This morning saw the first major announcement of my artistic plan for WNO covering the next two seasons, perhaps marking the end of my honey moon, filled with the delightful activity of making plans on paper although, to be fair, they have all been scrupulously budgeted as well. It’s not just fond fantasy!

It’s an ambitious programme, reflecting my view that the Arts do not thrive in survival mode. All culture is in some way the expression of a surplus – despite all the romantic tales of frozen garrets, not much culture was created by subsistence economies. And however dire the economic language, it’s important to realise that we are still a wealthy society dealing with surmountable economic problems. In that context, if culture gives up on its fundamental mission to surprise, stimulate, and provoke and instead masquerades as a safety blanket offering reassuring tea and sympathy, it is doomed. Culture is expensive: no-one wants to spend a fortune on a blanket.

Nonetheless, the budgets still have to be balanced, so I was brought up short by a provocative article from Norman Lebrecht in Standpoint: “Just say no to state funding”. Norman likes to fly a kite, and apparently flew this particularly gung ho idea for the benefit of the suffering attendees at the Dutch Classical Music Meeting, who were trying to digest the fact that the new right wing government in Holland has just said “No!” to them, rather than giving them the chance to commit financial suicide first. Norman works hard at being optimistic, suggesting that surviving on their own without state support, and therefore without state interference, would be liberating. Most of the positive examples he gives are small ensembles or individual musicians who can market themselves on the web, and who may, who knows, have a paper round on the side to pay for the coffee. This is a recipe more difficult to envisage in the case of WNO, rooted as it is in two superb collectives – chorus and orchestra - entities less suited to such self-help measures.

Norman is cynical about the obligations that State funding imposes on the Arts; I am not. He sneers at engagement with schools, prisons, hospitals, society in general whereas I see this as a robust way to interact with the society which we serve, though like him, I suspect, I could do without some of the politically correct box ticking on buzzwords like “diversity”. Anyway, with the WNO MAX programme in full swing WNO is a standard setter in this area – something to shout about rather than seek liberation from.   

He is nearer to the mark when he talks about those two lethal topics, accessibility and elitism. I agree with him that the arts are elitist, in the sense that they embody unique perceptions by exceptional individuals communicated by means of the highest levels of technical skill and quality. But just because the product is an elite object does not mean that the audience or the venue has to be elitist – far from it. We can accept that the arts are not to everyone’s taste, but still desire that, for those who wish, they are accessible. This means, as he says, both very high and very low prices. Those who can pay more for the best should do so, and those who cannot pay more should not be denied access to a fundamental pillar of society’s civilisation. This area is a problem for WNO: we are fundamentally under-priced, but we are not based in the wealthiest corner of Britain. Over the next years we will need to be clever to resolve this dilemma.

But it is surely naïve of him to suggest that the artist freed of state interference and obligation would be “allowed to choose what they perform no matter how abstruse, without regard to social relevance”. The evidence from places where such “freedom” exists is of overwhelming artistic conservatism. The arts in the US do of course benefit from significant State Subsidy – only the method of distributing what would otherwise be tax revenues lies in the discretion of the tax payer rather than a centralised government agency like the Arts Council, but this system of tethering the arts in America to popular taste leads not to freedom but to excessive, stultifying caution. I don’t apologise if this sounds like an argument for top down decision making. The arts are about the idealism and leadership of individuals. To choose an example close to Norman’s heart: Mahler did not become a popular composer by popular request. We were taught to like him by ambitious and pioneering conductors like Bernstein.

But rather than argue against Norman’s “Cultural Spring” liberation theory, in which the Arts cast off their State subsidised chains and joyously frolic in the nudity of self-financing, it is more productive to rehearse why cash strapped governments should continue to offer the shackles of State finance to the Arts.

Here I am an unreconstructed, antediluvian pre-Thatcherite idealist believer in the concept of Society. Society is the pact between human beings to create communal governance which offers security and the rule of law and…something more. Society with an economic surplus - which still includes us! – recognizes a fundamental need to celebrate that which is beyond the necessary. That is the definition of civilisation: the acknowledgement of values beyond material necessity. The acknowledgement and celebration of these non-material values in public art and architecture is one of the cornerstones of the communal belief that we as a Society are about more than mere survival. We have, collectively, through our history fought for and won that status and we are entitled to it. Those who don’t want it are condemned to wait for the barbarians: they may not be here yet, but given a vacuum of will, they will come.

WNO does not intend to offer such a vacuum. We are offering a rich cultural programme of much needed food for the mind and for the soul: essential materials to help anyone not merely survive but master the prevailing winds.