1 00:00:14,570 --> 00:00:21,020 A very warm welcome to this keynote note in the diversity and the British String Quartette Symposium. 2 00:00:21,020 --> 00:00:27,950 My name is Venkatraman and I'm delighted to be chairing this very topic, a highly relevant session today. 3 00:00:27,950 --> 00:00:35,780 The keynote will be delivered to us by Professor Laura Tonbridge. Professor is Nori's professor of music at Oxford University. 4 00:00:35,780 --> 00:00:45,350 Her research has concentrated on German romanticism with a particular interest in reception through criticism, performance and composition. 5 00:00:45,350 --> 00:00:54,320 She has thought and written extensively about musical genres, particularly those that try to straddle the lines between private and public and 6 00:00:54,320 --> 00:01:02,190 between amateur and professional incarnations in their socio artistic contexts. 7 00:01:02,190 --> 00:01:11,070 Since October 2019, Laura has been the recipient of a three major research fellowship from the Liverpool Trust for a new project, 8 00:01:11,070 --> 00:01:18,000 a social and sonic history of the string quartette, and we're all looking forward to the outcome of that. 9 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:23,490 She will speak to us today on early string quartette residencies at academic institutions. 10 00:01:23,490 --> 00:01:28,560 Nora will speak for about 45 minutes, after which we will take questions. 11 00:01:28,560 --> 00:01:33,360 So please post your questions on the YouTube live chat. 12 00:01:33,360 --> 00:01:49,060 Her talk to us today is entitled The String Quartette Takes Residence Class Community Curricula Open to Laura. 13 00:01:49,060 --> 00:01:54,910 Thank you very much. I hope that you can see my screen and that I can get started. 14 00:01:54,910 --> 00:02:01,000 And thanks to Victor for the very kind introduction and for hosting this session and also to my 15 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:06,970 colleague Joanna Bullivant and Samantha Dittman for inviting me to be part of this wonderful project. 16 00:02:06,970 --> 00:02:11,500 There are two things I should warn you about before I start next Netflix style. 17 00:02:11,500 --> 00:02:19,570 One is that there is one instance of strong language. And secondly, there's quite a lot of 70s fashion and the images you're about to see. 18 00:02:19,570 --> 00:02:37,160 Anyway, I'll begin. A respectable university these days. 19 00:02:37,160 --> 00:02:42,560 As a resident chamber ensemble or at least a working relationship with an outside string, 20 00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:48,470 quartette declared The Guardian's music critic Gerald Lerner in November 1969. 21 00:02:48,470 --> 00:02:54,650 And I should say we're going to hear a lot from Lahner this afternoon. He was the Guardian music critic from 1965. 22 00:02:54,650 --> 00:03:02,120 Before that, he was a lecturer in German at the University of Manchester. A music critic for the North, I should say. 23 00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:03,590 Some 45 years later, 24 00:03:03,590 --> 00:03:13,590 composer Christopher Fox reflected that by the 1970s and his self respecting British University Music Department had a string quartette in residence. 25 00:03:13,590 --> 00:03:20,340 There might be a subtle distinction to be made between a respectable university and a self respecting university, 26 00:03:20,340 --> 00:03:27,590 but both phrases suggest that a resident string quartette signals something about an institution standing and aspiration. 27 00:03:27,590 --> 00:03:31,070 But I'd like to do this afternoon is to consider what those qualities were, 28 00:03:31,070 --> 00:03:36,260 as I think they might inflect our discussion of the question of the British string quartette today, 29 00:03:36,260 --> 00:03:41,360 particularly in regard to how ensembles and universities tackle issues of diversity. 30 00:03:41,360 --> 00:03:49,700 My focus will remain historical, selecting a couple of examples from the seeming heyday of Quartette residences in the late 1960s and 70s, 31 00:03:49,700 --> 00:03:59,270 which happened to coincide with the so-called new universities. Allow me to ask alongside what a quarter some residents for what A is for? 32 00:03:59,270 --> 00:04:02,660 I'd also like to raise the question of what constitutes diversity. 33 00:04:02,660 --> 00:04:08,780 It will become clear, I think, that while education and access to culture are concerns shared across the decades, 34 00:04:08,780 --> 00:04:12,800 whereas now attention might be paid primarily to gender, race and ableism. 35 00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:19,700 In the 1970s, quartettes in residence, pretty much all white and male were concerned with class community engagement, 36 00:04:19,700 --> 00:04:24,820 the north south divide and extending repertoire beyond the classical canon. 37 00:04:24,820 --> 00:04:29,710 I'm not going to argue simply because I can't argue that those issues have since been resolved, 38 00:04:29,710 --> 00:04:37,530 instead, I want to make sure that we keep them in the mix. The idea of a quartette in residence is often associated with American 39 00:04:37,530 --> 00:04:42,410 universities and conservatives and with chamber music festivals such as Marlboro. 40 00:04:42,410 --> 00:04:50,240 However, there had been quarters in a British music department since the 1920s under the aegis of the ever energetic musician and education, 41 00:04:50,240 --> 00:05:00,800 is Sawford Davies, newly appointed as professor of music at University College Aberystwyth and as chairman of the National Council of Music for Wales. 42 00:05:00,800 --> 00:05:06,830 Now these two images show both a portrait of British British music scene in 1988. 43 00:05:06,830 --> 00:05:13,190 I've circled Davies and read his next Ebonie to sprout with the long beard. 44 00:05:13,190 --> 00:05:18,260 You have the splendidly moustached Elgar, Stanford and so on. 45 00:05:18,260 --> 00:05:24,260 And then you have Samuel Teleco on the back row and gazing off into the distance, Ethel Smyth, 46 00:05:24,260 --> 00:05:32,180 who we heard about this morning, the other image you have of him and the signals that after having been Professor Davies, 47 00:05:32,180 --> 00:05:38,540 they went and worked extensively for the BBC on their music appreciation programmes, in particular cigarette cars with his image. 48 00:05:38,540 --> 00:05:44,510 I can't imagine having cigarette cards today, but also cigarettes with images of music professors on them. 49 00:05:44,510 --> 00:05:52,010 The idea was soon picked up elsewhere by the late 1960s, Edinburgh and Cardiff had associations with professional quartettes, 50 00:05:52,010 --> 00:05:54,920 which did some coaching and gave regular concert series, 51 00:05:54,920 --> 00:06:03,300 while Birmingham had its own quartette made up of two university lecturers, one from the physics department and two professional musicians. 52 00:06:03,300 --> 00:06:11,720 The renowned Amadeus Quartette began a residency at the University of York in 1967. 53 00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:18,950 They were to spend three weeks there every time, giving two concerts at York and two elsewhere in the North for a generous annual 54 00:06:18,950 --> 00:06:23,210 salary of six thousand pounds provided by a grant from Granada Television, 55 00:06:23,210 --> 00:06:26,610 and the university paid their living expenses. 56 00:06:26,610 --> 00:06:33,990 While it was acknowledged that this was a coup for the university and for concert goers in the region, the immediate benefits and felt not by Granada. 57 00:06:33,990 --> 00:06:39,330 It was said and not by the university or the general public, but by the Amadeus Quartette, 58 00:06:39,330 --> 00:06:43,920 so far as they were concerned, it was a chance for them to learn and rehearse repertoire. 59 00:06:43,920 --> 00:06:45,750 Although they gave some individual lessons, 60 00:06:45,750 --> 00:06:52,800 they were said to be sceptical that a string quartette good enough for them to coach could be found in a university music department. 61 00:06:52,800 --> 00:06:59,820 Jared Loughner reported one senses a slight local resentment that they asked the students to pay for their tuition, 62 00:06:59,820 --> 00:07:06,510 that they go home on the weekends to see the families naturally enough, and that their concerns have become not only so popular in the university, 63 00:07:06,510 --> 00:07:13,930 but also so fashionable in the town that tickets have to be rationed and defended by an overwhelmed administrative staff. 64 00:07:13,930 --> 00:07:19,300 One of the composers on staff, David Blake, was quoted as saying that while the residency was working well, 65 00:07:19,300 --> 00:07:27,050 he was disappointed that their predominantly classical programmes, so little relation to what composing is about these days. 66 00:07:27,050 --> 00:07:33,410 While the Omidyar's had some quartettes by Britain to pitch and Bartok and as we have a Florida shooting this morning, 67 00:07:33,410 --> 00:07:43,240 also from the composer he was talking about in their repertoire, they were Siba sorry, they were wary of taking anything on the public. 68 00:07:43,240 --> 00:07:50,010 Want to produce the Amadeus as a world class ensemble whose presence alone would be of benefit to York. 69 00:07:50,010 --> 00:07:55,310 However, he concluded his article was something of a call to arms. 70 00:07:55,310 --> 00:08:03,830 But another university praying for a similar fairy godmother act might consider whether a young chamber ensemble with its destiny not yet charted, 71 00:08:03,830 --> 00:08:09,980 would suit its needs better. One that will coach will play through experimental student works and will involve itself 72 00:08:09,980 --> 00:08:14,180 in amateur musical activities would not be as great as a quartette of the Amadeus. 73 00:08:14,180 --> 00:08:21,820 But it could someday become one. A reply came from George Pratt, director of music at the University of CU, 74 00:08:21,820 --> 00:08:27,970 you wrote to the editor explaining that they had just hired a young quartette who would be in residence from October. 75 00:08:27,970 --> 00:08:32,290 The position was sponsored by nine thousand pound grant from the Liverpool Trust, 76 00:08:32,290 --> 00:08:38,050 split over three years rather than six thousand pounds per annum enjoyed by the end of the year. 77 00:08:38,050 --> 00:08:43,210 It would allow for young string players to study with Alexandrea. 78 00:08:43,210 --> 00:08:49,090 Moskovsky had been second violin with a Hungarian string quartette and was now teaching at the Royal Manchester College of Music, 79 00:08:49,090 --> 00:08:54,530 one of the forerunners at the RNC in. Explained. 80 00:08:54,530 --> 00:08:59,720 There will be research students aiming to have acquired a high standard of play and a reputation sufficient 81 00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:05,920 enough for them to be able to earn a living as a quartette when their three year term appeal is ended. 82 00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:11,890 They're certainly not as great a quartette as the amateurs, though, were share, Mr. Lanas hopes that they could one day become one, 83 00:09:11,890 --> 00:09:19,480 but there, as yet humble status makes it possible to ask that they should take an active part in a relatively amateur music making. 84 00:09:19,480 --> 00:09:22,360 They will lead the string sections of the university orchestra, 85 00:09:22,360 --> 00:09:31,540 take on a limited amount of individual teaching to an undergraduate string players and play chamber music to and with amateur instrumentalists. 86 00:09:31,540 --> 00:09:36,180 Pratt hopes that the scheme may produce another Ramadans. 87 00:09:36,180 --> 00:09:41,790 Meanwhile, we have a stimulus from your chamber music within the university and through the adult Education Department, 88 00:09:41,790 --> 00:09:46,590 and later, I hope, three invitations to play outside the university. 89 00:09:46,590 --> 00:09:53,950 This young quartette can gain both experience for themselves and also offer something to music in the Midlands. 90 00:09:53,950 --> 00:09:58,630 This is quite a different approach to a quartette presidency, to previous schemes in Britain. 91 00:09:58,630 --> 00:10:04,630 It was designed to create a new quartette from young musicians rather than to hire an existing ensemble. 92 00:10:04,630 --> 00:10:10,000 In so doing, it recognised the need for a new quartette to have time to learn how to be a quartette, 93 00:10:10,000 --> 00:10:15,950 which means not just learning repertoire, but how to play together and how to craft their own sound well. 94 00:10:15,950 --> 00:10:22,790 The pedagogic element of the residency through coaching by Moskovsky outside of a conservatoire was more in line with continental, 95 00:10:22,790 --> 00:10:30,980 European or Soviets mentoring models, groups in which tradition dominated international competitions and concert programmes. 96 00:10:30,980 --> 00:10:38,270 Yet the scheme also hoped to embed the quartette in the university as performers and teachers and in the wider community. 