Oh dear! I had hoped we were beyond the stage of narrow definitions of “classical music” and anything outside that realm on Radio 3 as “dumbing down”, but Richard Carter clearly disagrees (Letters, 27 September). I have a friend who thinks anything written after Bach and Mozart is scarcely worth listening to, but I’m delighted by the discovery of so much music, past and present, written by composers, often women, who I’ve never heard before, presented to us free by the much-maligned BBC.
My wife and I attended the Chineke! Orchestra’s Prom, including Duke Ellington’s wonderful version of the Nutcracker Suite. Would this be classed as dumbing down, and if not, where is the line drawn? Let’s put aside these quibbles and take some much-needed hope from the news that the prime minister is a music enthusiast, keen to reverse the cuts in state school support for the arts.
Roger Downie
Glasgow
• Dr Richard Carter suggests that the Florence Welch and Sam Smith Proms this year are “the kind of dumbing down that Melvyn Bragg and David Dimbleby are critical of”. For sure, the Proms are a “classical music festival”, but that doesn’t mean that they should be a musical museum. The Proms, from their inception by Henry Wood, promoted new music to a popular audience. The Smith and Welch Proms weren’t gimmicks; both were performances of established collaborations. As in other years, there were more than a few concerts that focused on popular music, presented by BBC orchestras and other “classical” performers, including the CBeebies Prom and Doctor Who Prom.
The Proms act as a gateway to a love of music of all genres. Cheap to attend and experimental in repertoire, they show how the art will survive. Those who apparently love the classics, but seem to shun anything less than 100 years old as dangerously modern must expect their music to die with them.
Liz Fuller
London
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