Katy Hamilton

Anyone who has ever organised an event will know that, however carefully and lovingly you plan it, someone will complain about something. You might have booked one of the greatest living artists to give a concert; or found the ideal combination of teachers for a course; even taken the time to factor in walking distances between buildings, flower allergies, food preferences, the works. Just wait til you get the feedback forms. I can almost guarantee that you will be told, quite firmly (though hopefully kindly) that you didn’t order the right sort of biscuits. Or the coffee cups were too small. Or the programme font wasn’t to someone’s taste. I’ve even been gently censured in the past for allowing two performers to stand in a perfectly standard concert configuration because one of the audience members (that’s one of about 200) couldn’t see the pianist properly.

So each year, when the new BBC Proms season is announced, I always feel a wave of sympathy – well, more like empathy – for the Proms team as the verdicts come in. This year more than most, though, I’ve also been muttering grumpily at my computer screen even at some of the commentators who seem to like the eclectic mix that forms the 120^th season, because I’ve been doing some research over the past few months into the history and establishment of the festival, and I think they’ve got it wrong too. (See? I told you there was no pleasing people.) So for those who like the 2015 line-up, and for those who loathe it, let’s revisit the 1890s for a moment.

The Proms began at the Queen’s Hall, Langham Place (tragically bombed in 1941 and never rebuilt) in 1895. The concerts were long, the programming mixed, and the floorspace sufficient that one could actually walk around between items, and collect refreshments from the back of the arena. Many of the features with which we are now familiar were put in place in those first few years: the cheapest tickets slap bang in the stalls, in a deliberate reversal of traditional pricing tiers; the fountain, filled with blocks of ice, to keep the space cool; and from 1905, a performance of Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs almost every year. The Last Night speech was introduced a little later, in 1941.

The point of the Proms, though, is what concerns me most here. When Henry Wood and Robert Newman first set up the series, the idea was twofold: to create an audience for classical music on the one hand, and to satisfy the public’s taste for popular pieces on the other. The best-loved works were repeated several times a season. The newspaper advertisements would often include details only of the second half (the ‘popular’ half) rather than the ‘serious’ first half in which Wood programmed Beethoven Symphonies and Liszt Symphonic Poems. This was the ultimate musical quid pro quo, and it worked because Wood conducted the same orchestra for each and every Prom. The personal touch, the celebrity link, the feeling of community – these were the things that bound the Proms and its audience together.

By the time the BBC took over management of the series in 1927, the Proms were realising that organisation’s brief ‘to inform, educate and entertain’ far more energetically than the fledgling broadcasting corporation had so far managed. They were a good match, and, following Wood’s death, an important support in the testing times of trying to continue the festival without such a powerful figurehead. From the 1940s onwards, change was rapid and occasionally rather bumpy: the introduction of more and more orchestras, gradually featuring non-UK ensembles; the extreme parochialism and snobbiness of Malcolm Sargent (just listen to his 1958 Last Night speech if you don’t believe me) succeeded by William Glock’s battle to increase the role of contemporary music; and gradually, from the 1990s onwards, a broadening remit that came to include Proms in the Park, TV show proms, online interactive features, and so on.

Perhaps I am missing something fundamental here, but I can’t see much difference between Pete Tong DJ-ing his way through an Ibiza Prom and a cornet quartet in 1895 playing The Lost Chord to Sullivan devotees of the day. Both initiatives take their lead from public interest, and both would (presumably) have contributed to the financial success of the operation. The one principal difference – most striking, when we constantly complain about society’s dwindling attention spans – is that the Proms now dedicate entire concerts to ‘popular’ or ‘serious’ programming, rather than constructing an evening of bits, as was standard programming practice in the late nineteenth century. As something of a fan of miscellany, I would encourage the next Proms director to consider it, just for fun…

As for the various newspaper reports: yes, I must say that I don’t really fancy all 5 Prokofiev Piano Concertos in one evening either, and that could have done with some more creative thinking. But I don’t think the Proms has a responsibility to ‘nurture Mozart’ – a bizarre concept if ever there was one. I applaud any organisation that seeks to capture the imagination of such a broad and diverse audience, and enthuse listeners of all ages. But my major plea, to the BBC and season commentators, is this. Please stop rehashing the same old story about the Proms uniting popular and ‘serious’ classical music. That’s been happening since 1895. Please stop trumpeting your world-leading education events. For heaven’s sake, during World War Two, hundreds of school children would sit in the Albert Hall whilst Adrian Boult talked them through Proms rehearsals. We get it. We get that those are important cornerstones. But tell about something else! Tell us about all those amazing talks and chamber events. Tell us about the breadth of activities in which we can become involved even if we’re no longer at school. Tell us about something Wood could not have realised – the amazing international reach of this superb festival.

What a tremendous gift it is that Wood and Newman left us. Thousands of people, hundreds of performers, a fortune raised for charity. Music shared, of all kinds, for all audiences. Time to stop moaning, and start buying tickets.