Lost voices

SIR – Last week I was speaking to an eminent choral conductor in Cambridge, and we discussed the loss of singing in schools (Letters, May 10).

The conclusion was that the voices of tomorrow are largely those of privately educated young people, who generally enjoy a more vibrant musical environment and still have the chance to sing hymns. It appears that many state-educated children are being denied the chance to express themselves through the instrument that we are all born with.

We know that singing can bring health benefits, and that communal singing helps to develop social skills. We need an enlightened education policy and teachers with musical abilities to reverse the current decline.

Avril Wright

Snettisham, Norfolk

SIR – Jennie Naylor (Letters, May 10) regrets that children are deprived of the “beauty of the words” of traditional hymns.

Each to their own. “By the light of burning martyrs,/ Christ, thy bleeding feet we track” seemed to my youthful mind a singularly disgusting image, and the passage of 60-odd years has not made it any less so.

Nicholas Guitard

Bude, Cornwall

SIR – The debate about hymns in schools has awakened in this octogenarian a sense of unfairness from his primary school days, when children were allowed to choose the assembly hymn on their birthday.

I always asked for Onward Christian Soldiers, that most stirring of hymns, but because my birthday was in the last week of term before the Christmas holidays I was always fobbed off with Away in a Manger. It still rankles.

Brian Smith

Dunfermline, Fife