Sexual abuse in music schools

Child sex abuse is more normally the topic of my other blog, where I have been working to address the child sex abuse scandal at Ealing Abbey and St Benedict's School.

But this unpleasant topic has now spilled over into the world of music and music teaching, with the conviction of Michael Brewer a former teacher at the prestigious Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, of a series of sexual assaults against a former pupil Frances Andrade. Tragically Frances Andrade committed suicide after giving evidence at the trial, something kept from the jury until after they had given their verdict.

In developments which are depressingly familiar to me as they mirror so many other cases I know of, in the publicity following the trial it has emerged that there are several other teachers or former teachers at Chetham's and at the Royal Northern College of Music who are under investigation. (Chetham's takes children up to the age of 18, RNCM teaches college-age students. As both are in Manchester, many teachers teach at both institutions.)

And worse still, it has emerged that Michael Brewer resigned from Chetham's after the then headmaster, Peter Hullah, disturbed Brewer and a pupil in Brewer’s office ‘when the choirmaster had the girl’s top off’. That resignation, supposedly on health grounds, allowed Brewer to leave without there being any investigation, and so allowed Brewer to continue to work with children, particularly as director of the National Youth Choirs. In fact, Brewer continued to work with NYC even after he had been arrested for the indecent assault on Frances Andrade, though the NYC did at least ensure that Brewer was not permitted to be alone with any student under the age of 16.

One of Britain's leading composers Michael Berkeley has this week said in the Guardian that he understood the conditions under which abuse could flourish at a music school.

"What is important to understand is the extreme vulnerability of a pupils … for whom the teacher may be some sort of guru … There is a huge responsibility attached to that."
The same was true for young dancers, "who have to delve deeply into their psychosexual makeup" and may transfer emotions on to their teachers.

Berkeley has has suggested that it should be an "absolute rule" that teachers should not have sex with their students – even if the student is over 18. He went on to suggest that if educational institutions, from colleges to universities, could not enforce such a rule, then one has to start thinking about legislation.

It seems to me that music schools and music colleges are particularly vulnerable to this issue, partly given the emotional aspect of making music, the hothouse atmosphere of intensively training children from a very young age, the almost universal practice (in Britain at least) of instrumental teaching in one-on-one lessons with a single pupil at a time, and the fact that teaching instrumental music at times inevitable involves the teacher touching the pupil in order to obtain correct hand and body positions for playing the instrument.

In fact, the new Principal of the RNCM Linda Merrick has suggested in the Guardian that one-on-one music tuition may need to be abolished.

Because of the high emotions involved in music making, it has to be recognised that the pupils themselves may form strong crushes on their teachers, and that there is scope for trouble even if they are not reciprocated.

Clearly, the first priority has to be to ensure that children are protected. Child sex abuse is a loathsome crime and all practicable measures to deter and prevent is must obviously be made. But we must also recognise that many good honest teachers who have dedicated their lives to music are now also feeling intensely vulnerable lest an unfounded allegation be made against them.

Chetham's is where there is a current scandal. But I doubt very much that it is unique, even among music schools. It is very likely that similar stories will eventually emerge from other music schools, in Britain or elsewhere.

And that means that the entire worldwide tradition of how we teach music may come into question. What changes do we need to make in specialist music education such that the welfare of the students is assured while maintaining the standard of the teaching provided?

Some parts of the answer are obvious. For instance, it is clear that all allegations of sexual abuse have to be passed immediately to the authorities, whether or not a teacher voluntarily resigns. If this has to be made mandatory because schools too often don't report voluntarily, then so be it. There also has to be greater awareness of the issue both among staff and students, and perhaps training for music teachers in music schools on how to conduct themselves in a way that reduces the risk of inappropriate behaviour or even of mistaken perceptions of inappropriate behaviour.

But it may be the more is also needed, and Linda Merrick's questioning of the future of one-on-one tuition needs to be part of this debate.

This is an unpleasant and uncomfortable topic. But it is going to have to be faced by everybody who cares about music and music education.

Playing a concert on one rehearsal

Last month, I was asked to play a concert with the North Downs Sinfonia. They don't happen to have any regular horns at the moment, and so they had to bring in extras from outside. I was asked to play 1st horn for the concert. The programme was very nice: Weber's Overture Euryanthe, Grieg's Piano Concerto, and Beethoven's 2nd Symphony.

