But no-one in the audience at the Hay festival doubted the passion in his voice when he warned against scaling down music lessons for children. The singer and bassist made The Police the world's biggest band in the 1980s and recently led them on a global reunion tour. But he has spent much of his career experimenting with everything from jazz to classical to medieval music, and drew his loudest applause of the night when he was asked how to help the young appreciate all kinds of sounds.
"We should stop cutting music programmes in schools," was the immediate reply. "It's vitally important that our kids are exposed to music: give them the opportunity to play instruments." Sting, who left the classroom in the mid-1970s to become a full-time musician, recalled how his favourite lessons involved borrowing as many instruments as he could - "guitars, banjos... nose flutes! And let the kids mess around". He warned that while the country did not produce much any more, "we do make art and music".
Sting was at the literary festival in Powys with his wife, the actress and producer Trudie Styler, to discuss Twin Spirits, a play they performed on Broadway as an Aids benefit about the 19th Century German composer Robert Schumann and his wife Clara.
Prolific e-mailer The composer of some of the biggest hits of the past three decades, from Every Breath You Take to Message in a Bottle and Englishman in New York, also confessed that he could not explain the art of his songwriting. "It's still a mystery to me, the whole idea of how you write songs, and I've been doing it all my life". Pressed to say whether he wrote songs for his wife, he said: "Of course I do." But he dismissed as banal "I love you, you love me songs", whereas "I love you, you love somebody else, is more interesting".
Celebrity watchers will have been intrigued by small glimpses into the life of a power couple. Ms Styler described her husband as a prolific e-mailer. He added: "I do good love letters, I'm very happy to say". Which means he treats e-mails like formal letters, starting with "Dear..." Judging by their schedules, there will be more of those.
O autorovi| BBC, Stránku připravila Marta Pelechová
