Bob Draper wrote:

>In my secondary modern we learned no music and no languages.

It's a disgrace that your school didn't teach any languages, but IMO not
teaching music (or anything else which depends so much on personal taste)
is no bad thing.  I'm very uncomfortable about the idea of state-owned
schools teaching people to say they like state-approved music, just as I'm
uncomfortable about state-owned schools teaching politics classes which
encourage support of the Government Party.

I agree that everyone should have access to great music, but I think that
nowadays (in Britain, at least) everyone does.  I don't think that there's
anyone who doesn't know that CM exists, or where to find it if they were
interested.  Despite the dumbing-down, Radio 3 is still quite good, and
it's free.  The adverts on Classic FM irritate me too, but on the whole
it's not too bad.  Naxos CDs are almost everywhere, and they're cheap.  If
people don't look for CM, it's more likely that they're put off by the idea
of actively listening to music (rather than using it as wallpaper) than by
the cost, or by the condescending snobs (who crop up everywhere, pop music
most definitely NOT excepted).

It was different twenty-five years ago, of course, but things change.

>If I had listened to classical music as a boy I'd have got beaten up.

But I got beaten up anyway (who didn't?) so that's not much of a deterrent.

>I said before that psychiatric treatment should come with Penderecki.

This comes back to the state-approved music.  I don't know what's on
today's A-level syllabus, but about ten years ago, some of Penderecki's
avant-garde stuff was on it.  Anyone who admitted to not liking it didn't
pass the exam (and probably wouldn't have been allowed to sit it in the
first place).  This was twenty years _after_ Penderecki himself had stopped
producing avant-garde stuff and gone back to writing symphonies.

Peter Varley
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