Sir, - In your issue of August 28th, Michael Dervan drew attention to the low priority given by the Arts Council to funding of music, in particular mentioning early music.
There are indeed some notable jewels in the council's music funding: the Contemporary Music Centre, The Irish Chamber Orchestra, the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and Music Network in particular. But elsewhere, as at the level of musical performance and promotion by smaller organisations and ensembles, in particular in the areas of contemporary and early music, the feeling is widespread that the Arts Council is irrelevant since funding is so seldom forthcoming as once it was.
When the Dublin Early Music Festival - enormously successful in bringing the best of international performers to Irish audiences in the late 1980s and early 1990s - was last held in 1992 the Arts Council grant was a paltry £1,500 out of an overall budget of £60,000.
The low level of funding highlights the extent to which we lag behind our European partners in the support of music. As Michael Dervan noted, the allocation of a mere 4.4 per cent of the Council's extra funding to music suggests that, despite statements to the contrary, music is not considered to be of major importance, while a single Arts Council officer has to represent all areas of music, traditional, "classical" (in all hues), and opera. Can adequate representation be said to be given to music on the council?
In addition to those musical organisations quite rightly receiving more significant funding, the Arts Council needs to support ensembles specialising in contemporary and in early music and, in conjunction with the music colleges, to encourage specialist early music training on period instruments, while the overall level of its support for music urgently needs to be reconsidered. - Yours, etc.,
Department of Music, NUI, Maynooth.