ALTERNATIVELY SPEAKING WITH MARK BRITTAIN.

Byline: MARK BRITTAIN

LOVERS of orchestral classical music - especially large scale works written since around 1890 - will instinctively know that a lot of the buzz they get comes from the sheer unalloyed noise. It's not simply the sound, it's the physical, mechanical vibrations, the sound waves themselves.

A full modern symphony orchestra going full pelt is a unique experience. The air resonates, your ear drums move like loud speakers in an equal and opposite reaction to the animal skins in the percussion, the reeds, the cat gut (in fact sheep intestines), and the brass; you break out in a sweat and your spine tingles fit to shatter into its constituent vertebrae. Small wonder the walls of Jericho were said to have been reduced to rubble by trumpets.

Anyone who has yet to experience these extraordinary, exuberant sensations could do worse than devote some time to Mahler, Richard Strauss or Shostakovich, but there are dozens of other composers whose scores delight in blasting out your eustachian tubes and blowing your mind in equal measure. Elgar, born 150 years ago last Saturday, was no slouch either. If you listen to the moment when Gerontius is ushered before the throne of God you'll get the idea - but what's important is that it should be very loud indeed, every instrument in the orchestra and every voice in the choir letting rip gloriously, simultaneously.

Now, however, a piece of health and safety legislation from the lads and lasses at EU HQ is recommending orchestras play a little more quietly (or mezza voce, as they might say) to protect the players' hearing.

The guidelines for the Control of Noise at Work Regulations (which came into force in April last year but don't need to be implemented until next April) suggest concerts balance loud works with quieter pieces, musicians wear earplugs or sit behind acoustic screens, and rehearsals be conducted, as it were, at reduced volume.

This way, by keeping the average weekly decibel level exposure down, orchestras will apparently be able to performat full volume for short periods without exceeding the permitted levels.

This column has the greatest respect for musicians and would not under any circumstances wish their hearing to be impaired, but I do hope common sense will prevail without the courts getting involved. It was probably inevitable that legislation would be introduced at some stage but the fact is that no compositions consist exclusively of fortissimos - and no-one in their right mind would programme, say, Stravinsky's Firebird with Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra and Copland's El Salon Mexico. It would be like having chicken vindaloo followed by chilli con carne (with extra tabasco), washed down with neat vodka.

As to what Wagner would have said about Brussels-based eurocrats meddling with his music, this family newspaper will best leave readers to imagine.

While on the subject of noise, news reaches us that Britons lose or damage on average a staggering 4.5m mobile phones, worth pounds 342m, every year.

Of these some 885,000 are accidentally dropped into toilets and discarded or even flushed away, according to new research by SimplySwitch.com2 - the price comparison and switching service.

Who said good riddance to bad rubbish?