Letters | 11 October 2012

The views of Sentamu

Sir: I wonder if Archbishop Sentamu is really the best candidate for Canterbury as you suggest (Leading article, 6 October). Cutting up his dog collar on live television in protest against President Mugabe was a splendid gesture; but how exactly has it helped anyone in Zimbabwe? He is wrong in any case about gay marriage. It is absolutely within the remit of the state to redefine what in the first instance is a civil contract. Religious groups may make rules on the subject for their own members, but they surely have no right to bind those who don’t share their belief.
Tim Hudson

West Sussex

Debating genius

Sir: I was amused by the article about the Beatles in last week’s issue (‘Was Lennon really a genius?’, 6 October). I’m only a hack amateur musician and certainly not a ‘music expert’ (what is that anyway?), but I listen to enough music from across many decades and styles to know that Mozart, Purcell and Handel changed nothing: sure, they wrote good tunes, but music wasn’t changed one iota because of them. The form and style was there before them. Unlike Lennon and McCartney: true geniuses. They took an emerging, sex-based dynamic style (black music), and blended it with classical form, and British and Asian folk music, to create a unique and absorbing body of work where no two songs are alike. And in doing so, opened the door to endless musical directions and forms for those artists who picked up the baton after them (pun intended). ‘Classical’ music hasn’t changed, because there’s been no ‘Lennon and McCartney’ in the mix, just (among others) the composers mentioned in the article, who were certainly very talented, but sadly, not geniuses; classical music is still waiting for that to happen.
John McInnes

Iraq

Sir: Why focus on Lennon when the true songsmith is McCartney? Giedroyc and Reed destroy their own credibility by citing the execrable ‘Imagine’ as one of Lennon’s ‘stronger’ songs.