Back
to Chapter 11
12
The London Orchestras
The London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic,
Philharmonia – between 1904 and 1963 all become self-managed. Despite
financial problems – lack of subsidy and patronage – the orchestras
survive. The Goodman Committee. Comparison with orchestras in Europe
and USA – their financial support and conditions.
All four of the ‘London Orchestras’,
the usual description that includes the London Symphony Orchestra
(LSO), the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra (RPO) and the Philharmonia (sometimes, on tour abroad, called
the Philharmonia of London) are self-administered. Their Boards of
Directors are wholly, or to a considerable extent, elected members
of the orchestra. They employ a General Manager (or Managing Director)
and the necessary staff. The members of the other orchestras based
in London, the BBC Orchestras, the Royal Opera House and the English
National Opera Orchestra are employed on contract in the usual way.
While I was a professional musician,
from 1943 until 1979, I was in turn a member of three of the London
orchestras, the LPO, the RPO and finally the Philharmonia – the last
two when they were respectively Sir Thomas’s and the other Walter
Legge’s, and then when they were self-administered. Some years later,
from 1974–79 I was Chairman of the Council of the Philharmonia (as
its Board of Directors is called because it is a Company Limited by
Guarantee). Although I was never a member of the LSO I was engaged
by them on a good many occasions during the 1960s as an extra or deputy.
Between 1964 and 1979 I was also very involved as an elected member
of the Executive Committee of the Musicians’ Union that from time
to time played a considerable part in coming to the rescue of several
of the London orchestras.
There are not many other self-administered
orchestras in the world; the Vienna Philharmonic is an outstanding
exception; all the other orchestras in Britain are managed. Self-management
has over the years been the cause of considerable opposition from
those who believe that musicians, like other groups of workers, whether
in industry, commerce or the arts are unsuited to manage their own
affairs. In particular, in the case of musicians, there have always
been those who feel that they should not be given the responsibility
for managing their financial affairs.
Before going into why the musicians
in three of the London orchestras were obliged to take over the management
of their orchestras between 1939 and 1964, in order to maintain their
existence, it is necessary to understand the economics of the symphony
orchestra. An orchestra is labour intensive requiring a large number
of performers to rehearse and then perform in concert halls that will
hold an audience of from 1200/1500 to 3000. The same is true for opera
houses.
Symphony orchestras everywhere have
always been dependent on patronage. It is impossible for any concert
hall or opera house to take sufficient money at the box office even
with a full house when every seat is taken, to pay for the number
of musicians, singers, the conductor and soloist, that a concert or
opera performance requires. Patronage for the groups of musicians
that developed into orchestras was first provided by the church and
then by kings and the many princes and counts of the principalities
all over Europe. Later, with the growth of the bourgeoisie in the
19th century, many city authorities took on this responsibility. In
America, from the beginning of the 20th century, men who had arrived
penniless from Europe and made their fortunes in the USA, endowed
orchestras in the major cities as a way of establishing themselves,
and particularly their wives, as members of local society.
It was only in 1940, when the Council
for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) was established
with funding from the Treasury, that for the first time a state subsidy
for the arts became available in Britain. CEMA, which was set up to
provide entertainment and to raise morale for both the armed forces
and the civilian population was a quite revolutionary step and was
taken with barely any resistance and, in fact, with hardly anyone
noticing. It at once gave artists, actors and musicians the opportunity
to play an important part in the war effort. Then, after the end of
the war in 1945, CEMA, once again without any protest, was quietly
transformed into the Arts Council of Great Britain.
The establishment of the Arts Council
with funding from the Government allowed public money to be allocated
to arts organisations of all kinds, especially those that had in the
past had to rely entirely on private financial aid. Unlike the situation
in most other European countries where during the 19th. century a
tradition had developed all over Europe of supporting orchestras,
for historical and social reasons this did not happen in Britain until
1946, very much later than elsewhere. However, the Government in Britain,
in contrast to the policy in most other countries, has operated a
‘hands off’ policy, leaving the Arts Council free to designate where
funding should be provided.
The first full-time symphony orchestra
was not established in Britain until the formation of the BBC Symphony
Orchestra in 1930. An orchestra, the Bournemouth Municipal, was formed
in 1893 by Dan Godfrey and funded by the local authority and, though
not a symphony orchestra it did provide regular employment throughout
the year. It is interesting to see what that orchestra played at their
first performance.
| March |
The Standard Bearer |
Fahrbach |
| Overture |
Raymond |
Thomas |
| Valse |
Je t’aime |
Waldteufel |
| Ballet Music |
Rosamunde |
Schubert |
| Russian Masurka |
La Czarine |
Ganne |
| Entr’acte |
La Colombe |
Gounod |
| Selection |
The Gondoliers |
Sullivan |
During the 19th century a number of
orchestras were created: the Hallé in Manchester, the Liverpool
Philharmonic and several elsewhere, but none gave concerts throughout
the year, usually only having at most a six month season.
