was already an extensive population in the area, particularly in the established town of Bletchley (which long continued to be the single largest centre of population within Milton Keynes) but also in Stony Stratford and Wolverton, each with further links to such other nearby centres as Woburn Sands, Newport Pagnell, Buckingham and the intervening villages. These towns and villages had their own active and continuing cultures – different, no doubt, from the larger-scale and more ‘nationally’ oriented institutions later encouraged by the MKDC but each with its own validity. The later developments in the 1970s and 1980s can only be fully understood as involving some interaction – often congenial, sometimes abrasive – with already established local institutions.
Figure 6 Milton Keynes facts and figures (1983). Based on Milton Keynes Household Survey, 1983
A detailed account of the earlier history of local music would be a subject on its own, but some illustrations can put the later situation into perspective. One was the long choral tradition in the locality. This went back to the last century, particularly in the established association between choirs and local churches and organists, and continued strongly in more recent times. Between the wars, for example, there was the flourishing Co-operative Choral Society in Bletchley under its lively railway conductor, still well remembered by older Bletchley inhabitants, followed by the Bletchley Ladies Choir, which lasted for over twenty years from the 1940s on, as well as regular choral performances in the local churches, and a well-attended Free Church Choir Festival in the 1950s. Many of the surrounding villages had their own choral societies and competed with the Women’s Institute choirs in the Buckingham music festival. Newport Pagnell’s choral society, still flourishing in the 1980s, had been putting on performances and inviting outside artists to sing with them since 1910 (with a few interruptions), and people still talked of the wartime occasion at the Electra Cinema when Owen Brannigan sang and was paid with £10 and two dozen eggs. These earlier traditions formed the base for later developments like the still-existing Bletchley-based Sherwood Choir, drawing many of its members from the older Bletchley Ladies Choir. This and many other recent groups were able to build on the established choral tradition not only for their singers but also for ready audiences, instrumental support, and recognised performance venues like the old churches.
The same interaction between the new and the already established was also to be found in other musical forms. Brass bands played an important role in the ‘new city’, merely the most recent manifestation of an already strong local tradition which included several brass bands dating back to the turn of the century or earlier. Similarly there were earlier orchestras such as the inter-war Apollo Orchestra in Bletchley, church concert parties like the Spurgeon Baptist Chapel’s Busy Bees, and dance bands like the Papworth Trio (figure 7) who were performing all through the war for parents’ association dances in the school halls – a role now more usually fulfilled by the ‘ceilidh’ folk bands – and continued to play for Bletchco Players (a drama group still in existence) till the 1950s. The newer musical groups thus fitted easily into the local situation, sharing in the same tradition of performance for local events and societies.
There was also the already-existing base of individual performers and local music teachers, some of whom had been putting on regular recitals by their pupils in the inter-war years, and of schools and other groups producing operas and musical plays. To this was added the foundation of the LEA’s North Bucks Music Centre in Bletchley in 1964. This provided a focus both for school music and for local groups founded in the seventies to practise on its premises off Sherwood Drive, among them the Sherwood Sinfonia, Sherwood Choir and re-formed Bletchley Band.
Figure 7 The Papworth Trio, a popular dance band in the Bletchley area from the 1930s to the 1950s, led by the local greengrocer, pianist and organist Tom Papworth
Many other 1980s groups too had their roots in earlier societies: for example the flourishing Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic Society (founded 1952 as the Bletchley Amateur Operatic Society following the tradition of the pre-war Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Amateur Operatic Society), the Milton Keynes and District Pipe Band (founded from Bletchley, 1971/2) and the Bletchley Organ Society with its regular monthly meetings since 1971. Similarly many of the earlier local festivals continued into the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes the models for parallel festivals in the ‘new city’. Among these were the annual Bletchley Middle School Music Festival, the Bletchley and District First Schools Folk Dance Festival, the Boys’ Brigade annual procession, and the Spurgeon’s Church ‘Carols for Everybody’, a yearly event since 1961. The Milton Keynes Festival of Arts was founded as the Bletchley Festival of the Arts in 1968 and by the 1980s was attracting thousands of entries each year from throughout the city and beyond. The tradition of music in the schools was important too, and ex-scholars of the (earlier) Bletchley Grammar School and Radcliffe School in Wolverton were formative influences in local folk and rock music, and together with newcomers were still making an active contribution to the local music scene in the 1980s.
To explain the musical character of Milton Keynes solely in terms of the new city or initiatives from above would thus be an over-simplification. It is understandable that some of the officials planning the arts should take the view that cultural development had to be initiated from the top – even half-believe that without their support grass-roots music could not really flourish. This, after all, is an approach in keeping with the accepted planning philosophy that ‘in all types of new community the basic responsibility for recreational provision lies with the local authority’ (Veal 1975, p. 79). An early arts manager in the city explained the process of ‘bringing art into the lives of those living in a new city’ from the viewpoint of planners: ‘It is a slow but rewarding process. One digs, fertilises, plants, prunes and tends – with a great deal of love. After many years the roses will have developed and the prize blooms will be ready for show.’3 Certainly this central encouragement was one real element. Without the initial sponsorship by the MKDC and BMK many of the larger-scale and more ‘nationally’ oriented and ‘professional’ musical institutions like the Wavendon Allmusic Plan, the Milton Keynes Chamber Orchestra, or the ‘February Festival’ would never have been set up; and MKDC in particular had an impressive record in tapping both private enterprise and local initiative to encourage a wide variety of local recreational opportunities. But concentrating only on a top-down model would be to miss the essential contribution of the existing musical traditions which not only often continued as important foci for local interest but also laid the base for later additional activities. Indeed some MKDC administrators explicitly recognised this, notably certain leading individuals in the ‘Social Development’ programme who made a point of working with existing musical groups and responding to the initiatives of local residents. The informal processes and expectations underlying the local practice of music and the people who maintained the local clubs and groups over the years thus also played a crucial role, one that cannot be understood by considering the official institutions alone.
Probably no city is ‘typical’, and it will be obvious from the above that Milton Keynes in the early 1980s certainly was not. It was a ‘new city’ growing in population by some tens of thousands during the research and characterized by lavish publicity, demographic and social structure divergent from the national ‘average’, and the special impetus of new challenges and new developments in a new environment. In the absence of comparable studies, we do not yet know what is ‘typical’ of musical practice in contemporary English towns. This study does not therefore claim to present a detailed representation of all English towns, but to give an ethnographic account of just one at one particular period.
Hence I have no doubt that the details of the extent and nature of the musical activities presented here or the personalities who helped to create them are indeed unique. But equally I feel certain from
