The answer to this question could fill a book, and the man who writes such a book will not have his nose to the school grindstone. Nor will his book be up to date for long. One of the disquieting features of the modern scene, not only in music, is the increasing conflict between very rapid changes and developments, opening up new horizons, and the natural human tendency to cling to what one knows and can cope with. Musical education is in particular danger of fragmentation by this conflict because so much of it consists of small closed worlds each ruled by one person - and a person, perhaps, who has all too little tine for surveying horizons new or old.

You can find schools where every pupil is taught to play an instrument of some kind and the morning assembly sounds like the Dawn-chorus ; schools where nearly all the pupils sing in the choir, and they perform works like "Belshazzar's Feast" from memory ; schools which have three or four full-time instrumental teachers and a senior orchestra that can play ( properly ) Beethoven symphonies } schools in which miracles are performed with a great circle of pupils armed with such things as half-empty bottles and pieces of gaspipe, and the conductor at the centre simply revolving and pointing. And you can find schools where the music-master is interested chiefly in Tudor madrigals and Monteverdi, and a dozen talented pupils are with him all the way ( schools whose pop-groups rock the lunch-hours with their practising and do pretty well for themselves in the evening ; schools which produce a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta every year and have no other musical activity ; schools, even today, which have no music staff at all. ' :

Somewhere between these heavens and these hells, rather closer to the latter than the former and at a curious angle to all, lies the musical world of Prescot Grammar School. About ten per cent of the pupils learn to play instruments, receiving a very inadequate amount of instruction unless they seek it outside ; very few boys, and now no senior boys, sing in the choir ; there is no experimental work of the bottle-and-gaspipe kind, and all too little creative work of any kind. The pupils do their best to delight the music master with the exotic flowers of the modern pop record industry, sometimes successfully, and he has been known to leap up to the stage and contribute to the rhythm-and-blues group ( otherwise an independent concern ) an extemporary blow upon his saxophone j and a frightful roaring overheard on the field and in the physics laba has proved, upon anxious investigation, to be a certain fourth year singing class performing the works of those sane historic Beatles. The School Orchestra is nearly fifty stong, and though it cannot play Beethoven symphonies it did this season play Gerahwin's "Rhapsody in Blue", Khachaturyan's "Gayane Dances", and other pieces that might well be called "semi-classical". More and more, the emphasis in the Orchestra's work tends to be on jazz : some would call this an irrelevance in today's world, but recent trends have made me less willing to concede this than I was a few years ago. Our jazz does indeed tend towards a slightly antiquated style, and it does not include as much improvisation as it should - though we are always trying to develop this -but it is blues-based, and modern pop seems to be moving towards rather than away from us. With these and other elements intermingled, the whole sound and over-all style of our concerts is quite unlike anything to be heard elsewhere, and that cannot be bad.

What we have not achieved, and do not look like achieving, is that dissolving of the barriers between "types" of music, and "types" of creative work generally, which is the real characteristic of the present age, and my own ideal. If anything, our barriers continue to rise. For example : our former gramophone society folded up years ago, largely because it tried to please too many tastes and ended up attracting nobody. But over the last two years the new Recorded Music Society, organised with great dedication by two boys, Lawrence Perkins and Philip Ashton, has built itself up into a modest success on the simple assumption that "music" means "classical music" ( just like the BBC's classical record review programme, which is blandly announced every week as "for ALL record enthusiasts I"). Another example : for our recent jazz concert we did not invite a contribution from the rhythm-and-blues group, simply because they use amplification, which gives unlimited volume without effort and would thus have made nonsense of our slow build-up of climaxes in orchestral jazz pieces ) thus we had created a barrier of our own. So we convened specially for the event a gallant if not very polished "folk-group" with acoustic guitars, and they made a modest effort at barrier-breaking by ranging from old Irish through country-and-western to the current charts. The leading honours for the jazz concert, however, must go to our three improvising soloists, Stephen Myatt and Raymond Carroll C tenor saxophones ) and Philip Renshall (trumpet ), and to the drummer, David Roscoe, whose devotion to the job can be guaged from the fact that ever since he aquired, in mid-season, a magnificent kit of his own, he has allowed it to be kept entirely at School, locked up most of the time ( including holidays ) and has seldom seen it except at rehearsals 1 This was our first fully "public" jazz concert. The secoi " night of it - our fifth full-length concert of the season - was our best j. rformance for years, justifying the huge amount of work that had been done ( including rehearsals in the holidays ) and making a wonderful finish for the Talrly numerous leavers, six of whom have given no less than six years' outstanding service to the Orchestra : John Norton, David Robinson, Donald Laagford, Geoffrey Strettie, Philip Halliwell and Robin Boyle.

To continue the roll of honour : Nigel Reeve's piano-playing was of very high merit, most notably as soloist in "Rhapsody in Blue", and he also figured in both the violin and the horn sections of the Orchestra. Jeffrey Oakes ( clarinet ) really made our playing of the "Rhapsody" possible by mastering the celebrated clarinet "slither" at the beginning ( a small thing it may seem, but nobody knows how many hours and weeks it took -(except perhaps his neighbours! ) and all his other playing was equally brilliant ; his standard is professional and his achievement unparalleled in this School. Alien Jessop, our second outstanding pianist, was tremendous both as soloist and as a tireless "work-horse" : his amazing sight-reading has made many things practicable. ( Incidentally with Reeve going now and Jessop next year, a horrifying shortage of good pianists threatens us. Have we any unknown talent in the lower school? ) The list of names could easily become unwieldy : obviously I could praise nearly everyone for technical merit or for loyalty or both. If I am to single out an orchestral player besides those already mentioned, it must be Peter Morris ( alto saxophone ) who, somewhat in the shadow of the two tenor players, has achieved an impressive technical standard with little ( recently no ) instruction and in the face of a whole series of discouragements.

Having suggested above, correctly, that the choir was of inadequate size and stength, I must end by saying that it was also the best choir for years in the two essential qualities of musicianship and beauty of sound. At the Christmas concert they sang more items than any choir has had ready before ; and one of these was the double carol "The Kings", in which an elaborate melody by Peter Corneliu* is sung simultaneously with an old hymn harmonised by Bach - a piece I had been holding in reserve for years,waiting for a choir that could do it. Another Christmas item, sung also in the church on Founder's Day, was Bach's "Flocks in Pastures Green", with the accompanying flute duet played by the hardworking Kerr twins. Then in the short Easter term the choir spent much of its time learning a piece which had to be abandoned because the singers were too few to hold their own with the full orchestra j but they again showed their quickness in learning and capacity for hard work by preparing in only a few weeks,more than enough items for the March concert, one of which, in particular, enchanted all ears : Grieg's "The Last Spring ."