this dispute illustrates, the problematics of the terms ‘amateur’, ‘professional’ and ‘semi-professional’ are not just of academic interest but can enter into the perceptions and actions of those involved in local music. The label ‘professional’ is used – and not only in this case – as an apparently objective, but in practice tendentious, description to suggest social status and local affiliation rather than just financial, or even purely musical, evaluation. From one viewpoint, it connotes high-standard or serious performance as against ‘mere amateur playing’, and from another, outsiders coming in from elsewhere to take prestige or fees from local players, or entertainers who try to charge more than those paying them would like. Thus the emotional claim – or accusation – of being either ‘amateur’ or ‘professional’ can become a political statement rather than an indicator of economic status.
This adds yet a further dimension of ambiguity to the difficulty of isolating the ‘amateur’ side of music-making. If one pays attention to local perceptions, then it is difficult to be more definite than saying once again that this study focusses on the amateur end of the continuum – for that there was some such continuum, however elusive, was generally accepted locally. Even this vague statement, however, does have some meaning, for it thereby excludes any detailed description of the explicitly ‘professional’ Wavendon Allmusic Plan (WAP) run by John Dankworth and Cleo Laine, the Milton Keynes Chamber Orchestra, or BMK-MKDC Promotions, which organised large-scale concerts by professional orchestras and other outside performers. But it also has to be accepted that there were many ambiguities between the ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ spheres and it is impossible, therefore, to keep them entirely distinct.
These overlaps and interactions between the (relatively) ‘amateur’ and (relatively) ‘professional’ are also of interest in themselves. For the world of professional music in Britain, with its famous orchestras, opera centres, and pool of high-status performers, is often pictured as an autonomous and separate one. Yet when one looks more closely, it quickly becomes obvious not only that – as just indicated – there are degrees of ‘professionalism’, but also that professional music feeds directly on local amateur activities and would be impossible to sustain without them.
Thus, whatever may be the case in other countries, in Britain in the 1980s the budding professional musician regularly gets started through local nonprofessional opportunities. This is particularly noticeable in classical music when it is based on encouragement through schools, churches, friends and parents, as well as on the system of local teachers and national music examinations. One important stage for many is to try out their wings in local amateur groups – a school bassoonist, for instance, playing in a scratch orchestra to accompany a local operatic performance, or an aspiring violinist acting as leader or soloist for local youth orchestras before going off to music college. This apprenticeship in performing skills is an essential preparation for the would-be full-time musician. Every year a handful of young players go on from their localities to further professional training in music, a reservoir of already partly trained talent brought up through the local amateur organisations.
A similar interaction is also involved in the next stage of a young professional’s career. A musician’s home area is often his or her first resource for recruiting the first pupils or trying out public performance. This is where the musician is already known and has the necessary contacts. In Milton Keynes, for example, students away at music college tried to keep some pupils at home and to appear as soloists with local amateur groups or at local music events. If they are fortunate, they gradually build up their contacts more widely (making prominent use in their publicity of sympathetic reviews from local newspapers) and start practising farther afield.
Even beyond these personal career stages, the general interaction between amateur and professional worlds is very perceptible at the local level. Amateur groups like to put on grand performances from time to time with soloists who appear for a fee (how large the fee and how well-known the artist depending partly on the available money, though personal links on the soloist’s side also sometimes play a part). This is particularly common in choirs, who often need solo singers to appear with them or instrumentalists to supplement local players accompanying their big concerts, but local orchestras too like to stage some concerts with outside soloists. Local music societies too engage performers – both individuals and small ensembles – to appear at local concerts for their members, selecting their chosen artists in part from the brochures or letters with which secretaries of local music groups are deluged. This continuing interdependence is essential to both sides: to the individual artists on the one side who, whether just starting out on their careers or already established professional players, have the opportunity to perform for a fee before an audience; and to the local groups on the other, who both want the prestige and need the services of experts to assist them in performing admired works in the classical canon.
This interdependence of performers at different points along the amateur/professional continuum is particularly strong in the classical music world, where the accepted repertoire includes many works based on solo–group interaction. But it also comes out, if in rather different forms, in other types of music. Local brass, folk, and country and western bands form both the training ground and the reservoir from which the players and bands who eventually ‘make it’ in terms of fame and finance are ultimately recruited. This is particularly important for rock players, who typically learn ‘on the job’ by becoming members of local groups, sometimes with practically no previous musical experience at all but developing their skills through local practising and performing. The largely ‘amateur’ activities at the local level – the ‘hidden’ practice of local music described in this book – provide the essential background for the more ‘professional’ musical world.
The local situation, then, is a complex one. Rather than the presence of any absolute divide between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ there are instead a large number of people and groups who, from at least some viewpoints and in some situations, can be – and are, both by themselves and in this book – described as ‘musicians’. And this is despite their having a whole range of different economic, occupational, social and musical characteristics in other respects. Though this book concentrates mainly on the amateur end of this multi-faceted continuum, in view of the many overlaps and interrelationships the spheres cannot be totally separated: the concept of ‘amateur’ music is a relative, partly arbitrary, and sometimes disputed label rather than a settled division. In this context the difficulty of making any absolute divide is more than just a problem of presentation; it also tells us something about the characteristics of contemporary English music-making and forms the background to the people and music described in this book.
3
Introduction to Milton Keynes and its music
In Milton Keynes local music was unquestionably flourishing. A quick preview of the music-making going on between 1980 and 1984 can give a preliminary indication of its extent.
Here, then, is a summary list of the main groups and activities in and around Milton Keynes in the early 1980s, each the subject of fuller exploration in later chapters: three to four classical orchestras and several dozen youth and school orchestras; five to eight main brass bands and several smaller ones; nine or ten independent four-part choirs in the classical tradition together with many small groups, and choirs in most schools and churches; around six operatic or musical drama societies, including two Gilbert and Sullivan societies; over a dozen jazz groups playing in regular jazz venues known to their devotees; five or six folk clubs, a dozen folk groups, and about four ‘ceilidh’ dance bands; two leading country and western bands plus other more fluid groups and an extremely successful club; and a hundred or more small rock and pop bands. Live music was being heard and performed not just in public halls but also in churches, schools, open air festivals, social clubs and pubs, and the local newspapers were teeming with advertisements about local musical gatherings.
Definitive numbers are impossible, if only because groups typically
