The surprising and forgotten roots of the Edinburgh International Festival and its Fringe
The driving force behind the creation of the Edinburgh International Festival, Rudolf Bing, initially thought Oxford would be the best place to host it
In 1945, as the clouds of war started to clear from Europe, people of great vision were already planning what became the Edinburgh International Festival. It was not just a cultural decision and certainly not a commercial one.
Rather, it was a statement of optimism and hope, to create a better world; to bring people together; to celebrate the permanence of human creativity even as so many of the places through which it had been expressed, in the great cities of Europe, lay in ruins.
There were many such statements at the time, as people of all nationalities aspired to an international order worthy of those who had sacrificed their lives and their dreams. Conceived of as a cultural manifestation of that mood, the Edinburgh International Festival has survived better than most.
READ MORE: Edinburgh International Festival 'back to what we're used to' next year, vows Nicola Benedetti
Vision of a festival city
Hopefully, within the Festival as it exists today, there will be room for reflection upon these noble sentiments as the resolve of 80 years ago, that the same must never happen again, is cast into doubt. War in Europe... the rise of anti-Semitism, these were never supposed to recur.
The lead visionary, Rudolf Bing, was an Austrian Jewish impresario who fled to England after the Nazis took power in Germany, to inaugurate the Glyndebourne festival in 1936. As the great opera houses of Europe were reduced to ruins, the concept emerged in his mind of a festival city, where the cream of European talent could reassemble.
There was no certainty it would be Edinburgh. Bing’s first choice was Oxford but he ruled it out because “town and gown” were too far apart. Bath was considered and so too was Liverpool but, said Bing, “no money on earth could turn it into a festival city. Edinburgh was a different matter”.
Both the newly elected Labour government, eager for such symbols of hope, and Edinburgh’s city fathers got behind the idea. In 1945, before the war ended, Bing started working on the “manifold challenges” which included the fact that “many of the singers had never heard of Edinburgh”. Thus are the vagaries of history written.
As far as can be recalled, the citizens of Edinburgh got behind it too, in principle if not in participation. At the inaugural festival in 1947, coal rationing was still in place and floodlighting the castle was prohibited. The people of Edinburgh donated their coal rations so it could be lit from dusk to midnight.
Communist Party’s cultural committee
How much else they had to do with the Festival and the reputation it soon brought to their city, as a centre of cultural renewal, is more doubtful and this produced its own response – the creation of a “People’s Festival” which in time would turn into “the Fringe”.
Two of the leading instigators were also central to what would become the Scottish folk revival, Norman Buchan and Hamish Henderson. It had been “a fortunate accident”, Henderson later wrote, that Bing had decided to site his Festival in Edinburgh, not least because it provoked a reaction which had its own historic consequences.
“When it became clear that the Edinburgh Festival was to be in the main a prestigious showcase for the ‘High Art’ of the world… it was decided by the cultural committee of the Communist Party in Glasgow (of which Norman was a member) to create an ’alternative’ festival” which would feature “the finest traditional singers and musicians in Scotland and Europe”.
It would be fair to say that the Fringe has travelled a very long way from these early objectives. Somewhere within it, there should be at least a nod towards these origins as a people’s festival and a celebration of traditional music as a complement to the “High Arts”. Why indeed should that modest counterpoise not have a place within the International Festival itself? Nicola Benedetti will understand that.
A slightly jaundiced view
There is an endless, annual debate about whether the Fringe is too big, too expensive, too lacking in quality control; probably all true. However, these are best left as arguments for the market to decide though, by same token, it might reasonably be asked why such a hugely competitive market also requires public subsidy.
Long ago, I formed a slightly jaundiced view of the Fringe when I was pressed into service as a reviewer of four or five shows a day, each more challenging than the one before to find something nice to say about. But I suppose that’s what its many adherents expect of the Fringe – a hopeful search for hidden gems.
Back in the day, there was the annual entertainment provided by whatever manifestation of “filth” a Tory councillor in Edinburgh could be induced by the popular press to be outraged about. The views of the eminently quotable Councillor Kidd were as close as most of Scotland got to the cultural wonderland that was happening in the capital.
Fringe nudity
A dear friend of mine, Duncan Campbell, later a distinguished journalist at the Guardian who died recently, had a good story. As a student in his native Edinburgh, he appeared in a Fringe production which required him to run naked across the stage. Councillor Kidd was duly informed and readily agreed to be outraged. A tabloid furore ensued.
To Duncan’s horror, his mother decided that as an act of solidarity, she must attend a performance of this theatrical epic. “If there’s one thing you don’t want to do,” he said, “it’s appear naked on stage with your mother in the audience.” Let that be a cautionary tale.
So let the annual orgy of high culture, terrible comedians, earnest student theatre groups, desperate show promoters, pipes and drums, jangling tills, commence. And somewhere in the middle of it all, spare a thought for why it all began, the hopes and aspirations behind both Festival and Fringe.
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