Last Night of the Proms

The annual series of classical music concerts held during the summer months in London’s Royal Albert Hall has become a Britiish institution. The Promenade Concerts – now known simply as The Proms – have been running for 110 years. What has also become an institution is the Last Night of the Proms, where the second half of the concert always includes the same three pieces: Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance march, Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs and Parry’s Jerusalem. The concert is invariably broadcast on BBC TV, and I invariably watch it.

 

I have to say though, that I am getting increasingly disenchanted by the trio of pieces that concludes the concert. Not because they aren’t good music – they are – but because the atmosphere in which they are received comes across to me as jingoistic little englander nationalism of a particularly creepy kind. A point taken up by Anthony Holden’s review of the last few concerts in today’s Observer.

 

That feeling was hammered home again to me while watching last night’s performance. And what I thought was especially interesting was the audience in the Royal Albert Hall – that sea of thousands of faces: they were overwhelmingly white. Where were the black or the brown faces? I did not see any, and believe me, I was looking. I did see a very few Chinese or Japanese faces in the audience, but surely the enjoyment of classical music is not confined to the British white middle classes?

 

When I lived in London, I went to quite a few Proms – including one Last Night. And yes, I waved and shouted and sang along with everybody else, and perhaps it is just a bit of fun – that is how I viewed it at the time anyway. But that season, I was also in the audience for the concert on the night before the Last Night – and at that time, there was also something of a tradition to include Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as the finale. And that, to me, was something far better – the Ode to Joy  filled my soul and made it one of the great musical experiences of my life. These days, Pomp and Circumstance and Jerusalem come with too much baggage for me to be able listen to them without prejudice.