{"id":10069,"date":"2025-01-03T15:04:33","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T14:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=10069"},"modified":"2025-01-07T13:15:32","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T12:15:32","slug":"john-eliot-gardiner-and-the-game-of-classical-thrones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2025\/01\/03\/john-eliot-gardiner-and-the-game-of-classical-thrones\/","title":{"rendered":"John Eliot Gardiner and the Game of Classical Thrones"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Silly AI-generated imagte<\/p><\/div>\n

The classical music community was rather endearingly shocked earlier this past autumn to learn that a man who has at least twice been known to allegedly assault colleagues may not be a very nice person.<\/p>\n

[NB. I’ve never met Maestro Gardiner and, like many, I admire a lot of his recordings. What follows is my take on a set of situations, not on the man himself]<\/em><\/p>\n

For those who missed it, conductor John Eliot Gardiner recently announced his return to the podium with a programme in which his new orchestra and chorus would perform exactly the same pieces in exactly the same venue that his former orchestra and chorus would a few days later.<\/p>\n

Sat, 7 December 2024<\/strong>, Elbphilharmonie, Grand Hall<\/em>
\nThe Constellation Choir & Orchestra<\/em><\/p>\n

Marie Luise Werneburg soprano<\/em>
\nEline Welle mezzo-soprano<\/em>
\nPeter Davoren tenor<\/em>
\nAlex Ashworth bass<\/em>
\nconductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner<\/em><\/p>\n

Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Messe de minuit \u00e0 4 voix, fl\u00fbtes et violons, pour No\u00ebl<\/em>
\nJohann Sebastian Bach: Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36c<\/em>
\nJohann Sebastian Bach: Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, BWV 110<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Sat, 14 December 2024, Elbphilharmonie, Grand Hall<\/em>
\nEnglish Baroque Soloists \/ Monteverdi Choir<\/em><\/p>\n

Hilary Cronin soprano<\/em>
\nBethany Horak-Hallett mezzo-soprano<\/em>
\nFlorian Sievers tenor<\/em>
\nFlorian St\u00f6rtz bass<\/em>
\nconductor Christophe Rousset<\/em><\/p>\n

Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Messe de minuit \u00e0 4 voix, fl\u00fbtes et violons, pour No\u00ebl<\/em>
\nJohann Sebastian Bach: Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36c<\/em>
\nJohann Sebastian Bach: Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, BWV 110<\/em>
\n\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The venue press release did an amusing job of trying apply a whole tube of lipstick to this particular pig by noting that \u201cThe Elbphilharmonie Hamburg is the only place in the world where this special programme can be heard in both first-class interpretations within a very short space of time.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>But this is not an exercise in comparative listening \u2013 it is a calculated act of Trumpian belligerence. That said, this looks like a programme which was very carefully and lovingly assembled. Presumably by Gardiner. Having had way too many programmes and projects poached over the years, I actually totally get why JEG might have decided to make a stand on this issue. Surely Monteverdi and Co. could have changed the programme to something without their former AD\u2019s fingerprints all over it?<\/p>\n

\u201cShocked but not surprised\u201d could well be the defining expression of our time. In the course of one of the most successful and enduring conducting careers of the last 50 years, JEG has always been, both literally and metaphorically, a pugilist. In many respects, it\u2019s an approach that has served him well.<\/p>\n

JEG\u2019s instinct to fight back was key in one of the defining achievements of his professional career \u2013 the founding of his own record label after he was dumped by Deutsche Grammophon\/Arkiv. Together with his ex-wife, Isabella de Sabata, the Gardiner\u2019s founded Soli Deo Gloria, or S.D.G., Records to continue and complete JEG\u2019s vision of a complete recording of all the Bach cantatas. The project was, by most critical reckonings, a triumph. Gardiner has explained that the name of the record label was chosen as an homage to J.S. Bach, who often made the notation S.D.G. at the end of his compositions (as did a number of other composers). However, widely accepted classical urban legend has it that, in this case, S.D.G stood for \u201cSod [=Fuck] Deutsche Grammophon\u201d.<\/p>\n

Everybody does it?<\/h3>\n

So, JEG, who made it clear in previous statements that he wasn\u2019t done with conducting, has gone and started a new orchestra. That, in itself, is a tale as old as time.<\/p>\n

