A Musical Tantrum

I was reading in today's Times about a composer, Nitin Sawhney, who has written a Brexit 'anthem'. He apparently believes artists have failed to get to grips with Brexit, and that music can help bring people together. An extract from the article -- see if you notice the problem:

The new work by Nitin Sawhney described as a “rational anthem for a national tantrum”, will have its television premiere on Sky Arts on Monday after being performed for the first time last month at the Barbican. 

The lyrics seek to unpick the emotions behind patriotism. “It’s only random chance/That we weren’t born in Spain or France/Or China or a plane or ocean liner/Or a field in Asia Minor,” it begins.

The anthem concludes with a lament for the future of the country. “For this land of hope and glory/In the hands of hopeful Tories/And the anti-migrant stories/Of Farage and Nadine Dorries.”

So much for getting to grips with Brexit. I will try to hear the work in order to form a better judgement, but if those extracts are indicative he has made no effort to understand the reasons and sentiments behind the referendum result. There is little evidence of reflection or thought, just a smug sense that he, the enlightened artist, will inform us why Brexit is bad (presumably to an almost exclusively Remainer audience). It is to him nothing more than a 'national tantrum'; and of course he is the rational observer.

Composers used to have strong national feelings. Their homeland was much more than mere 'random chance'. Especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, their patriotism meant they would frequently incorporate national and folk music into their work. Think Dvorak, Vaughan Williams, Bartok...

There used to be clear differences between the music written by composers from different nations. Debussy could not have been German. Purcell could not have been French. And one suspects that the bland internationalism of today is somewhat to blame for obvious musical decline -- and our decline generally. For there is one thing I can agree with him on: we should lament for the future of the country. But Brexit was an astonishing, albeit brief and ineffectual, collective spasm -- the first time Britain had reacted with any power against the dreary liberal future which awaits us. It won't come to anything, and in some ways I'd rather it never happened, but it did show that there was some life left in us.