Response to Charlotte C. Gill article on music and notation – full list of signatories
I. Pace · City Research Online (City University London) · 2017
below, is a patron), focusing in particular on Gill's comparison of reading music to learning Latin.Another recent blog article considers the article in the context of changing expectations in UK secondary education, while composer and teacher Des Oliver has made an important podcast with Tigran Arakelyan about the article, and I have also made an extended podcast with Arakelyan, considering the article and wider issues of musical education, notation, literacy, privilege, and more.For an utterly contrasting view to that of Gill, strongly advocating reading (and sight reading), composition, and musical history, being available to all schoolchildren by right, see this 1945 pamphlet by the Workers' Music Association (hardly the voice of the wealthy), especially pages 5-6.Speaking personally, I think many of the recommendations in this pamphlet are as relevant now as they were 72 years ago.I have also blogged an inspiring defence of the teaching of Western classical music and literacy by Estelle R. Jorgensen, which I believe to be highly relevant to this debate.