This year, the BBC is celebrating 40 years of its Young Musician competition. All of us past winners take great pride in its legacy, which is a part of the musical heritage of this country. We are grateful to the teachers and schools that allowed us the chance to be a part of it.
However, despite some brilliant schemes, we are all deeply concerned that instrumental music learning is being left to decay in many British schools to the point that it could seriously damage the future of music here and jeopardise British music’s hard won worldwide reputation.
Today, we are launching a campaign for every primary school child to be taught to play an instrument, at no cost to them or their families. It is crucial to restore music’s rightful place in children’s lives, not only with all the clear social and educational benefits, but showing them the joy of making and sharing music. We are especially concerned that this should be a universal right. This is an opportunity to show the world that we care about music’s future and its beneficial impact on our children.
The writer Jeanette Winterson has said: “Life has an inside as well as an outside. Playing music is more than recreation; through music children find confidence and happiness unrelated to money or social status. In a world where success is measured by what you can buy, many children feel left out or shut out. Music is inclusive. Music works across culture, across class, across language. It seems to be hard wired into humans. Music is spontaneous, and with some teaching music can enrich children’s lives forever.”
Musical life in the London Borough of Newham could be one example, with their excellent Every Child A Musician scheme. The programme gifts all of their primary school children a free instrument to keep and teaches them how to read and play music in weekly lessons. This at no cost to the children or their families.
We believe that every child deserves to enjoy the benefits of Ecam and other excellent schemes, and their widespread adoption would alleviate many of our current concerns about the future of music in this country. There are cost-effective, efficient and inspiring early-level interventions available, and we call upon the governments in Westminster, Edinburgh and Cardiff to join us in making this happen across the whole country.
Nicholas Daniel, Michael Hext, Anna Markland, Emma Johnson, Alan Brind, David Pyatt, Nicola Loud, Freddy Kempf, Natalie Clein, Rafal Zambrzycki-Payne, Adrian Spillett, Guy Johnston, Jennifer Pike, Nicola Benedetti, Mark Simpson, Peter Moore, Lara Ömeroglu, Laura Van der Heijden, Martin James Bartlett, Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Marble Hill marvels
An earlier dispute about Marble Hill helps definitively to settle this latest one (“Pope’s ‘great lost garden’ will flower again – but was it just a pipe-dream?” News). It was a disagreement with a neighbour in 1752 that probably prompted the remarkable Henrietta Howard, Countess of Suffolk, to draw up a detailed survey of her garden – the very garden that English Heritage now wishes to restore.
That survey has recently been corroborated by archaeological investigations, the results of which, along with a wealth of complementary evidence – bills, estate papers, letters, engravings and poems – all combine to confirm the existence and design of a rare 18th-century pleasure ground. If more proof is required, visitors to Marble Hill can still see the remains of Lady Suffolk’s garden including the ice house, the grotto, the terraces and the oval lawn. It would be delightful for park users to be able to walk through her woodland garden again and the new tree planting would restore the setting for one of London’s great Thames-side villas.
Marion Harney, Director, The Gardens Trust; David Cornwell, chair, Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust; Brian Dix FSA, international garden archaeologist; Ed Harris, trustee, the Twickenham Museum; Dr David Jacques, garden historian; Helen Monger, director, London Parks and Gardens Trust
A slice of reason
Hurrah for Kenan Malik and his defence of the “gay cake” bakers (“The ‘gay cake’ fight: why the bakers had to a right to refuse this order”, Comment). Malik deals not in the generalities of 20th-century oppositions between left and right, black and white, men and women, but brings a forensic eye to the specifics of a very 21st-century dispute.
Peter Tatchell, veteran LGBT campaigner, deserves even more praise for generously perceiving the implications of the bakers being forced to facilitate an idea they oppose. Would that more members of the commentariat could tell the difference between pernicious acts and generalised prejudice.
Steve Gooch
Robertsbridge, East Sussex
Putting alcohol out of reach
Nick Cohen rehearses all the usual arguments in favour of curbing alcohol consumption (“Enough liberal hand-wringing – raising alcohol prices is not class war”, Comment) but makes no reference to the potential benefits of restricting availability.
When every corner shop, newsagent and 24-hour filling station is an off-licence, buying a bottle or a few cans is too easy: so what if it costs a few bob more? Perhaps the government should be looking at how off-sales licences are granted, with a view to developing a policy that falls short of the extreme restrictions imposed in places such as Sweden but puts cheap booze further out of reach.
Jim Trimmer
Kingston upon Thames
Children of our time
Having grown up in Belfast in the 1960s and 70s, I was disappointed to see the picture of young ballet dancers with the caption “A Belfast ballet class with pupils from both communities shows how some progress has been made” (“In Belfast a fear is growing… the hated barriers will go up again”, Focus). I was a member of youth choirs then and involved with orchestras and theatre and the words “both communities” were never heard. Don’t impose these ideas on the children of 2018.
Fionnuala Ratliff
Newcastle upon Tyne
Polanski was no Savile
Barbara Ellen writes that Roman Polanski was the “A-list Savile who got away” (“Those who deplored persecution of Polanski enabled likes of Weinstein”, Comment).
Polanski participated in a plea bargain, legal under Californian law. He admitted a lesser charge than the “sexual assault” mentioned and all other charges were dropped. He did spend jail time in Chino and it was only later, when Judge Rittenband indicated that he was going to renege on the deal and subject Polanski to further punishments that the director decided to skip town. This also explains why the extradition request by the US failed (to the court in Zurich).
Nobody is suggesting that this was Polanski’s finest hour, but it is wrong to compare a man who has done his time for one crime committed 40 years ago with Savile, or indeed to suggest that those having sympathy for Polanski have helped to embolden characters such as Weinstein.
Nick Howe
London W2
Sons of the unmarried
Agnès Poirier’s article (“Even when they foul up, multilingual politicians get it right”, Comment, last week) reminded me of a speech by the late Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, when, as the governor of Malaya, he was forced to reprimand the Chinese men of “strategic village” during the 1948-60 “emergency”. The village fathers had allowed their issue of a dozen rifles to fall into the hands of Communist guerrillas.
Standing in the village square, he is said to have begun his admonition with: “You are a lot of bastards.” The Chinese interpreter with him scratched his head. No equivalent word existed in the dialect he was speaking, let alone one so offensive. So he lamely said: “His excellency the governor informs you that he knows that none of your mothers and fathers were married at the time you were born.”
Unaware, Templer went on: “But you’ll find out I can be a bigger one.” To this the interpreter finally settled for: “The governor does however concede that his own parents were not married when he was born.” The dressing down was therefore rather diminished.
Chris Sexton
Crowthorne, Berkshire