The ABRSM ‘house’ composers

IN the post-war Britain of the 1940s and 1950s, many felt there was a sense of cultural suffocation about British life, despite the liberating, though demanding, cultural agenda of radio's Third Programme. The feeling of British insularity is tellingly captured by film producer Lindsay Anderson:

Some felt that the ABRSM had cast itself in the role of the nation's musical nanny, keeping the dangers of the outside world away as though the musical revolutions in Europe and the USA had never occurred. What is now forgotten is that when William Glock began to bring a breath of fresh musical air to the Proms in 1960, it was enthusiastically welcomed, the age range of the Prommers suddenly dropped and their numbers increased. In the 1960s and 1970s Glock and the new radio producers he had recruited reshaped the BBC's serious music output. Against this appearance of radical new music and the new vogue for ‘authentic’ historical performance, the Board's musical stance seemed even more outdated. Rather than commissioning a younger generation of composers to contribute to its syllabus, the Board stuck to its cultural last, and the sense of an anachronistic disjuncture between music in education and music elsewhere grew stronger.