“Research commissioned by the Royal Albert Hall has shown that the number of children learning a classical instrument is falling,” writes Camilla Turner in Saturday’s (7/28) Telegraph (U.K.). “Around one per cent of children identified the oboe, French horn, English horn, bassoon or contrabassoon as instruments that they either play or would like to play, a poll of 1,000 children found. Meanwhile, a third of those surveyed chose the guitar, either classical or electric, as an instrument they play or would like to play…. ‘The numbers have dwindled enormously in the last ten to 15 years,’ ” said Robert Codd of the British Double Reed Society. “ ‘Oboes and bassoons are generally not known at all in schools. They might have a picture on the wall, but they haven’t seen them in the flesh.’… He described how he hears from ‘desperate’ conductors [of] national and regional youth orchestras [who] struggle to find oboe or bassoon players…. The demise of these orchestral instruments is part of a broader problem,” Lucy Noble, the Royal Albert Hall’s artistic and commercial director, pointed out. “Children do not have to choose an arts subject for General Certificate of Secondary Education exams, while taking a science subject is compulsory.”
Posted July 31, 2018
