Leading Composer Rages at the New Labour 'Philistines'

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TONY Blair is encouraging an 'atmosphere of philistinism', according to one of our top composers.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Master of the Queen's Music, criticised the Government for adopting an attitude that 'working with serious classical music is elitist'.

He said the Labour administration was 'an utterly philistine government, whose Prime Minister recently read a platitudinous speech about the health of the arts in Britain, when his own horizons are rock and pop'.

Classical music had 'proved comparatively resistant to commercial exploitation, unlike certain types of music we are pressed now to regard as its absolute equal'.

Pop music, …