Leading composer rages at the New Labour 'philistines'

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, according to Sir Peter, had become "ever more zombie-like, and the bands ruthlessly exploited".

He added: "The exploited victims do not feel themselves the exploited subjects of designs upon their minds and pockets ... insulating the victims from all reality, and particularly from political reality.

"Of course, keeping people in a state of ignorance is good for the government in power - it precludes the possibility of articulate criticism, induces political apathy, and its by-product is a frustration-which bursts forth into seemingly mindless, unmotivated violence.

"Education, or its perverse inversion, becomes a tool with which to keep the underclasses in their place, incidentally ensuring bursting prisons."

Sir Peter holds the musical equivalent of the poet laureateship. His criticisms of the Government's attitude towards music education came in a speech to the Incorporated Society of Musicians.

He said standards were still below those when he taught at a grammar school in the early 1960s.

Praising classical music, he said: "In our music, harmony and architecture have given rhythm as such a multi-layered depth unique in all of music history.

"To reduce all of this subtlety by placing a rock beat behind Mozart's Symphony No 40 is like sticking orange plastic boobs on the Mona Lisa."

Sir Peter, 72, said he was an "archetypal working-class child" who would have been "stymied" had he not been taught musical notation.

He also benefited from free education with scholarships to music schools.

Not teaching children how to read classical music was the equivalent of "not teaching how to write the alphabet, or numbers", he said.

Colin Bradbury, the society's president, told the conference in Torquay the content of Labour's planned music manifesto was "disappointing".

"In spite of all the publicity and razzmatazz it is so unambitious," he said."We would expect a pledge to have more primary school teachers trained in music, and all we get is the promise of "music leaders" and " community musicians", with no mention of who they are, how they are to be selected and what their qualifications should be.

"This would be unthinkable in any other school subject. In the sciences it would be heresy."

Sir Peter is no stranger to controversy. He was cautioned by police in March 2005 after the remains of a swan - a protected species - were found at his Orkney home. When officers arrived at his house, he offered them swan terrine.