Sounds of silence

Hear hear (sic) to your corre - spondents’ complaints about background music in restaurants and pubs (Letters 5 September)! May I extend that to the producers of cinema films and TV films, dramas, documentaries and news reports?

In Channel4’ s documentary on the first 4- minute mile, BB C2’s Rise of the Nazis and Great Canadian Railway Journeys, BBC Scotland’ s on the development of Edinburgh New Town, and even Sir David Attenborough advising us to listen to the mating call of an exotic bird he was describing in the Indonesian rain forest, the narrative and the genuine background sounds are marred by excessively loud, invariably unnecessary, often inappropriate, always intrusive, and sometimes obliterating so-called “background” music–with Mozart’ s Requiem sadly being a particular favourite for such misuse.

Who decides, who approves, who chooses which musical snippets are deemed “suitable” and at what decibel level? No doubt as they reach rather more mature years and become harder of hearing, the decision makers will understand – but my teenage grandchildren already agree with me.

Does BBC Music approve of such prostitution of Europe’s greatest music? Let us hope that the new Director-general can deal with this long-standing problem and set an example to other producers.

JOHN BIRKETT, Horseleys Park, st Andrews

I never thought I would thank this dreadful pandemic for anything – but thankyou Covid 19, your insidious way of spreading by air droplets has stopped“music” in rest aurants.

Long may it last.

I am sick to the back teeth of searching out a table as far away from loud speakers as humanly possible, of shouting, struggling to understand what my companions are saying, even re sorting even to miming, and perpetually asking ever y waiter to turn the volume down.

I avoid noisy places like the plague, in fact, and shall hopefully continue to do so long after Covid 19 has been consigned to history

PENNY MCKEE The Cedars, Edinburgh