97 00:10:38,270 --> 00:10:45,560 As such, it reflected the set up of the university as a whole, which is worth a brief digression here. 98 00:10:45,560 --> 00:10:49,820 After the Second World War, there was a recommendation that more provincial colleges, 99 00:10:49,820 --> 00:10:56,840 which previously had been overseen by Oxford or Cambridge or the University of London, should be allowed to confer their own degrees. 100 00:10:56,840 --> 00:11:02,990 While industrial cities such as Manchester and Birmingham had founded universities in the 19th century, the so-called red bricks, 101 00:11:02,990 --> 00:11:11,600 the potteries had lacked the financial muscle and political influence to do so until the foundation of the University of North Staffordshire in 1949. 102 00:11:11,600 --> 00:11:20,570 Its first principle was Lord Lindsay, a philosopher who'd been master of Balliol College and vice chancellor of Oxford University. 103 00:11:20,570 --> 00:11:24,410 Jill was deeply committed to education for the working classes and as you put it 104 00:11:24,410 --> 00:11:28,820 in a lecture to North Staffordshire Workers Educational Association in 1925, 105 00:11:28,820 --> 00:11:38,830 advocated for, quote, a people's university. When an opportunity came to buy a hole from the Sneyd family, the Reverend Thomas Harwood, 106 00:11:38,830 --> 00:11:42,520 vicar of Australia and leader of the Labour Group on Stoke City Council, 107 00:11:42,520 --> 00:11:49,300 encouraged them to bid for it, which allow them to build a university campus in a green site away from the city. 108 00:11:49,300 --> 00:11:54,700 University of Kiel was granted a full charter in 1960 to. 109 00:11:54,700 --> 00:12:02,970 Lord Lindsay believes that, quote at the end of education is a better understanding of the society in which we live. 110 00:12:02,970 --> 00:12:07,020 He argued that specialist, an expert knowledge, needs to be balanced with a wide outlook, 111 00:12:07,020 --> 00:12:14,220 and general understanding is that if we are going to try and keep a democratic country and maintain understanding of one another, 112 00:12:14,220 --> 00:12:18,960 we have to send out people from our universities who can do the technical stuff and who at the same 113 00:12:18,960 --> 00:12:24,750 time have an understanding of political and social problems and the values that lie behind them. 114 00:12:24,750 --> 00:12:27,690 Nancy died a decade before the university opened, 115 00:12:27,690 --> 00:12:33,960 but his ideas formed the basis for its curriculum and this was shaped differently to those of Oxbridge or the red bricks. 116 00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:40,650 Instead of concentrating on one subject or two closely related ones, all students took a foundation year that incorporated arts, 117 00:12:40,650 --> 00:12:47,340 sciences and social sciences before deciding to concentrate on two subjects and some subsidiary ones. 118 00:12:47,340 --> 00:12:52,870 Music was introduced subsidiary subject on the undergraduate curriculum in nineteen sixty five. 119 00:12:52,870 --> 00:13:01,640 There have been a music director at the university, you already mentioned George Pratt overseeing musical activities on campus since 1958. 120 00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:07,070 He might not have had the modern brutalist architecture of other universities built in the 1960s, 121 00:13:07,070 --> 00:13:13,010 the plate glass universities of Sussex as East Anglia, Warwick Kent and Lancaster, 122 00:13:13,010 --> 00:13:17,420 but they shared Linzess generalist principles and the notion that by all being together on 123 00:13:17,420 --> 00:13:22,160 a residential campus outside of an attractive regional town rather than the large city, 124 00:13:22,160 --> 00:13:27,990 they might foster close pedagogical and social context as well as better pastoral care. 125 00:13:27,990 --> 00:13:33,390 These issues were coming to the fore as the nature of university provision was changing across the country. 126 00:13:33,390 --> 00:13:38,850 Student numbers were rapidly increasing, along with a number of universities at the start of the Second World War. 127 00:13:38,850 --> 00:13:43,200 Only two percent of the British population went to university in 1939. 128 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:51,630 There were 50000 students in 21 universities. By 1961, numbers more than doubled to one hundred thirteen thousand. 129 00:13:51,630 --> 00:13:59,160 Students are more willing to travel to universities rather than to stay local, which is one reason why Campus University succeeded. 130 00:13:59,160 --> 00:14:05,850 What they studied was also changing. In the 1930s, half the undergraduate student population took up subjects. 131 00:14:05,850 --> 00:14:11,830 The post-war expansion of the universities and the degree subjects they offered shifted that to science and technology law. 132 00:14:11,830 --> 00:14:19,020 Is this an accountancy? To the extent that in 2009 only 11 percent of students were taking degrees in the humanities? 133 00:14:19,020 --> 00:14:21,990 Stefan Collini and what are the universities for? 134 00:14:21,990 --> 00:14:28,290 Observes that the 1960s and 70s are exceptional in the history of undergraduate provision in the United Kingdom. 135 00:14:28,290 --> 00:14:33,420 They were the first and last decade in which Britain tried to sustain a substantial, 136 00:14:33,420 --> 00:14:41,900 still rigorously selective, wholly state funded system of high quality, undergraduate centred universities. 137 00:14:41,900 --> 00:14:47,180 There remained a strongly paternalistic side of the universities, if they were beacons of culture, 138 00:14:47,180 --> 00:14:51,820 as Kathleen said, they shone light on a very particular aspect of its. 139 00:14:51,820 --> 00:14:58,150 A report on the foundation year Akeel published in 1968 acknowledged that lindsy deliberately 140 00:14:58,150 --> 00:15:04,390 limited the scope to Western culture by adopting the phrase the heritage of European civilisation. 141 00:15:04,390 --> 00:15:08,830 It is thus no criticism of the cause that emissions can be detected with ease. 142 00:15:08,830 --> 00:15:13,150 But if there is any intention to include in the course of discussion of contemporary problems, 143 00:15:13,150 --> 00:15:19,040 it's hard to see how to justify the neglect of the political and economic roles of the USA and the USSR. 144 00:15:19,040 --> 00:15:27,210 The influence on 20th century thought of Marx and Freud and a psychological basis of nationalism and racial prejudice. 145 00:15:27,210 --> 00:15:32,760 Where does the string quartette fit in here? How does that address contemporary problems? 146 00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:37,110 The appointment of a group of young musicians would learn to work together and share the growing 147 00:15:37,110 --> 00:15:42,330 expertise of students would seem in line with the community ethos and civilising process. 148 00:15:42,330 --> 00:15:48,630 There's little doubt the majority of a string quartette repertoire typically represents the rich European heritage more 149 00:15:48,630 --> 00:15:54,210 than anything is tempting to see the appointment of the quartette in residence as representing the taste of luxury. 150 00:15:54,210 --> 00:15:57,390 That editor of the Times educational supplement Walta James, 151 00:15:57,390 --> 00:16:05,280 thought every university should be able to offer in an article supporting the use of private funds to raise funds for higher education institutions, 152 00:16:05,280 --> 00:16:09,950 where he mentioned a city based on sponsorship of the Amadeus residency at York. 153 00:16:09,950 --> 00:16:14,270 The Bernstine connexion also points to something beyond the elite university. 154 00:16:14,270 --> 00:16:19,970 As founder of Granada Television, Bernstine had made a case for the cultural strength and coherence of the north of England. 155 00:16:19,970 --> 00:16:25,640 And James acknowledged that some areas, for example, York had a strong tradition of local benefaction. 156 00:16:25,640 --> 00:16:34,040 If a quartette were to enhance music in the Midlands, it needs to tap into civic pride that those areas had access to artists of the highest quality. 157 00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:42,740 You could compete with those performing in London, which had access to so many international musicians that residencies were not as vital. 158 00:16:42,740 --> 00:16:46,580 The difficulty of finding adequate candidates meant that Appetiser posted 159 00:16:46,580 --> 00:16:51,140 quartette quotation residence for two years before finding suitable musicians. 160 00:16:51,140 --> 00:16:51,680 Eventually, 161 00:16:51,680 --> 00:16:58,250 he appointed four students in the Royal Academy of Music who were already playing together as a quartette and have been coached by Sidney Griller. 162 00:16:58,250 --> 00:17:04,880 His own quartette had been in residence at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1949 1961. 163 00:17:04,880 --> 00:17:17,260 Greene, the King. They change their name in homage to the founder of the new university home, calling themselves the Lindsy Quartette. 164 00:17:17,260 --> 00:17:22,090 Jared Loughner, he had hoped some university would take up the gauntlet of taking a young quartette 165 00:17:22,090 --> 00:17:27,790 on Gedeh Review to the inaugural concert by the Lindsey Quartette in November 1968. 166 00:17:27,790 --> 00:17:32,050 They played high school, setting seventy seven No. One but second quarter. 167 00:17:32,050 --> 00:17:37,420 And Beethoven's Opus 59. Number three, it was Falana, an encouraging event. 168 00:17:37,420 --> 00:17:41,740 While nerves seemed to affect the first half, Billings's grew showed in the second. 169 00:17:41,740 --> 00:17:47,710 When they have the technical security to take risks, they could become an exciting string quartette, he said. 170 00:17:47,710 --> 00:17:50,200 You can explain the arrangement with the university. 171 00:17:50,200 --> 00:17:57,010 Each player was employed as a research fellow with an annual salary of around a thousand pounds, which is about thirteen thousand today. 172 00:17:57,010 --> 00:18:01,480 It's worth noting that they had to be called research fellows to fit in the university system, 173 00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:07,330 and I assume for the funding and early manifestation of the practise as research agenda. 174 00:18:07,330 --> 00:18:14,950 In this context, it meant that the quarter had been rehearsing and having tuition for Moskovsky for over a year before they made their debut. 175 00:18:14,950 --> 00:18:19,000 Pratt was quoted as saying that there was an altruistic aspect to the set up, 176 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:26,050 which is that we can enable a young quartette to stay together without having to work on the back desks of some orchestra as well. 177 00:18:26,050 --> 00:18:27,340 The scheme bore fruit. 178 00:18:27,340 --> 00:18:34,720 The Lindsays, going to third place of the International String Quartette competition in Vienna, Belgium, in 1969, with Lonn explaining, quote, 179 00:18:34,720 --> 00:18:39,430 It was the youngest quartette in the competition and its success against state sponsored competition 180 00:18:39,430 --> 00:18:43,970 from elsewhere was largely the result of enlightened arrangement of the Enlightenment arrangement. 181 00:18:43,970 --> 00:18:50,410 To kill the reference to state sponsored competition presumably refers to the Soviet Union. 182 00:18:50,410 --> 00:18:55,810 And as I'll come to you later, there was some intriguing quartette, diplomacy taking place during these years. 183 00:18:55,810 --> 00:18:58,750 But perhaps most striking Islamised description of the arrangement, 184 00:18:58,750 --> 00:19:03,820 Acuil as enlightened a term that again positions the presence and nurturing of a quartette 185 00:19:03,820 --> 00:19:09,550 within a university environment as being indicative of a deliberate educational strategy. 186 00:19:09,550 --> 00:19:14,470 Proj was concerned that after the leadership fellowships had ended, the Lindsays will be set adrift, 187 00:19:14,470 --> 00:19:19,030 condemned to endlessly playing the music club circuit to make ends meet at the university Senate. 188 00:19:19,030 --> 00:19:22,940 Vote to the presidency should be extended for a further two years. 189 00:19:22,940 --> 00:19:31,490 The first London concerts in 1970 were welcomed by the critics, with Edward Greenfield conveying their rough edges with most wit. 190 00:19:31,490 --> 00:19:35,870 If Ken, motorists sometimes describe a car as hairy energy and responsiveness, 191 00:19:35,870 --> 00:19:45,510 the quality is rather the smooth efficiency, then the lenses make an attractive Harry quartette. 192 00:19:45,510 --> 00:19:50,550 As you'll see from this next slide, reminiscences from students, Aqeel, while volunteers were in residents, 193 00:19:50,550 --> 00:19:57,450 range from the deeply appreciative through to acknowledgements that they realised what an opportunity their presence was only after they graduated. 