ALTHOUGH the level of musical activity in Ireland is increasing all the time, there is little co-ordination between the agencies and individuals involved in music performance, music education and music creation. As far as contemporary music is concerned, a comprehensive, well-organised policy remains for the moment on the distant horizon. In order to approach that horizon, those institutions centrally involved (particularly the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland) as well as performers, composers and audiences, must wade through a tangle of issues and attitudes. The following exploration of this tangle, while only touching on attitudes, attempts to identify a number of the issues involved and, perhaps, bring them forward for further consideration.

To begin, a few figures as background. In 1998, the Irish government provided the Arts Council with a total of IR£26 million in revenue and capital funds. Of this, IR£1.881 million went to music (not including opera, which received an additional IR£1.316 million). In Belfast, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland's music and opera budget for 1998-99 (April to April) was Stg£1.781 million.

In the Republic, contemporary music organisations which received funding were the Contemporary Music Centre (IR£170,000); the Association of Irish Composers (IR£10,000); Composers' Ink, an affiliation of five composers (IR£10,000); the 'Mostly Modern' concert series (IR£20,000); the chamber ensembles Concorde (IR£16,000) and the Crash Ensemble (IR£15,000); and the Ennis/IMRO Composition Summer School (IR£4,000). The New Music Commission Scheme, a primary source of income for full-time, freelance composers, received IR£30,000, and the UK-based recording company, Black Box Music, received IR£40,000 in the period 1997-98 for its Irish Composers CD series. Sixteen composers were members of Aosdána, Ireland's state-sponsored academy of creative artists, of whom eight received a cnuas or annuity of approximately IR£8,000. Some twelve composers received individual awards from a total fund of IR£80,000 allocated to music and opera and there was additional support for musicians through the Artflight travel scheme. There was also indirect, less easily quantified funding where the Arts Council supported organisations with a strong but not exclusive commitment to contemporary music. These were the regional touring agency, Music Network; the Irish Chamber Orchestra; and the Cork International Choral Festival. In Sligo, a grant of IR£20,000 was divided between its early and contemporary music festivals.

In the North of Ireland, 89% of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland's current music and opera budget is divided between the Ulster Orchestra (Stg£1.148 million) and opera (Stg£435,000). Although Opera Northern Ireland lost its ACNI grant last autumn and no longer exists, the moneys were not reallocated to other art forms or to other areas of music but retained for opera development, which may include performances of contemporary opera and education work.

Of the Stg£198,000 which remains, the Contemporary Music Centre received Stg£12,000, the Ennis/IMRO Composition Summer School received £2,000, the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music in Belfast received £5,000, and residency schemes for composers and musicians, £15,000. Three Northern Ireland composers received awards and bursaries for travel and study. There is also indirect support for contemporary music through funding for Music Network tours, and grants for projects such as concert series. The funding for the Ulster Orchestra supports contemporary music through its performances of newly-commissioned and twentieth-century orchestral music, its curriculum-based schools projects and education programme, and its commissions for the various chamber groups drawn from within the orchestra. Since 1996, the funding available for all organisations to commission new works and make CD recordings has come from the ACNI National Lottery Fund, which is separate from the music and opera revenue budget.

In Dublin, the Arts Council's Artform Director, Dermot McLaughlin, maintains that support for contemporary music has up to now been manifest primarily in what were felt to be 'building block' areas. These include support for the individual composer as regards training, commissioning and, more recently, recording; and support for established organisations such as the Contemporary Music Centre and the chamber ensemble, Concorde. There was also support for bodies such as Music Network, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, Music for Galway and the Cork International Choral Festival, whose programming encouraged audiences to experience new music.

In Belfast, ACNI's Director of Performing Arts, Philip Hammond, describes a less proactive involvement in contemporary music. 'We fund client partners in order to encourage new music. We don't do anything directly. Our arts council has gone from being proactive to much more reactive: we respond to applications -- if there are applications coming in.' This shift in approach resulted from a shuffle of mechanisms which saw ACNI's Lottery moneys become the funding source across the artistic spectrum for several major areas including the commissioning of new work.