In America, folks used to say that if you got 25 well-to-do women together with coffee and nibbles, they would start a symphony orchestra, and it\u2019s true that the vast majority of American orchestras were founded not by musicians but by music lovers and social leaders.<\/p>\n

Not so in the United Kingdom. Manchester\u2019s Hall\u00e9 Orchestra bears the name of its founding conductor, Charles Hall\u00e9<\/a>. Today\u2019s City of London Sinfonia was originally the Richard Hickox Orchestra. Sir Henry Wood, of course, founded the Queens Hall Orchestra, as well as the Proms. Though both the Queens Hall and its orchestra have since been lost to time and bombs, the musical progeny of Sir Thomas Beecham live on. Beecham, whose family was so rich they actually owned Covent Garden as well as one of the world\u2019s biggest pharmaceutical companies, founded both the London Philharmonic (he actually co-founded it with Malcolm Sargent so as to share the financial burden with Sargent\u2019s patron, Elizabeth Courtauld) and the Royal Philharmonic. The list goes on and the phenomenon continues to this day. Perhaps the most-talked-about orchestra in the UK right now is the Sinfonia of London, which is not a charity but, according to their Companies House filings, a private company owned entirely<\/a> by its conductor John Wilson, although their website makes clear they are supported by a number of trusts and sponsors and maintain an administrative staff.<\/p>\n

There are also the player-founded orchestras, most famously the London Symphony and the English Chamber Orchestra. There\u2019s the Philharmonia, now also player-run, but which was originally founded by a record company. And there are the BBC orchestras. But musical life in the UK would be, and would have been, infinitely duller without the orchestras which were born of their conductors\u2019 ambition.<\/p>\n

And, coming back to JEG \u2013 there would really be no Early Music movement at all if it were not for ambitious conductors. After all, the \u201cbig three\u201d of period performance in the UK were Roger Norrington\u2019s London Classical Players, Christopher Hogwood\u2019s Academy of Ancient Music and Gardiner\u2019s Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras. Without their initiative, and the money they brought into the field of historically informed performance, musical life here would be much poorer.<\/p>\n

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?<\/h3>\n

I remember being incredibly impressed many years ago when I heard South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu say (I\u2019m paraphrasing) religion is not a good thing or a bad thing. It\u2019s a human institution, and just as capable of being a good or bad thing as any other human institution. Sometimes it\u2019s one, sometimes it\u2019s the other. Most of the time, it\u2019s both.<\/p>\n

I can certainly see why the idea of conductors setting up their own orchestras where they can pretty much do whatever they want might make many a musician a little uneasy. But history shows that often the most interesting and influential work has come out of orchestras where the leader has incredible artistic autonomy. In addition to the examples above, one can look at groups as varied as Toscanini\u2019s NBC Symphony, Ivan Fischer\u2019s Budapest Festival Orchestra and Haydn\u2019s own hand-picked orchestra at the Esterhazy court. Outside of the classical music bubble, just think of the Count Basie Orchestra, Glenn Miller Orchestra, etc. etc. There\u2019s the famous story about when Duke Ellington was asked what the secret was to keeping the world\u2019s greatest band together that he answered \u201cI pay them money.\u201d Frank Zappa was one of music\u2019s great control freaks, but he also took all the financial risk. When his band cracked up midway through his last tour, he lost a fortune, having paid for months of rehearsal. I\u2019ve toyed for years with writing a blog post that explores the thought experiment \u201cshould orchestras survive their founders?\u201d The NBC Symphony tried to carry on after Toscanini\u2019s retirement under Stokowski, but that didn\u2019t work. The Queens Hall orchestra lives on only in memory. But the City of London Sinfonia, Royal Philharmonic and London Philharmonic are treasured and vibrant organisations, and the Hall\u00e9 goes from strength to strength, even though I would suspect almost nobody who attends their concerts these days knows the origin of their unique name.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf my baby don\u2019t love me no more\u2026 I know her sister will.\u201d<\/strong>
\nFrom \u201cRed House\u201d by Jimi Hendrix<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conductors are as susceptible, if not more, to \u2018founder\u2019s syndrome\u2019 as anyone else. At what point does an orchestra decide they want a future without their founder? At what point does a conductor feel the need to hand over the orchestra she or he founded to new leadership? If I had one piece of advice for every musician, it\u2019s that the day you win that dream job or create your perfect artistic vessel, whether you\u2019re a player, conductor or administrator, start coming up with a few exit strategies you can live with. There is nothing uglier, more unbecoming or more toxic than someone fighting to hold on to their bit of glory at the expense of their colleagues artistic wellbeing.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you\u2019re Frank Zappa, you can\u2019t very well turn your band over to a new conductor just because the winds of change are starting to blow. In his case, he always made it clear that nobody in his bands had a job for life, and that change was both inevitable and beneficial.<\/p>\n

