The New Narrative for Classical Music

This paper was written to implement one of the recommendations of the MCA’s Classical Music Summit of July 2010. At the time of posting, it is not directed at any particular government or other entity. Rather, its purpose is to guide advocacy by the classical music sector into the immediate future.

Prepared by Antony Jeffrey and Richard Letts
With input from many others.

A lot of the content was drawn from other recommendations of the Summit. The draft was distributed to the participants in the Summit for comment and amended appropriately.

It is intended to be a statement about classical music – the musical genre, if it can be so called, practised over the last millennium and continued in Australia and around the world up to the very newest compositions performed today.

There are eight sections, all but the last intended for public consumption. (Section 8 is for the sector only.) If you string together the paragraphs in bold type at the beginning of each section, you have what we hope is a description of classical music that is persuasive about its value.

These statements are followed by some further description or discussion, and then by proposed strategies: things that the sector can do for itself, and actions requested from governments.

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