194 00:19:57,450 --> 00:20:01,620 So we go from remembering the boxes they used to soundproof the hole they rehearsed in. 195 00:20:01,620 --> 00:20:08,440 And Peter Cropper being a resident tutor. Through to feeling privileged to have witnessed them at the start of a great career, 196 00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:13,720 then to someone who was completely unaware of them because at the time she preferred the Grateful Dead and then came 197 00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:19,720 to them later and saw themselves as being fortunate to have gotten what they were wearing on the farewell tour. 198 00:20:19,720 --> 00:20:22,970 And then finally, sadly, I didn't appreciate the Lenzi quartette much during my time, 199 00:20:22,970 --> 00:20:30,820 Akeel, but has learnt through their daughter to appreciate the music. 200 00:20:30,820 --> 00:20:39,310 It was soon recognised that Lindsay's vision of a civilised community of 800 students at CU was being eroded, a student numbers increased. 201 00:20:39,310 --> 00:20:45,250 By 1972, there were two thousand two hundred students enrolled and no plans to expand to 3000. 202 00:20:45,250 --> 00:20:52,330 Some chose or had to live off campus or forsook the student union in favour of staying in their residential halls. 203 00:20:52,330 --> 00:20:57,220 Hopes for engagement with local communities was also harder to achieve than originally envisioned. 204 00:20:57,220 --> 00:21:04,990 The Times reported that the geographical isolation of CU is a cause of prejudices both within and outside the university. 205 00:21:04,990 --> 00:21:08,260 If you ask someone in the potteries just three miles away about kill, 206 00:21:08,260 --> 00:21:12,940 a likely answer would be they live in that country house on the hill, surrounded by a high wall. 207 00:21:12,940 --> 00:21:19,560 I don't know what they do all day. We only see them once a year when they come into Stoke-On-Trent on floats, waving flags. 208 00:21:19,560 --> 00:21:27,300 Yeah, during the time Akeel, the lenses encountered another local institution news director would transform their attitude to community engagement, 209 00:21:27,300 --> 00:21:32,100 cellist Bernard Greg Smith and his recently published memoirs recalled a rehearsal for a concert at the 210 00:21:32,100 --> 00:21:41,170 old Victoria Theatre in Stoke-On-Trent in 1969 and 1970 when they met Peter Cheesman for the first time. 211 00:21:41,170 --> 00:21:50,770 We arrived at the theatre, complete with our usual trappings of suits, white shirts, shiny shoes, and began to rehearse and try out the space. 212 00:21:50,770 --> 00:21:57,010 This was tricky, it being a veteran around a Shakespearean theatre when no one in the audience was very far away, 213 00:21:57,010 --> 00:22:02,730 something quite new to us and rather intimidating. We didn't see how it could work. 214 00:22:02,730 --> 00:22:11,010 The idea of playing to the audience behind you is very peculiar. An actor is much more mobile and can swivel to confront the audience behind. 215 00:22:11,010 --> 00:22:14,250 We learnt from Peter Cheesman that we should relax and forget that worry. 216 00:22:14,250 --> 00:22:18,870 The intimacy provided from being closely surrounded outweighed that small problem. 217 00:22:18,870 --> 00:22:23,430 But when Cheeseman's are intended to for the forthcoming concert, you roared with laughter. 218 00:22:23,430 --> 00:22:26,160 You shout it from the back, you can't wear those penguin outfits. 219 00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:33,300 This is an evening of music and we allow these people who are coming up, potters, miners, the shopkeepers, they want to be happy. 220 00:22:33,300 --> 00:22:39,730 You've got to appear natural, normal and communicative, not dressed like unapproachable nuns. 221 00:22:39,730 --> 00:22:44,530 One of us said, but we're here to play. I asked, what are you going to say? 222 00:22:44,530 --> 00:22:50,830 He said, scrutinising this as we came where players outtalking tokers, you can't just play. 223 00:22:50,830 --> 00:22:54,880 You've got to open your bloody mouth. This isn't the thing with Moho. 224 00:22:54,880 --> 00:23:00,250 Peter, Croppa, the most vociferous amongst us, picked up the gauntlet, according to Greg Smith, 225 00:23:00,250 --> 00:23:08,200 abandon the tail jackets and bow ties and Croppa became adept at introducing the pieces they were going to play. 226 00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:15,820 Now, if I can, I'd like to show a clip from 1977, which shows the lindsy quartettes in action at the Old Vic, 227 00:23:15,820 --> 00:23:22,770 and I think this involves me stopping sharing my screen and hopefully we'll be able to access this video. 228 00:23:22,770 --> 00:23:30,720 Online. It lasts about five minutes, but I think it is worth watching, I'm nervous. 229 00:23:30,720 --> 00:23:37,970 This week begins a concert in Stoke that features the fallen musicians who make up the Linzey string quartette. 230 00:23:37,970 --> 00:23:42,300 They're a very remarkable group of players. This quartette not only for their musical ability, 231 00:23:42,300 --> 00:23:47,280 but also because one of their aims is to break down the mystique which still surrounds chamber music, 232 00:23:47,280 --> 00:23:52,020 even to some people who seem to enjoy opera or romantic symphonies. 233 00:23:52,020 --> 00:24:00,270 Peter Cheeseman's Victoria Theatre in Stoke the Lind's, has been doing an entire Beethoven cycle this season in a specially informal atmosphere. 234 00:24:00,270 --> 00:24:10,510 The Omnibus Film Unit spent some time with them last January to prepare this portrait of the lindsy quartette at work. 235 00:24:10,510 --> 00:24:18,560 We found that really a university was a marvellous basis on which to build a quartette. 236 00:24:18,560 --> 00:24:22,570 It gives you a chance to not consciously mould yourselves, 237 00:24:22,570 --> 00:24:28,690 but just purely by being together for the number of hours that a university position will allow you to do, 238 00:24:28,690 --> 00:24:49,040 because you definitely need time to mould for people's way of thinking and way of playing. 239 00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:54,620 Beethoven was commissioned by Congress, mostly like three quartettes. 240 00:24:54,620 --> 00:25:01,490 Fifty nine, I think the slight movement of 59 one is just out of this world, just fantastic. 241 00:25:01,490 --> 00:25:03,250 That's the great thing about it. 242 00:25:03,250 --> 00:25:11,780 I mean, you imagine most people doing the same thing for 20, 30, 40 years, playing the same music time and time again. 243 00:25:11,780 --> 00:27:07,780 But we've only done it for nine years now. I still every time I and I still find something new every time. 244 00:27:07,780 --> 00:27:24,040 This. Mean. 245 00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:29,440 I'm not saying that this is the only time it should be, I think they should be every possibility. 246 00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:35,260 I mean, I like dressing up for certain occasions, but when you see people in tails on a platform, say, 247 00:27:35,260 --> 00:27:42,670 50 yards away from you, you tend to think of them as purely machines that are producing a sound that you want to hear. 248 00:27:42,670 --> 00:27:50,710 We're trying to break that down with these particular countries, provide people with something to drink and try and show them that we are, 249 00:27:50,710 --> 00:28:47,130 in fact, human beings with the same sort of feelings that they have. And I think this doesn't often come across. 250 00:28:47,130 --> 00:29:22,590 And. And. 251 00:29:22,590 --> 00:29:39,850 Thank you. 252 00:29:39,850 --> 00:29:48,790 The vic was one of several theatres in the round, established in the 1960s and 70s, picking up on Steven Joseph's work as Scarboro in the mid 50s. 253 00:29:48,790 --> 00:29:56,470 Indeed, Joseph worked with Cheesman in Stoke. Others include the Everyman in Liverpool, the Octagon in Bolton Kopit Theatre in London, the first, 254 00:29:56,470 --> 00:30:01,930 which apparently was association round since in London since the Great Fire, the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. 255 00:30:01,930 --> 00:30:10,280 Amongst his royal exchange. It was a political aspect in allowing audiences to engage with actors more dynamically, literally from every angle. 256 00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:17,460 It was matched in Cheeseman's case to a commitment to putting on plays about local subjects and engaging with the surrounding community. 257 00:30:17,460 --> 00:30:23,430 The way the Lindsays talk about their performances in the clip suggests a similar impulse to break down the mystique, 258 00:30:23,430 --> 00:30:30,840 which still surrounds chamber music through showing that rather than being killing machines, we are, in fact, human beings. 259 00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:34,200 The court has extended the practise of playing in the round of other venues, 260 00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:41,940 one contributor to the Cheal oral history project recalls them rearranging the assembly room of the prestigious benzyl festival. 261 00:30:41,940 --> 00:30:46,740 Subsequent association was shuffled through the residents of the university in the mid 70s and the long 262 00:30:46,740 --> 00:30:52,700 running annual festival in the student theatre of Sheffield's Crucible had been playing around as well. 263 00:30:52,700 --> 00:31:01,350 I continue to visit Stoke after affiliation with Chelate ended and as I had in Sheffield and later Manchester, I built up a long following. 264 00:31:01,350 --> 00:31:09,850 Guardians on this show, the chickens are called. It wasn't exactly an avalanche of classical concerts in Middle Staffordshire in the 1980s. 265 00:31:09,850 --> 00:31:15,490 This was the only music that I got to hear performed locally. I was so lucky through the lenses. 266 00:31:15,490 --> 00:31:19,540 I first had the beacons of the canon. Again, that word beacon is coming up again. 267 00:31:19,540 --> 00:31:29,170 Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Shostakovich and Croppa hosted workshops and gave talks before it was standard. 268 00:31:29,170 --> 00:31:33,490 There was nothing distant or Olympian about the way the quartette played or indeed dressed proper, 269 00:31:33,490 --> 00:31:39,100 was incapable of formality and will open Tosha sandals with socks and crumpled shirts. 270 00:31:39,100 --> 00:31:46,450 The plane was earthy, passionate at times lacking a cool perfection, but always utterly exhilarating cropper. 271 00:31:46,450 --> 00:31:53,910 And the lenses were hugely important internationally, but especially precious to us living in the Midlands and the north of England. 272 00:31:53,910 --> 00:31:59,440 I can corroborate Higgens account from my own experience of going to concerts by the Lindsays while I was growing up in Manchester, 273 00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:01,900 though that city generally had more going on musically. 274 00:32:01,900 --> 00:32:10,150 The concerts in the music department than housed in an old cinema on the road held a special place in the calendar and tickets were coveted. 275 00:32:10,150 --> 00:32:16,060 The audience is a concert series by the Lindsays were probably made up mostly by middle class residents of Stoke Sheffield in Manchester. 276 00:32:16,060 --> 00:32:20,800 Doctors, teachers and university lecturers. But they could indeed introduce not only students, 277 00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:25,900 but also local young people to the classics and their more informal dress and spoken introductions 278 00:32:25,900 --> 00:32:32,570 as well as they're playing some venues made their concerts somewhat less foreboding than the whole. 279 00:32:32,570 --> 00:32:40,400 I'm intrigued, though, by Higgins inclusion in her canon alongside Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven, Shostakovich, 280 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:49,080 that indicates a shift in reception that had a lot to do with my next example of a string quartette in residence, the Fitzwilliam. 281 00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:56,550 The Fitzwilliam quartette took their name from the Cambridge College, where they met in 1968 after graduation in 1971, 282 00:32:56,550 --> 00:33:03,770 they joined the University of York as quartette in residence while studying with Sidney Griller at the Royal Academy of Music. 283 00:33:03,770 --> 00:33:07,040 They were learning on the job, so to speak, even more so than the Lindsays, 284 00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:12,180 who graduated from the studying with Greller at the academy when they arrived to kill. 285 00:33:12,180 --> 00:33:20,230 Relative use of these quartettes in terms of the players themselves and how recently the group had formed was acknowledged by critics, 286 00:33:20,230 --> 00:33:26,320 in some ways this enhanced their suitability for a position within a university as perhaps of the scheme. 287 00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:30,340 They could ask them to do more on campus than an established touring group. 288 00:33:30,340 --> 00:33:38,280 Moreover, a quartet's usefulness could impact the kind of repertoire they played and perhaps also what and how they were expected to play. 289 00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:45,720 And generally, 1972, Brian Newbold reported the. York is the latest university to have acquired a resident string quartette, 290 00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:51,690 not an established group with a ready made reputation, but a young team just finding its feet as an ensemble. 