As part of yesterday’s Koerner Hall concert yesterday there was a panel discussion between the President of the RCM, the Artistic Director of the ARC Ensemble and the Director of Koerner Hall.  Unsurprisingly the President at one point made a pitch about the value of the arts in education and deprecated the cuts that have been made in that area by various governments.  Fair enough.  That’s his job and, anyway, I agree with him.  What did raise my hackles was his contrasting the “creative” arts with “drilling” (his word) in maths and science.

As some of my readers may know, mathematics was once my field and it, and theoretical physics, remain important interests.  Now it’s quite possible, likely even, that someone running a conservatory never got far enough in mathematics to experience just how deeply creative it can be but there’s no excuse for not knowing it can be.  Some of the most subtle and beautiful ideas can only be understood mathematically.  And here’s the irony.  It’s just like music.  You have to do a hell of a lot of grunt work to get to the point where you can do beautiful mathematics just as even the best musicians still have to practice and play scales. This is probably true of anything where deep skill is involved.  That apparently effortless blind back of the hand pass of Richie McCaw’s comes from hours on the training field as much as from brilliance.

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