In 1895 Henry Wood, later Sir Henry,
was engaged by Robert Newman to conduct a season of Promenade Concerts
at the Queen’s Hall in London. His first Promenade season programme
was of an even lighter character than that played by the Bournemouth
Orchestra, being made up of overtures, a selection, songs, instrumental
solos such as that for the bassoon, Lucy Long, and flute and
cornet solos.
10 August 1895 Queen’s Hall
| Overture |
Rienzi
|
Wagner |
| Song |
Prologue: Pagliacci
Mr.Ffrangcon Davies
|
Leoncavallo |
| Havanera |
|
Chabrier |
| Polonaise in A |
Orchestrated by Glazounov
|
Chopin |
| Song |
Swiss Song
Madam Marie Duma
|
Eckert |
| Flute Solos |
(a) Idylle
|
Benjamin Goddard |
|
(b) Valse from Suite
|
|
| Song |
Thou hast Come
Mr. Ivor McKay
|
Kennington |
|
Chromatic Concert Valses from
the opera Eulenspiegel
(First performance in England)
|
Cyril Kistler |
| Song |
My Heart Thy Sweet Voice
Mrs. Van der Vere Green
|
Saint-Saens |
| Gavotte from Mignon |
Ambroise Thomas |
| Song |
Vulkan’s Song (Philemon and
Baucis)
Mr. W.A.Peterkin
|
Gounod |
| Hungarian Rhapsody in D min. and
C maj. (No. 2) |
Liszt |
INTERVAL 15 MINUTES
| Grand Selection |
Carmen
arr. Cellier
|
Bizet |
| Song |
Largo al Factotum
Mr. Ffrangcon Davies
|
Rossini |
| Overture |
Mignon
|
Ambroise Thomas |
| Cornet Solo |
Serenade
Mr. Howard Reynolds
|
Schubert |
| Song |
My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair
Madame Marie Duma
|
Haydn |
| Bassoon Solo |
Lucy Long
Mr. E.F. James
|
|
| Song |
Dear Heart
Mr. Ivor McKay
|
Tito Mattei |
| The Uhlan’s Call |
|
Eilenberg |
| Song |
Loch Lomond
Mrs. Van der Vere Green
|
Old Scottish |
| Song |
The Soldier’s Song
Mr. W.A.Peterkin
|
Mascheroni |
| Valse |
Amorettan Tanze
|
Gungl |
| Grand March |
Les Enfants de la Garde
(First Performance)
|
Schloesser |
The Queen’s Hall Orchestra that Wood
conducted in a series of concerts, as well as for the Promenade season
each year, still retained the deputy system that had operated throughout
the music profession in Britain for many years. The lack of regular
employment always made it necessary for musicians to maintain as many
of their connections as possible
Henry Wood was determined to create
a really good orchestra so that it would not be possible for anyone
in future to say that England was ‘das Land ohne Musik’. To this end
he needed to weld a group of musicians playing together on a fairly
regular basis under his direction into an ensemble that could compare
with the finest orchestras in Europe and America. Because of the deputy
system he was frustrated by the constant absence from rehearsals,
and sometimes even from performances, of key players. As time went
by Henry Wood became increasingly exasperated by the constant appearance
of deputies until one day the matter came to a head. In his autobiography
My Life of Music he recalls how he arrived for rehearsal and
‘found an orchestra with seventy or eighty unknown faces in it. Even
my leader was missing’.
He had to contend with this until
in 1904, by which time his reputation and authority had grown sufficiently
for him to instruct his manager to inform the orchestra ‘In future
there will be no deputies’. The next day 40 members of the orchestra
resigned. Those 40 musicians were to form the nucleus of the London
Symphony Orchestra, a co-operative organisation in which the players
accepted the financial responsibility, controlled the orchestra’s
artistic policy, and engaged conductors and soloists. From being employees
they became the employers. As there was no contract the musicians
were paid at the end of each engagement, and always in cash. I remember
being paid in this way whenever I played with them well into the 1960s.
It was the only major orchestra in my experience to do this.