In general, Dermot McLaughlin feels that a greater emphasis needs to be put on the performance of contemporary music, thus echoing one of the main concerns of the new music community, including a composer who felt it was time for a break from commissioning new works in favour of performing regularly some of the music which has been commissioned in the recent past. 'If you look at the past five or six years', says McLaughlin, 'I think that the first part of that period has been nuts and bolts, low-key, almost invisible stuff developing resources support, and it hasn't really focusse sufficiently, I would say, on support for public performance. But I think that changed last year and will be consolidated further in 1999 and future years. Last year we managed to divert most of the additional funding for music into performance areas, one of which was contemporary music, alongside early music and jazz.

If indeed a corner was turned last year, then perhaps this was exemplified in the first-time funding to support performances of contemporary music by the newly-formed groups, Crash Ensemble and Composers Ink, as well as the long-established Association of Irish Composers. 'I think there is a need for many more voices to be heard', says McLaughlin, 'and I think the Irish listening public have had a fairly restricted diet so far.'

According to Philip Hammond, the grant to the Ulster Orchestra covers all its work: concerts throughout Northern Ireland, subscription series, playing for the Belfast Philharmonic choir, education and community outreach work, and playing for opera and festivals. 'The fact is', says Hammond, 'that if we tried to quantify it, the balance would be very heavily in favour of community, education, festival, opera and normal concerts. The programme they do of new music is by no means large because they have other priorities.' And although the orchestra submits its programming plans to ACNI, the council does not try to impose conditions of content on the orchestra. 'That would be far too dogmatic', says Hammond.

Applications from within Northern Ireland for new music commissions are sporadic, according to Philip Hammond, apart from the Ulster Orchestra and the Sonorities Festival which make two or three each on an annual basis. Not surprising, then, that Northern composers look to the more active new music scene in the Republic for commissions. In the last three years, for instance, seven new works (representing ten per cent of the total receiving funding from the Arts Council's New Music Commission Scheme in that period) have been commissioned from Northern Irish composers by An Chomhairle Ealaíon. With this low level of creative activity in the North, there is a concomitant paucity of new music performance although, ironically, larger sums of money are in fact available there under the Lottery New Works scheme. In the Republic, the New Music Commission Scheme is massively over-subscribed and, the composers say, under-funded, with two applications being turned down for every one that is successful. However, there is little chance of these composers accessing Lottery New Works funding, since they would have to be commissioned by a Northern-based group.

Hammond, a composer himself, enumerates the problems. 'There aren't that many composers working up here. And where can new Northern Ireland composers get experience? There are very few platforms. The Belfast Music Society is a possibility, but it's geared more towards historical repertoire chamber music. And funding has stood still. Lottery funding looks good on paper but is very hard to access because the system is very bureaucratic. Take away the support for the Ulster Orchestra and opera and the revenue budget doesn't leave much leeway for doing other things, especially now that new music commissions have been taken out of revenue funding and put into Lottery. The processes are there, but unless the interest comes from outside, there can be no movement. We will encourage anyone who shows the slightest glimmer of interest. We can't go out and set up a concert, but we can advise them, show them how to apply.'

A shortage of applications for new music concerts and events is something which the contemporary music community in the Republic is also conscious of. 'We don't get an awful lot of proposals for new music', confirms Dermot McLaughlin, although he agrees that low demand from a small sector for a small portion of the available resources does not diminish the sector's importance. 'It's not a developmental way of looking at it. It's a reactive way which doesn't really take us any further.' It was argued, however, at last summer's consultative meetings run by the Arts Council as part of the preparation for writing the new Arts Plan, that low levels of project submissions reflect the lack of any public perception of Arts Council policy on music.

