This chapter sets out to stimulate thought about the place of music in the secondary school, to consider what role it might play within a general education and to do this within a historical perspective. Plato's ideal state required men of courage, disciplined in war, reflective in peace, physically agile and politically adroit. The idea of music as a subject of study, as having a distinctive contribution to make to the whole, had emerged from antiquity. The aim of Plato's regulation of music was to preserve the state, to ensure social order and to establish and sustain a common culture. The curriculum offered was experienced as increasingly irrelevant by the young people for whom it was designed. A gap had grown between policy makers, teachers and youth. The most influential of these new ideas came from the composer-educator John Paynter, who, leading a major curriculum development programme at York University drew on innovative classroom practice.