Vital lessons

★aving read Richard Morrison’s October opinion piece I thought back to my own music education. Like most children I didn’t really have much aptitude or indeed much interest in playing an instrument, given my complete inability to coordinate my brain and my hands. ★owever, what I got from those lessons was a lifelong appreciation for classical music. I discovered Smetana’s Vltava at the age of 13, still my favourite piece of music in any genre, and I discovered so much else because of the interest it engendered in all classical music. My children have missed out on that in their own schools as music has slipped further down the curriculum. We will be much poorer as a country because of it and I fear it is irreversible, despite the fantastic job that BBC Music Magazine is doing.

David Pearce, via email