Although my father enjoyed playing popular music on the piano (so long as it was in F major - never fathomed why), it was my mother who insisted on my having piano lessons. My first teacher at Caldecott was Dilys Bartholomew. I remember her for two reasons: first, she permanently numbered the digits on my hands 1 to 5, starting with the thumb; secondly, she married a Mr Bartholomew, so did not have to change her name. Later, Betty Rayment took over as music teacher, a no-nonsense lady from Nottingham from whom I learned a great deal. My musical diet was largely Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and I enjoyed playing Haydn symphonies with her in a piano duet version. I remember two other musical activities at Caldecott: in the primary school the class regularly sat in the music room singing traditional folksongs such as “Barbara Allen” with Mrs Robson, an aspect of the curriculum now sadly missing from school life; the other was the eurythmics when the children danced round in their underpants but learned a sense of rhythm.
I enjoyed attending Miss Leila's classical music listening on Sunday evenings, but my appreciation of more modern music was slow to develop. The most modern piece I heard regularly was Scheherezade by Rimsky Korsakov: When I went to the Kent Junior Music School in Maidstone on Saturday mornings, I still found modern music hard to follow: a teacher wrote on my Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra "listen to it again".
At the age of 15, I went to Gordonstoun where my musical education flourished under an inspirational teacher, Robert Anderson. There I broadened my range of appreciated music, and learned choral singing, to play keyboard continuo (often at short notice) and played a couple of Bach concertos with the orchestra, and had my first experience of madrigals. I passed my LRAM on leaving school, spending the summer holidays reading up on French music of the second half of the 19th Century (a subject about which I knew virtually nothing).
Appreciation of early music came later, when I went to Dartington for summer schools and Roger Norrington brought Monteverdi, Schutz and Purcell with him. I got into Wagner in a big way, and through him, began to enjoy Richard Strauss, especially Salome and Metamorphosen. I discovered an affinity with Berlioz whose letters I admired as well as his music. Sometimes I got to know pieces by accident: on one occasion I borrowed a record of Tippett's Concerto for Orchestra by mistake for his Concerto for Double String Orchestra. In 1965 Robert formed a choir for the nurses at Barts Hospital and asked me to sing. That started me on a huge choral repertoire. I well remember the choir taking a major step forward when Robert came on to conduct Elgar's Dream of Gerontius without a score. Later I became the choir's Assistant Conductor which involved some programme planning.
Later I became involved with our local church as organist, and got to know a different repertoire. I even managed to find a piece by Messaien I could play! Then, after the children had grown up, I joined a small local auditioned choir where I discovered many modern composers including Arvo Part, John Taverner and James Macmillan. I sang in a Motet by King John IV of Portugal. At last, now that I’m in my seventies, I can claim an extensive repertoire of music from the 14th century to the present day. It has taken a long time, but the grounding I had at Caldecott in Classical and early Romantic music has paved the way to this being a constant and continuing learning experience.
[This was originally published in the Caldecott Association Newsletter for June 2016, and we believe it is the version which Bob Lawton uploaded to the website, but was later lost in a severe hacking attack]