Things get murkier when you start to try make the group you setup look like, and function like, something bigger than the artistic leader\u2019s personality. The pressures to do so are driven by a variety of factors: artistic credibility, fundraising and financial sustainability, musician satisfaction and the desire to leave a legacy. Beecham\u2019s London Philharmonic was not the first group he founded \u2013 like the John Wilson Orchestra, the Richard Hickox Orchestra and the Boyd Neel Orchestra<\/a>, there was once a Beecham Orchestra. By founding his next group as the London Philharmonic he was able to share the funding burden with Malcolm Sargent\u2019s patrons. In 1939, when he was preparing to leave the UK (he would eventually land at the Seattle Symphony) he worked tirelessly according to Wikipedia \u201cto secure the future of the London Philharmonic, whose financial guarantees had been withdrawn by its backers when war was declared. Before leaving, Beecham raised large sums of money for the orchestra and helped its members to form themselves into a self-governing company.\u201d \u00a0His Wiki entry continues the narrative as follows: \u201cIn 1944, Beecham returned to Britain. Musically his reunion with the London Philharmonic was triumphant, but the orchestra, now, after his help in 1939, a self-governing\u00a0co-operative<\/a>, attempted to hire him on its own terms as its salaried artistic director.[<\/sup>82<\/sup>]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0“I emphatically refuse”, concluded Beecham, “to be wagged by any orchestra … I am going to found one more great orchestra to round off my career.” Sound familiar?<\/p>\n

Rich beyond consequence?<\/h3>\n

Beecham was as good as his word. His musical legacy is vast and goes far beyond the two thriving and virtuosic orchestras that are still with us today. He was widely loved by the musicians he worked with. (His erstwhile business partner, Malcolm Sargent, on the other hand, while beloved by Proms audiences, is reputed to have been almost universally loathed by orchestral players). My own teacher, Gerhard Samuel, played under his baton many times at the Minneapolis Symphony (now the Minnesota Orchestra) and had many stories about Beecham\u2019s musical brilliance and his incredible sense of humour. Beecham was phenomenally rich \u2013 the family fortune that came from the sale of Beecham\u2019s laxative pills meant that the money came with great regularity (sorry, I couldn\u2019t resist). But he was also a smart businessman and a tireless fundraiser. His family also knew his artistic ambition posed a threat to the whole family fortune, so there were limits on his use of the inheritance. What great wealth did afford him was both the start-up capital needed to get projects off the ground, and the financial resilience to programme unknown and unpopular works that he wanted to conduct. Those little pills paid for a lot of Delius concerts. Yes, he emphatically refused to be \u2018wagged by any orchestra\u2019, especially the one he founded, but he was pretty pragmatic about working with collaborators and partners to share and limit financial risk, and to increase capacity far beyond what even his inherited wealth would support. He was rich enough to shape his destiny in a way most of us can\u2019t imagine, but he wasn\u2019t rich beyond consequence.<\/p>\n

John Eliot Gardiner also comes from fantastic wealth. His great-grandfather, Henry John Gardiner<\/a>, (born 1843, died 2 February 1940) was a businessman and Freemason who, according to Wikipedia, amassed \u201can immense fortune in the clothing industry.\u201d He passed his \u2018enormous wealth\u201d on to his sons, H. Balfour Gardiner<\/a>, composer and patron of British classical music, and Sir\u00a0Alan H. Gardiner<\/a>, JEG\u2019s grandfather, and then on to John Eliot Gardiner\u2019s father, Rolf Gardiner.<\/p>\n

It is widely believed that no less a conductor than Beecham himself once admonished that \u201cyou should try everything in life once, except incest and Morris Dancing.\u201d How apt then, that Rolf Gardiner was at the forefront of the movement to bring Morris Dancing back to life. His Wikipedia article<\/a> starts with the following paragraph:<\/p>\n

