Sorry, but I don't believe that is likely at all - quite the reverse, a move towards more private investment is likely to lead to the institutional sources spending their money elsewhere, as they can argue that private sponsorship looks after the job. It's not unlike the situation whereby the National Lottery was supposed to generate more money for the arts, but simply acts as a substitute for money that would and should have come from elsewhere. Taxpayers money may only 'become public' when it is collected as such, but that is the fundamental principle of redistributive taxation. All individuals receive benefits and protections from living in a country (the owners of capital wouldn't be able to operate otherwise), and it's only fair that some money should be taken in taxation as a result.

And limited companies are not made to be accountable to trade unions, certainly not after draconian anti-union laws were instigated by the Thatcher government, and maintained by New Labour, and when unemployment is used as a threat to deter industrial action.. But that's a subject for elsewhere.

Well, let's be fair to ordinary Germans by not equating them with the utterly unscrupulous owners of BMW, whose company supplied engines for the Luftwaffe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bmw - have a look at their various unsavoury activities in earlier times).

I didn't mean a general insistence as such - all I was referring to was that I'm not so sure that I'd like to see new orchestral pieces being commissioned using laundered money from illegal sources, but that's not supposed to mean that others might not be bothered about the legality or otherwise of the fundng sources.

I agree that this is indeed a potential danger and that it could not be overcome other than through due persuasion that such self-serving would simply be unacceptable and have to rmain off-limits in the service of commissioning new music; OK, many companies might turn away from this and say "no dice, then" but, who knows, a few might not and, in any case, is that any worse in practice than the "democratically accountable" institutions providing funds that are woefully inadequate to cover sufficient rehearsals, etc.?

Obviously, any corporate or private sponsor would expect as of right to have its/his/her name attached to the work in the form of a credit along the lines of "commissioned with funds provided by (XYZ)" just as is now the case, but it shouldn't be more than that; what's good enough for the "democratically accountable " institutions should, in this context, be good enough for the corporate or private commissioner.

Best,

Alistair

It's certainly worse in practice than those institutions providing adequate funds, which shouldn't be out of the question. Of course the distribution of public money has its own problems (a lot of which are, I believe, generally down to over-centralisation of organisations, which tends to reflect the centralised nature of public life in countries like Britain, France, Holland, less so in more federally-structured ones like Germany and Italy and to some extent Belgium), but I'm not convinced that private capital is preferable in almost any sense.

Thanks to all for responses to my question. It seems clear that everyone here (unsurprisingly) is firmly on the side of the integrity of the idea - which is also my 'default' position and usual frame of mind.

However I do, in the course of writing any piece, suffer from regular wobbles of confidence (not so much in the ideas as in my ability to render them well) and I was having just such a wobble last night. While contemplating some of the things I had in mind, the vision of Sam's incomplete Proms performance slithered into view, and I found myself thinking "what if I don't get enough rehearsal time either?" The way I'm feeling today, I'd be immediately consoled by the fact that what the BBC SO played of Substratum was clearly well enough played for me to be able to tell it was a good piece - but those midnight wobbles, you know...

Anyway, thanks, I needed that 'default' position reinforced and you've done it for me!

Incidentally, in the past, no matter how difficult I thought what I'd written was to play, I've only ever twice felt that the rehearsal time was insufficient to give at least a reasonably good performance - and one of them was for a solo instrumentalist! I'm continually astonished by what players and singers can achieve, and often in so little time, but to paraphrase Ian and Richard's comments, this should not be encouraged as a 'virtue' of British orchestras. And it is certainly the case that, should an ensemble/orchestra perform the same piece 3 or more times in the first run of performances, the piece seems to mature into a real performance by the second or third outing. Often the players need familiarity with the piece as well as rehearsal.

It is always good to be reminded of the risks taken by earlier composers where ease of performance is concerned - I always think of that early recording of Gruppen where it really feels so difficult - and they had a bucketload of rehearsal time for that as well (detailed hour by hour, orchestra by orchestra in Stockhausen's preliminary notes to the score...). It does, however, take quite a bit of courage over quite a lot of time to really convince yourself (as that is what is necessary) that what you're producing is going to be worth everyone's effort!!

And just how many articulations of tacet did they eventually come up with?

We had the "BT Scottish Ensemble" for ten years...

Now they're "The Scottish Ensemble"

Ian, I would prefer to discuss this privately with my current commissioner than put my name to something public at the moment, but in principle it's a good idea.

The nature of the music also needs to be considered, though. I'm sure Richard's music would in most cases need more rehearsal than mine, for example, and likewise there are probably other new pieces that could be rehearsed in less time again.

Assuming that something I'd write is somewhere in the middle of the difficulty spectrum, I'd say that ideally 9 hours should really be the minimum for a 20-25 minute piece.