OPINION

The Way
Forward

what can be done to create more awareness of

western classical music in india? by karl lutchmayer

musical culture promoted

by the few, for the few, is
nothing new. Whether
it
was
18th-century
Vienna and London,
early 19th-century Paris,
or mid-19th-century St. Petersburg and
Moscow, this was the model, and in each
of those cases the city later became an
internationally important powerhouse of
music-making, influencing the rest of the
country, and ultimately the wider world.
So why not Mumbai?
To explore this fully, first we
need to understand a little history.
In previous centuries, the few
had invariably been the wealthy
nobility (usually supported by the
educated classes) who had funded
opera houses, orchestras, resident
composers and salons. However, in
each case, as their power and wealth
began to falter, whether due to war,
revolution or the rise of industry, the
demise of their patronage heralded
an extraordinary flourishing of music.
A newly risen and rapidly expanding
middle-class with a disposable
income, sense of security (consolidated
by comfortable homes and servants)
and desire for self-betterment turned
the arts into a marketplace. First they
purchased objects of desire and display
(houses, jewellery, art and furniture); then
education for their children, especially in
the social graces of riding, fencing, dance
etc; and above all, they bought music,
in the form of lessons, instruments,
sheet-music and concerts. This created
an enormous grass-roots interest, from
which a few serious individuals could
emerge into a viable marketplace.
The musicians seized upon this
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opportunity. In late 18th-century Austria,

after Napoleons armies had laid waste
to the principalities whose courts had
formerly employed them, they thronged
to the cities full of the educationhungry middle-classes in order to meet
their need for music lessons. They
then invented the public concert to
meet this new demographics need for
entertainment and to milk them further
of their wealth. Indeed to some extent,
this new outlook created the classical

western music is
largely about public
performances,
and even in the
age of youtube,
live concerts are
necessary for music
to be a normal part
of society
style far more simple and easy to listen
to than the Baroque, especially to a new,
uneducated audience.
With a ground swell of people studying
music and a number of entrepreneurs
creating concert opportunities, a few
musicians invariably stood out who
needed training. At first they went abroad,
but this was only possible for the wealthy
or those with patrons, and so in each city a
combination of senior musicians, wealthy
patrons and sometimes politicians and
nobles banded together to create music
colleges, promoted as part of a sense of
national pride.

So what about India in the 21st century?

Well, I wonder if the above history lesson
rang any bells. It is absolutely clear to me,
with pianos flying out of Furtados; a huge
middle-class that eats out regularly (did
any of our grandparents do that?); armies
of schoolchildren engaging in extracurricular activities; a few lucky music
students going abroad (I auditioned over
20 this year for Trinity Laban) and with
India being, I suspect, the only place
on earth where there is more demand
for qualified music teachers than
supply, that we stand at the brink
of a potential tipping point. So how
might we proceed?

public concerts

Western music is largely about public

performances, and even in the age of
YouTube, live concerts are necessary
for music to be a normal part of
society. The more there are, the more
normal it is, and the more people
who attend. Children are inspired to
learn, adults are educated, students
and teachers develop, performers
learn from one another, thus creating
a powerful breeding ground.

who?

While foreign musicians were important

to burgeoning musical scenes, it was
always indigenous performers (or at least
newly resident immigrants) who fired the
public imagination and truly increased
awareness among new audiences. As
such, India has to find ways of promoting
performances by as many Indian
performers as possible. The SOI, whether
through education or financial incentive,
has to have far more Indian players, and
book more Indian soloists. Audiences

Members of the
SOI perform in
St.Xaviers College
in December 2007

Below and bottom: The

NCPA Special Music
Training Programme was
started with the aim of
training future musicians

programmes is always shocking for how

few works one recognises from the now
standard repertory. We cannot expect
forward-looking India in 2016 just to
jump into the ancient musical canon of
Europe, and nor should we wish it to.

teaching

have to take pride in supporting

them and not assume that foreign
means better. Indeed, even foreign
orchestras should be strongly
encouraged to work with Indian
(or Indian diaspora) soloists as has
been the case in China. Above all,
far more opportunity must be given
to young musicians at all levels to
gain experience at performing.
The ones I meet at auditions have
seldom played more than four or five
concerts in their lives. The international
students against whom they compete
will have played in public 10-20 times a
year for many years.

