In (the five months) between the last two posts, I have been astonishingly busy with all sorts of musicological and non-musicological activity, which is, of course, why I have failed to post. It wasn’t that it was all boring, just very time-consuming. I’ve transcribed a whole book of madrigals, written two articles, finished transcribing a book of motets and completed an eye-bleedingly, mind-numbingly complicated touring grant application to the Arts Council. My Beloved Husband and I created a truly lovely website for Fallen to pull the promoters in to the tour. I’ve also started an anti-bullying campaign at my workplace and become an occasional pundit on Radio Solent reviewing the newspapers on the odd Saturday morning. Plans for the next few months include a trip to Austin to have a look at/listen to my friend Randall’s Connie Boswell collection, and to have a small Boswell jamboree at UT; recording Alessandro Grandi’s Motetti a cinque voci (1614) and the rest of the music from Fallen with Musica Secreta; a conference in Cork organised by the lovely Mel (for which I still have to write the paper) and a whole lot of digit and limb-crossing to ensure the success of the touring application. So that’s me.
But before I close this little update, I feel I have to mention the issue of attitude, specifically the attitude of arts promoters. In the course of putting together the application, I emailed and phoned literally dozens of promoters here in the UK, presenting to them the opportunity of putting on Fallen with financial assistance from the Arts Council. Not asking for commitment, mind, just an expression of interest that could go into the application. Some receptive, forward-thinking people got it straight away – that here was a way of drawing new audiences into the concert hall, and doing something utterly different than a stand-and-deliver concert with dry-as-dust programme notes and evening dress. And this wasn’t just for established venues with plenty of funding and regular audiences. Hooray for them! Sadly, though, others took the attitude that it would be “difficult” – oh, where would we get a choir, how could we sell it to our existing audience, yadda, yadda. All very valid concerns, I’m sure, but these are the same people who grumble about the dwindling audience for early music – an audience that is literally dying off because new people aren’t being attracted in. They will moan, but they won’t make the effort – and when artists such as us make the effort for them, they are too craven to change their ways. Humbug, I say!
But the one that beats all is the festival administrator that is too busy even to consider putting it to the programme committee. I speak to the local university, who say they would love for their students to get involved; both I and my co-director (who is also a festival director, so knows this person professionally of old) email acknowledging the university’s interest and offering the possibility of putting it on with a subsidy if they express enough interest to put it in the funding application. I’m fobbed off several phone calls, and then finally I get the message from a minion that the administrator ‘has my details, and will ring when s/he is ready’. Guess that’s a no, then.
I'm an American-and-naturalised-British academic who tries to juggle musicology with family life, singing, extreme knitting and football. Most of the time I succeed in keeping the balls off the ground.