291 00:33:51,690 --> 00:33:57,120 The Fitzwilliam Quartette is already being bold in its choice of programmes during its first academic session. 292 00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:01,200 Last night's concert to the Lyons Concert Hall did not look tame on paper. 293 00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:07,650 Inevitably, they were failures in its execution. But it was not a major hurdle that brought these aspirants down. 294 00:34:07,650 --> 00:34:11,550 One of the shadows in the brooding quartette points out in his memoirs that British critics always have. 295 00:34:11,550 --> 00:34:16,200 But in their reviews, they never outright in their praise. 296 00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:22,920 Newbold went on to list the shortcomings of the renditions of Beethoven's Third Rasmusson quartette and the Mendelssohn F minor quartette Opus 80, 297 00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:27,390 while conceding that the Mendelssohn was an enjoyable revival of an underplayed work 298 00:34:27,390 --> 00:34:32,250 and that the performance of Shostakovich six quartette was careful and pleasing, 299 00:34:32,250 --> 00:34:38,070 it concluded for the time being, there is any way more pleasure to be had from half formed interpretations by a 300 00:34:38,070 --> 00:34:43,790 youthful quartette than from wrong-headed or tired ones by an overworked star group. 301 00:34:43,790 --> 00:34:47,480 You might have been alluding here to the famous long established Amadeus Quartette 302 00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:51,180 who was mentioned have been the previous quartette and residents of New York. 303 00:34:51,180 --> 00:34:58,200 If it's William's willingness to include some underplayed Mendleson might have been part of the bold programming to which Newbold referred, 304 00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:01,260 so too might have been the Shostakovich is quartettes, 305 00:35:01,260 --> 00:35:09,030 another Guardian reviewer noted trouble that less than half the speed is less than half the reality of his symphonies. 306 00:35:09,030 --> 00:35:13,680 In fact, love has traced the shifting reception of Shostakovich symphonies in Britain and notes of 307 00:35:13,680 --> 00:35:18,510 the performance of the first quartette at the Edinburgh Festival in 1962 by the Burdine, 308 00:35:18,510 --> 00:35:25,730 Allegri and English quartette with a turning point. But it still took some time for them to feature regularly. 309 00:35:25,730 --> 00:35:29,120 The ambitious repertoire of the Fitzwilliam quartette was recognised repeatedly in early 310 00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:35,900 reviews Jared Loughner observed at a concert given during Yorke's new Music Week in July 1973. 311 00:35:35,900 --> 00:35:42,080 It was a difficult programme for young quartette to undertake, not that an older one would have approached it. 312 00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:46,100 It began with David Blake's second quartette and ended with Sebastian Vulpes. 313 00:35:46,100 --> 00:35:50,970 Second quarter quartette in between. 314 00:35:50,970 --> 00:35:59,010 Came Shostakovich's 13th quarter, which Lerner acknowledged that Williams had memorably introduced to this country a few months previously, 315 00:35:59,010 --> 00:36:05,160 David Blake was the best enforcer, both composers, both, in fact, Cambridge graduates working in academia. 316 00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:09,270 Blake, who I mentioned earlier, commented about the Omidyar's quartette that it was a shame they wouldn't play 317 00:36:09,270 --> 00:36:13,080 new works was a founder member of the University of York's Department of Music, 318 00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:19,000 and Forbes had just joined the University of Surrey. In other words, they represented the new universities. 319 00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:24,220 Composers constituted the whole music faculty at York Market at amongst British University departments 320 00:36:24,220 --> 00:36:28,510 Will Robin has written about how the role of new music ensembles within American universities, 321 00:36:28,510 --> 00:36:34,910 enabling staff and student composers to have their pieces workshopped and perform within an academic environment. 322 00:36:34,910 --> 00:36:40,790 quartettes might not be music specialists, but they could be chorales to play some within a university setting, 323 00:36:40,790 --> 00:36:44,690 which reveals something about the perception both the string quartette repertoire and what 324 00:36:44,690 --> 00:36:50,450 the function of the quartette as a genre and as an ensemble is within the institution. 325 00:36:50,450 --> 00:36:58,780 Diversity can reside in the repertoire that's played as is evident in the concert programmes and roundtables at the symposium. 326 00:36:58,780 --> 00:37:05,300 In comparison to Blake and Forbes, Shostakovich might seem mainstream, however, as mentioned in the early 1970s, 327 00:37:05,300 --> 00:37:13,060 his quartettes were not that well known in Britain, and the composer still needs to find advocates to give premiers outside of what was then the USSR. 328 00:37:13,060 --> 00:37:17,560 Shostakovich was in London in November 1972 for a festival of Russian and 329 00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,370 Soviet music and agreed to visit New York as biographer Laurel Faithful said, 330 00:37:21,370 --> 00:37:27,920 to help the young members of the Fitzwilliam quartette refine their interpretation of its 13th quartette. 331 00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:32,720 Violist Alan George recalls that they were on a crusade to perform Shostakovich's music, 332 00:37:32,720 --> 00:37:38,120 having realised that the 13th quarter had yet to be performed in Britain and that they were surprised that the composer should have taken 333 00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:46,130 such interest in a relatively inexperienced group until they realised that distressingly conscious of his age and his precarious health, 334 00:37:46,130 --> 00:37:52,340 you must have felt reassured to know that this old man's music could live and thrive in young hands. 335 00:37:52,340 --> 00:37:58,880 The relationship the musicians forged meant the Shostakovich sent them his next to his last quartettes when the barraging quartette 336 00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:05,450 were prevented from by illness from giving the British premiere of Shostakovich's 14th quartette at the opera festival the first. 337 00:38:05,450 --> 00:38:08,670 Williams performed it at the Haraga Festival. Instead. 338 00:38:08,670 --> 00:38:14,100 They received an invitation to visit Shostakovich in his dacha to work together on half a dozen of his quartettes. 339 00:38:14,100 --> 00:38:22,590 But the composer died before they could do so. This Williams went on to become authoritative interpreter and Shostakovich. 340 00:38:22,590 --> 00:38:26,580 They made the first complete recording of the quartettes and recently rerecorded them. 341 00:38:26,580 --> 00:38:30,780 That's an interesting question here about the Cold War reception of Shostakovich and about the musical 342 00:38:30,780 --> 00:38:35,550 relationships between Soviet musicians who promoted his music and the British groups who also played it. 343 00:38:35,550 --> 00:38:40,260 That I can't really go into here, though I will flag cellist of the borrowing quartette Buntine. 344 00:38:40,260 --> 00:38:48,150 Berlinski, whose comment was Shostakovich's and other Russian quartettes are particularly difficult for non Russian players to interpret. 345 00:38:48,150 --> 00:38:55,540 The British presence in Britain as performers and coaches was key to a performance practise for this repertoire being developed. 346 00:38:55,540 --> 00:39:01,030 On another practical level, the inability of Soviet string quartettes to fulfil their engagements in Britain, 347 00:39:01,030 --> 00:39:04,870 whether because of illness or because of the fear they would defect to the West, 348 00:39:04,870 --> 00:39:11,590 gave British court has the premiere as a son works, as we've seen with the civilians, and thereby encourage them to be performed. 349 00:39:11,590 --> 00:39:16,300 Incidentally, a quartette being unable to leave the Soviet Union was said by Bernard Smith 350 00:39:16,300 --> 00:39:19,270 to be the reason that the LINDSY quartette were first summoned to Sheffield. 351 00:39:19,270 --> 00:39:23,980 They stood in for a concert at the last minute and struck up a relationship with Professor Basil Main, 352 00:39:23,980 --> 00:39:29,270 who appointed them as quartette in residence there and took them with him to Manchester. 353 00:39:29,270 --> 00:39:35,270 There's also a sense in which young cadets based in residence at the university, supported by the institution and a salary, 354 00:39:35,270 --> 00:39:42,100 were willing to take a risk on unchallenging repertoire or at least repertoire that an audience might not like. 355 00:39:42,100 --> 00:39:47,530 The Fitzwilliam Court moved on to a residence at the University of Warwick and have more recently returned to their alma mater, 356 00:39:47,530 --> 00:39:55,870 taking up residence in Cambridge. As I mentioned, the Lindsays moved from Kiel to Sheffield and then to Manchester before retiring in 2005. 357 00:39:55,870 --> 00:39:59,110 Both court has built up a loyal following amongst local audiences, 358 00:39:59,110 --> 00:40:04,720 and there is a great deal of community building that can be achieved through such long term relationships. 359 00:40:04,720 --> 00:40:09,760 There is a tension here between the initial aims of the residences and what came to pass, 360 00:40:09,760 --> 00:40:17,740 the Lindsays, as discussed, were appointed Acuil as research fellows. In essence, they were students learning the trade as performers and teachers. 361 00:40:17,740 --> 00:40:26,210 Well, the University of Khiel had a relatively small student body. A quartette might not seem out of reach of anyone on campus. 362 00:40:26,210 --> 00:40:31,720 A student numbers increased, however, for people playing classical music in a hall that could accommodate an ever 363 00:40:31,720 --> 00:40:36,700 diminishing proportion of the university population seemed less accessible, 364 00:40:36,700 --> 00:40:44,980 especially as the quartette built up a loyal following. The community that's so important to chamber music is, by nature, exclusive. 365 00:40:44,980 --> 00:40:48,970 The longevity of the 10 years of such quartette residencies was part of their strength. 366 00:40:48,970 --> 00:40:54,060 Yet as they stayed in post, they became a silver haired as the season ticket holders. 367 00:40:54,060 --> 00:41:01,230 A crucial element of Gerald Llanos call to arms for a young chamber ensemble with its destiny not yet charted, has forgotten. 368 00:41:01,230 --> 00:41:08,670 The Lindsays may not have been exactly the same as the Amadeus Quartette in residence, but in some respects they did become like them. 369 00:41:08,670 --> 00:41:15,930 Sarah Ahmed, in the conclusion to being included, racism and diversity and institutional life, 370 00:41:15,930 --> 00:41:22,440 observes that we realise much about institutional life through what she calls failures of residents. 371 00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:30,180 Are the correct categories in which we are immersed in styles of life become explicit when you do not quite inhabit them, 372 00:41:30,180 --> 00:41:35,440 as we consider the role of Quartet's speaking from within inhabiting a university system. 373 00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:53,530 It's vital that we keep caution in mind. Thanks very much. 374 00:41:53,530 --> 00:41:59,560 Thank you very much, Laura, for this hugely rich and very stimulating paper, 375 00:41:59,560 --> 00:42:04,210 I will give a quick response that will hopefully lead us into the questions. 376 00:42:04,210 --> 00:42:09,070 And I'm sure there are many questions on the chat function already. 377 00:42:09,070 --> 00:42:18,190 And you are in wonderfully introduced many of many of the critical discussions of this symposium. 378 00:42:18,190 --> 00:42:22,730 I think and I would like to start with Sarum, its words that you gave to us, 379 00:42:22,730 --> 00:42:28,210 that at the very end, particularly this idea that you do not quite inhabit something. 380 00:42:28,210 --> 00:42:32,440 Right, because that particular phrase and what she's talking about that points the 381 00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:40,360 finger at our consistent failure to address diversity because we perpetuate the, 382 00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:47,920 as she calls it, categories in which we are immersed in styles of life by persistently trying to inhabit them, 383 00:42:47,920 --> 00:42:52,900 trying to make sense of them, trying to make them our own. 384 00:42:52,900 --> 00:42:57,640 So your investigation of the string quartette residences at the British universities between the 385 00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:04,630 60s and throws into relief the sort of sharp irony of what they are actually trying to achieve. 