1. A Music Room
Richard McClean, who was at Caldecott from 1948 to 1950, recalled among his happiest memories “piano lessons in the library”*. I mention this to stress that when I arrived, not much more than a decade later, in 1961, Caldecott had a Music Room. This was one of the earliest, and most important, achievements of Betty Rayment.
Betty Rayment trained as a music teacher only after she had left school and started to work as some sort of secretary. As soon as she was ready to make her living by teaching music, she found work as a music teacher in a residential school – Caldecott. She left a few years later in order to extend her studies and acquire further qualifications. By the time I knew her she had, at the very least, an LRAM piano diploma and a diploma in Dalcroze Eurythmics. Other diplomas were acquired over the years. When she left for the first time, she considered the Caldecott episode closed because conditions did not allow music to have its proper place in school life. “Piano lessons in the library” may have been very nice for Richard McClean – maybe things were better then. For Betty Rayment, piano lessons in the library, or wherever there was a space, meant that music was an expendable extra, grudgingly allowed by directors who did not mind much if it was there or not.
To her surprise, Betty Rayment was headhunted by Leila Rendel, the Director, about a year later. Miss Leila was frequently visited by inspirations as to this or that person’s place in life, staff as well as children. She had decided that Betty Rayment’s place in life was with the Community. Betty Rayment accepted to return, but only under certain conditions. The most important of these was that there should be a Music Room. So it was that, when I arrived at Caldecott, there was a Music Room in a corner of the former stables that served as schoolrooms, between the Chapel and the storeroom.
Did it really matter where music was taught? Why not in the library?
I think it does matter. Symbolically, it makes a difference if, at a fixed time in the morning or afternoon, the children from the three classes – Margaret Robson’s, Joan Watson’s and Desmond Draper’s when I attended them – were lined up and marched across the schoolyard for singing or other musical activities in a room dedicated to music and with a teacher specialized in just that. A Music Room lends permanence to music in the school. This Music Room had a piano, usually two. It had a white cupboard, kept locked, with an extensive collection of music in it. On top of the cupboard were cardboard folders, each with a student’s name on it. These were the students who had individual lessons in one instrument or another, usually the piano, and contained the music they were studying. Impressively big and bulging was the folder of Caldecott’s second “musical boy”, David Dear – the first “musical boy”, Michael Sherwin, was just before my time. My ambition to have an even bigger and even more bulging folder than David Dear’s was achieved in due course. Another cupboard, this time brown and also kept locked, had various musical instruments; recorders, triangles, tambourines, a pair of cymbals that I was not allowed to bash as often as I would have liked and a few violins, though violins entered the curriculum in a big way slightly later. Betty Rayment had not long been studying the instrument herself in 1961. There was a mono-only gramophone and a collection of LPs, also of 78s which were occasionally brought out. Large windows looked out onto the garden while the window-sill was lined with other music books and scores. On the wall behind the piano there were line-drawings of the great composers with a brief biography beside them. Starting with Bach and Handel (or maybe Purcell), they arrived at Stravinsky and Britten, both still alive. There were timetables of individual lessons and practice times – several other pianos were spread over the schoolrooms and available for practice. Woe betide the student who failed to turn up for his or her lesson or practice, but more of this later. One curious feature of the room was that Betty Rayment detested draughts and had the windows sealed with Sellotape from late autumn through to early spring. All this, except maybe the sealed windows, stood for permanency. Music was a part of Community life.
For most of my ten years at Caldecott, the principal piano in the Music Room was a Broadwood grand, dating from the 1870s. It had a most impressive appearance, in tortoise-shell patterned wood. Slightly less impressive was the piano itself, which had a rather brittle sound. Now that it is fashionable to play “period pianos”, I realize that maybe I did not fully appreciate the opportunity to study Beethoven and later 19th century composers on an instrument such as they might have known themselves. But I am not wholly convinced; I have played other Broadwoods from around the same period which had a warmer, rounder sound. Either this was not a good example or it needed a lot of restoration work. In terms of actual care, though, I doubt if much was amiss. The Community pianos were tuned by the elderly but imposing Mr. Buss, who came down from London for the job. Later on I asked Betty Rayment why a local tuner was not sufficient, when most of the pianos were not very good and got bashed out of tune almost at once anyway. The answer, if you call it that, was that “there is a sort of tradition that, for as long as the Community has had pianos to tune, Mr. Buss has tuned them”. I dwell on Mr. Buss, because he was a typical example of the considerable entourage of external well-wishers Miss Leila and the Community accumulated over the years, not always for any apparent reason. Mr. Buss was undoubtedly a prestigious person to have around, for his professional standing was high. When André Previn took a house in England following his appointment to the London Symphony Orchestra, his first step was to phone for a Steinway – no trying it out in the shop, just “A Steinway, please” – and his second was to call Mr. Buss to tune it. Mr. Buss was somewhat perplexed at what he found. Modern Steinways need a lot of playing and voicing before their true pedigree shines out. “Do you really like that piano?” Mr. Buss ventured to ask as he presented his bill. “I hate its guts”, replied Previn in his best American drawl.
When I arrived at Caldecott, the Broadwood piano was still housed in the Prep Room, another institution that needs a little explanation. It was on the opposite side of the old stables to the Music Room, and it was a place where students who went out to school – practically everyone after the age of eleven – could do their “prep”, or homework, watched over and, if necessary, helped by a member of staff. This member of staff was almost always the co-Director Ethel Davies ("Miss Dave") herself, with her golden retriever Lady dozing grumpily at her feet. This was our main opportunity to get to know Miss Dave directly, which I suppose is why she made a point of doing it.
The Prep Room was only needed for “prep” after about half-past four, when the Grammar and Secondary Modern children got back from school, so it was used by the junior school for various purposes during the day. First of all came morning Assembly, when the headmaster Desmond Draper said a few prayers, a hymn was sung and various notices were given out. Throughout the day, the Prep Room was plied into purpose whenever a bit more space was needed than the classrooms allowed. Eurythmics, of which I remember very little, took place there, and maybe also in the library. Joan Watson tried to teach us dancing in there, and certainly did not succeed with me, though I do not blame her for that. Margaret Robson attempted to get some play-acting out of us. I remember having to say “past the great volcano Popocatepetl” over and over again, trying to make it sound more exciting. There was also a black and white television. I recall in particular, again while I was in Mrs. Robson’s class, how we all thrilled to Stevenson's “The Master of Ballantrae”, which was given in instalments. It must have been a very good adaptation, for the book itself is rather slow. After supper, the Prep Room became the Television Room, where those who wanted could follow “Top of the Pops” and other delights of the 1960s. I held myself aloof from anything like that, so perhaps it is time I got back to my own story.
* See Richard McClean, "Caldecott Memories" on this website.