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Everywhere, the parents of primary school are pushing sighs of relief to the news that fewer children learn the recorder. In erroneous and slightly sticky hands, the instrument is capable of producing a problem of drilling which makes the comparable sounds of the coupling foxes or a circular saw sucked.
But there are good reasons to worry about the drop in the game of recorders, revealed this week by the associated board of directors of the last survey of the Royal School of Music on musical creation.
The recorder was the instrument of the kings of Henri VIII to our own monarch, who made the headlines by playing a carrot during a recent reception. But it was also the main entry -level instrument for young children in the United Kingdom at least since the 1950s, when Carl Orff – better known as the composer of “Carmina Burana” but also a pioneering musical educator – presented it in its influential “Schulwerk” program for Ending musicians. Simple to learn, the recorder is also accessible – cheap plastic requires almost no maintenance and are small enough to be filled in a bag of books.
The survey indicates that the decline is indicative, in part, of a change in musical education, while instruments such as the electric guitar, the flute and the ukulele gain popularity in school. The call of these alternatives is not difficult to understand; Few children dream of shredding the solo recorder from the Bach Brandenburg Concerto N ° 4.
But this is only part of history. The precipitous decrease in the number of children playing the judiciary, from 28% in 2014 to 16% today, can also reflect the regular deterioration of musical education in the United Kingdom. An OFSTED report in 2023 revealed that, even if almost all primary schools present music to children as part of the national program, only half provide instrumental or vocal tuition fees. The investigation of the board of directors revealed “cliff edges” in the participation of music at 12 and 15 years old. GCSE numbers have dropped. Many schools lack specialized staff.
The main difference between a gentle lyric recorder and the one that looks like live vivisection is a good teacher. But in secondary schools, there are nearly 1,000 less music teachers today than in 2012. About a third of the survey teachers said they had not planned to stay beyond five years.
The recorder may suffer while some students collect different instruments. But only the most funded schools can afford to distribute electric guitars to a seven -year -old children's class. For all these recorders make a horrible howl if they are blown away by an exaggerated child, they represent an affordable way to present young concepts such as melody, rhythm, technique and musicality. The fact that they fall into disgrace suggests that access to musical tuition fees is shrinking.
Will it change? Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of Education, has reduced that music and the arts more broadly are now “the conservation of parents who have additional money and can pay for clubs and lessons for a weekend”. With a community examination of the school program in work, charities and defenders argue that music becomes a basic material such as mathematics and English. The British Musical Education Association calls on the government to fill a “black hole” of 161 million pounds sterling in the financing of the so-called musical centers created in 2011.
The investment was worth it. Music can be a joyful and fulfilling hobby and an enriching profession, but it is also a plan for accomplishment. Learning the piano and the trumpet when I was a child shaped my adult life – the self -discipline necessary to practice and improve to the orientation that live performance requires.
Do not just believe me, ask the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer, before embarking on a career in law and politics, was a Guildhall music scholarship holder playing the flute, the piano – and, yes, the recorder.