386 00:43:04,630 --> 00:43:13,720 And I really enjoyed the sort of tension that comes through on so many levels that if we just sort of put bullet points to them, 387 00:43:13,720 --> 00:43:18,850 they they wanted to achieve a community engagement through art or an artistic practise. 388 00:43:18,850 --> 00:43:28,450 Amateur music making and engagement through that amateur music making, tapping into civic pride was part of civic pride, was part of that. 389 00:43:28,450 --> 00:43:38,770 But then they also wanted to live a culture and civilisation. And that sort of word keeps coming through that as a sort of red line. 390 00:43:38,770 --> 00:43:43,840 And obviously it's criticised as well, but it's very much part of the narrative. 391 00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:49,240 So the obvious question becomes why have a string quartette in residence? 392 00:43:49,240 --> 00:43:56,350 Isn't that what is sort of establishing many of these tensions? The string quartette itself is is a very expensive medium. 393 00:43:56,350 --> 00:44:04,810 To train each person individually has spent a lot of money training before they get to the point of being a string quartette. 394 00:44:04,810 --> 00:44:10,930 The string quartette as a genre has a sort of self professed ideology of being music for connoisseurs. 395 00:44:10,930 --> 00:44:17,620 Going back to the late 18th, early 19th century, the string quartette, certainly by the 60s and 70s, 396 00:44:17,620 --> 00:44:24,370 has got these cultural association with, you know, what he wonderfully called the effing Wigmore Hall. 397 00:44:24,370 --> 00:44:31,540 So why have a residency of a string quartette? Why not choose to have the residency of a brass quartette, 398 00:44:31,540 --> 00:44:42,490 get composers to compose contemporary music for them and sort of weave the community engagement and an introduction of a particular 399 00:44:42,490 --> 00:44:50,050 kind of culture that they obviously want to introduce around a medium that may be much more familiar to the local audiences. 400 00:44:50,050 --> 00:44:58,930 So that's sort of the tension that really sits in here. And I would claim that the civilising project itself undermines that. 401 00:44:58,930 --> 00:45:03,160 That is inherent in the string quartette and in the choice of the string quartette undermines 402 00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:09,160 the very idea of diversity as it establishes automatically a hierarchy of cultures, 403 00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:15,760 of lifestyles and of people. And that, of course, has a long heritage, as we all know. 404 00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:21,340 But in music, it was particularly modelled in the mid to late 19th century. 405 00:45:21,340 --> 00:45:25,900 We only need to think of L.A. schools that you take along to the recital so 406 00:45:25,900 --> 00:45:31,600 that you truly understand and you could truly learn what this child is about. 407 00:45:31,600 --> 00:45:33,640 Rove's entire project programme notes. 408 00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:45,460 And then then the dictionary has nothing else in mind, really, but that civilising into an understanding of something higher than where you came from. 409 00:45:45,460 --> 00:45:52,360 And what your paper has highlighted for me is the sort of fascinating reluctance to let go of some of that, 410 00:45:52,360 --> 00:46:00,220 even even at the point in the 60s to 80s, when society has been through a lot of upheaval. 411 00:46:00,220 --> 00:46:01,810 That's something that's being held onto. 412 00:46:01,810 --> 00:46:08,740 There's a fascinating reluctance to let go of boundaries around art, around education, and with that around genres, 413 00:46:08,740 --> 00:46:19,150 there's a reluctance to let go of certain cultural values and of particular ideologies that are deeply steeped in hierarchies. 414 00:46:19,150 --> 00:46:23,110 That is, of course, a question of the particular historical point, 415 00:46:23,110 --> 00:46:28,120 as well as the sort of looking back to to the scholars that are still relatively 416 00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:35,140 fresh and the desire to establish a culture of authority and let's face it, 417 00:46:35,140 --> 00:46:43,480 to prove to oneself that one is really a civilised nation, despite everything that has gone before. 418 00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:49,030 Which makes it interesting that the string quartette has a strong Germanic heritage as well, of course. 419 00:46:49,030 --> 00:46:53,190 And we have to take into account when we are now thinking about this from our. 420 00:46:53,190 --> 00:47:00,600 Point of view that we haven't had any waves of feminism, let alone any particular race theory at that point. 421 00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:09,360 So the battle is not we are fighting today are obviously quite different, whereas the battles they fought were largely Eurocentric. 422 00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:20,730 And we can see the sort of critique of the Eurocentrism just about creeping in there by suggesting that we need to expand to the US and the USSR. 423 00:47:20,730 --> 00:47:29,230 And it's very class centric or middle class centric education and middle class centric. 424 00:47:29,230 --> 00:47:37,030 So our battles today are different ones, and the question this raises very aptly, I think for the for the symposium and the many sessions to come, 425 00:47:37,030 --> 00:47:44,380 is are to really is thinking about the string cost that still useful and relevant today? 426 00:47:44,380 --> 00:47:54,220 How do we deal with a string quartette and heritage? And B is thinking about the idea of residences, residences, useful, 427 00:47:54,220 --> 00:48:04,060 and the residences perhaps offer up a sort of much more immediate solution in that they relate very neatly to 428 00:48:04,060 --> 00:48:13,030 the practise based research that is on a on a strong trajectory at the moment and that can have new currency. 429 00:48:13,030 --> 00:48:18,700 And it was interesting that they were actually the Lindsays were enrolled as a research fellows. 430 00:48:18,700 --> 00:48:23,830 And that's something that I would love to hear more details about how exactly that was defined. 431 00:48:23,830 --> 00:48:30,580 But so if we take that forward, there's lots of large potential for projects that can start with with composition, 432 00:48:30,580 --> 00:48:39,970 as David Blaggard suggested in the 1960s, of playing within the round of sort of breaking particular traditions and models. 433 00:48:39,970 --> 00:48:47,530 Now, what about the string quartette? The string quartette, of course, has got the tension implicit in itself that that from its inception, 434 00:48:47,530 --> 00:48:55,390 it was it came with the rhetoric of being for connoisseurs and early rhetoric that was nevertheless imposed by 435 00:48:55,390 --> 00:49:03,850 critics and then adopted by composers and performers as a way of establishing themselves within a new market system, 436 00:49:03,850 --> 00:49:15,670 as sort of a new intellectual, refined virtuosity on the concert platform that formed a counterpart to a different kind of virtuosity. 437 00:49:15,670 --> 00:49:21,190 But I think what's perhaps more interesting is if we think about its other history, its social history, 438 00:49:21,190 --> 00:49:29,080 the social history where it was made by players to be played for players and for the strong idea of 439 00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:36,100 having social interaction and social engagement with each other rather than witnessing it second hand. 440 00:49:36,100 --> 00:49:44,080 So that interaction is part of its social social history. It has its exclusive elements to it, of course, as well. 441 00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:46,600 But maybe that's a sort of key to helping us today. 442 00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:55,240 Think, think, think, think about how we can remodel this genre in this particular type of music making. 443 00:49:55,240 --> 00:50:02,560 Again, it's the idea of in the round that is the first step of breaking down some of those boundaries. 444 00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:08,830 But I would claim that this needs to extend to a much more narrow question of genre definitions, 445 00:50:08,830 --> 00:50:15,280 genre boundaries and the concomitant modes of its performance. 446 00:50:15,280 --> 00:50:23,050 One example that I like in that context is of fifth string quartette, the Rosa Parks quartette, 447 00:50:23,050 --> 00:50:26,950 where he does actually get an even bigger audience involved by asking them to clap. 448 00:50:26,950 --> 00:50:34,750 So in the round is properly expanded. It's properly extended out in that everyone who is sitting in the round or standing 449 00:50:34,750 --> 00:50:41,100 in the round does start to actively participate rather than witnessing it. 450 00:50:41,100 --> 00:50:47,670 But the Christian political question becomes, how do we shed our habit of just wanting to fight, 451 00:50:47,670 --> 00:50:55,590 wanting to belong, and how do we instead gain enough of a critical distance? 452 00:50:55,590 --> 00:51:01,740 And with that, of course, comes the question, how do we do this in particular within academia, within an institution, 453 00:51:01,740 --> 00:51:10,610 within institutions that are founded on the civilising project that have that civilising project written into them. 454 00:51:10,610 --> 00:51:18,230 So in that sense, I think your paper has opened up an array of wonderful political considerations that I hope will 455 00:51:18,230 --> 00:51:24,530 be taken up over the next couple of days about the interactions of genre and its associations, 456 00:51:24,530 --> 00:51:34,340 institution and education, audiences and diversity or critical considerations that I believe will be really explored, particularly tonight. 457 00:51:34,340 --> 00:51:39,410 I'm looking forward to the session of String quartettes written by younger people in the 458 00:51:39,410 --> 00:51:45,590 community and also by the debate about writing the challenges of writing for string quartette. 459 00:51:45,590 --> 00:51:51,420 And today that that composers face. So I want to wrap up, though, 460 00:51:51,420 --> 00:52:01,800 by coming back briefly to the wonderful Granada television clip of the Lindsays and ask you whether you can elaborate a little bit more 461 00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:11,640 on this question of modes of engagement and stepping into a diversity realm beyond repertoire and through that most of engagement. 462 00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:26,100 And what struck me as particularly interesting watching that clip was that while the television station in itself heralds a sort of era of diversity, 463 00:52:26,100 --> 00:52:30,570 of branching out, having a television station for the north, the television itself, of course, 464 00:52:30,570 --> 00:52:38,790 making the concert much more visible and making the working process that they are documenting in this particular clip much more visible to a much, 465 00:52:38,790 --> 00:52:48,570 much wider audience. At the same time, the filming techniques that they use, in my opinion, were incredibly demarcating. 466 00:52:48,570 --> 00:52:54,960 Whenever we had the musicians, we had the instruments. We didn't actually have people interacting with each other. 467 00:52:54,960 --> 00:53:01,740 The people's interaction was replaced by the mystique of the sound that interacts with each other. 468 00:53:01,740 --> 00:53:07,350 And often we saw just their hands on the instrument rather than them looking at each other and and, 469 00:53:07,350 --> 00:53:15,930 you know, having some kind of enjoyable social experience. And then we are cutting to the bar where people are mixing and mingling and drinking. 470 00:53:15,930 --> 00:53:23,610 But that's a different set. So it was interesting to me to see that Granada seems to have not thought this 471 00:53:23,610 --> 00:53:28,740 through to its logical conclusion and all the boundaries are actually upheld. 472 00:53:28,740 --> 00:53:34,350 And what it amounts to in the end is we are introducing you to this mystique. 473 00:53:34,350 --> 00:53:40,470 We are elevating you were civilising you by giving you an insight into this whole mystique so that 474 00:53:40,470 --> 00:53:47,250 I would I would love to sort of pass over back to you with that wonderful television clip in mind. 475 00:53:47,250 --> 00:53:52,830 Thank you very much. And thanks for all the points you've raised, because it's so much to try and deal with here. 476 00:53:52,830 --> 00:53:55,320 And I'm not going to reach any kind of great conclusion. 477 00:53:55,320 --> 00:54:01,470 But actually, that whole thing of actually what the quartette means, how we can use it within this setting, I think is really fascinating. 