ABSTRACT
The music educational experiment of the BBC had succeeded in a wave of People's War idealism, but not in the manner its proponents had hoped. The preference for Tchaikovsky among radio listeners is as significant a commentary on the inherent nature of the radio voice as on the broader social issues of contemporary listening habits. The claim that swung classics could promote classical music appreciation was an indefensible position at the BBC. The Mozart concerto sequence in Listen to Britain celebrated the ability of classical music to engage the morale of a wide range of wartime citizens, who engaged with the music in many different ways. The concerto sequence in Listen to Britain embodied two powerful and contradictory understandings of classical music and its role in Britain's war effort. Soldiers, sailors and airmen listened communally in billets, dug-outs, messes, and canteens, where listening was by necessity distracted and subject to interruption, whether by conversation or by the call of duty.
