexander Woolcott.

"Five years ago, all that was mortal of Thomas Hardy was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey... Stanley Baldwin, Ramsey MacDonald, J M Barrie, Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, Rudyard Kipling - these were among the pall bearers. Curiously enough, Shaw and Kipling had never met until that day when Gosse introduced them. Or rather tried to. Kipling, so runs the legend, still had so much of war-time bitterness left in his heart that he would not acknowledge the introduction , and Shaw, impishly amused by this reminder of the Junkers' incurable resentment against him, chuckled in his beard all through the funeral." (1)

In fact, more than being "among the pall bearers", Kipling and Shaw were paired with each other, which Shaw complained about because of their difference in height. Shaw’s secretary, Blanche Patch, wrote that Kipling shook hands "hurriedly, and turned away as if from the Evil One". (2)

It was wet and cold. Perhaps Kipling's mood was not helped by the London weather. He and his wife, Caroline, had only recently returned from a long-ish stay on the continent. Caroline recorded in her diary: "To the Abbey for Mr Thomas Hardy's funeral. Rud pall-bearer. I near the grave for the ashes - not a very impressive ceremony. Home after tea. Bad weather and mud on the roads." (3)

It all sounds rather ill-tempered, but it wouldn't have surprised the others present. These two Nobel Laureates had very little in common.

The outbreak of the First World War epitomises their opposing standpoints. While Kipling (then aged 47) was in tune with the national mood of fervent patriotism, and producing propaganda that repeated typical stories of German brutishness, Shaw (aged 58) produced his tract 'Common Sense About the War', which argued that Britain was just as much in the wrong as Germany. (In a kind of mirror image of this pose, in 1945 he disapproved of the postwar trials of the defeated German leaders, as an act of self-righteousness, saying "We are all potential criminals".)
 
By contrast, Kipling stood with his countrymen in proudly claiming the moral high ground. In a 1915 speech, he said, "There was no crime, no cruelty, no abomination that the mind of men can conceive of which the German has not perpetrated, is not perpetrating, and will not perpetrate if he is allowed to go on.... Today, there are only two divisions in the world... human beings and Germans."

Their politics were about as far apart as one can imagine: on the one hand, the Irish Fabian and on the other the great pillar of the establishment and the Empire, who described Ramsey MacDonald's Labour government as "Bolshevism without bullets" and, according to Mary O’Toole's analysis in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, may have had "enormous sympathy for the lower classes … yet distrusted all forms of democratic government".

And yet, peculiarly, they were both admirers of Mussolini when he came to power in 1922, with Shaw calling him "the right kind of tyrant".

Mussolini would certainly have been a subject of conversation at the famous weekend house parties given by Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat, at Cliveden. Everybody who was anybody seems to have been invited there at some point between the wars. She must have revelled in hearing the contrasting views of Shaw and Kipling, who were both visitors, but it seems unlikely she would have tested her genius as a hostess by inviting them simultaneously. Shaw described her as "a volcano". She persuaded him to join her on a trip to the Soviet Union in 1931, which included a lengthy meeting with Stalin, whom Shaw described as "a Georgian gentlemen". (4)

Kipling's star was waning in the years after Hardy's funeral, while Shaw travelled the world growing more famous as a playright. When Kipling died in 1936, his ashes were interred next to Hardy's in the Abbey. Shaw did not attend the service. (5)

Notes
1. Long, Long Ago, Chapter Vii, February 1933, by Alexander Woolcott

2. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-349-05109-0_34

3. http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/members/car_28.pdf
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliveden
5. http://www.kiplingjournal.com/acrobat/KJ037.pdf

Bringing the music back

Wigmore Hall

It’s a landmark moment. This week, Wigmore Hall re-opens for live concerts. Although live-streamed ‘behind closed doors’, it signifies the start on a long road to normality, a journey back to the music making and listening that we all took for granted just a few months ago. 

Music festivals, concert halls, churches and other places of performance are now girding themselves for the painstaking task of assessing all the risks of each step forward; from a soloist on a platform and a sound engineer, to a small consort, to an orchestra - even, praise be, to an actual, live audience.

There are going to be plenty of risks assessments, deep cleans, health warnings, new procedures and a lot of worry before we get there. But the journey is one to be taken with enthusiasm and imagination. 

For many musicians, whose livelihoods have been so suddenly interrupted, performing online has become an unexpected necessity. It doesn’t suit everybody. But not being able to perform isn’t just about not earning a living: it’s about not properly living at all. It’s about not being able to express yourself; not fulfilling your purpose. I’ve talked to players who speak of the frustration and emptiness when all the music around them is just on the pages of books and on their music stands, not vibrating and flowing from their instruments and voices.

Of course, there have been some wonderful innovations. Virtual choirs, already popularised for one-off events, have sprung up everywhere. And even entire orchestras have worked together online, such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Bach, the Universe and Everything concerts. Each participant submits a home recording, and these are knitted together by an editor. This requires considerable technical effort, and a lot of time, quite apart from the precision and commitment of every musician involved. It’s surprising just how good some of these are. 

But for the most part, for the vast majority of musicians, working freelance, probably doing their best to keep up some teaching commitments by video, and juggling other responsibilities in lockdown like childcare, such collective enterprises are rare or impractical. To perform, they have had to manage on their own (or as a couple), overcoming whatever technical and acoustical limitations they find in their situation, and being increasingly resourceful with social media - for some, a new venture. They have streamed videos on Facebook and YouTube, linked to them from Twitter, and channelled them on Instagram. It was all possible before, but instead of an entertaining promotional outlet, it’s become the only way of reaching an audience. 

And to them all, I say thank you, and well done. Thank you for having the courage to take an often unfamiliar path, to try out new technology with all the testing and unexpected problems it involves, and to share your talents in a new and challenging spotlight. 

I’ve really enjoyed seeing and hearing musicians who have previously performed in the concert series I manage, Music at King Charles. For example, violinist Ken Aiso has been broadcasting daily 15-minute recitals from home. Steven Devine has explored new repertoire. Members of Eboracum Baroque have made solo videos. And Cantabile,the London Quartet, have recorded songs from their four homes. 

All this is fabulous, and it’s encouraged me to take my concert series online over the summer, to give artists like these an opportunity to perform, and also to talk about what they’ve been up to and share their lockdown journeys.

But it’s not the way it should be. As well as enjoying their music, I’ve found myself spending less time with CDs and the radio and more on YouTube watching live concert recordings, such as the wonderful and inexhaustibly refreshing Netherlands Bach Society’s complete Bach project. 

Because I miss it. I miss the air of expectation and chatter front of house. The last-minute adjustments backstage. The nervousness. The smiles between players when something they’ve rehearsed works out or when someone is mischievous. The scrape of chairs, opening of instrument cases, tunings, polishings, page-turns, deep breaths, sweat and concentration. And above all, the silence, the noise and the elation of an audience. 

And this is why I think that, rather than just listening to recordings and waiting for normal concerts to resume, we need to explore the journey back to normality, back to the heights of expression and collective music-making, alongside our musicians; recognising the difficulties it involves, giving opportunities to them to describe through whatever performances they can manage how music continues to stretch and challenge them, and share the unexpected solace and delight to be found in these chance encounters with music and the people who are keeping it alive for us while we wait for its full reawakening.

See also: Reflections on online concerts