From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: government and the arts
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:02:48 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster

In article <VANCE.92Apr8095150@kyoto.speech.sri.com>, vance@speech.sri.com (Vance Maverick) writes:
> 
> In article <1992Apr7.113956.5324@vax.oxford.ac.uk> wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
> 
>    Someone has just asked what government has to do with good
>    classical radio.  This is not meant to be a reply to the very good
>    arguments put forward in that post.
> 
> Could have fooled me.
> 
>    In Britain, we have a very different political culture to that
>    which pertains in the US, as I understand it. We believe that some
>    things: education, the health of the population, the culture of the
>    country are just too important to be left to the vagaries and whims
>    of free marketeers acting out of self-interest.
> 
> I think the analogy to health care is unsound.  Education, maybe; but
> I would say the culture of a country is too important to be left to
> the impositions of the people in power.
                                                                   
I certainly don't advocate impostion of the government's will. (See below)
The analogy with health care is the same as that with education: these things
must be able for all, whether they can pay or not. Education for the nation's
industrial health, health care for its physical health and the arts for its
cultural health.
 
>    So, even among those few people who
>    can afford private education, private health care and tickets to
>    unsubsidised opera (for example), the issues of public funding for
>    education, health and the arts are very important. As I perceive
>    it, these are not issues on the same scale in the US.  I apologise
>    if I am wrong.
> 
> Leaving aside the issues of health and education, it is precisely
> because I *do* care about the arts that I can't see the logic of the
> government supporting them.


You are mistaking government support for government control. I wholeheartedly
encourage the former, but think the latter to be intolerable.

 
>    Let government do its duty and support the
>    nation's culture! Without it, the arts will remain the preserve of
>    the middle classes and the well-off.
> 
> Um, I hadn't noticed that blues and jazz sprang from the middle
> classes and the well-off, Stephen.  It is precisely this narrowness of
> the institutionalized notion of The Arts that I'm complaining about.
> The proposition "The government should support the nation's culture"
> sounds wonderful, but it unfortunately entails the government's
> deciding what the nation's culture is.  Is opera the culture of
> Brixton?  You tell me.

As above. The government must, and to a certain extent does (but for how long?)
support what is best called community arts. I think that this is as important
as its support for the great opera companies and theatres in the UK.
 
> If the government could do something to make the public media
> accessible to minority cultural activity, including "classical music",
> of whatever sort, that would be great.  I think the growth of
> broadcasting technology will bring more and more video and audio
> channels into the home, and that will help, but it's not the whole
> solution.
> 
> 	Vance

Well, I don't know where you're posting from (Japan? USA?), but in Britain we
have an institution called the BBC. It is funded by television licences and
government subsidy. It supports the arts, and particularly music to an enormous
extent (see my post of a fortnight back)

Stephen Wilcox
wilcox@uk.ac.ox.maths
From: rms@hpgrla.gr.hp.com (Rick Scherer)
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 13:48:38 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: CARMINA BURANA (was Re: Conan Soundtrack- the Real Deal)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Greeley, CO