By the best musical standards the average school concert programme makes dismal reading. The School Orchestra will play the usual Haydn Minuets and Handel Gavottes, with perhaps an imitation Pomp and Circumstance March thrown in. The School Choir will sing some folk songs, as well as some pieces by Bach, Mozart and Schubert; there is nothing to complain of here, but what about the dreary group of so-called modern songs at the end of the programme? No doubt a song or two by Vaughan Williams and Arthur Benjamin will be found, but otherwise the usual things are there: Fairies in the Glen and Flowers in the Spring: and to finish with, the highly moral one with plenty of uplift; there are dozens that fit in here, so there is no need to mention titles. But where is the music of our real modern composers? By modern composers I don't mean the school music masters, church organists, or “educational” composers who at this minute doubtless are turning out another uplifting song for massed unison voices, but the real composers, those who are sometimes in evidence on the Third Programme and at the Cheltenham Festival. It appears that our real composers are not very interested in writing music for our school children to sing and play. True, some have shown the way: Bartók, Kodály, Copland, Vaughan Williams, Britten have all made considerable and worthwhile contributions to this particular field. But where are the rest? The great majority of them are not “Ivory Tower” artists, and yet even in the concert programmes of those schools which are musically enterprising their names seldom if ever appear.