478 00:54:01,470 --> 00:54:09,360 The clip, you're right, it does still privilege the musical experience as being a very special thing and trying to convey that. 479 00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:15,120 It does remind me of when you see plays, films of the 1970s and the sort of interesting camerawork. 480 00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:17,340 And I was trying to imagine. 481 00:54:17,340 --> 00:54:23,550 So they had footage of the audience, but then they must have done separate sessions, I guess, so they could do the close ups, 482 00:54:23,550 --> 00:54:31,800 which actually, having looked at a fair amount of string quartette, footage now is relatively rare to get those kind of close ups. 483 00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:40,500 And there is I think it's BBC rather than Granada. This particular clip. But some of we are bringing culture to an unusual environment. 484 00:54:40,500 --> 00:54:46,320 I'm going to show that these are relatively young men going off in the car of snakes 485 00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:54,950 past and that there is a kind of youthful enterprise to this that is attractive. 486 00:54:54,950 --> 00:55:01,730 How do you talk to the man in the street as the BBC was famously struggled to work with? 487 00:55:01,730 --> 00:55:06,620 Then actually, we are now going to take this into your home, through the medium, the television, 488 00:55:06,620 --> 00:55:13,550 and suggest to you that you two could go and it will be OK because you can get your point at the end of your orangeade. 489 00:55:13,550 --> 00:55:20,150 So it's doing a lot of work work within a very small section. But what's interesting is the amount of space it gives to the music and the 490 00:55:20,150 --> 00:55:24,780 fact that it's Beethoven and that it actually has a sense of giving the whole. 491 00:55:24,780 --> 00:55:32,070 And as the movement, the citizens of performance there and the special qualities of performance, 492 00:55:32,070 --> 00:55:37,710 so it's doing the same kind of institutional work that I think a lot of these residences are also doing, which is both. 493 00:55:37,710 --> 00:55:42,930 We want to educate you. We want to allow you to appreciate this music. 494 00:55:42,930 --> 00:55:48,780 But we're also going to prove to you that it is still very hierarchical and these musicians are special people. 495 00:55:48,780 --> 00:55:57,730 It's interesting, they don't show the quartette talking to the audience, which they do regularly, but it is all just about the performance on stage. 496 00:55:57,730 --> 00:56:00,400 Yeah, it's almost like it wants to hold on to this mystique, right, 497 00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:07,480 this Nereus artist who is in that space and and takes on a sort of a superior role or 498 00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:12,370 a different way of communicating something very universal and and and value of it. 499 00:56:12,370 --> 00:56:19,480 Right. Yeah. And those problems still linger with any project that tries to go and take classical music out into alternative venues. 500 00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:22,960 This is not so much that people don't like going to those venues. 501 00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:29,260 Everyone still behaves as if they're in a concert hall and they silent and don't want to click the glasses or anything else. 502 00:56:29,260 --> 00:56:38,500 And so there still is tension is happening. And how much information did you find on how the modes of engagement worked within the residency? 503 00:56:38,500 --> 00:56:46,870 So how much community work did the string quartettes do and when they were working with the students and what type of work that they do with them? 504 00:56:46,870 --> 00:56:52,780 I haven't found out enough about that yet. It's one of the limitations of Pandemic's that I have been able to get into the archives. 505 00:56:52,780 --> 00:56:58,720 Either of the leaders seem to know more about the kind of the criteria for the fellowships, 506 00:56:58,720 --> 00:57:03,760 but also actually details of whatever details remain of programmes and activities. 507 00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:08,530 So I have kind of Second-Hand reports, but nothing systematic here. 508 00:57:08,530 --> 00:57:14,050 Hopefully I'll get a chance to do that. So fingers crossed that this would happen because that would be fascinating to see 509 00:57:14,050 --> 00:57:17,800 how the amateur engagement or the community engagement in particular actually works. 510 00:57:17,800 --> 00:57:26,410 You know, what are they taking out? And and is the boundaries around that civilising process broken in any way in those processes? 511 00:57:26,410 --> 00:57:31,810 And we have got some questions coming in. And the first question you have is from Joanna. 512 00:57:31,810 --> 00:57:36,700 I read it out to you. My father in law was raised in a working class Nottingham household and later got a degree and 513 00:57:36,700 --> 00:57:43,900 doctorate in adult hood and worked in Cumbria in the 80s concerts for a tiny Cumbrian music society. 514 00:57:43,900 --> 00:57:51,730 I wondered if you think the string quartette is important not just for university students at 18, but for adult or to didacticism? 515 00:57:51,730 --> 00:57:54,520 Great question that. Yes, a great question. Yes. 516 00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:59,440 I mean, there's a whole culture of the music societies and quartettes going out to in some ways you think, 517 00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:02,470 well, how nested why is that on the concert circuit? 518 00:58:02,470 --> 00:58:07,810 But actually it's a really important part, both of music appreciation, didacticism and community building. 519 00:58:07,810 --> 00:58:11,260 And the idea of having an event within a village hall or whatever it is, 520 00:58:11,260 --> 00:58:17,440 is something that still exists not quite as vividly, but I think is still present. 521 00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:22,240 Certainly talking to quartettes, the idea that you still end up going to some quite minor venues, 522 00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,180 you would think from a sort of academic musicological perspective, 523 00:58:25,180 --> 00:58:36,220 but actually have very important both for the quartettes getting experience, but also for people to have the opportunity to hear live concerts. 524 00:58:36,220 --> 00:58:44,260 I mean, quartettes are expensive to train, but they're not as expensive as having a symphony orchestra or a larger ensemble. 525 00:58:44,260 --> 00:58:48,820 So it's not not the cheapest way of getting music. But actually they they don't get terribly well paid. 526 00:58:48,820 --> 00:58:57,870 And it is a relatively economical getting hold of like musicians. And thank you. 527 00:58:57,870 --> 00:59:03,180 Florian cheating has also he I think he's picking up on similar points to what I raised, 528 00:59:03,180 --> 00:59:07,110 I was struck, he says that the Lindsays turned their backs on the audience in the clip. 529 00:59:07,110 --> 00:59:11,990 In so doing, they seem to socially produce a space thick with hierarchies and hierarchies. 530 00:59:11,990 --> 00:59:17,370 Yeah, this is a relaxed, inclusive atmosphere. On the other, it's exclusive. 531 00:59:17,370 --> 00:59:24,090 They are turned towards an imaginary centre of culture. Those further away are less involved in the social production of space, 532 00:59:24,090 --> 00:59:27,870 given the Februaries largely contemporaneous with the time period you're looking into. 533 00:59:27,870 --> 00:59:33,720 You go along with such a Marxist analysis and for how useful do you think it might be? 534 00:59:33,720 --> 00:59:39,240 Oh yeah, why not? But actually, 535 00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:46,350 there's an interesting culture of what's grown up around the Chinese and it comes out in the in the discussion with the quartette with us. 536 00:59:46,350 --> 00:59:52,170 I mean, we don't want to play because we have our backs to the audience. And it's interesting that they haven't found. 537 00:59:52,170 --> 01:00:03,810 A way to show that differently in the way that it's filmed, but also talking to regulars, to court concerts, that sense of overhearing, 538 01:00:03,810 --> 01:00:13,740 of being a part of the process of the interiority of the musical experience is a lot of what people are attracted to. 539 01:00:13,740 --> 01:00:23,810 So, yes, it is deeply hierarchal and you can read it in that sense in terms of space and different layers within it. 540 01:00:23,810 --> 01:00:30,470 And it is complicated. I need to do more to work out exactly what's going on in the in the ground, because in some ways, 541 01:00:30,470 --> 01:00:36,450 if you go to somewhere like the Crucible, you can sort of see in much more. 542 01:00:36,450 --> 01:00:39,410 It doesn't feel so much as if people look at the facts to you. 543 01:00:39,410 --> 01:00:44,830 But obviously it can also mean that they can't move, as they say, like actors can't get out of the way. 544 01:00:44,830 --> 01:00:48,560 And it's an interesting question that, isn't it? 545 01:00:48,560 --> 01:00:51,350 Because, of course, that's sort of started to happen in symphonic halls as well. 546 01:00:51,350 --> 01:00:56,570 I mean, the one in Cologne, as for many decades now, has that in the round set up. 547 01:00:56,570 --> 01:00:58,490 The family in Hamburg has that set up. 548 01:00:58,490 --> 01:01:07,850 So and other large ensembles are sort of using that idea of looking in and off of a type of voyeurism that comes with it. 549 01:01:07,850 --> 01:01:12,740 And but I do wonder where the ideology comes from and whether if you take the 550 01:01:12,740 --> 01:01:16,830 string quartette to people who have never witnessed the string quartette, 551 01:01:16,830 --> 01:01:23,270 not read about it and not listen to recordings of it and come with fewer preconceptions, 552 01:01:23,270 --> 01:01:29,810 whether that would be the mystique that they want and the comparison with, you know, 553 01:01:29,810 --> 01:01:34,580 with jazz performance is always a little sad, but is nonetheless quite a useful one to visualise it. 554 01:01:34,580 --> 01:01:41,990 Right. Because are we expecting the same kind of voyeurism where we aren't really infiltrating it there? 555 01:01:41,990 --> 01:01:45,770 Why are we finding it in the string quartette? Where does that come from? Yeah, 556 01:01:45,770 --> 01:01:53,330 but there's also that it goes back again to the idea that people can also be practitioners of German music as amateurs and so go to see professionals. 557 01:01:53,330 --> 01:01:56,390 And then actually in a sense of going and looking in, 558 01:01:56,390 --> 01:02:02,030 that's not so dissimilar from if you go to somebody's home and are sitting on the sofa or somebody else playing string quartettes peculiar situation. 559 01:02:02,030 --> 01:02:06,140 But I mean, it's something that is part of that culture of music making. 560 01:02:06,140 --> 01:02:09,620 And so that's sort of I wonder I'm not sure I'm convinced by this, 561 01:02:09,620 --> 01:02:19,040 but whether that is a sort of a the way the amateur musicians can sort of interact and in some ways be on the same page, 562 01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:22,820 overlook the same page as the professionals in the centre. I'm not sure. 563 01:02:22,820 --> 01:02:24,470 Mhm. 564 01:02:24,470 --> 01:02:32,400 Yeah, so the the interaction becomes a sort of more metaphorical one in the moment and then it's taken out and now becomes the moment of interaction. 565 01:02:32,400 --> 01:02:38,390 Yeah, yeah. We we don't really get away with the interaction with the ideology then though, don't we, 566 01:02:38,390 --> 01:02:49,610 because they they presumably they know a lot of the time re-enact the same expressivity at home in the same and loads of performance. 567 01:02:49,610 --> 01:02:56,680 Yes. No, I mean this is a both bringing into these groups but also then who is refused 568 01:02:56,680 --> 01:03:00,620 submissions and maybe nobody would ever think of it in terms of refusal of admissions. 569 01:03:00,620 --> 01:03:05,040 But it does is naturally selecting the. 570 01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:12,960 Thank you, and I'll just look at the chart with the matter of why the string quartette at the ensemble of residence, 571 01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:19,980 is it the fact that it has just an exclusive history? So is it about making the best music accessible? 572 01:03:19,980 --> 01:03:23,970 So we're coming back to the Marxism idea here. 573 01:03:23,970 --> 01:03:30,240 I think that I think there is an element of that and is interesting thinking about the canonical status of the String Quartette repertoire, 574 01:03:30,240 --> 01:03:32,260 which I think is fairly unassailable in lots of ways. 575 01:03:32,260 --> 01:03:37,170 There are some people on the fringes, but it's very much to do with the predominantly ostrer German canon. 