But I and the other horns couldn't get to any of the rehearsals before the day of the concert, so we had just the one rehearsal on the day the concert itself. Amongst freelance pros and also among the better amateurs who deputise in each others' orchestras, this is a fairly common occurrence. The only unusual aspect of this concert is that it isn't all that common for a deputy to be called in to play 1st.

If you are going to do a concert on such little rehearsal, then you owe it to the rest of the orchestra to be as well prepared as possible. Ideally, you should already know the pieces and so not need much rehearsal anyway. In this case, this was true for me for two out of the three pieces, I've played both the Beethoven and the Grieg before.

But whether or not you've played the pieces before, you still need to prepare. If at all possible, get hold of the parts ahead of time. You can get the orchestra to post them to you, or if the pieces are out of copyright, you can go to the IMSLP website and download the part if it is available. You then have a listen to a recording of the piece while looking at your part, so you can identify any tricky &/or exposed bits. Mark these as you listen. They are then your priorities for practice prior to the concert.

Just as important, listening through the piece while looking at your part will get you used to hearing it and knowing where you come in. For instance, if you have a long rest during which 2 or 3 rehearsal letters go past, you should see if you can note a change in orchestration. Maybe the flutes have a solo entry at letter "B", the trombones at letter "C". Note that down in the part, it means that you will be able to reset your counting in case you have miscounted during a long rest. This is always possible with a piece you're less familiar with.But more generally, if you know how the music sounds you can be much more confident of your entries.

The third vitally important point is that pieces have "corners", places where there is a pause, a break, or a change of tempo. Many such corners have been established by tradition and aren't written into parts, and so you need to be able to anticipate what the conductor will do. You can't guarantee that the conductor will follow tradition in exactly the same way as happens in the recording, but at least you will be able to work out a number of places where you need to watch carefully to see what the conductor is doing, and so avoid wasting rehearsal time by being the one person who carries on when the rest of the orchestra has stopped!

If you're playing 1st, or if you're playing another part with any exposed solos, you need not only to ensure that you have the relevant notes well-practiced, but you also have to form a view ahead of time on what expression you're going to put in: what articulation, dynamics and rubato. This may of course need to be adapted on the day, depending for instance on whether the conductor is going at the speed you expected. But if you do something that is fairly appropriate and convincing on the first run through, the conductor is likely to be so grateful that he will leave it as it is rather than attempt to get you to change it, and will instead go on to rehearse something else that needs more work.

If the parts aren't all that difficult then preparing by listening to recordings is generally more useful than preparing by practicing. If basically you know how to play the notes then the most important issue is making sure you know when your entries are. That's done by listening.

These days, with electronic copies of much of the orchestral repertoire so easily available, there is usually no excuse for turning up and sightreading your way through the one rehearsal before a concert. You're greatly appreciated if you come prepared.

This kind of concert is great experience if you're a student aspiring to be a pro. You should take every possible chance of getting standard repertoire under your belt. But remember, if you're hoping to become a pro, then coming prepared isn't merely appreciated, it's an absolute necessity. Even with the most obscure amateur performance, you never know who may be in the audience or in the orchestra. For instance, it's not uncommon for the admin staff of the professional orchestras to be amateur players. You absolutely don't want to mess up a concert where one of the violins happens to be in charge of the extras list for a professional orchestra! Treat every concert as if it is an audition for a bigger gig.

Beecham on rehearsing

I've just come across this quote from Sir Thomas Beecham on rehearsing. If only more conductors could rehearse his way!

There's only one way to rehearse an orchestral piece, which is what I do. I take either a Mozart symphony or a Strauss tone poem. I play the whole thing through beginning to end without a stop. The whole blessed thing. The orchestra makes a few mistakes, naturally. I play through a second time. The orchestra makes no mistakes. I then just take a few little difficult parts. I pinpoint them, I emphasize them, I repeat those three or four times - I'm ready for performance.

What does the young conductor do, who will never profit by anybody else's experience, thanks to his unconquerable egotism and innate stupidity? He will take a first class orchestra, and after playing twenty bars he will stop, and he begins educating them - fancy educating a body of people like the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra! They already know the damn piece ten times better than he does. He gives us one more twenty bars, stops, starts educating, teaching them. That's why he wants six rehearsals, and that's why I can do with two!

