When I went recently to the local schools’ Shakespeare competition, I was asked at the door, in a chatty way, who was I "here to support?"
I thought for a second, wondering what was meant, and said, "I’m here to support Shakespeare!"
Most of the audience, I realised, had a child or grandchild or sibling performing. Mine was clearly such an original perspective that the lady at the door, who was one of the comperes, mentioned it in her opening remarks.
I was reminded of this when I read, with complete sympathy, Professor Anthony Ritchie expressing in these pages (ODT 2.10.24) his disappointment with the news that the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra will not be giving any concerts in Dunedin next year. Prof Ritchie, a distinguished composer and music teacher, encourages readers to "support the arts".
For many Dunedin people, a profusion of things such as live concerts, recitals, book launches and readings, lectures, film festivals, exhibitions and choirs is an integral part of our attraction to life in the bijou city.
Dunedin gets more such events than most cities of its size. Many of these activities are relatively cheap and low-key, and are pushed along by enthusiastic amateurs.
But the NZSO news and the empty seats at last week’s Chamber Music NZ concert by the Dutch reed ensemble Calefax made Prof Ritchie wonder if they are not supported enough.
In the last few weeks I’ve enjoyed the Calefax concert, a little Baroque concert, a Haydn Mass at Knox Church, and the Southern Consort of Voices.
Prof Ritchie also attended at least two of these.
Clearly, I support the arts. But I don’t have any skin in the game: I don’t teach music, or have a child who plays in the orchestra, I can’t myself read or even make music.
I’m a consumer — that’s to say, I go to hear this stuff because I love it.
Dunedin’s conditions, of course, are a bit special. Travel time is short, and venues are easy to get to.
And civic pride motivates some people to support arts events because they are "good for Dunedin".
At the lovely concert of Celtic choral music by the Southern Consort, I bumped into one of my students. She was there because one of the performers was her boyfriend. She enjoyed the music, but it was not exactly why she was there.
Prof Ritchie’s music department, in the University of Otago’s school of performing arts, teaches music practitioners. Increasingly, my own English department, in the school of arts, also teaches potential practitioners.
Many of our students have not developed at school a taste for reading books as a pastime. But they do want to become writers, and few students (or their creative writing teachers) seem to have quite registered that without readers there will be no need for writers.
Books and literature, like the classical music tradition, need support. But more critically they need something more.
It’s not healthy to be kept going on the artificial life support of government grants, scholarships, fellowships, subsidies. More than support, the arts need love.
And love is, in part at least, something you need to learn.
Some students are learning to make music, but we need more to be learning to listen to it. We are teaching or encouraging more people to write, when what we need to encourage is more people to read.
Not merely "functional literacy," but how to read books: how to read old books, difficult books, important books, and how to read such things not for professional reasons or self-betterment, or in order to vet them for ideological error, or to become "a writer", but how to read them for pleasure.
Pleasures vary in complexity, and in the depth of satisfaction they offer. You don’t need to have imbibed any cultural knowledge to enjoy, say, eating chocolate, or getting tipsy, or to lie dozing in the sun. These are natural or, if you like, animal pleasures.
In the same way, much pop music is very readily appreciated: simple melodies, strong beat, cliched lyrics and sexy performers.
Great music like great literature is not always easy to appreciate. You’re not going to "get" Mozart’s Requiem or Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice without a bit of effort.
Both require openness, curiosity, some knowledge and experience.
But the rewards are immense or, at least, different to the pleasures of Abba or Enid Blyton.
More than ever we all — young people in particular, and not just writers and performers — need something profound and substantial in our imaginative and aesthetic diet, to bond us to the best of human traditions and give meaning to our lives.
And a living culture needs not just supporters, but participants.
— Paul Tankard is associate professor of English at the University of Otago, director of the Otago Centre for the Book, and co-presents the monthly Reading Allowed sessions at the Dunedin Public Library.