576 01:03:37,170 --> 01:03:42,390 But obviously there are other people within the and cutting the kind there as well. 577 01:03:42,390 --> 01:03:53,040 And it is interesting that it is so associated with that heritage. However much it gets expanded and diversified is still that idea of being cool. 578 01:03:53,040 --> 01:04:03,400 And I think there is something to be said that that's one reason why it has been within a university setting, 579 01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:07,140 doesn't mean it doesn't still have a place within a university setting that it can. 580 01:04:07,140 --> 01:04:11,100 Is then also interesting as the raises the question, but why not another type of ensemble? 581 01:04:11,100 --> 01:04:14,280 There is something about that idea for people playing equally, 582 01:04:14,280 --> 01:04:26,590 which I think the ideology surrounding that and the canonical repertoire means that the culture has a really special place and thank you and. 583 01:04:26,590 --> 01:04:34,270 At the moment, I can't see another question. Please put your post your questions so that we can feed them through to Laura. 584 01:04:34,270 --> 01:04:42,280 One other question I had was this interesting tension about the North and the potentially more cosmopolitan south 585 01:04:42,280 --> 01:04:48,670 that seemed to be a sort of bit of rhetoric of metropolitan isn't being mapped onto the island and then the north. 586 01:04:48,670 --> 01:04:54,490 And and then the interesting choice that nevertheless the Lindsay quoted when it is chosen, 587 01:04:54,490 --> 01:04:59,740 is picked from one of the London conservatoire and is transplanted. 588 01:04:59,740 --> 01:05:06,790 So, you know, what is the the ideology there or what is happening there? 589 01:05:06,790 --> 01:05:15,190 It's interesting that almost all of the I mean, residents of turning around in Liverpool, Fitzwilliams. 590 01:05:15,190 --> 01:05:21,130 Lyndsey's are all London Sabata trained and some of them, and then it ends up Surrell Quarterly. 591 01:05:21,130 --> 01:05:24,160 I mentioned this morning, I think study with the Fitzwilliam. 592 01:05:24,160 --> 01:05:31,510 I mean, you get into that kind of genealogy of string quartettes where they both studied with each other and then go on some positions. 593 01:05:31,510 --> 01:05:40,360 And it's partly because they're the Sydney griller of the Academy, who's a renowned chamber music coach and violinist himself, 594 01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:44,110 who's been at the critical time, which is very successful in the mid century. 595 01:05:44,110 --> 01:05:50,770 And so it's just a self-perpetuating idea that actually, if you want to be a to learn how to play quartettes, 596 01:05:50,770 --> 01:05:58,450 those are the places that you go to and that changes that shift when you start getting people like Chris Rolands at the RNC. 597 01:05:58,450 --> 01:06:03,760 And that becomes sort of different centres of gravity in terms of what kind of music coaching is happening. 598 01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:10,810 But certainly in this particular period, is the academy primarily slightly less than music, 599 01:06:10,810 --> 01:06:18,100 which seemed to attract people who are interested in playing quartette repertoire and becoming quartettes? 600 01:06:18,100 --> 01:06:22,570 And I think a large part of this also has to do with the idea of how you become a quartette as a professional quartette, 601 01:06:22,570 --> 01:06:30,910 that it does entail a great deal of study of repertoire, but also crucially, how the ensemble comes to work together. 602 01:06:30,910 --> 01:06:34,960 I mean, this is you you've sort of put your finger on one of the sort of difficulties again there, don't you? 603 01:06:34,960 --> 01:06:41,500 Because there is a sort of sense if one play devil's advocate, where one could look at this entire programme and say, wonderful, 604 01:06:41,500 --> 01:06:43,480 this gave the highly trained, 605 01:06:43,480 --> 01:06:51,610 very elitist education and trained players a wonderful sort of sounding board where they could go and try new repertoire. 606 01:06:51,610 --> 01:06:58,480 Right. Play it quite badly until they played it five times and then they can go and take it to the real audience who properly appreciates it. 607 01:06:58,480 --> 01:07:01,390 Right. So it's a sort of dangerous out there. 608 01:07:01,390 --> 01:07:10,450 And I found that interesting in the tension that they like to have the young quartette that is itself being trained, 609 01:07:10,450 --> 01:07:15,910 but they also like to use the North as its training ground. 610 01:07:15,910 --> 01:07:19,360 Is that is that a difficulty? How do you reconcile that? 611 01:07:19,360 --> 01:07:27,310 And have you found anything where they are not just using it in terms of learning new repertoire and bringing you, you know, 612 01:07:27,310 --> 01:07:31,720 trying out new and difficult repertoire such as the Shostakovich, for example, 613 01:07:31,720 --> 01:07:37,840 and also delivering or developing new ways of delivering the performing. 614 01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:41,560 You did mention that they started talking to them and that was a new thing. 615 01:07:41,560 --> 01:07:46,510 They had to do verbal introductions and. But does it go beyond that? 616 01:07:46,510 --> 01:07:53,070 Are they gaining something else from that and reading and try it around? 617 01:07:53,070 --> 01:07:58,380 I think there's a lot to be said for the audiences that build up around these groups, 618 01:07:58,380 --> 01:08:05,700 which are fiercely loyal and is partly, but they're also making music themselves. 619 01:08:05,700 --> 01:08:11,730 But it's also that they actually really care and invest both emotionally and sometimes financially in these groups. 620 01:08:11,730 --> 01:08:17,750 There's a great sort of civic pride and a protectiveness of them, a. 621 01:08:17,750 --> 01:08:25,820 I wonder whether you can say that actually, yes, this experimentation, a willingness to try new things and open mindedness there, 622 01:08:25,820 --> 01:08:32,370 rather than just expecting the latest Clipse offering from off the continent whose time it happens to be in London. 623 01:08:32,370 --> 01:08:40,390 But actually the idea of supporting a team, if you will, which I think is important without wanting to. 624 01:08:40,390 --> 01:08:44,950 Suggests that there's any reason why the people of Manchester or Stoeckle Sheffield should not have 625 01:08:44,950 --> 01:08:50,440 as fine an appreciation of Quartette repertoire and playing as anyone anywhere else in the country. 626 01:08:50,440 --> 01:08:56,020 But I think so it's interesting in terms of who travels and what kinds of practises get built around it, 627 01:08:56,020 --> 01:08:59,980 but also an idea of what the function of culture is, 628 01:08:59,980 --> 01:09:07,270 that if you look at the industrial cities and the importance of having access to culture is really pronounced, 629 01:09:07,270 --> 01:09:13,960 and that has a lot to do with actually introducing it to people. The people do need to be educated and you can't just assume that people know things. 630 01:09:13,960 --> 01:09:20,350 And I think that's a great strength of the musical cultures within those kind of cities. 631 01:09:20,350 --> 01:09:23,620 And it's one reason why these quartettes get the reputation that they do, 632 01:09:23,620 --> 01:09:27,700 because actually, if they hadn't had the opportunity of playing, of being tested, 633 01:09:27,700 --> 01:09:36,160 of having to talk to people in the audience after the in the interval in the bar of actually trying to engage and explain what they do, 634 01:09:36,160 --> 01:09:41,830 then that can only enrich the kinds of ways they present themselves wherever. 635 01:09:41,830 --> 01:09:50,290 It's interesting saying in that clip, when I think it's the viola players, as I sometimes I quite enjoyed playing up, 636 01:09:50,290 --> 01:09:54,450 dressing up for concerts, but actually I also quite enjoy these more informal sessions. 637 01:09:54,450 --> 01:09:57,220 Sometimes it's much easier for them to be in a more formal session because they 638 01:09:57,220 --> 01:10:01,990 don't have to engage is much harder to do that kind of audience engagement, 639 01:10:01,990 --> 01:10:06,570 particularly if you're primarily a performer and haven't thought about talking to people. 640 01:10:06,570 --> 01:10:16,580 In that way, yeah, I hope that's something that has changed in today's education system. 641 01:10:16,580 --> 01:10:22,710 Yeah, it's interesting that that the development of a civic pride that you point to there and the idea of a protectiveness 642 01:10:22,710 --> 01:10:28,140 and that I think that parallels that you do that with supporting a team is is a really interesting one. 643 01:10:28,140 --> 01:10:36,750 And I wonder, does it do you get a sense of reading the first hand account of people who are starting to support 644 01:10:36,750 --> 01:10:44,490 these groups and that they see themselves as sort of more globally connected through this as well? 645 01:10:44,490 --> 01:10:51,090 Is there something that sort of goes beyond your Jewishness or is there more of a sort of national rhetoric? 646 01:10:51,090 --> 01:11:00,990 And in of having these Home-Grown String quartettes that start to tour the country and and that you have helped to promote, 647 01:11:00,990 --> 01:11:06,030 that you have helped to to bring to where they get to? 648 01:11:06,030 --> 01:11:08,880 I think you can go every every way. 649 01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:16,620 That can be pride in the fact that the quartette who you've watched over the years has ended up winning an international prise. 650 01:11:16,620 --> 01:11:20,110 And it's a kind of we have them first. We understand the best mentality, too. 651 01:11:20,110 --> 01:11:22,500 But there's also, I think, 652 01:11:22,500 --> 01:11:30,450 a large part of China music is about we want to keep these groups for ourselves and don't necessarily want to share them with people. 653 01:11:30,450 --> 01:11:34,560 So I think there is an interesting tension between wanting to have a local base 654 01:11:34,560 --> 01:11:38,940 and then having the international reputation and the hardness of the touring life, 655 01:11:38,940 --> 01:11:45,630 as well as a sort of certain routine and returning to places which can be quite reassuring and knowing that there are 656 01:11:45,630 --> 01:11:51,570 supportive audiences and that you will get an audience is something that can also be really important for groups group. 657 01:11:51,570 --> 01:11:55,740 So I'm not necessarily sure it's true, but of sort of nationalism. 658 01:11:55,740 --> 01:12:04,620 I think this is something where regionalism can really play a strong role in terms of thinking about how groups are received. 659 01:12:04,620 --> 01:12:12,930 Thank you. Alexander Douglas has just posted a question. He would like you to talk a little bit more about the function of listening as opposed 660 01:12:12,930 --> 01:12:22,570 to hearing in these settings with the quartette step out into these new environments. 661 01:12:22,570 --> 01:12:27,110 There's a lot that could be said about the difference between listening and hearing, I suppose. 662 01:12:27,110 --> 01:12:33,590 If we think of the conventional black tie concert experience and how we think of in a very stereotypical way, 663 01:12:33,590 --> 01:12:41,270 of course, that there's an idea of a dedicated, attentive listener that has come about through the 19th century and is still the primary 664 01:12:41,270 --> 01:12:49,190 way in which we think about how we should consume quartettes in the concert hall. 665 01:12:49,190 --> 01:12:52,380 In terms of hearing quartettes, it's difficult. 666 01:12:52,380 --> 01:12:58,550 I mean, if we think of quartettes as background music and they still can be very much coded in class terms as involving black tie and everything else, 667 01:12:58,550 --> 01:13:03,470 and we're thinking must be kind of receptions and quartettes obviously also have 668 01:13:03,470 --> 01:13:08,900 a part to play that is a different kind of less attentive background listening, 669 01:13:08,900 --> 01:13:15,110 which you might think of more as overhearing, if you mean actually because I've mentioned overhearing, 670 01:13:15,110 --> 01:13:20,270 there's that sense of being part of quite a private musical experience in performance, 671 01:13:20,270 --> 01:13:24,290 which I think as we keep on using the word ideology of the string quartette is 672 01:13:24,290 --> 01:13:27,920 actually quite fundamental to the idea of how folk people make music together. 673 01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:35,840 And being able to have access to that overhearing is something that I think is something that is really valued within the quartette context, 674 01:13:35,840 --> 01:13:41,770 although it's not a word that gets used very often. Thank you. 675 01:13:41,770 --> 01:13:47,770 Maybe we can finish with a final few words, what is your sense then? 676 01:13:47,770 --> 01:13:54,280 This idea of residences, of course, is something that is there with us that we still do in institutions across the country. 677 01:13:54,280 --> 01:13:58,750 How do you think that has changed the purpose of these residences? 678 01:13:58,750 --> 01:14:02,380 Has it changed or how do you think it should change? 