Leading cellist Julian Lloyd Webber has attacked the "new fuhrers" of avant-garde music for condemning classical music to unpopularity and decline.

"Forty years of madness" robbed Western classical music of its audiences and lifeblood while pop took over, he told leading figures at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

He said audiences and CD sales were declining, fewer children learned instruments, and the general media were uninterested - "unless semi-naked bimbo violinists or something like the David Helfgott circus are involved".

He said the majority of young people in the West had no interest in classical music unlike East Asia where concert halls were packed.

Avant-garde 'fuhrers' or revolutionaries?

Mr Lloyd Webber, who was invited to speak and perform at the conference in Davos, attacked the composers of the of the last 60 years who broke with the tradition of tonality.

"Composers who pursued a logical development of the music of the great masters were increasingly disparaged and derided by the new fuhrers of the classical music establishment, for whom tonality and harmony had become dirty words," he said.

Sir Malcolm Arnold was driven to "near suicidal despair" and his own composer father, with his roots in Richard Strauss and Rachmaninov, had been "disillusioned and broken" by the vogue for Stockhausen and the schools of the Second Viennese, Darmstadt and Manchester, Mr Lloyd Webber added.

He said while classical music broke its trust with young people, rock legends like Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly captivated the public. "The Beatles and the Beach Boys obligingly provided all the melody and harmony that classical music appeared to despise," he said.

Television challenge

He blamed part of this problem on the Western media and appealed to British breakfast television companies to help promote a better image.

"Today I issue a challenge to breakfast TV companies, those arbiters of culture to the young," he said. "Give me four weeks of daily three-minute slots and I will deliver you 20 young musicians who will captivate your viewers."
 

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage	©