\u201cHenry Rolf Gardiner<\/strong>\u00a0(5 November 1902 \u2013 26 November 1971) was an English rural revivalist who helped to bring back folk dance styles including\u00a0Morris dancing<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0sword dancing<\/a>. He also founded groups significant in the British history of\u00a0organic farming<\/a>; his forestry methods were far ahead of their time and he was a founder member of the\u00a0Soil Association<\/a>. He sympathised with\u00a0Nazism<\/a>\u00a0and participated in inter-war far right politics. He organised summer camps with music, dance and community aims across class and cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t you love how the authors fit the bit about how \u201cHe sympathised with\u00a0Nazism<\/a>\u00a0and participated in inter-war far right politics\u201d in the penultimate sentence, just after organic farming and before the innocuous bit about \u201csummer camps with music, dance and community aims across class and cultures\u201d?<\/p>\n

Rolf Gardiner first began publishing Nazi-inspired writings around 1928 bemoaning the \u201cimpoverishment\u201d of Northern European racial stock, and supporting Nazi pro-ruralist policies. Contrary to the \u201cinter-war\u201d disclaimer above, he retained close ties after WWII with Richard Walther Darr\u00e9, one of the \u2018ideologists\u2019 behind the Nazi\u2019s \u201cBlood and Soil<\/a>\u201d movement, which bore an obvious similarity to Rolf Gardiner\u2019s views about ruralism, with its emphasis on the ideal of a monocultural rural, agricultural way of life in opposition to the integrated, cosmopolitan and multi-racial life of the cities. Darr\u00e9\u2019s ideas about racial aristocracy based on selective breeding had a major impact on the genocidal policies designed by Himmler. Darr\u00e9 was a senior member of the Nazi Party and sixth in command of the SS during the war. And remained a correspondent with RG after the war.<\/p>\n

And, just because it\u2019s fun to mention it, Rolf Gardiner was also an early advocate for German-style nudism in the UK. How big an influence Rolf’s thinking had on his son is impossible to know.\u00a0 According to researcher and author Patrick Wright, John Eliot \u201chad\u00a0 fought\u00a0 his\u00a0 own\u00a0 battles\u00a0 with\u00a0 his\u00a0 father\u00a0 –\u00a0 and\u00a0 not\u00a0 just\u00a0 about\u00a0 his\u00a0 decision\u00a0 to\u00a0 perform\u00a0 music\u00a0 within\u00a0 the\u00a0 professional\u00a0 domain\u00a0 that\u00a0 his\u00a0 father,\u00a0 who thought music\u00a0 should be\u00a0 connected to the\u00a0 soil\u00a0 and performed within\u00a0 the\u00a0 agricultural\u00a0 setting,\u00a0 disdained\u00a0 as\u00a0 the\u00a0 ‘discarnate’\u00a0 bourgeois\u00a0 concert\u00a0 hall.\u00a0 John\u00a0 Eliot\u00a0 may\u00a0 farm\u00a0 organically\u00a0 on\u00a0 many\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 same\u00a0 acres,\u00a0 and his\u00a0 ideas\u00a0 on\u00a0 polyphony and rhythm\u00a0 may\u00a0 in\u00a0 some\u00a0 way\u00a0 still be connected to\u00a0 the\u00a0 musical outlook of his\u00a0 father,\u00a0 but\u00a0 he\u00a0 long\u00a0 ago\u00a0 took\u00a0 his\u00a0 distance\u00a0 from\u00a0 the\u00a0 dodgy\u00a0 organicism\u00a0 of his\u00a0 father’s\u00a0 political\u00a0 vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just how much of the family fortune (if any) went in to the founding and building of the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique<\/em> is probably known only to him and his family, which is absolutely fine. Today those groups exist as a single registered charity, The Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras LTD<\/a> and a tied limited company<\/a>. The foundation raised between \u00a3573k and \u00a3850k each year since 2018, on a fundraising budget between \u00a367k and \u00a3105k. The only government funding the charity received was in the Covid years of 2020-2021 (\u00a378k and \u00a339k respectively).<\/p>\n

