Classical Music: Upbeat

There's more to life than London orchestras, said this page's headline on 31 July. Music is singing, composing, learning, improvising, discovering the sounds of the rest of the world. You wouldn't think so from reading the acres of print these last few days, as the orchestral lobby has showed muscle enough to hijack the musical agenda in a situation that would stretch the skills of Solomon.

Or maybe Solomon had it easy. Whatever the London orchestras have going for them, it isn't the love of a good mother. How does anyone pass judgement among such close equals? There still is a way to get off the hook; but time and persuasion are the key - not instant schemes. The Arts Council must stop trying to outdo the wisdom of the Old Testament, and look instead to the chap in the New who fed thousands with a few buns and a pair of kippers.

First, observe the Royal Philharmonic's support around the country: make it an irresistible magnet for funds from the regions to keep 'Britain's national orchestra' truly national. Next, think of the current top dog, the Philharmonia, with its residency in Paris: let no one sleep until they have extracted enough cash from Continental institutions and the orchestra's own backers to turn it into 'Britain's European orchestra'. Then, over on the South Bank, the London Philharmonic is still only settling in (remember how long it took the LSO at the Barbican). Give it time, and set the South Bank to raid its own coffers and if necessary to twist the arms of the private sector until they break. Et voila: all the orchestras set happily on the roads they have already begun to travel.

The beauty is, this hasn't cost anything yet. Certainly the Arts Council can put money in, to get things started, but it needn't be much. Orchestras are the most powerful of all subsidised musical institutions, apart from the opera companies, and they are much more resourceful than they let on when they are after grants. So the rest can go to show what Arts Councils are for: recording, early music, education, regional orchestras and chamber orchestras and small opera companies, for instance, and all the brilliant activity that a multicultural society ought to deliver (and the much-maligned South Bank has already started to deliver).

Well, we can dream. But only this July the Arts Council's music director gave me, in an interview, a shopping list of just these 'underprovided' areas. That was what the music panel thought its task involved then. The London orchestras didn't, but they forgot to ask the size of the 'enhanced' funding then on offer, and they assumed two orchestras would share all the grants that used to go to four - wrongly, as it now appears.

There's a way off this hook too. Nearly pounds 1 million is being argued over. Insiders say the Arts Council has this sort of sum floating around more often than we think, especially when its government grant has just arrived (and even more when it has been told to cut its running expenses). This time it has to be found; in the current climate the council's own survival may be at stake. It could always ask why exactly the Albert Memorial needs pounds 11 million right now, but it would have more impact by doing its own work.

Whatever happens, there's a moral for most musicians and educators. Working for assorted small organisations, they can't hope to match the clout in high places of powerful symphony orchestras and national companies. These groups need a common voice; there has to be a lobby for music that welcomes members of all musical styles and conditions - except orchestras and opera companies (though it would have their support). Otherwise, when the pressure is on, they will inevitably go to the wall.