Missing music ed

Regarding “Pops: From Light to Lite” (June 19), my own experience might help explain why my age group predominates in current audiences.

I went to a middle-class public grade school in the early ‘60s. From the fourth grade, most of us participated in either the school band or orchestra. If we didn’t have an instrument, the school would provide one. We were taught “music appreciation.” By sixth grade, we’d sight-read from the large notes on the blackboard, remembering “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge” (and that “space” rhymes with F-A-C-E). Shown pictures of instruments, we could classify them as brass, strings, woodwinds or percussion.

At home, we sat in front of the TV (not always voluntarily) to experience Leonard Bernstein at his “Young People’s Concerts.” The car radio might bring in only six or seven stations, but one was sure to be classical.

I’m nostalgic for this period and sad for the “no child left behind” generation for whom a “pops concert” is little more than a presentation of symphonic arrangements of pieces clearly not warranting the treatment.

Howard W. Hays

Sierra Madre