For some composers, arguing about policy is perceived as futile as long as funding remains, as they see it, disgracefully low. Although it has been said, most recently by a visiting US composer, that Irish composers are far better off, financially and in terms of working conditions, than their American counterparts, there are many who argue that funding levels for music in general and new music in particular are simply unrealistically low. To support this, comparisons with other countries and, within Ireland, with other art forms are cited. Concert organisers describe the tremendous costs involved where programmes require electro-acoustic equipment, for instance. A recurring theme is the imbalance between the funding last year of IR£330,900 for Wexford Festival Opera and IR£405,700 for Opera Ireland performing 'museum' pieces for relatively exclusive audiences, and the much smaller funding for new music which caters to a wider public and represents music as a living art form.

Philip Hammond has already described ACNI's lack of leeway in revenue funding once the Ulster Orchestra and opera have taken their slices of the pie. In Dublin, Dermot McLaughlin won't be drawn on comparing percentages or different art forms. 'I've often said this, publicly and privately: percentage arguments don't impress me. They're of very limited value. You can't talk exclusively about contemporary music and conveniently leave RTÉ and the National Concert Hall out of the picture. That is simply not acceptable as a starting point, and it's not an argument that stands up very well to scrutiny. Of course the budget for music is a lot smaller than for drama, but it's not significantly smaller than for anything else.'

In truth, budget considerations include so many variables and invisible realities that the complexity of adjustment required for purposes of comparison makes it fatally easy for an arts lobbying group to present an incomplete argument, as well as for an arts council to dodge the bullet.

Comparisons are nevertheless useful, even if little can be viewed in black and white terms. In Canada, the province of Quebec has a population of approximately seven million, not hugely dissimilar to the combined population (ca. five million) of the Republic and Northern Ireland. However, funding for contemporary music comes from both provincial and municipal arts councils. So, for example, at provincial level, the contemporary music budget for 1996-97 was more than Can$1 million (ca. IR£500,000). Of this, Can$185,000 (ca. IR£93,000) was allocated in thirty-one grants to individual performers of new music and to composers. The remainder -- the equivalent of approximately IR£400,000 - was provided to organisations which present contemporary music concerts and festivals.

At municipal level, Le Conseil des Arts in Montreal has a music budget of nearly Can$1.517 million (IR£750,000) of which Can$285,000 (IR£143,000) is for the production of concerts of contemporary music. The source for these figures is the local equivalent of our Contemporary Music Centre: the Quebec branch of the Canadian Music Centre, one of five regional Music Information Centres spread across Canada. Interestingly, the Quebec Centre has a budget which, at Can$275,000 (or ca. IR£140,000), is not dissimilar to that for the Contemporary Music Centre in Ireland (IR£170,000 for 1998).

The hazards of interpreting these figures for comparative purposes notwithstanding, it can safely be observed that contemporary music is taken very seriously at both provincial and municipal levels in Canada. Also, while funds for composers and for the Quebec Centre are comparable, a substantially higher proportion is ear-marked specifically for supporting the performance of contemporary music. Certain ratios, in fact, are enshrined in policy. Furthermore, even though the Montreal Symphony Orchestra includes contemporary music in its programming, as also do I Musici de Montréal and the Orchestre Metropolitain de Montréal, this does not entitle these ensembles to provincial or municipal arts council funds for new music. These funds are intended for specialist contemporary music ensembles, of which there are several in Montreal and in Quebec City.

Comparisons are no less problematic within Ireland where arts council funding mechanisms in Dublin and Belfast are governed by different sets of circumstances. These differences can create ambiguities as easily for arts policy as they do in other areas, for example a recent controversy over Northern Ireland-born football players who fail to make the Northern team and then declare for the Republic. The Contemporary Music Centre, although situated in Dublin, is an all-Ireland resource organisation and therefore works on behalf of composers in Northern Ireland as well as in the Republic. Client statistics maintained by the Contemporary Music Centre indicate that in 1998 some 12% of the Centre's work was directly North-oriented, which ACNI accepts. CMC's director, Eve O'Kelly, has therefore requested ACNI to make a proportional contribution to the Centre's overall budget. ACNI has been unable to accede, last year providing Stg£12,000 of the Stg£15,000 sought. In addition, an application to the Northern Ireland Lottery to provide a similar percentage of the capital costs of the Centre's impending move to new premises, has recently been turned down.

