Radio Three initiative

BBC Radio 3 are presently running an initiative to attract female composers. This particular drive is as old as the hills. There’s really nothing new about trying to get more women writing music. There were scores of similar initiatives when I was a student composer. Whether they’re ever more than gimmicks, however, I’m not sure and, already, the BBC seems to be heading at top speed down gimmick highway. 

It appears that the BBC is planning to spend a day patting itself on the back, playing music by female composers, which, in itself is wonderful, but, are they serious about finding and nurturing genuine talent? Are they planning to play material written by the composers they choose long into the future? Or will they choose a load of crap which merely reenforces the out-dated notion that women can’t compose?

Yes, it’s noble that they want to attract previously unheard composing voices, but there are so many reasons, beyond gender, why composers find themselves unable to break through. Social background, schooling, location, lack of confidence, being endlessly in the wrong place at the wrong time, or writing music in a style which doesn’t fit into the narrow box defined by Radio 3 (who are their own worse enemies in this respect.)

How about a call for unpublished composers? Or a call for writers who went to state schools? Or one for composers who write cross-genre music and haven’t had radio play as a result?

Anyway, the hideousness of the whole initiative is bailed out by the photograph they’ve used to promote it, which features a pair of headphones sitting on a piece of paper covered in a load of guitar tabs. It’s almost as though the organisers are assuming that women won’t be able read or write proper music scores, so need to be patronised by being shown that they can enter if all they know how to do is strum a bloody guitar.

No! This is Radio 3. If you can’t read or write music, you shouldn’t be having your music played by the station. And as a person who has spent thirty years honing my craft as a composer, I would even go as far as to say that if you can’t read or write music, you have no right to call yourself a blinkin’ composer at all. And there are certainly plenty enough brilliant undiscovered female composers out there who do NOT need to be patronised in this manner!

On a far happier note, my godson, Will, has another sibling. Raily gave birth to little Lola on Friday night, and sent us all the most fabulously Pre-Raphaelite image of her breastfeeding the little lass just minutes after birth. It was a home birth, entirely natural, with no pain relief whatsoever, and I am so very excited to meet her.