“The idea that it is possible not only to pass, but to excel, in the mainstream of secondary musical education seems as ridiculous as the idea that one might be able to pass English GCSE without ever learning to read and write. But in so far as the roots of western musical notation lie in its role as an heuristic device for practicing musicians – theorists of music at the time used numbers and ratios to express musical intervals – it is also possible to conceive that in contexts where this is no longer a practical advantage, the learning of musical notation may have become unnecessary.”