In 1905 three outstanding players
formed the New Symphony Orchestra, another self-administered orchestra,
which in 1920 became the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra and in 1909 Sir
Thomas Beecham founded the Beecham Symphony Orchestra but, unlike
the LSO, neither lasted for many years. The next major orchestra to
be formed was the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in 1930, the first orchestra
to offer the players a full-time contract. The Corporation went even
further than Sir Henry Wood: not only were deputies absolutely forbidden,
members of the orchestra were not allowed to do any other orchestral
work
The London Philharmonic Orchestra
Limited was formed in 1932, with Sir Thomas Beecham as Founder and
Artistic Director. His co-Directors were distinguished and wealthy
patrons of the arts: Viscount Esher, Robert Mayer, Samuel Courtauld
and Baron Frederick Alfred D’Erlanger. Though the others joined him
in providing the initial funding to establish the London Philharmonic
Orchestra, it was in reality Beecham’s orchestra. His intention was
to have an orchestra that would, like the BBC Symphony, have no deputies
and be as full-time as possible. He put together a schedule that included
the Beecham Sunday Concerts, the Courtauld-Sargent Concerts and providing
the orchestra for the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Royal Choral
Society concerts. He also accepted engagements from organisations
around the country, and arranged to do a number of gramophone recordings.
Longer periods of employment for the orchestra were provided by the
International Opera Season and the Russian Ballet season both at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Even so, this did not create enough
work for the orchestra to be engaged on a full-time basis so that
the players did still have to maintain their other professional connections
In 1940, at the beginning of WW2,
Beecham went to America, leaving his orchestra without any work or
financial support. To keep the orchestra going the players decided
to form a co-operative company, which they named Musical Culture Limited.
The first thing the new board of management had to do was to find
engagements for the orchestra, not an easy task for those more used
to playing their instruments than managing an orchestra and with the
country preparing for war. The members of the orchestra did the first
concerts on a truly co-operative basis: they shared out what little
was left after all expenses had been paid. I was told that for the
first concert this amounted to 5 shillings (25p), the equivalent of
about £12/15 today.
It was not long before a number of
the players were being called up to join one or other of the armed
services. The task of replacing them and getting deputies of the required
standard was becoming increasingly difficult. In addition, the orchestra
was obliged to do many more engagements away from London, which many
of the best players were not too keen on. The orchestra decided that
the best thing would be for everyone to receive a regular weekly salary.
By the time I joined the orchestra in 1943 as second clarinet, my
salary was £10.50 a week with a small amount extra to help with the
cost of over-night accommodation, depending on how many ‘out-of-town’
dates there were in the week. When I left to join the Royal Philharmonic
in 1947 I was receiving around £12/13 a week
Until I joined the RPO I had always
been on a weekly salary. Suddenly I found I was paid for each engagement
I played. The fee would depend on whether it was for a concert in
London, an out of town concert or for an extra rehearsal, a children’s
concert, broadcast, recording or film session. I see from my old diaries
that in 1947 there were weeks when I earned as much as £45, followed
by a week when I only earned as little as £10 or £15. After a time,
when I had made some free-lance connections, I found, as I had been
told I would, that I was earning a great deal more than I had in the
LPO. Beecham paid his musicians well. As second clarinet I was paid
£4.20 for a concert instead of the Musicians’ Union rate which was
£2.75. Principal players received £5.25 instead of £3.00.
Walter Legge, who was employed by
the major recording company, at that time EMI, created the Philharmonia
in 1945 mainly for making what were then called gramophone records.
They were those large, black, double-sided discs that played for about
four and a half minutes on each side, and can still sometimes be found
lurking at the back of the second-hand section of record shops. For
some years the Philharmonia was fully occupied making records and
gave very few concerts.
Then, in 1946 Sir Thomas founded the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He established an exclusive contract
with EMI for his orchestra to make a considerable number of records
each year for five years and an agreement with Glyndebourne Opera
for the orchestra to play for their season each year. He also persuaded
the Royal Philharmonic Society, with which he had been associated
for so many years, that the orchestra could use the title ‘Royal Philharmonic’
and undertake the Society’s concerts.
There was a good deal of competition
for players between the RPO and the Philharmonia and one or two players
like Dennis Brain managed to play in both for a time. In the early
years both orchestras were very busy making recordings. The conditions
were very similar in both orchestras, though the Philharmonia probably
had rather more recording sessions, much sought after as one was paid
the same for a session of three hours as for a concert with a three-hour
rehearsal in the morning.