679 01:14:02,380 --> 01:14:07,940 What do you think their role and function can be today in our changed landscape? 680 01:14:07,940 --> 01:14:12,230 I think actually the kinds of things that they do and that they should be doing are very similar to what 681 01:14:12,230 --> 01:14:18,580 was being done in the late 60s and 70s in terms of having a sense of supporting music making on campus. 682 01:14:18,580 --> 01:14:29,030 However, that's defined and interacting with composers in the creation of new music staff and students teaching students, 683 01:14:29,030 --> 01:14:34,790 but also what now is called outreach activities actually now has much more to do with 684 01:14:34,790 --> 01:14:41,470 going into schools and accessing people at the primary school level particularly, 685 01:14:41,470 --> 01:14:47,480 but more than anything else. And that's a result of changes in the music education system and the fact that we don't have the same kind of 686 01:14:47,480 --> 01:14:54,560 music provision that was around in the 70s and 80s for people to actually learn instruments in the first place. 687 01:14:54,560 --> 01:14:59,720 So I think that is actually feeding through from school education, 688 01:14:59,720 --> 01:15:03,710 through university system means that the function of the quartette in residence is change as the 689 01:15:03,710 --> 01:15:09,470 most substantial thing I can think of in terms of thinking about community building and building, 690 01:15:09,470 --> 01:15:20,780 sort a technical and historical musical awareness and knowledge, then that's something that still quartettes and residences do quite extensively. 691 01:15:20,780 --> 01:15:27,530 One thing that I think has become more true in recent years and was less true once the audiences got in so much that they say they were very, 692 01:15:27,530 --> 01:15:33,920 very long time. And that did change. As I sort of mentioned at the end of my paper, the way that the court has worked within the institution, 693 01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:36,860 because there was a history that people knew them very well. 694 01:15:36,860 --> 01:15:42,980 There were certain things they weren't as willing to do when they were touring a lot as opposed to when they first started out. 695 01:15:42,980 --> 01:15:47,990 Now, a lot of young quartettes will be in residence for three years or so. 696 01:15:47,990 --> 01:15:50,570 And so that goes back in some ways to the original scheme. 697 01:15:50,570 --> 01:15:58,370 Q Which is is the chance for a quartette to build their own reputation in a supportive environment where they can experiment, 698 01:15:58,370 --> 01:16:06,770 but they can also just study. And that's something that I think is could be lurking in some of the residences which 699 01:16:06,770 --> 01:16:11,450 are here to have actually that support a foundation on which to build a reputation, 700 01:16:11,450 --> 01:16:15,950 I think is something where residences and universities are still really important, which, 701 01:16:15,950 --> 01:16:20,210 of course, is a wonderful thing for the quartette of Hollywood, which is a chamber group. 702 01:16:20,210 --> 01:16:26,150 It is. It's the thing that makes it slightly more difficult to think of the places, 703 01:16:26,150 --> 01:16:31,160 the local communities of the residences, not just as a sort of trial ground, right? 704 01:16:31,160 --> 01:16:38,000 Yeah, the football team is never going to leave, but the quartettes might get to the point where they come back maybe once a year, 705 01:16:38,000 --> 01:16:44,330 if that, you know, so they they they leave their hands behind in a certain way and in some way. 706 01:16:44,330 --> 01:16:52,910 It seems that these residencies are designed to train someone who is going to go and leave there, their fans and their loyal followers. 707 01:16:52,910 --> 01:17:01,610 Like most students, it's a very similar process. But yes, it does change and it changes the constitution of the community around the group. 708 01:17:01,610 --> 01:17:08,300 And there's obviously things that are lost with that. But in some ways, it could also be a sort of healthy learning process. 709 01:17:08,300 --> 01:17:12,560 Yeah, thank you. I think you've spoken to the sustainability of the residents. 710 01:17:12,560 --> 01:17:22,560 Is there a lot, a little bit to the psyche that has been through that we are going back to to something that was originally envisaged? 711 01:17:22,560 --> 01:17:37,780 And do we have any further questions? Giving it a few seconds to see whether anything else is coming through. 712 01:17:37,780 --> 01:17:43,660 Otherwise, I think we should probably say a huge thank you to Laura for this really fascinating, 713 01:17:43,660 --> 01:17:52,040 stimulating paper, which I think has an old Tom Hyde has written that you haven't answered his question yet. 714 01:17:52,040 --> 01:17:57,490 Shall I read the oh, can you say something about the sustainability of these residences when Scott had left? 715 01:17:57,490 --> 01:18:04,270 Did they automatically get replaced by another quartette? It varies a lot, certainly amongst the. 716 01:18:04,270 --> 01:18:13,660 Yes, but are a place by the cattle down. The Fitzwilliam, I think were replaced by the Surrell, but I'd have to check it other places. 717 01:18:13,660 --> 01:18:17,020 Sometimes it's a bit of a agap quite often. 718 01:18:17,020 --> 01:18:22,120 Now universities have applied for sort of short term contracts for these groups rather than something that's just a rolling. 719 01:18:22,120 --> 01:18:26,740 There will be a residency and it varies according to institutions. 720 01:18:26,740 --> 01:18:35,710 And the question of how could such maintain relationships with the institutions that they've left is also an interesting one, 721 01:18:35,710 --> 01:18:38,620 because usually what if there is another quartette in residence, 722 01:18:38,620 --> 01:18:46,570 then that tends to supplant the opportunity to return, but it's not impossible for that to happen and for them to continue with. 723 01:18:46,570 --> 01:18:50,890 Building connexions with the communities I worked with as amateurs or whatever, 724 01:18:50,890 --> 01:18:56,350 so it's difficult and is also something where the funding becomes critical in 725 01:18:56,350 --> 01:19:00,610 terms of finding other foundations that will support it or even more rarely, 726 01:19:00,610 --> 01:19:07,390 funding institutions that will support it themselves. And of course, it raises interesting questions then about the reception from the audience. 727 01:19:07,390 --> 01:19:11,710 Right. Is there scepticism when a new group comes in and a sort of sense of loss that 728 01:19:11,710 --> 01:19:15,640 the one that you have established that relationship with and who you have 729 01:19:15,640 --> 01:19:27,040 seen grow is is the party or is is it built up in such a way that actually it's the excitement off of the new quartette as well as the new repertoire? 730 01:19:27,040 --> 01:19:30,190 That was the tension that we've had? One more question come through. 731 01:19:30,190 --> 01:19:37,450 And John Whittle writes, I'm interested in the aspect of the ensemble building and audience then then growing great with them, 732 01:19:37,450 --> 01:19:43,360 maybe a wide issue across music making with choirs, including amateurs. 733 01:19:43,360 --> 01:19:47,830 Yes. No, it is a is an interesting issue, an important one. 734 01:19:47,830 --> 01:19:51,670 And I think actually one thing that really struck me when I've done work on the 1920s is that 735 01:19:51,670 --> 01:19:55,450 people already then are complaining about the graveyard's haired audience for classical music. 736 01:19:55,450 --> 01:20:00,400 So I think there's a time of life thing where people actually have the time and the money to spend 737 01:20:00,400 --> 01:20:05,180 on going to subscription concerts that they don't have when they're earlier in their careers, 738 01:20:05,180 --> 01:20:08,410 were raising families or whatever. 739 01:20:08,410 --> 01:20:14,890 So I think in some ways, yes, it is a concern and it is something where you always think that you are wanting to attract younger audiences. 740 01:20:14,890 --> 01:20:20,920 But there does seem to be a kind of consistent turn to certain kinds of conversations 741 01:20:20,920 --> 01:20:28,510 with people at certain stages of their lives in terms of the audiences, 742 01:20:28,510 --> 01:20:37,570 in terms of musicians. But sharing with the audience is, of course, that's a very deep way of creating a bond with a particular audience or community. 743 01:20:37,570 --> 01:20:42,310 And there's a lot to be gained from that in terms of those long term relationships. 744 01:20:42,310 --> 01:20:48,820 And with a quartette in particular, it doesn't mean that you really do get a sense of how the ensemble matures and changes with changes in personnel. 745 01:20:48,820 --> 01:20:55,360 And all of that is so very hard to predict what will happen in terms of how that all works out. 746 01:20:55,360 --> 01:21:00,850 And so I think it's something where, as with almost all of these topics, you can argue it either way, pluses and minuses. 747 01:21:00,850 --> 01:21:06,730 And I think it's something that is worth being aware of, not being afraid of that ageing population, 748 01:21:06,730 --> 01:21:15,760 because I think actually that still is a major contribution, hopefully will remain a major concentration of audiences and people who appreciate them. 749 01:21:15,760 --> 01:21:22,180 I wonder on that note, to what degree is the rhetoric of the sort of child prodigy comes into it? 750 01:21:22,180 --> 01:21:26,710 Is there a sense that actually this renewal through residencies where you always have the young group, 751 01:21:26,710 --> 01:21:33,100 is something that is coveted by by particular audiences and particularly by audiences 752 01:21:33,100 --> 01:21:40,330 who don't have maybe the sort of wealth of five concert halls in their city, 753 01:21:40,330 --> 01:21:48,850 but that there's a sort of sense of seeing the new thing, seeing the the exciting thing in the very unusual thing in that youth. 754 01:21:48,850 --> 01:21:59,290 Because, of course, what strikes me is the discrepancy between the older audiences, if it is a time of life thing and the youth of these groups, 755 01:21:59,290 --> 01:22:04,210 if they're coming straight after their degree and moving into one of these residencies, certainly today, 756 01:22:04,210 --> 01:22:13,520 they often do what you know, what is the dynamic in that divide and what relationship does that inspire? 757 01:22:13,520 --> 01:22:17,990 I think relationships of patronage can be very important in this instance in terms of adopting 758 01:22:17,990 --> 01:22:23,810 a young group and seeing how they mature and the excitement of that and seeing what happens. 759 01:22:23,810 --> 01:22:28,880 And you can see that a lot in the histories of quartettes, where they started out as a young group, they start to get appreciated. 760 01:22:28,880 --> 01:22:34,460 Somebody then loans them instruments. That takes them on to another level. They win a competition that takes them on. 761 01:22:34,460 --> 01:22:38,480 So there's that sense of support, which I think can be very important. 762 01:22:38,480 --> 01:22:47,750 It takes a while to become an established quartette. I don't I can't think of any kind of real prodigy quartette that just tends not to happen. 763 01:22:47,750 --> 01:22:52,520 There is a sense in which it is about the group working together on the whole, 764 01:22:52,520 --> 01:23:00,500 rather than the kind of virtuosity from the idea myself, you know, you certainly don't don't have them in their teens. 765 01:23:00,500 --> 01:23:05,930 But but this is a similar thing, right, that you have the quartette in the fifties and the quartette in his late 20s. 766 01:23:05,930 --> 01:23:14,120 And I think that, you know, within that world, the one in their late 20s are the wunderkind and eclipse. 767 01:23:14,120 --> 01:23:17,630 Yeah, that's. But yes, this a slightly different idea of what youth means. 768 01:23:17,630 --> 01:23:23,150 But I mean, that's quite often the case. Yeah. Thank you. 769 01:23:23,150 --> 01:23:26,900 And of course, the idea of patronage, if that plays into that, 770 01:23:26,900 --> 01:23:34,340 becomes another way perhaps of inhabiting those worlds in the same way that you were sort of drawing those networks between 771 01:23:34,340 --> 01:23:43,070 what people come and spectate and look in on and then take home and re-enact possibly through the acts of patronage, 772 01:23:43,070 --> 01:23:50,720 that there may be similar senses of identification with what is happening in artistically that. 773 01:23:50,720 --> 01:23:58,920 Yeah, very interesting. And. I cannot see any further questions at the moment, we have five minutes to four. 774 01:23:58,920 --> 01:24:04,260 I think we are going to say a huge thank you to Laura for really stimulating paper that I think 775 01:24:04,260 --> 01:24:11,070 has set up the symposium really very nicely and lots of the strands that you brought out. 776 01:24:11,070 --> 01:24:19,290 We keep coming back over the next session. Thank you very much to everyone for attending and listening. 777 01:24:19,290 --> 01:25:00,068 And we hope to see you in the next sessions.