5. A Would-Be Composer
My attempts at composition were also encouraged. Here again, Betty seems to have taken the view that hearing the composition performed was the best lesson – provided it was within the practical reach of the resources available. Two of my songs were presented at a Musical Evening on 16 July 1967. A group of twelve girls sang my setting of Charles Dalmon’s poem “O what if the fowler?” and eight boys sang “The Raiders”, to a poem by W.H. Ogilvie. They were very elementary even for a boy of fourteen. “No modulations”, complained David Dear, on a visit after his first year at Huddersfield. True, but they were such very simple, folk-like melodies that an academically imposed modulation might have made them worse. More ambitious was Psalm 149, set for unison choir and orchestra. I conducted it. I do not have the programme, but it must have been at the Musical Evening of the autumn term 1967, since the score is dated 30 July. It received such thumping applause that the main part, from the entry of the choir to the end, had to be repeated. It is a very basic tonic-and-dominant affair, but anything else would not have been performed and the sheer fact of putting together a score involving everybody available and which, within its limits, “came off” in performance was an achievement of some sort. It elicited two pieces of advice – “Don’t underestimate yourself” (from Peter Banks*) and “Don’t let success go to your head” (from Miss Leila). Covered both ways!
A diatonically undemanding Overture in G major was well enough received. Then I tried to introduce a slight veneer of modernity, and things got more difficult. My Adagio for flute, bass recorder and strings was a response to hearing the slow movement of Edmund Rubbra’s Fifth Symphony. The model has a grave tone that might not appeal to children, but in terms of dissonant harmonies it should deter only by its blandness. Looking at this piece again, I seem to have caught the Rubbra tone in several places. I think Betty Rayment genuinely admired it, since she told me that she “saw more in it every time I look at it”. A real composition teacher, something Betty never claimed to be, might have helped me to see the weak points and develop it into a useful piece. The response was such as could only happen in an environment where classical music stopped at Brahms and here I think Betty might have opened our young ears a little more. A spot of Stravinsky in the record cabinet, maybe? Or some Prokofiev other than “Peter and the Wolf”? Anyway, back to my Adagio. “This is funny music”, murmured one young violinist. Worse still, after a gruelling rehearsal in which I tried to get the harmonies right, Betty Rayment had an argument, not with one of the children, but with a member of staff, a certain Mr. Hort who played the cello. He insisted that I was being unreasonable in expecting an amateur musician to play the right notes and, worse still, play them in tune. The piece was never performed.
If Betty believed in the Adagio, I have to wonder if she ever thought my next piece could work, or whether she simply felt duty bound to give it a try. This was “Ezekiel”, a setting of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier for unison choir, a dramatic entry by a reciter towards the end and as many instruments as we had available (three descant recorders, two treble recorders, two tenor recorders, tambourine, rasp, wooden blocks, glockenspiel, piano, four violins and three cellos). By the standards of anything anybody at Caldecott was used to, the idiom was modern. I am saved the need to reconstruct this debacle from memory by the discovery that I wrote a very detailed note on the last page of the score the day the rehearsals were abandoned. I thought of scanning it, but it mentions two children who required invented names. I have made no attempt to alter the slightly pretentious style of writing – which some might say has not changed very much over the years.
The story of the rehearsals, leading to the final setback on 2/7/71, the day after the recorder parts of the final section were eventually completed, is instructive, and I would it were held up as an example and caution to other composers in the same position.
In early June, Miss Rayment, music teacher of the Caldecott Community, began to teach the vocal part in classes, meeting (I believe) mixed but generally favourable reception. The only comment offered the composer by any of the children was from one Alessia Small, who was most critical, to say the least. During the latter part of June, the composer was occupied with “A” levels, and completion of the piece continued slowly. Meanwhile, parts began to be copied out, and recorders began to be rehearsed. The aforesaid Alessia was (now 1st descant) again vocal as to her opinion on playing E flat against D (bar 37/4). (Almost in the same breath, she asked why I did not have the work published, so it would become a “famous song”!) Miss Rayment had begun to express “cold feet” about the recorder chords at that point, and about combining these with the vocal line. On Saturday 26th June, the composer rehearsed small groups of children in the vocal parts. At first appearance, the job was hopeless, but they mostly responded to assistance. From 29th June onwards the composer was free from responsibilities regarding “A” levels, and from 30th devoted much time to all the children except those who attended school in Ashford. The recorders were quite encouraging, and on 30th June a rehearsal of cellos 2 and 3 (Miss Diana Howarth and Trevor Warrington) (no. 1 was unable to come) went extremely smoothly, both cellists finding nothing difficult in their parts. Rehearsal of recorders and voices continued. At 4.30 2nd July recorders met in entirety (barring descant 3 who had gone home for the weekend and whose parts were played by Miss Rayment) and rehearsed smoothly from bar 37 – bar 58. All players were extremely cooperative (Alessia still held her opinion, but nonetheless was extremely willing). Furthermore, earlier in the day, the vocal groups had all sung their line at that point against the piano without apparently being put off.