The difficulty here arises because the Lottery has one foot in Northern Ireland and the other in Westminster, where the provision of Lottery funds hinges on the perceived benefit to the people of Northern Ireland. 'ACNI has an ambivalent attitude towards CMC', says Philip Hammond. 'On the one hand, we're all Irish. We like the idea of being part of the all-island context. And our composers find a much more personal connection with Eve O'Kelly and the Contemporary Music Centre than we've had with the other avenue open to us, the British Music Information Centre in London. And lik all things in Northern Ireland, you can pick and choose, and usually we fall somewhere in the middle. Because London isn't particularly interested in what happens here, whereas CMC in Dublin has been a very strong, growing organisation under Eve O'Kelly.

'But on the other hand, although we back what CMC does, it requires more money than we have to give. And if we are to spread the load equally across a number of art forms -- and within music itself a number of people are crying out for funding -- certainly the CMC could not be any more of a priority than it is at the moment.'

The Arts Council in the Republic has an open policy on funding applications from the North. Affirming this, Dermot McLaughlin argues that the real issue is optimising the links. 'How can the two arts councils work more effectively, more collaboratively, to produce more opportunities and resources? I do believe that support for resource organisations is the obvious area to look at: the Contemporary Music Centre, the Irish Traditional Music Archive and Music Network.

'Music Network is an interesting model of a resource organisation in the Republic being able to serve all constituencies. If it can work for one rganisation doing a discrete set of things, it can work for another. Over the next two years, we're hoping to clarify a lot of these slightly confused issues: who's responsible for what, or how can we give better support.'

Are we any closer to a policy for contemporary music in Ireland? If not, it is because so many issues have yet to be resolved and attitudes acknowledged and confronted. The role of the two arts councils is problematic, with Dublin maintaining that contemporary music policy can only be formulated in conjunction with other institutions such as RTÉ and the National Concert Hall, and Belfast reluctantly reducing the proactive nature of its function because of internal changes of structure. Many issues relate to the core issue of funding. As we've seen, quantifying both demand and supply is complicated enough to make it very difficult either effectively to challenge or to defend the amounts allocated. Yet perhaps there is little measurement required to demonstrate that it is now the performance of contemporary music that requires the focus of support, a point made by Dermot McLaughlin. Perhaps contemporary music policy in other jurisdictions, such as Quebec, might provide models?

A corollary of the performance issue is another issue not even touched on here: the performance of non-Irish contemporary music. Receiving even less representation and support than native contemporary music, this, in most other art forms, would be considered a scandal. Some blame this situation on residual attitudes of insularity, while others maintain that with scarcely enough funding for the work of Irish composers, non-Irish contemporary music has little chance.

Another, deeper background issue not dealt ith here is the extent to which a negative mind-set hampers the development of contemporary music. Some perceive this as an uninformed belief (both among the public and the institutions centrally involved), that new music by its very nature is difficult to listen to and hard to sell. Yet the success of the 'Mostly Modern' series in Dublin in recent years, as well as the substantial audiences drawn by Concorde in the long-standing Hugh Lane Gallery 'Sundays at Noon' series - and even the excellent attendances in the new NSOI/RTÉ FM3 'Explorer' series -- indicate that this is a false mind-set. As composer Donnacha Dennehy has remarked, these events attract new audiences: not necessarily the existing 'mainstream' concert-goers, but audiences made up of people who are simply interested in new things. And it is perhaps this negative attitude which is behind the low level of project submissions for contemporary music attested to by both arts councils. If musicians seeking to perform new music encounter the notion that contemporary music is specialised, unpopular and no one wants to hear it, never mind pay for it, they will ask themselves: 'Why should I bother?'

Finally, there is the knotty matter of harmonising policy on both sides of the Border so as to maximise the opportunities for contemporary music, North and South. The untangling and resolving of these issues is vital to the continued development of contemporary music in Ireland.