It’s two in the morning, I can’t sleep and someone’s attempting to commit an outrage upon my ears. According to the BBC’s website, I have been watching

Myth and Music

Open University. Composer Judith Weir explains why she wrote a series of works based on Scottish folktales about people who have disappeared mysteriously.

Which sounds like it might be interesting. And it is interesting — people slow down to look at traffic accidents don’t they?

Ms Weir witters on about all being part of a tradition and how she’s just carrying that on, and then we cut away to listen to a singer and pianist doing grave damage to Bonny George Campbell.

Bonny George Campbell concerns a lord who rode out one day and never came back. It doesn’t say why, nor why he rode out with a sword at his knee in the first place. Here’s the full text of the version I sing:

High upon highland and low upon Tay
Bonny George Campbell rode out on a day.
Saddled and bridled and booted rode he.
Home came his good horse, but never came he.

Down came his mother with her heart full of care.
Down came his pretty wife, a curling of her hair
The meadow lies green, and the corn is unshorn
And bonny George Campbell he’ll never return

Saddled and bridled, so gallant rode he
With a plume in his helmet and a sword by his knee.
Home came his saddle so bloody to see.
Home came his good horse, but never came he.

Gill sings “The meadow lies green and my baby’s unborn”, but I reckon that rather lays it on with a trowel.

Now, I’ve heard classically trained singers having a crack at traditional songs—it’s almost never a good idea. The daft buggers only sing the dots. And they’re so mannered. It’s cruel; folk songs and tunes are living things, what brings them to life is the variation and ornamentation a particular singer brings to them. Classical singers don’t seem to know how to do that.

Oh, and another thing, the piano is not traditionally used to accompany the singing of Border ballads. The traditional accompaniment is the silence of a listening audience.

So, you can imagine my reaction when I hear a gruesomely operatic tenor and his partner in crime on the piano proceed to perform Ms Weir’s setting of the song. She’s changed the tune, and some of the words (reducing the strength of the second stanza for my money), and for extra points, the piano accompaniment seems to bear no relationship to… well… anything. To compound the injury (and I know this sounds like someone complaining about how the dreadful food at their hotel came in such small portions) the narrator proceeded to talk all over the piece. The song ends and we cut back to the composer and she’s patently proud of the festering pile of aural muck she’s foisted on those members of license paying public who are still up at 2 in the morning. She has the air of someone who’s rescuing something.

Music is something for everyone to listen to, make and participate in. The composer who takes a tune with a beautiful, singable set of words and serves ‘em up in a new setting that can only be attempted by professionals who have to be careful not to listen too hard to each other for fear of hitting notes that sound good together is missing the point. I loathe the ‘professionals only’ attitude.

The music industry says that sharing music is bad because the music shared will obviously be the product of an artist with a record deal whose income will be hurt. Peer-to-peer distribution has the potential to be more than that, it enables anyone to distribute their music. Lots of it will be, um, not to my taste, but that’s fine. The bar to entry is so low; a decent microphone and the kit to record yourself is, whilst not cheap, far from the kind of expensive it used to be.

But no, to the mainstream, music is a product, made by highly skilled professionals who Autotune and comp their ‘talent’ into shiny chromeplated loveliness and serve it up as the latest thing, whilst always, always, looking out for the next thing. After all, you wouldn’t want the talent to think it has a career would you?

Music is too important for that.

In his song Here is my Home Si Kahn writes about the act of singing together as a secular sacrament and I think he’s dead right.

Music is about a connection between musician and audience, something we share, something that makes us better people for the length of a song. I’m not sure it’s possible to make music without an audience. Oh you can practice, but the real stuff comes out when you’re playing with and for other people.

Whatever else you do this week, try and hear (or make) some live music. It doesn’t really matter if it’s any good, what matters is the sharing.

But if it’s a performance of Judith Weir’s work, I suggest you try somewhere else first—find the worst busker on the planet, the bloke with a tin whistle, a dog on a string and about three quarters of a half remembered tune. Trust me, it’s still an improvement.