Allowed to wander ‘off topic’ I shall be perversely succinct! One word explains all ‘background’!
i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gifHowever, I’m sure someone would like me to explain or develop further, ???if only because, seeing it’s me, they’ve just put the kettle on so something useful is happening while they read the expected missive length! Oh, okay, how do I know they didn’t just skip it?
I have a singular, contradictory background. ::)On my mother’s side, while it was ‘okay’ to be in the audience it was certainly not socially okay to be ‘on the boards’. My grandmother’s brother was ‘on the boards’ as a life-time (but private) friend of both Chaplin and Stan Laurel, both of whom he had met while acting with Fred Karno, before either of these two made their names by ‘dropping off’ from Karno’s Circus when it was touring the States.
Despite this rather negative atmosphere :'(my mother’s younger sister was a keen amateur thespian, which apparently was socially ‘okay’ because she wasn’t paid! ???She was a good singer and dancer and was very prominent in the local operatic company in the days when that company could fill the original professional theatre in town (by my time turned into a cinema but retaining its stage areas, fly tower and two-pin electricity supply!) for a whole week! TV was still black and white; there weren’t many TV sets and one channel ITV hadn’t appeared.
So, classical music came to me via the stage. My first most vivid performance was
Die Fledermaus. I remember the wonderful transition from rehearsals with someone banging on the piano with perpetual stops and repeats. Then band calls in the same school hall. Then that magical moment of final dress rehearsal, when you were in the real theatre, the orchestra in its pit, the rich red curtains warmed for the overture and that magical rising of the curtain, opening up two hours or so of utter enchantment.
This was paralleled with a short period, which seemed interminably long to me at the time and which one might have thought would have put me off all music permanently. That was being forced to be taught (as opposed to attempting to learn) the piano.
Looking back, I think I had an insensitive, old-fashioned and inflexible teacher who, not recognising my undoubted but obviously extremely well hidden talent was clearly an idiot!
It also never occurred to anyone that making two hands do different things simultaneously might be the problem, not helped by me being completely confused by the seeming contradictory nature of the G and F clefs!
Later, when learning the recorder and then clarinet, requiring two hands to co-ordinate for the same effect, things were completely different.
I then found reading orchestral scores perversely easier than reading the two clefs for a keyboard instrument!
My father, initially entering the army as a band boy was an excellent clarinettist. Army bandsmen played for dances at the officers’ mess and other social functions, which meant a repertoire of classical and dance music as well as the obvious military music.
That background led me into show music generally and the diverse members of the amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society introduced a wide range of other music for their regular Music Hall nights—hence my fascination for
O Mio Babbino Caro and ballads generally. I can’t sing for toffee
, which may explain my fascination for someone who really can sing exceptionally well, but acting appealed, while my school was classically orientated for school concerts and a general classical introduction to music appreciation and historical development etc.
I was also fortunate in that my school had its own chapel, paid for by a former headmaster at the turn of the twentieth century. He had been touring Italy with his wife during one school summer holiday and came across a delightfully designed little chapel which he thought would look good facing the grass quadrangle, so he acquired the designs and built a replica out of his own funds!
This was part of the contradictory background from which I emerged into the real world at 17 and to which I have never really adjusted!
It seemed perfectly natural to me that the ‘mere’ headmaster of a school, seeing a chapel in Italy which he liked, should reproduce it at the school, paying for it entirely out of his own pocket as a general goodwill gesture!
Even in my day as a junior, the headmaster drove a Rolls Royce convertible (if somewhat old and battered)
and had his own butler to look after his wine cellar for him. I thought all schools ran like this :2fun: until I entered the state-run education arena. As I wanted to enter the printing industry, the state college was the only option, without commuting for three years to LCP (London College of Printing). It was a most interesting contrast and quite an eye-opener!
But I digress. This superb chapel had a magnificent organ. Well, we thought so until about fifteen years ago when it required such a major overhaul that a complete rebuild was required—apparently the original organ builders weren’t that competent!
Such rebuild was totally out of the question and so the pipes were going to be left in place while some electronic device would replace the actual noise-making bit. Uproar.
After all, music had been one of the school’s strong points ever since the chapel had been built because it was able to provide organ tuition—the organist Bowers-Broadbent is a contemporary of mine.
Mercifully, aided by an extremely generous but anonymous gift, the organ was rebuilt and Bowers-Broadbent kindly inaugurated it. In my day it certainly influenced me. I was mesmerised by the Director of Music’s keyboard skills and regretting my own earlier incompetence it was admiration for him that pushed me first to the recorder and then the clarinet, in order to make some kind of music in a reasonably competent manner. My diverse background being such thst music seemed an essential part of life itself, as much as breathing.
Therefore, as far as classical music appreciation is concerned, it was opera, leading to show and dance music, ballads (Music Hall 'bawdy') and then organ, choral and church music. In short, entertainment, entertaining, entertainers in all their aspects, especially with the sound of music associated with them, has always been a part of my life for as long as I can remember,
Gosh, I hope that kettle hasn’t boiled over!
Peter
, which may explain my fascination for someone who really can sing exceptionally well, but acting appealed, while my school was classically orientated for school concerts and a general classical introduction to music appreciation and historical development etc.
and had his own butler to look after his wine cellar for him. I thought all schools ran like this :2fun: until I entered the state-run education arena. As I wanted to enter the printing industry, the state college was the only option, without commuting for three years to LCP (London College of Printing). It was a most interesting contrast and quite an eye-opener!