From: vance@speech.sri.com (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: government and the arts
Date: 14 Apr 92 16:31:41 GMT
	<VANCE.92Apr8095150@kyoto.speech.sri.com>
	<1992Apr13.160248.5422@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Organization: Speech recognition group, SRI
In-reply-to: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk's message of 13 Apr 92 15:02:48 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.160248.5422@vax.oxford.ac.uk> wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:

   >    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 wrote:]
   > 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 [available? Ed.] 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.

I guess I disagree with you about the purpose of education -- at
least, I am very glad *I* was permitted, in the course of my
education, to pursue interests not related to my country's industrial
health!  And the notion of cultural health just begs the question of
who gets to decide what constitutes culture.  [Didn't you leave out
religion here?  Or do you maybe think like Matthew Arnold on this one?]

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

OK, so how in practice will you provide support without control?
Surely someone in the granting agency (to use US terminology) is
judging "quality"?

   [question about *what* culture to support -- point that opera
	is not everyone's culture]

   As above. The government must, and to a certain extent does (but
   for how long?) support what is best called community arts.

Could you be a little more explicit about which are community arts and
which are the other kind (and what the other kind is called)?  Seems
to me the combine blandly represented by the phrase "The Arts" is in
practice the art of a very particular community.

   I think that this ["community arts"] is as
   important as its support for the great opera companies and theatres
   in the UK.

   [...]

   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)

Just out of curiosity -- which music?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I
believe it supports (1) standard "classical" music activity and (2)
"modern", i.e. academic post-classical, composition etc. -- this is
the "third programme" (no?), with its .02% of the listenership or
whatever.  

	Vance

[posting from the USA, by the way -- wasn't it obvious from my name?]
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical