Down the tubas: music is dying in our schools

Serious music is under threat because it isn’t taught, concertgoers are conservative and talented new composers ignored

A thought-provoking piece.

And an interesting companion piece.

I was brought up listening to serious music, studied it seriously at school, ended up with a group of music-loving friends at University (I have a suspicion that they allocated people to my Hall of Residence who had a track record of Performing Arts, although the drama people tended to dominate) and ended up doing my Accountancy Training in an organisation that seemed to recruit more on the basis of having Music O-Level than Maths O-Level.

But going to concerts etc is a different matter. During my twenties I found that after a hard day in work meetings, often followed by a hard evening in political meetings, the last thing I wanted to do on a night off was sit and listen attentively to anything.

Mind you, I think there's a trend for saying that concert attendances are dying. I'm not convinced, especially when you see the choice avaialable on any given night in London. I suppose there is room for concern at the supposed decline of music in schools, there again, I know someone who teaches at a Bog-standard Urban Comprehensive and says they have an orchestra for each year in the school.

And then there's parents. If parents can't bring their children up to have a rich tapestry of experiences or, alternatively, to make them intellectually curious, well, that's not my problem. Eventually, the winners will be separated from the losers.

There are loads of things that people get into later in life. How many people in their twenties or thirties are interested in gardening except for maintenance or sheeplike erection of decking as the Forces of Capitalism instruct them to do so? On my two visits to Egypt, and from people I know generally, I am struck by how few young people go diving, and I bet most that do weren't brought up to it nor learnt it at school. I never went abroad until I was twenty-one, I never took responsibility for booking a holiday (as opposed to visiting friends) until four years ago.

I did read somewhere recently that the problem with the Youth of Today is their inability to rebel. They apparently lap up all the mass marketed commercial pap without question, desperate to conform. The real rebels are those who see past the cynical capitalist marketing mantras and quietly pursue excellence.