Everything went very well until Sir
Thomas ceased conducting in 1960. When he died in 1961 Rudolf Kempe
became the principal conductor but, of course, he had other commitments
and was not involved in such a personal way as Beecham had been. The
management gradually found the task of finding work for the orchestra
more and more difficult, their problems being made very much worse,
first by the loss of the Glyndebourne season and then by the decision
of the Royal Philharmonic Society to terminate their agreement with
the Orchestra whereby it would lose the use of the title ‘Royal’.
In 1963, The Anglo-American Music Association Ltd., the Company Beecham
had established, gave up control of the Orchestra and the players
decided to emulate the course taken by the musicians in the LPO in
1939, when they had found themselves in a similar unhappy situation.
They formed a new company, Rophora Ltd., elected a board of Directors
from the members of the orchestra, managed to retain their name intact,
and became another self-administered orchestra.
I had been playing in the Philharmonia
from the late 1950s and was a member of the orchestra in 1964 when
Walter Legge decided he no longer wanted the responsibility of owning
an orchestra. He not only disbanded the orchestra; he took its name
away as well. Again the players had to take the only course open to
them if they wished to survive; they too became a self-administered
orchestra and were obliged to rename themselves The New Philharmonia
Orchestra. It was to be more than 10 years before they were able to
obtain their original name again and once more become the Philharmonia.
Notwithstanding adversity the four
London orchestras survived. None of them had either an outstanding
conductor like Beecham, or a man with a personality like Legge, with
his involvement in the recording industry at EMI as well as his many
close associates in the world of music. More serious was the decline
in the volume of recording. This particularly affected the two orchestras
that had been created in the aftermath of the war in 1945/6, the Philharmonia
and the RPO, which depended to a considerable extent on their recording
work.
There was a body of opinion that felt
there were too many orchestras in London and not a large enough audience
to sustain four orchestras. It was said that two was ample and that,
perhaps, one large orchestra assembled from the best players from
the current four orchestras might enable Britain to have an orchestra
to match those in Berlin, Amsterdam, New York and Chicago. On the
other hand, there were others who believed that the current number
should not be changed.
In December 1964 the Arts Council
and the London County Council, which in 1965 became
the Greater London Council (GLC), appointed the Committee on the London
Orchestras under the Chairmanship of
Arnold Goodman, who shortly after the Report was issued
in 1965 became Lord Goodman. The Committee’s terms of reference were:
to examine the organisation of the four orchestras; decide whether their
number should be maintained, increased, reduced or regrouped and what
steps should be taken to improve the stability and working conditions
of the musicians. The Committee was told that it should consider the
desirability of a co-ordinated orchestral concert policy, so as to ensure
that programmes and performances were of the highest standard.
In 1965 the then Labour government
held the view that the Performing Arts – music, opera, ballet and
theatre – which had been the preserve of the upper and middle classes,
should also be available to what was still referred to as the Working
Class. It was also determined, if possible, to maintain employment
wherever it could. I was elected by the Executive Committee of the
Musicians’ Union to represent the Union, alongside the General Secretary
Hardie Ratcliffe. The other interests represented were the Arts Council,
the London County Council and the Orchestral Employers’ Association,
now the Association of British Orchestras (ABO).
The Report, usually referred to as
the Goodman Report, was accepted by Lord Cottesloe with the commendation
to Miss Jennie Lee, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at
the Department of Education and Science, expressing the hope that
the necessary financial resources to implement the Report would be
made available. It is not too much to say that Jennie Lee and Lord
Goodman, both Labour supporters (today they would certainly be considered
on the left of the Party though at that time they were much more mainstream)
were responsible for the four orchestras remaining, and continuing
to do so until the present time.
I had already been involved in negotiations
with quite a few employers in several areas of musical employment,
but this was my first experience of taking part in preparing a report
that was likely to have a profound affect on the future of my colleagues
alongside people representing such conflicting interests. Only Arnold
Goodman’s legendary skills as a diplomat enabled us to complete our
task.
There were some members of the Committee
who wanted to reduce the number of orchestras in London, opposed by
those of us representing the welfare of the musicians currently working
in the four orchestras. Other members of the Committee were concerned
that in looking after the London orchestras it might be at the expense
of the Regional orchestras. The most important group, those with the
responsibility for providing the funding for all the orchestras, was
ever watchful that no decisions were arrived at that would be too
costly.
There was unanimous agreement on the
Committee and among those from whom they took evidence that if first
class playing standards were to be maintained a musician should not
be required to work more than 10 sessions a week or 35/36 in any four-week
period. That would mean approximately 27/30 hours a week, still more
hours than nearly all orchestras around the world, especially for
the woodwind and brass principals. Most orchestras in Europe and America,
even those in the smaller cities, had four of each woodwind instrument
with co-principals in the woodwind and brass who would share the work
between themselves, so that each of them usually did no more than
about18/20 hours a week as part of their contract.
