How far should art engage directly with “the real world”, especially the brutish world shown on the TV news? There is no simple answer. Shelley thought that poets were “the unacknowledged legislators of the world” – a delightfully inflated view of his own profession which suggests that arty types can make a real difference.

At the other extreme was the philosopher Adorno’s view: “To write a poem after Auschwitz would be barbaric.” In other words, real atrocities not only render artists irrelevant, but compel a stunned silence.

Most people in the arts rebound between those two extremes. Though creative types have a reputation for arrogance, I have met few who believe that they wield much influence over politics or current affairs. As the National Theatre’s boss, Nicholas Hytner, once said: “It’s a long time since a play changed the world.” Or, indeed, a poem or a painting. Probably not since the 1930s when Picasso jolted Europe’s conscience with Guernica.

But next Thursday, in a fascinating if slightly bizarre experiment called And Now, the News at Birmingham Town Hall, some musicians will try to engage directly and simultaneously with world events. As a live broadcast of BBC World News is shown on a big screen, the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber and an orchestra from the Birmingham Conservatoire will improvise music to fit the stories.

Well, that’s what the press release says. As usual, the reality is more complicated. Two composers, Michael Wolters and Marcus Dross, will have written 30 or 40 snippets of music to fit every conceivable type of news. They will have been briefed on the BBC’s running order, and know each item’s duration. Armed with that information, they will select the requisite music a few minutes before the broadcast starts.

Even so, it’s an intriguing exercise – part of the enterprising New Generation Arts Festival. And it raises all sorts of questions. Most of us, I guess, would be uneasy if such a thing happened every night – if every story on the TV news was accompanied by appropriate mood music. We would think it lurid to underscore real-life tragedies in this emotive way (though that’s exactly what happened on the old cinema newsreels).

But if that’s the case, how long after the event would we consider it tasteful for musicians or artists to interpret the news? By coincidence, Birmingham also hosts the British premiere next weekend (by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) of a piece called Strange News, in which harrowing filmed interviews with child soldiers in Africa are filtered into a live music performance. That’s not today’s news, but the events depicted are still raw in these children’s memories. Is that acceptable?

And if your answer is no, then what’s your attitude to Britten’s War Requiem, written just 15 years after the Second World War ended, or Shostakovich’s anguished symphonies, which clearly mirrored the suffering and persecution inside the Soviet Union as it was happening? Where would you draw the line?

Even the organisers of And Now, the News recognise that it must be drawn somewhere. If a big disaster or atrocity happens on Friday, they say, they will cancel their experiment. In that respect, at least, they agree with Adorno. There are some things into which it would be crass for art to intrude.

www.newgeneration-arts.co.uk; www.bcmg.org

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