The point of course is that we mainly get better in rehearsals by playing the piece, not by listening while we are told how we should have played the piece. It works at the amateur level as well, though there may be more in the way of errors that need to be cleaned up after the play-through. But even at an amateur level, people learn faster through actually being able to play the piece!

Choosing concert programmes

Choosing a programme for an amateur orchestral concert is a considerable art. There are quite a few things that need to be considered.

First you need to think of the numbers and quality of the players you have. Are they capable of playing a specific piece? If they aren't, there's no point in programming it. You can stretch the players, but you mustn't break them.

Then there's the question of cost. Is the music expensive to hire? Does the piece require additional players of obscure instruments who will need to be brought in (and probably paid)? That a piece is expensive to put on isn't necessarily a bar, but there is a limit to how many expensive concerts an amateur orchestra can afford.

Then there's the question of whether the programme is likely to attract an audience. Each individual orchestra will have its own audience and you should be looking to know their tastes, and to some degree cater for them. There is a fine balance between giving them what they know and like, and introducing them to something they don't know but might like.

And then there is the question of whether the orchestra will enjoy rehearsing the piece. This is not a trivial consideration. For an amateur orchestra, a significant number of people in the audience will be friends and relatives of the players coming along to support them. The players are the orchestra's sales force. If the players don't have confidence in the programme, they aren't going to work hard to get their friends to come along to the concert.

When I'm involved in helping to choose a programme for an orchestral concert, I work on the principle that for most amateur orchestral concerts, every programme should contain at least one disgustingly popular work. In Britain, that generally means a piece in the Classic FM Hall of Fame Top 300, or a piece that could easily be mistaken for something on the list (for instance one of Tchaikovksy's first three symphonies instead of one of his last three). This piece is what will actually get people into the hall. Then you have a bit more freedom with the rest of the programme. You can pick some works that are a bit less familiar. You can pick a concerto, you can pick something modern (perhaps even commissioned by the orchestra). There is plenty of room for creativity provided you remember that people have to persuaded to come, and you want them to enjoy it enough that they will want to come back next time.

My thoughts along these lines have been triggered by disagreements I've had with the conductor of one of the orchestras I'm a member of.

Our spring concert consisted of the following:

Schumann: Overture Hermann and Dorothea
John Woolrich: The Theatre Represents a Garden - Night
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica)

The Eroica is fine. It's an undeniably great work, it is popular, it is playable, albeit challenging in places. The problem was with the other two pieces.

The Schumann overture is not well known, and having played it, I can see why. It's what I would call one of his "justly neglected" works. It's worth a very occasional airing, but it's not good enough ever to become particularly popular and isn't all that enjoyable to rehearse - the same gloomy tune repeated over and again with bits of La Marseillaise interspersed occasionally. I've never played it before and I have no great desire ever to play it again.

John Woolrich is a favourite of our conductor. He's a living British composer. I had never heard of him before, and specifically never heard of this piece. It is passages of Mozart (mainly taken from uncompleted fragments of works) tacked together with odd time signatures and somewhat abrupt transitions between subjects. My feeling was that if we wanted to play something that sounded like Mozart, we could actually have played some Mozart. The frequent changes of speed and of time signature made the piece difficult to rehearse. The effect achieved wasn't really worth the effort involved.

I don't mind musical experiments. I like them. I accept that not all experiments will work, and if you try an experiment that doesn't work, you learn from it and move on. But two obscure or experimental pieces in the same programme in my view was one too many. I certainly didn't feel that I wanted to bring all my friends to the concert, and I suspect that others in the orchestra felt the same. The audience was down by almost half on our usual numbers.

The programme for the orchestra's summer concert will be as follows

Rossini: Overture Il Turco in Italia
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 2
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto

In my view, this programme breaks the rule of making sure that most of what you put on will be enjoyable to rehearse. The Tchaikovsky is undeniably a great work. But it is a concerto, so the soloist has most of the good tunes, and much of what the orchestra plays is relatively uninteresting accompaniment. For a professional orchestra, this doesn't matter so much - they are paid to turn up and play whatever is put in front of them. But for an amateur orchestra, the players won't turn up if they don't enjoy rehearsals.

The Rossini is fine, it's not one of his best-known overtures, but it is tuneful and pleasant enough. But it only 9 or 10 minutes long, it isn't going to occupy much time in rehearsal.

The Schoenberg is another problem. The composer's name frightens audiences, he is synonymous with difficult tuneless atonal music. He invented serialism, a musical system based on the ultimate democratic principle that every semitone in a chromatic scale is as important as every other semitone, and should be heard as often in a piece. The problem with this idea is that our ears aren't democratic, and like consonant harmonies better than overly frequent dissonances. As it happens, the Chamber Symphony No. 2 isn't one of his atonal pieces, but it isn't the most tuneful thing in the world. Moreover it does have some odd harmonies and some difficult transitions of speed. It is going to be a problem to rehearse.

I think that this programme again is going to have trouble attracting an audience and gaining the confidence of the players. The conductor told me that he felt that the Schoenberg was an excellent training piece for the orchestra, and that they would improve musically as a group by playing it. My view is that the orchestra exists to play music to audiences, and there's not much much point in playing to an empty hall even if what we play turns out to be a musical triumph.

And it is so unnecessary. The orchestra had a unique opportunity to play the Tchaikovsky with a bright young soloist who is taking up a post in Germany in the autumn. That's fine, the programme could have been built round that. The Rossini was fine with it. But having all but 10 minutes of the programme containing pieces that don't have much in the way of orchestral tunes is in my view the wrong way to programme an amateur concert. So, you don't have a long concerto and a long experimental or obscurely difficult piece in the same concert, it's a step too far. The situation could have been resolved really easily by programming the Schoenberg some other time, and putting a Mozart or Haydn symphony in, or if you wanted to be a bit more modern and ambitious, perhaps Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 "Classical", which is very lively, contains some very enjoyable tunes and is scored for much the same group of instruments. I could without much effort think of 15 or 20 other pieces that could have filled that gap quite satisfactorily.

But with the Schoenberg I foresee another poor audience. I've also decided I don't want to spend a second consecutive unenjoyable term rehearsing a programme I don't have confidence in. I play music to enjoy it. I've discussed the issue with the conductor, he's not budging. I don't think it is fair on the orchestra for me to pick and choose which programmes I'll play, so I've decided to leave.

Any horns in Hillingdon?

If you're a horn player, you live in Hillingdon or anywhere in west London or thereabouts, and want to join an orchestra, please let me know by emailing me at jonathanwest22@googlemail.com. The Hillingdon Philharmonic Orchestra needs you!

Mendelssohn Nocturne

On November 12th, Hillingdon Philharmonic played a concert - 3 movements from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (the Overture, Scherzo and Nocturne), Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto and Beethoven's 4th Symphony.

Bob Paxman, former owner of Paxman Musical Instruments, Britain's leading manufacturer and seller of French horns, died during the summer after a short illness. Paxmans have put up a tribute to him on their website. Bob was a regular member of our audience at Hillingdon, and would always come round and say "hello" and "well done" to the horns after the concert. This was our first concert after his death, and Stuart, our other regular horn, suggested it would be good to dedicate the Nocturne to Bob, since it is mostly a horn solo. I thought that was a wonderful idea, and so Stuart arranged with the conductor and the chairman that there would be a short announcement at the start of the concert about Bob Paxman and his connection with the orchestra, and how the Nocturne was being dedicated to his memory.

So, I played the solo and made it sound as beautiful as I knew how, to show the audience what a wonderful instrument the horn is and how much horn players need good instrument makers in order to produce those beautiful sounds. At the end, Stuart put his hand on my shoulder and quietly said "Bob would have enjoyed that."

Strauss at Brent

I've been horrifically busy since the last week of October, with work, a huge eruption of publicity on the child protection issues I've been dealing with over on my other blog, and with three concerts that I took part in in November. So this blog has been rather neglected, as far as writing about music is concerned I've had to restrict myself to making an occasional comment over on Lyle Sanford's Music Therapy blog.

But I have been meaning to write for some time about the concert on 9th November at St John's Wood Church, which the Brent Symphony orchestra incredibly kindly dedicated to the memory of my parents. I played the solo horn part in Strauss 1, and my sister Joanna played solo violin in Tchaikovsky's Sérénade Mélancolique.

