Michael White asks an interesting question:
Why are the students on University Challenge so muscially illiterate?
As he writes:
The other night was typical: two good teams who could answer the
most obscure questions about everything from photosynthesis to
post-Soviet economic theory. But faced with a snatch of Peter Pears
singing Turn of the Screw, they had no idea. One thought it might be
Mozart. The other Puccini. And in the follow-up round in which they
were asked to identiy three more Britten operas, they said Peer Gynt to
every one.This wasn’t just bad luck. I can recall past programmes where
neither team knew what Messiah was and failed to identify Elgar’s
Engima (living up to its name I suppose). It happens week after week.
And it’s depressing.
Forgive this blatant attempt at salesmanship, but I answer this question in my book, Ten Days That Changed The Nation, in the chapter on the Arts Council. Read it and find out!
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