to begin with, audiences would

be small, which would require
sponsors to have deep pockets,
but it was ever thus, and thats
why the names of Carnegie and
Juilliard are still known to us today.
Furthermore, concerts also have to
be at timings when people attend
why are there no 4pm concerts
for schoolchildren? Lunchtime
concerts for housewives and the
retired? What about late evenings? After
all, Mumbai hits its stride at around 11pm
(unlike its European counterparts), and
yet we have concerts at 7pm.

the flourishing
of music is always
accompanied by its
democratisation, and
there can be little
room for elitism

where?

In order to kick-start a culture of

attendance, concerts have to be easily
accessible, in places where people are
socially comfortable. In the 19th century
they took place in assembly rooms, pubs,
coaching houses, covered marketplaces
and theatres. Today, it might be
nightclubs, cinemas, pop festivals, jazz
clubs, malls and hotels. They also need
to happen right across the city, and they
need to be cheap (perhaps the same
price as cinema tickets) the flourishing
of music is always accompanied by its
democratisation and there can be little
room for elitism.
For a city the size of Mumbai
(including Navi Mumbai), I estimate
that each concert could be played in
at least four different venues. And yes,
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Did you know that there are possibly

fewer than 50 teachers in the whole of
India who have a music degree? Thats
for 1.3 billion people. Indeed most
teachers have not even achieved Grade
8 (a qualification barely sufficient for
undergraduate entry in London). How
can we possibly expect to have wonderful
students if we do not have trained
teachers? It would simply be unthinkable
to employ someone in England who
didnt have a degree. The only serious
solution, as the Russians realised, is to
invest in importing teachers wholesale
from other countries. It will cost dearly in
the early years but, as Russia found
out, in terms of national pride and
international visibility, will pay
back richly.
This would raise standards and
competition in the marketplace, but
would require long-term planning,
vision and, again, deep pockets. It
would require an understanding
that these incoming musicians
must be allowed to also perform on
a freelance basis, creating their own

The NCPA holds regular

talks on Western classical
music to familiarise newer
audiences

lucrative performance opportunities.

This would, at the same time, benefit
the rest of the community just as Liszt,
Chopin, Thalberg, Pixis and countless
others did in their adopted Parisian
home.
Should the government be involved?
Personally, my experience, both historical
and contemporary, is that governments
seldom offer long-term vision and
support in the way that a foundation
with a large enough corpus can. More to
the point, in a country where a clean and
ample water source, sewerage, food and
affordable medical care are not always
available to significant parts of the
population, I dont see how music can
be a priority. However, the government
could certainly create an energy to the
music market by simply lowering the
earning requirements for incoming
music teachers and abolishing some of
the red tape that currently stifles private
entrepreneurship in the field.
Ultimately, if India wants to have
a world-class musical life, it needs
investment in that musical life. It
should not ape current practice
in Europe, but create its own
outlook over the next century. We
have the talent, the capacity for
entrepreneurship and endless hard
work. Now all we need is the will
to invest in the long term and the
vision to see it to completion.

did you know that

there are possibly
fewer than 50
teachers in the whole
of india who have a
music degree? thats
for 1.3 billion people

what?

The entrepreneurial musicians of the

18th and 19th centuries understood
that new audiences needed careful
handling. There was no point playing
complex Baroque music to early 19thcentury audiences; and Romantic music,
with its vivid pictorial elements, was
almost designed to allow inexperienced
listeners to follow the music through
the storyline. We need to be aware that
new audiences will need music they can
relate to. That might be fusion, it might
be classical fantasies on Bollywood
themes (were Liszts opera fantasies
and Hungarian Rhapsodies anything
different?), or songs in the vernacular,
but it must be by Indians of course,
include older mainstream repertoire, but
only as part of the offering. As a modern
researcher, looking back at 19th-century

Zane Dalal conducts the SOI

in St. Thomas Cathedral at
Horniman Circle

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