Children would benefit from taking part in musical activities in school - Yorkshire Post Letters

I am writing to say that I agree wholeheartedly with your Editorial comments on Monday, October 21, about the value of music in schools.

Children who grew up in Doncaster from the 1950s onwards had varied and valuable opportunities to experience music education. The Doncaster Schools Music Advisor was William ‘Pip’ Appleby who also presented the weekly, ‘Singing Together’ on the Home Service, now Radio 4.

He greeted us all with, ‘Hello Schools!’ in his cheerful voice. Many of us still have the pamphlets we used during the broadcasts. Also, we listened to ‘Time and Tune’ and ‘Rhythm and Melody’.

One of the great advantages of these broadcasts was that all of us learned to read music which helped with musical activities throughout our lives. We learned traditional and folk songs from many countries and there was always a Christmas story from another country in the Autumn Term.

If it hadn’t been for that I would not have heard, ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ which is very apt for the present day.

The Music Centre on Danum Road was named after Mr Appleby. There was a thriving Orchestra which met on a Saturday morning and the excellent Doncaster Youth Jazz Band based at Conisbrough, led by a brilliant teacher, John Ellis.

Music lessons were held at Danum Road in the evenings for groups of teachers who wanted to learn or improve their skills and a team of peripatetic teachers of music worked from there. They also had a system for lending instruments to pupils who wanted to learn but who couldn’t afford to buy them.

My violin lessons were scheduled for the art lesson on Tuesday afternoons, “so I did not miss anything important”. In retrospect I would have been better doing art, thus saving a lot of pain for myself and others and I might have passed Art GCE!

Doncaster schools held a Music Festival in the Corn Exchange every two years where musicians, choirs, orchestras and various ensembles met to enjoy making music.

In the intervening years there was a Dance Festival held at the Racecourse in front of the old grandstand. Schools would learn and perform their own choice of dance and we would finish with a mass performance of one dance we had all learned in our own school. What a lot of work for the teachers and pupils!

The ability to read music has helped me throughout life, in choirs and in taking a lunch time recorder group from being beginners, through four years of regular playing to being able to sight read pieces in parts.

There are many children who would benefit from taking part in musical activities in school and so being able to enjoy something which is not purely academic both in school and in later life.