So, unlike, for instance the Sinfonia of London, the Monteverdi organisation has a group of trustees who must operate under pretty stringent legal obligations and responsibilities. While its status as a limited company protects trustees from most individual financial risk, if they are found to have been negligent in their governance of the organisation, they could face a number of significant personal and professional sanctions. Members of certain professions, such as lawyers and accountant, can lose their license if they are found to be negligent in their service on a board of trustees. Given that the punch heard round the world was at least the second time that Gardiner had physically assaulted a colleague, they were probably advised that they had absolutely no legal recourse but to sack him, lest they be sued by his next victim and\/or lose their own livelihood. They literally had no choice.<\/p>\n

So now it\u2019s on to Springhead Constellation Ltd. for JEG. The entity takes its name from the trust and the estate left by Rolf Gardiner. This one is JEG\u2019s baby entirely \u2013 Companies House lists only him as a director<\/a> (at the time of writing). Without trustees to answer to, we\u2019ll soon find out just how far the family fortune will stretch. There\u2019s nothing to say a company like this or the Sinfonia of London<\/a> can\u2019t also raise funds even if they\u2019re not a charity, but will the price of outside funding be that JEG has to accept being \u2018wagged\u2019 again? So far, they\u2019ve got one controversial concert in the diary. I\u2019m reminded of another British orchestra who fired their conductor in the middle of a board meeting a few years ago \u2013 he was shown out of the building at the end of the meeting never to return. Within a couple of weeks he\u2019d announced a new orchestra in the same town playing the same venues. The venture produced one recording and a handful of events, but seems now to have been dormant for some years. If you\u2019re really going to play the Game of Classical Thrones to its bitter end, you need deep<\/strong> pockets or the support of those who possess them. The Monteverdi organisation was a big machine. A Dorset farmer is going to have to sell a lot of cattle to make up for the loss of \u00a3800k\/year in donations. Actions have consequences. JEG punched a fellow musician at a concert, now he\u2019s lost his job. We\u2019ll now find out if he\u2019s rich enough to avoid consequences.<\/p>\n

(As an aside, it still sickens me that nobody at the Met or the BSO who facilitated James Levine\u2019s many crimes against children has ever been held to account for their complicity. They really do seem to be rich beyond consequence.)<\/p>\n

Neither shocked nor surprised<\/h3>\n
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Silly AI-generated image<\/p><\/div>\n

The thing about the Game of Classical Thrones is that it\u2019s played at every level of the business – universities, amateur orchestras, youth orchestras. There are seemingly no artistic stakes too low to justify behaviour that is so manipulative, duplicitous and cruel that it would make Iago blush in our field. The arts have always been completive, and where there is competition, there is going to be playing hard, playing dirty and outright cheating. Where there is ego, ambition, scarcity and complex power relationships, the game is played ruthlessly, and it\u2019s played to win. I have many, many, many stories to tell about my own experiences\u2026. But those, as I always say about the juicy stuff, are for the memoir. Nope, I\u2019m neither shocked, nor surprised.<\/p>\n

Ours is a messy world, and our artistic community can only be a reflection of the chaos that surrounds us, whether as an embodiment of it or a reaction against it\u2026. Or, most likely, both. I would never have imagined that there was a direct connection between organic agriculture and Nazism. Even the most complex persons will have some good and some bad in both who they are and what they do. This is why it is so important to judge each other on actions and to establish in law and social norms what are the lines that cannot be crossed without consequence. In our new gilded age, however, many are rich beyond consequence and so the keep crossing lines because it reassures them of their importance and exceptionalism. Transgression has become the new sport of kings.<\/p>\n

A healthy sense of perspective is probably the best way to protect oneself from being collateral damage in the Game of Classical Thrones. You may be averse to playing the game, but others will surely challenge you. Do you take up the challenge and play? Do you defend what you believe is yours or walk away? Most of us do stand our ground to some extent, but a smart player knows that the rewards in our world are ephemeral, and the damage to well-being, reputation and artistry that come an all-out fight are simply not enough to justify what we lose in pursuing a battle to the death against our perceived enemies and rivals. It can be frustrating to watch the powerful seem to \u2018get away with it,\u2019 and one of the appeals of religion is to reassure believers that nobody really gets away with it in the end. To me, Hell is the disgust the future regards one with. Better to concede defeat and preserve a legacy, even a mixed one, than die in disgrace. The lesson of the JEG saga, as with so many of these scorched earth sagas, is that the real losers in the game of thrones are those who refuse to stop playing long after the game is lost. The wise player walks away from the Game not to let their adversary win, but to salvage some dignity as victory for oneself.<\/p>\n

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