It can be seen, then, that the Community had the material to perform the piece, and the signs were that, though much hard work was yet to be done, the piece could be performed. But the younger children were extremely ill-behaved, and once the initial enthusiasm of working with the composer faded, became almost unmanageable. At 6.00, Fri/July/2nd, the choir in its entirety met, joined later by recorders, cellos and some violins. Despite the fact that 5 members of staff were present, the composer was scarcely able to make his directions heard (he was conducting), and upon stopping an outbreak of talking, jostling, even fighting, broke out. Under those circumstances, Miss Rayment could not see the way to continue (vocal intonation was often excruciatingly bad) and the composer finally agreed.
CKH 2/7/71.
Bad behaviour brought down my final endeavour, which should not have impossible to bring off. A major television network was to give the Caldecott Community a brief slot – for fundraising, I suppose – with Wilfred Pickles as the presenter. The television people wanted a bit of music from the school and, with Betty Rayment’s approval, I arranged a pretty little Tyrolean folk-song for unison chorus and small orchestra. Simple harmonies and rhythms. I do not have the score to this, but there seemed no reason why it should not work. A considerable number of staff were in the orchestra or choir, but at the one full rehearsal it was just impossible to obtain any sort of attention. Maybe the desire to appear on television would have focused the children in the end, but Betty was not prepared to allow them to act like hooligans at the rehearsals, then put on seraphic faces before the television cameras, and substituted it with a piece for a small group of recorder players. My mother thought too much space was given to “those silly little girls playing the recorder”.
One piece never got written, and I mention it to show the sort of encouragement some parts of the Community were willing to give to anyone with a wisp of a creative project in their head. I conceived the idea of writing a children’s opera on a Christmas theme. Betty Rayment immediately said that the person to write the words was Miss Elizabeth (Lloyd). I was greatly in awe of Miss Elizabeth, a striking personality who could be withering in the face of silliness (adult or junior), but also energetically supportive of anything that looked like a good idea. Part of her originality was that, when children were behaving sensibly, she seemed to forget they were children and treated them like adults on her own level. She rapidly typed off a draft and handed it over to me remarking, just as if I were a fellow artist, “I hope this will be all right. If it isn’t, it can easily be changed”. I did not know what to do with it! She had given me a piece in complicated blank verse, with lines of different lengths and irregular metres. Perhaps today I could cope with it, but the proper music for poetry of this kind would have made “Ezekiel” look simple. If I really had been the artist she seemed to imagine, I could have explained to her that these were only children. I needed simple poems, with rhymes and regular rhythms, so I could write a series of pretty tunes. I forget if I made some sort of initial attempt. I have no trace of this project, or of Miss Elizabeth’s poem. Perhaps Betty Rayment explained to her the problem. Miss Elizabeth never made any enquiries – “For goodness sake, get a move on, boy” – would have been typical. The project disappeared in a black hole.
In terms of practical utility, the most successful thing I did in those years may have been a piece I hardly thought of as a composition at all. This was written for the Colt House’s contribution to an entertainment called Talent Night. As a simple means of involving people who did not want to learn speaking lines, Mr. Marshall concocted a sort of Gothic tale about a Princess lost in a dark tower, her handsome suitor and his wicked rival. He was to read this while the boys mimed the action. This was the sort of thing that brought out the best in Mr. Marshall. He laid the parody on with a trowel – “Standing alone in a clearing is the Dark Tower, scene of many dreadful events in the past and about to be witness to yet another awful tale … The sad maiden is wandering alone in the forest … her scheming father, Don Sebastian, has arranged to give her away in marriage to the wicked Don Alphonso …”. “We must keep up our adjectives”, I remember him saying as he piled on yet another. I put together the music in an afternoon. A few minor chords, semiquavers for the bubbling stream, shameless cribs from “Scheherazade” for the fighting and from “The Immortal Hour” for the love scenes, and a snatch of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” for the nuptials. It did not intend to be original and original it was not, but unlike “Ezekiel” it made no unfeasible demands and it worked. The whole thing aroused much hilarity in the audience, especially the wedding scene, with the result that the Mendelssohn quotation got buried amid the laughter.
* Peter Banks’s Colt House connection is discussed in my paragraph on Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths.