This ideal classical model was a powerful one which, however vague at the edges, implicitly moulded people’s views of music and of their own participation in it at the local level. They were taking part, it was assumed, in a high art form validated by an authorised historical tradition and a structure of professional specialisation in which experts had to undergo rigorously assessed training ultimately controlled by the highest members of the profession. Of course not everyone who went to a classical concert, learnt the piano or played the violin in a local orchestra had formulated this explicitly or expected his or her own performance to measure up to the highest level of this ideal. Nevertheless, the model had a profound influence throughout the musical groups and activities that were widely seen as part of the world of classical music.
The local awareness of links with the wider classical world and its authorised canon from the past came out in many contexts. One concrete form was the printed scores and music ‘parts’ which were a necessary channel for transmission and performance among local classical groups, both instrumental and vocal. These were often borrowed rather than bought and when a local choir, say, found itself, as so often, singing from old and well-marked copies, it was easy to picture the earlier choirs 20, 30, even 50 years ago singing from the self-same copies – and repertoire – of classical choral music in the days when, perhaps, those parts cost just one penny. Local performers could also regard themselves as the amateur counterparts of the specialist professionals, their reflection at the local level, playing however imperfectly from the same classical canon. It was this pervasive model of the lengthy and highly valued classical tradition which ultimately set the definitions of the musical activities in which local amateurs were engaged.
Amidst these many locally based classical musical activities, what kind of people were the main participants? Is the prevalent assumption justified that classical music is primarily a ‘middle-class pursuit’ or confined to the ‘elite’ rather than the ‘common people’? Judging by Milton Keynes there was certainly one sense in which this was true: if one focusses primarily on highly trained specialist musicians and the national institutions in which they participate, this is almost by definition an elite and select world; and insofar as this model influenced people’s interpretations, classical music was indeed pictured as, in its fullest and best form, a high-art pursuit for the few. But, as becomes clear by examining the local situation, the actual practice which upholds and perpetuates the classical music world consists of more than just these elite musicians. The local amateurs and small-scale events also play an essential part. In their case it is by no means so evident that an elite or a ‘middle class’ label is correct. Indeed my main conclusion – however banal – was that local musicians and participants in local musical activities varied enormously in terms of educational qualifications, specialist expertise, occupation, wealth and general ethos.
Some musical groups did approach more nearly than others to the ideal of the expert professionals in terms of specialist musical qualifications, and this often – though not always – went along with the kinds of jobs or backgrounds loosely referred to as middle class. The leading amateur orchestra, the Sherwood Sinfonia, was a good example. Players had gone through the formal examinations of the national music institutions, and there was a high proportion of local music teachers and of individuals in high-status occupations among their members. But even here there were exceptions, like the young sausage-maker, later music shop assistant, who besides being a Sherwood Sinfonia violinist was a keyboard player and composer with a local rock group, or pupils from local comprehensive schools not all in the ‘best’ areas. The amateur and widely based emphasis within English music was particularly noticeable in the choirs, with their long tradition of extensive local participation without formalised musical expertise or selective background. It was true that the older pattern of local choral societies made up of a cross-section from one locality was – with the change in transport arrangements perhaps – being replaced in the 1980s by choirs recruited on a city-wide rather than neighbourhood basis; but both local ties and a wide mix of backgrounds were still evident in the church and school choirs (see chapters 15 and 16). In such cases generalisation about classical music practitioners coming from just one social background or set of occupations does not stand up: many (though not all) choirs were very mixed.
The same applied to instrumental players, despite the elite nature of some smaller ensembles. Piano and organ playing were widespread, sometimes still learnt on a self-taught basis (especially in church contexts), and even instrumental groups were not all highly select. The Wolverton Light Orchestra, for example, went back far into the local history of Wolverton, the town long dominated by the local railway works. It was first founded as the Frank Brooks Orchestra after the First World War by a bandmaster of the Bucks. Volunteers who also conducted the local brass band, and was later renamed the Wolverton Orchestral Society. Between the wars it played light music with a First World War flavour, the thirty or so players giving regular winter concerts in local cinemas. It was revived after the Second World War, but later took the title Wolverton Light Orchestra to make clear that in contrast to the newly founded Sherwood Sinfonia their policy was to play smaller-scale works rather than symphonies. This they were still doing very effectively in the 1980s, giving six or seven concerts a year, mainly around the Wolverton area, with a playing membership of about thirty. By then there was a fair proportion of local schoolteachers in the orchestra, but over the years – and to some extent still – it had been strongly rooted in the local community and still had a mainly self-taught conductor from the local railway works. It would be hard to regard this as a select elite or middle-class activity in the sense often attached to those terms.
All in all, the picture was a varied one. The high-culture model of classical music should not lead us to conclude without further question that the musicians who in practice made up the classical music world at the local level were themselves members of some clear elite or drawn predominantly from some single class. For Milton Keynes, at least, the evidence points to a weighting towards teachers and fairly high-status occupations in several of the more aspiring instrumental groups, but otherwise – and particularly in the choirs – great heterogeneity of background, education and occupation.
The power of the specialist model, then, which focusses attention on professional concerts and national performing organisations, should not be allowed to obscure the equally real practices of local performance, training and appreciation. This classical ideal – misleading though it can be – is nevertheless of great relevance for the local scene. It provides a framework for the local practice, and without it one justification and measure for the many local orchestras, choirs and instrumental ensembles would be lacking. The recognised tradition of the classical repertoire and the currently accepted styles of presentation also provide local groups with a rationale which they both draw on and help to perpetuate. All in all the over-arching classical music model on the one hand and the local performers and enactors of the tradition on the other interact together in a complex and varied way to transmit and sustain, carry and form, the national and enduring world of classical music so characteristic of this country as a whole and so richly practised at the local level
5
The brass band world
Given the well-known association of brass bands with the North, the strength and continuity of the local brass band tradition came as something of a surprise. For there were five to eight main brass bands in and around Milton Keynes in the early 1980s (the exact numbers depending on just where one draws the boundaries): the Wolverton Town and British Rail Band, the Woburn Sands Band, and the Bradwell Band (all going back many decades), and the more recent Stantonbury Brass, the re-formed Bletchley Band and (from 1984) the Broseley Brass; also regarded as in a sense local were the century-old Great Horwood Band and the Heath and Reach Band, in villages about five miles from the city boundary. There were also youth bands, bands connected with the Boys’ Brigades and similar groups, and Salvation Army bands in Bletchley and Bradwell. Brass band gatherings like the Bletchley spring festivals had been a local tradition