The other week Dean Robert Brustein of the Yale Drama School was viewing with alarm in the Sunday New York Times a decline in government and-industry's support for the arts. My friend Carl, who is the implacable enemy of government-and-industry, phoned me forthwith to share his outrage. To his disappointment, and somewhat to my own surprise, we both discovered that I was not especially outraged.
Don't get me wrong. The fine arts provide much of my reason for being. And one can understand the Church's paying Mike Angelo for redoing the Sistine Chapel, or Duke Carl Theodor's supporting the Mannheim Orchestra, for in such cases the end-products were for the edification and delight of the patrons. But when the arts went public in quite recent times--when they focussed on opera houses and concert halls and museums and the like--they went into business, presumably to turn a profit, or at least to break even. On such a footing (I'm playing devil's advocate to a degree) there is little to distinguish them from professional sports, other than the myth that they are somehow good for us. In actuality, they are show biz--at least in the form Brustein is beating his breast over. If, as in some European nations, the government sees fit to support them as national treasures, that is understandable, I suppose. But I don't recall that Union Carbide and Bethlehem Steel were castigated for failing to save the late unlamented World Football League, and I don't see why they should be expected to bail out the Metropolitan Opera or the Metropolitan Museum.
Naturally I am grateful when they do--though I suspect that they have motives more devious than sheer altruism. But when it comes to support of the arts, I stand awestricken at a firm like Lyrita Records of England, the original publishers of this record and dozens like it. So far as I know, Lyrita is not an arm of the British government, but a private venture with capital and plant and employees and taxes and all that stuff. Yet year after year it has devoted itself to turning out a steady flow of high-quality recordings of the music of British composers, living and dead, played by the best artists to be had. Now--despite Sir Thomas Beecham's quip that "British audiences are not fond of music, but they adore the noise it makes" --record buyers in Great Britain, like their American cousins, are much more apt to buy Tchaikovsky and Beethoven than Tallis and Bridge. Since Lyrita persists, despite recessions and inflations, one suspects that its operation is motivated by some financial dodge unintelligible to the layman, sheer quixotic madness, or a real sense of love and duty.
Anyhow, William Alwyn, now in his seventies, should be particularly proud and grateful that Lyrita has made available all of his symphonies (No. 1 waits in the wings) in gorgeous, composer-led recordings. Alwyn is well-known for his film scores (e.g. "Odd Man Out"), but up to now his "serious" music has been shamefully neglected, probably because it's eclectic and does not subscribe to any fashionable system. I've been much taken with the symphonies issued so far, and can recommend Alwyn's music to anyone who does not find Richard Strauss, Ravel, or Debussy too far-out.
