There has been much talk about the importance of musical education. The facts are unarguable: the benefits to a child's mind of classical music have been proven time and again - hence the "Mozart Effect" and other such initiatives. But perhaps the emotional and social benefits of involvement with music have been discussed less than the intellectual ones; and they are at least equally important.
I can't really claim my own experience to be a good example of the academic advantages that are supposed to come from a musical education. My academic prowess diminished through the years in pretty much inverse proportion to my musical progress. I did well at primary school but from the age of 10 or so, most of my school lessons started to bore me, in comparison to the cello lessons and other musical experiences I was having with my inspirational teacher, Jane Cowan.
My school grades plummeted rather alarmingly; all I was interested in was scraping through my O-levels so that I could leave school (at age 14) and concentrate on music full-time - which is what I did.
Luckily, I was at an establishment (the City of London School) where the headmaster understood my priorities and, while of course never encouraging me to neglect my academic studies, allowed me to drop a few subjects so that I could get my homework done during the day and spend the evenings playing music. And, despite a few tuts from disapproving teachers, I didn't suffer too much from my lack of academic success.
My experience was not typical, though. In fact, many of the group of us ''musos'' at CLS were among the highest academic flyers at the school. Perhaps I should add here that I remain extremely glad that I went to a ''normal'' school - especially such an understanding one. (The alternative would have been to attend a specialist music school; and I've never been comfortable with those, successful though some are.)
But, equally, without the musical side to my life that enveloped me after I'd finished with school for the day, I would have been deprived, not just of the career that I still love, but also of a wonderful circle of friends who transformed me socially.
At the Cello Centre (as Jane Cowan's establishment was called), I would mix with a group of people whom I would never have met through my school. Students at the centre were made up of a fascinating array of people - not all professional musicians or music-students.
I remember, among many others, a wonderfully courteous gentleman who had taken up the cello at the age of 60 and, having learned to play one note in tune and with a (fairly) nice sound, used to wonder why he was being asked to spoil everything by playing other notes; a Kurdish gentleman who, while waiting for his lesson, first told me (at the age of 11 or so) about the plight of his people; a cello student, now a very well-known figure in the world of early music, who (to my delight) used to hold me upside-down on a regular basis; and a dog - not strictly a cello-student, but profoundly musical - who had a disconcerting habit of being sick over the floor whenever a cellist was trying to play the difficult octave-passage in the first movement of the Dvorak cello concerto.
With all of these and many others I formed strong friendships. Music binds people together in a way that is, I think, unique. If one plays chamber music with others, one is sharing one's emotions in a way that is hard to do in conversation; even children feel this, as they embark on their first musical journeys. Of course, because music involves such personal feelings, it is easy to fight over it; it is almost like a religion.
That's why so many chamber groups founder. (I liked the name of a string quartet whose concert I saw advertised once in Poland: the Quarrel Quartet. Good on them - honesty is a good policy.) But there is also a very special bond between people who explore a piece of music together; it is as if they have gone to another world, which cannot really be described to those who have not experienced it.
Families, too, are brought immeasurably closer when more than one sibling plays a musical instrument. Both my sisters are professional musicians - and still now, in our 50s and 60s, we know many of the same people, constantly exchange musical opinions, and are interested in the same gossip.
Our connected experiences bind the family together. It doesn't matter whether children playing music together have any intention of turning professional; just the sense of having to listen to one another, of doing something that is separate from school-life, shared, and less hierarchical in terms of age than most activities, is enough to bring them closer together.
Finally, just listening to the classics can bring lasting happiness into a child's life. The great composers, if introduced in the right way, can become their friends for life. Falling in love with works such as The Rite of Spring, the Pastoral symphony, The Magic Flute and so on - and children will fall in love with them as long as they're introduced to them at an age when they are still open to all forms of music - is of huge benefit to a child's emotional well-being. A child humming a tune by Mozart is a happy child. Yes, he or she may also prosper academically; but ultimately that is just a side benefit.