With everything that had been else that had been going on in my life, my practice schedule was shot to hell. I had been intended to play the Strauss from memory, but in the end regretfully decided that I shouldn't take the risk. Playing the music from memory looks very impressive, but I take the view that the sound and expression of the performance is the most important thing, and that I was more interested in making it a good musical experience for the audience than showing off my memory skills. So to allow me to avoid stressing about the notes and give the most possible brainpower to the music, I decided to have the music available, on a stand in front of me but fairly low down, where I could refer to it if I needed to but where it wouldn't get in the way of the audience seeing me. It was a compromise that worked. As an orchestral musician by long experience, I have a prejudice towards thinking that memorisation of pieces is a greatly overrated skill!

At the first rehearsal with the orchestra, a couple of weeks before the concert, we discovered that the tempo was dragging. It was only after the rehearsal that I twigged what was going on. I was being an orchestral musician, and I was following the conductor's beat. But he was being a good conductor and listening out for what the soloist was doing. And so we were both following each other and getting progressively slower and slower!

This was a problem easily solved. At the other rehearsal, on the day of the concert, I deliberately turned more away from the conductor and towards the audience, and decided just to set the speed for myself and leave it to the conductor to catch me. By turning away, the conductor's beat was no longer in my eye, only just visible in the extreme corner of my vision, and so the temptation to revert to orchestral beat-following technique was minimised. Also, in the time between the two rehearsals I had put together a few thought on how I intended taking the piece, and emailed them off to the conductor Lev Parikian. These are the points I wrote

1st movement, maybe just a tiny bit faster than we took on Wednesday. I think that was mainly my fault - a lifetime's habits as an orchestral player means that I stick to the conductor's beat. I'll try and lead a bit more.

Opening cadenza: while I will pull the tempo about, the last 2 minims will be in strict tempo, so you can beat those and I'll match you.

After that, the first movement is pretty much in strict tempo. I'll be doing expression by means of articulation and dynamics.

2nd movement, again maybe a tad faster. If I feel it's a bit slow to start, I'll push it on a bit at my second entry, 6 bars before un poco accelerando.

The countermelodies in the clarinet and bassoon can come out as much as you wish - they are 20 feet further from the audience, and it's an additional item of interest in what would otherwise be a straightforward and slightly boring repetition of the tune.

Initial tempo for the last movement was fine.

At the 4/4 section where the cadenza comes back, I will pull back quite a bit at the un poco calando.

Lots of rubato at Mit freiem Vortrag. I'd like to start the rit a bar earlier than written and pull back the tempo a lot by the time we get to the Lento.

The poco piu mosso will be a little bit faster than the rest of the movement, but not very much. I think it is more important that the notes can be heard than that the audience are terribly impressed with it appearing to be taken at meltdown speed. Very little if any rall at the end, only the minimum necessary for me to accent the last 4 notes.

Lev briefly wrote back saying that was really useful. And by and large that is how we took it in rehearsal. I was really fantastically pleased with how the rehearsal went. Everything seemed to gel. A horn in my hand, a fine orchestra behind me, a nice resonant church acoustic, and Richard Strauss. Heaven!

It was such heaven that I probably pushed it a bit harder than was entirely wise in the rehearsal, and so my lip was a bit tired towards the end of the performance. Not enough that any of the audience would have noticed, but just enough to feel a bit uncomfortable. As an amateur musician I get so few chances to play a solo with orchestra. Lesson learned, I'll know better next time, if and when next time arrives.

I think there were sixteen members of the family in the audience. As far as I can remember, it was the largest assembly of family members for any event other then weddings and funerals since my grandparents had a party for their golden wedding anniversary over 30 years ago. They came from as far afield as Glasgow and Southampton. For the first time in years (apart from weddings & funerals), all six of the grandchilden of my Grandma and Grandad West were present. It was a tremendous support having them there.

And the concert went magnificently well. The orchestra started with Schubert's Rosamunde Overture. Then Joanna went on and played the Tchaikovsky absolutely beautifully. She's recently got hold of a magnificent old violin, and in her hands the warmth of its tone completely filled the church.

