Music Education for Children with Physical Disabilities

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Wednesday 30th July 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. I am sometimes inclined to refer to him as my noble friend, because we work together on a number of issues, not least the all-party group to which he referred. I will refer to what he said, but I must begin by congratulating him on the timing of this debate. As he pointed out, it was only last week that the Government announced a substantial increase in the funds for musical education. He made the point that part of that fund might be used to provide for handicapped children.

As was reported by that admirable body, the Incorporated Society of Musicians, the Department for Education has dedicated £75 million to support music education hubs in 2015-16, an increase of £17 million from 2014-15. Against the background of the general atmosphere of austerity, that is a remarkable achievement, and I congratulate the Government on it.

The noble Lord referred to one-handed instruments. I am lucky enough to share a room with my noble friend Lord Colwyn, who, as I think we all know, is a formidable trumpet player. He has a friend who plays a trumpet with one hand. That friend’s problem is that he always has to have someone else to turn over the page, but it can be done. I will cite another example in a moment.

I draw the Minister’s attention to two of my own experiences of dealing with handicapped musicians. At school, I was lucky enough to be able to learn both the piano and violin, and when I reached secondary school, I found that the head of music there, a Dr Douglas Fox, had only a left arm. He had set out to be and would have been an absolutely outstanding concert pianist, but his right arm was shot off in World War I. He proved to be an inspiring music teacher. Not only did he teach me to play the piano—not very expertly, but I got enormous enjoyment out of it—but he conducted the school orchestra and choral society. Years later, as president of the school, I had a very interesting talk with the then music director and asked him what he was doing with choral and orchestral works, telling him what we had done back in the 1940s, and he said, “There is no way we could do that now”. I doubt that—but the fact of the matter is that Douglas Fox, despite his one arm, had a huge influence on literally thousands of pupils that passed through the school while he was music director. It is an object lesson of what a handicapped person can achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, mentioned Ravel’s “Piano Concerto for the Left Hand”, which he performed at concerts several times, up and down the country. As he was a brilliant pianist, it was absolutely suited to his abilities and talents, and we were all very proud of him. I cite that as an example of what can be achieved.

Douglas Fox made one very bad error. In my house I was not the only violinist—there were three others—but none of us was very expert. We had a house music competition, and when we looked for something that we might perform he said, “What about the Bach passacaglia for four violins?”. I will draw a veil over what happened. It was a disaster—four teenaged boys trying to play what is really a very difficult Bach passacaglia. Nevertheless, the ambition was there; we were inspired to try, and that in itself is worth while.

The other aspect to which I would like to draw attention, again mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is that of children with severe learning difficulties. My daughter is a professional singer and has sung with the parliamentary choir and as a soloist. She had a friend who had a little girl very severely affected with learning difficulties. Jessie was a child to whom it was extremely difficult to get through with ordinary speech and normal parental emotion, but they discovered that she could respond very positively to music, which provided a bridge to the rest of the community for that child. She did not survive long but, in her memory, her parents set up what is now called Jessie’s Fund to provide resources to help to educate parents and teachers on what can be done through music to help even the most severely impaired children. It is an inspiration. If anybody wants to know anything more about it, there is a website called jessiesfund.org.uk.

I hope that those two examples will show how, in one case, a disabled teacher was able to have an enormous influence on many hundreds—indeed, thousands—of his pupils and, in the other, how music can help even the most seriously affected child with learning difficulties when other approaches have failed. I hope that they underline the importance of giving as many children as possible, even if they suffer from handicaps, the chance of playing in an orchestra, singing or whatever it may be—a musical education. I look forward very much to my noble friend’s reply.