1. Sir Arnold Bax was born in 1883 and died in 1953. The Sir Arnold Bax Charitable Trust was formed in 1984, using funds from the Royalty Estate of Sir Arnold Bax, to promote the music of Bax, at that time little known.

2. Over the period since its formation the Trust has championed the music of Bax largely by providing bridging funding for recordings and assisting with the preparation of performing materials required to make those recordings. It has also provided financial assistance for young performers wishing to programme Bax, and for publishers to issue the printed music and publish books and catalogues.

3. The Bax Trust's activities have been similar to those of many other Music Trusts representing British composers. These have been:

(1)  promoting the music of the nominated composer;

(2)  promoting the music of living composers, especially younger composers;

(3)  promoting the music of worthwhile British composers of the past who have been neglected for whatever reason; and

(4)  promoting other musical activities including competitions, young performers, libraries, festivals.

The Bax Trust has largely concentrated on 1 and 4 of these.

4. The Bax Trust's annual expenditure has been small—of the order of £5,000 per annum, but the work it has been able to do with so small an income has still been very considerable. Over some dozen or 15 years it has been able to promote CD recordings of most of Arnold Bax's large output. These have sold internationally and this has resulted in a substantial revaluation of Bax as a composer, and the appreciation of his music worldwide. One only has to read reviewing journals of today and 30 years ago to appreciate the change of critical climate.

5. The proposal to reduce the Classical Music Subsidy will significantly reduce and slow the work the Trust (and of other similar trusts) is able to undertake.

6. To substitute any loss in trusts' gross revenues by establishing a new centralised promotional fund would be a retrospective step. In a recent conversation with the financial director of one of the record companies with which the Sir Arnold Bax Trust has worked it was made clear to me that they feel that any such organisation would bound to be bureaucratic in its procedures, and would tend to be corporate in its policies and choices of projects to be supported; they would be unlikely to wish to work with it. The beauty of the present system is that it has evolved representing a large number of interests, views and enthusiasms. The benefit of such pluralism may be seen in the tremendous success of the trusts in reviving an enormous and unexpectedly rich repertoire of music. This far surpasses the more focused repertoire British Council/Arts Council subsidy schemes of the past were able to promote, valuable and timely though they were.

7. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to underline the broader, non-artistic, consequentials if funding of the individual trusts fall:

(a)  a loss of revenue to the Treasury, as VAT income falls as recording programmes diminish;

(b)  a reduction of copyright and performing rights revenue to the UK, as a significant proportion of the recordings of British copyright music promoted by the trusts are sold overseas;

(c)  the drop in revenue to the trusts will be exacerbated as overseas copyright/collecting agencies take retaliatory action; and

(d)  there will be a diminution of the de facto cultural diplomacy which the promotion of a rich recorded repertoire of British music has represented for more than a quarter of a century.

June 1999