Then I had to go on. It had been agreed beforehand that I would say a few words about the two charities the concert was in aid of, the Thyroid Eye Disease Charitable Trust and the Alzheimer's Society, and their connection with my parents. And then we had an A to tune to and we were off into the concerto.


And I was really pleased with how it went. If I want to be hypercritical, yes, one or two notes were cracked. But none of the top Bbs, they came out clear as a bell, and I felt that they weren't sounding strained in any way, the acoustic of the hall was supporting me well. And I I got fairly well into a "flow" state where I felt able to become the music, without having to worry much about the notes. Although the music was on the stand in front of me, I barely looked at it. In the first movement the tone was singing out over the orchestra, I was getting the dynamic range I wanted, the slurs were coming smoothly.


I've always found the first part of the slow movement more difficult than the notes would suggest. In performance, the movements follow on after each other without a break, so there isn't all that much time to catch you breath and rest your lip during the orchestral interlude at the end of the first movement before you're off again. The first part of the slow movement is a bit of a test of endurance and smoothness - you want it all to remain fairly quiet because of the need for the contrast with the second theme, but you daren't risk any of the notes not actually sounding, and it still all needs to sound over the admittedly very quiet accompaniment an also of course appear to be effortless. Audiences have no idea how much work goes into making music sound effortless! But I had to increase the effort and concerntation to make sure it all went well.


And then there is the second theme. With a crescendo from the orchestra, you burst out into major key and a truly heroic mode. I took it almost loudest I could make it without the tone turning brassy. I kept a bit in reserve so I could I add just a bit of brassy edge along with additional volume for the G natural at the climax. And then it all winds down quite quickly to a recapitulation of the first theme.


There's one great advantage to Strauss 1 which Lev mentioned at the end of the performance. It doesn't outstay its welcome. Some violin concertos have a slow movement that is as long as the whole of Strauss 1. They wallow. The music is undoubtedly wonderful, but sometimes you wish there could be a little less of it. Not so with the slow movement here. First theme, repetition with countermelodies, second theme, recapitulation, and you're done. Just as well, because then there is the third movement...


The third movement is a wonderful romp. Although it has heroic moments in it, for the most part the words to describe the mood are playful and relaxed. There's lots of expression you can put into the dynamic markings, lots of play into the quavers and smooth relaxation into the slower tunes. You let the flutes through in their little countermelody.. And the tension gradually rises until you break out into the final cadenza "Mit freiem Vortrag", at which point you are in full heroic mode again.


Then the danger is that you run away with yourself in the final passage. It goes faster than the rest of the moment, but it is all too easy to let it run away from you. So even while I was enjoying the cadenza to the max, a voice was whispering in the back o my head "not too fast in the next bit, don't let it get away from you!".


The whole of the last section is essentially one long crescendo.No dynamic mark is given at the start, and even though it is marked con bravura, it needs to start no louder than a solid soloistic mp. Then you can start each phrase progressively one notch louder until you get to a climax with the top Bb. Then you drop down to p again, and then do a much faster crescendo all over again to the end.


And it all went to plan. I didn't overspeed in the last passage. and I got to the end with a great flourish!


I probably lost a pound or so in the course of the performance, just from sweat and nerves. Playing a solo concerto in front of the orchestra is decidedly a different proposition from playing a solo passage from within the orchestra. You are far more exposed, far more on show. You're also standing which is somewhat unfamiliar (though less so for me because I always stand when I practice at home).


But I'm very pleased with how it went. I think that I did justice to the music, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. It was a wonderful way to honour and remember my parents. I think they would have approved.


My playing for the evening was over, but the orchestra's wasn't even half done. They had Bruckner 4 to play after the break. and they did exceedingly well. Although the piece has only 4 horn parts, they used six horns, bumpers on the 1st and 3rd parts, and they made a glorious sound all together with the heavy brass.. At the end I went up to them and shook all their hands and congratulated them. Bruckner is very hard work for the horns.


Lessons to learn. No matter how well a performance goes, there's always something you can take from it with the aim of making it even better next time. Next time I would want a less disrupted practice schedule prior to doing a concerto, and I would go a bit easier in the final rehearsal to conserve my strength for the concert. As a soloist I need to lead rather then follow the conductor, and to remember to do that from the very start of the first rehearsal. There's always something you can hope to do better next time.