The Committee then considered the
amount of work there was likely to be for the orchestras. It came
to the conclusion that with the agreed work schedule there was enough
for more than three but less than four. The fact that we were shown
the plans for building the Barbican Centre with a large new concert
hall (it was some years before this was finally built) played a part
in the final decision that the four orchestras should continue as
before. Now, 40 years later, we still have four orchestras.
The Committee made a number of other
recommendations: some were implemented, others were not. The London
Orchestral Concert Board was created and was given the task of overseeing
the administration of the orchestras, the distribution of subsidies,
organising the concert dates at the Royal Festival Hall, and the co-ordination
of programme planning. This last had been a big problem for some time;
popular works such as the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no.1, or Beethoven’s
5th Symphony might feature in several programmes within a matter of
weeks.
A major recommendation was that a
standard contract be established that would guarantee a basic salary,
and include provision for holiday and sick pay and some sort of pension
scheme. This has not come to pass for a number of reasons. First and
foremost there has never been the possibility of sufficient funds
being made available, by either Local or National Government, to pay
for the administration of the orchestras and the salaries of the musicians,
if they were only to work the recommended number of hours and have
a paid holiday.
The members of the orchestras were
not keen on the idea of a contract unless their salaries were to match
what they could earn from their current orchestral employment plus
what they could earn from their free-lance work. It was clear from
the start that this would never happen. But there were two other reasons
why the players were not enthusiastic: they did not trust those who
would be in charge of the ‘money bags’ and they feared that a full-time
contract would incur a change in their taxation status.
They knew how managed orchestras in
London had collapsed in the past and how each time it had required
the musicians to take responsibility for the survival of their orchestra.
This had made them suspicious of putting their future in anyone else’s
hands again. They were also concerned that as full-time employees
they would have to give up the advantages of being on Schedule D.
When registered on Schedule D their home was considered their ‘work
base’, so that they could (and still can) claim expenses for all travelling,
by car or public transport, repairs to their instrument, dress clothes
for concert wear and so on; even the cost of a room in which to practise
and give lessons. I enjoyed these benefits throughout my performing
career until I became Director of the National Centre for Orchestral
Studies and was paid a regular salary. Fortunately my salary was sufficient
for the loss of my Schedule D benefits to no longer be of concern.
However, like most musicians, who Lord Goodman noted, ‘are as conversant
with Schedule D as with D major’, I continued to remain on ‘D’ for
my private teaching, examining and other odds and ends.
Throughout the time I have been involved
with what we used to refer to as the ‘music profession’ that then
became the ‘music business’, and is now the ‘music industry’. (Oh!
Dear!) London has had a much envied music scene: four orchestras,
employing the finest conductors and soloists from all over the world,
providing at least one symphony concert every evening throughout the
year, and two full-time opera houses. The amount of financial support
received from Local and National Government to pay for the salaries
of the musicians in all the orchestras in London has been about a
quarter of what has been given practically anywhere else in Europe.
In the USA the orchestras in Cleveland, New York, Chicago and other
cities with major orchestras have had the benefit of an income derived
from the interest from the donations they had received in the past
from those wishing to gain entry into ‘society’, in addition to a
continuing tradition of private patronage to the arts.
How has London achieved this? With
financial assistance from the Arts Council and the hard work of the
musicians in the symphony orchestras themselves. Without the input
from the Arts Council it is unlikely it would have been possible.
However, from the start in 1946 the funding they have provided has
been inadequate, at times better than at others, but never sufficient
to support a year round concert season bringing in the finest and
most expensive conductors and soloists. These star artists were essential
if audiences were to be attracted in sufficient numbers though they
soaked up virtually the whole subsidy, leaving nothing over to pay
the for the cost of the orchestras and their administration. For 60
years it has been a bumpy ride with everyone just managing to stay
onboard.
But, in the end, it has only really
been possible because the musicians themselves have continued to subsidise
the concerts in London by doing recordings and film sessions, overseas
tours, and working nearly twice as many hours and earning much less
than their colleagues in Europe and America. The recommendation of
the Goodman Committee in 1964 that the orchestras should work 27/30
hours a week still remains unfulfilled. However, musicians in Britain
continue to enable Londoners and the many music lovers who visit London
from all over the world to enjoy an envied musical experience that
has continued to flourish for over half a century.
Chapter 13
