Music hath charms ...

Re “Halt, or I’ll Play Vivaldi” [Feb. 13]: One aspect of the classical music-as-hoodlum-deterrent concept that is being overlooked is what I’ll call the feng shui effect.

It’s not so much that the music creates an environment that is considered “uncool.” It may be that by playing beautiful music in crime-prone areas you change the energy of those places. You alter the environment and thereby make it incompatible with the negative intentions of the would-be criminals. On some subliminal level, the drug dealer and thugs might understand that their lowly actions debase a place that has been made sacred by the purity of fine music. And so they move on.

Jilana Van Meter

Mamaroneck, N.Y.