S5M-17059 Music Tuition in Schools

The Presiding Officer (Ken Macintosh): The next item of business is an Education and Skills Committee debate on motion S5M-17059, in the name of Clare Adamson, on the committee’s report “A note of concern: The future of instrumental music tuition in schools”.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

When I was the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change, I recall attending a getting it right for every child event at 11:30 on 12 March 2010 on behalf of one of my fellow ministers, Adam Ingram, who could not go. It was at the Pittodrie stadium in Aberdeen and we arrived a little early. A psychologist gave a presentation that included a bit of film showing a one-hour-old child. The child was, not surprisingly, lying on its back. Music was being played to the baby and it was beating its arms in syncopation with the music. When the music was switched off, the baby stopped moving; when it was switched back on, the baby started moving again. I found that immensely moving. It was absolutely fascinating that the effect of music on somebody who was one hour out of the womb was so significant.

I happen to be surrounded by a number of female friends who are pregnant. They say that playing classical music diminishes the palpitations in the womb—their child, even in the womb, is responding to music.

There should be no doubt whatsoever about the beneficial effects of music on us all, on both our psychology and our physiology, but it was the GIRFEC event that led me to that understanding.

I am with Ross Greer and Tavish Scott: my musical competence could barely be described as limited. At primary school, there was an attempt to teach me the violin that utterly failed. My only competence in musical instruments is in using a spoon on my teeth. By flexing my cheeks, I can change the note that comes out. To describe that as music would be gross exaggeration.

I wanted to intervene on Tavish Scott when he was talking about Shetland fiddle achievements, to make an important point. I very much love fiddle music from Shetland and, although there has been talk of postcode provision of instrumental music tuition, we must ensure that variation is possible so that we can preserve, enhance and develop local variations in the instruments being used. In the case of Shetland, that would apply to how the bow is used on the fiddle, which is quite different from elsewhere.

I think that I have a love of music, and I suppose that it has been a significant part of my life. For my very first date with the person who this year will have been married to me for 50 years, I suggested that we go to the Dubliners concert at the music hall in Aberdeen in 1966. That may have been the first time that she heard “Seven Drunken Nights”, but it was not the first time that I had been exposed to the same as a student.

Today, I find myself greatly enamoured by three Québécois groups—Soldat Louis, Salomé Leclerc and Le Vent du Nord, which all play a range of instruments. Le Vent du Nord plays one instrument that I could just about deal with—the jaw harp. To play it, a person sticks it in their mouth and pings the metal. That might be something that I could do. I think, too, if one examines with a powerful magnifying glass the photograph on the cover of one of the 12” LPs by the Corries that we have at home, one will see that, among the approximately 1,000 people who are pictured, there we are, in the front row. Music has been an important part of my life.

Incidentally, one of the reasons why the Dubliners came to fame involved a guy named Ronan O’Rahily, who was the founder and owner of the immensely popular pirate station Radio Caroline, which played an enormous number of songs by the group.

I very much enjoyed reading the committee’s report. I have two music teachers in my family. My late brother-in-law was a guitar teacher, and one of my nieces is a music teacher in Kent. She is finding it rather sterile territory at the moment, so, on Thursday, she is standing for the local cooncil to try to do something about it. Obviously, she is not standing for the SNP, so I am uncertain whether I should wish her all the best, but I do.

I will close by saying that my favourite piece of classical music is Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”, which is absolutely apposite to the debate. When I think of the people who have spoken in the debate, perhaps Rachael Hamilton is “Mars, the Bringer of War” and Jenny Gilruth is “Venus, the Bringer of Peace.” For my part, I am clearly “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age”. Of course, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills has to be “Uranus, the Magician”.

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