Musical tales from the mists of time

Mists. Of time or otherwise.

Way back in the mists of time – or the beginning of the 1980s, as it is sometimes known – I entertained ideas of a very specific career.

I wanted to be a singer.

My music teachers considered it far from impossible: Noel McKee – probably the best teacher I ever had in any subject, throughout my entire schooling – believed that I had a very “Russian middle register”.

Other teachers and tutors later said that, while I didn’t have perfect pitch, I had perfect tone. Which doesn’t sound bad, really, even viewed through the prism of several intervening decades.

I was a mezzo – which often seemed to me to be something of a neither-here-nor-there sort of voice, but wasn’t.

Unfortunately, despite the extraordinary help and support of Noel over my three years at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School, I couldn’t quite make up the lost ground on theory that had occurred at Fairfield, where my O’ level music lessons had been a dreadful experience – characterised in my memory by a bullying approach from the teacher, that I excluded myself from on mornings by walking (slowly) to school with a claim of bus problems.

It was an approach that, no matter how bad I was at some other subjects, I never extended to any other lesson or course.

Now for clarity, I could never have sung Wagner – or Verdi or Puccini or any other grand opera, for that matter. There was no way that I had that level of voice.

But light opera, operetta, oratorio and lieder were well within my vocal capabilities.

I would love to have sung Gilbert and Sullivan with the D’Oyly Carte.

But hey ho – it wasn’t to be.

It’s not snide to say that parental support was not all it could have been.

My father had paid one of his church organists to teach me some basic piano many years earlier, but it was dire.

Dull lessons that inspired nobody. Indeed, I don’t recall, at that point, being particularly enthused about learning. I suspect the decision that I should be taught was a combination of our having a piano in the house – thanks to my mother’s parents – and some cock-eyed idea of respectably-educated young gals, combined with one of an even more respectable young woman who could play the organ in church.

That I later pretty much taught myself is at least a suggestion that, with a good teacher, I might have prospered more, earlier.

That I taught myself via a piano score of Oliver! is even more of an indication that the parental choice of music was hardly inspirational.

But that was a theme that was to be repeated over and again.

By the second half of the 1970s, I was regularly competing in an annual local festival in Ashton-under-Lyne, in a variety of categories – including singing.

My parents exercised a certain amount of control over what I sang. Hymns were expected – or old songs like Cherry Ripe, which came out of a brown leather-clad tome that almost seemed to take on the status of family heirloom. I think I still have it somewhere.

I combined a lack of inspiration with nerves. Not good.

Later, in Lancaster, I carried on this trend – albeit tempered by Noel accompanying me for rather better pieces (a bit of Mozart, some Rachmaninov, Schubert …).

But looking back, I realise that I had the most extraordinarily limited knowledge of what was possible.

Nor were my parents particularly encouraging in other ways.

When I sang the mezzo/alto solo in an all-female arrangement of Fauré’s magnificent requiem in a big concert at school, they didn’t attend. I remember my mother sniffily noting that it was Catholic music.

It was actually staged at St Martin’s College – beyond, even, the school hall.

Oh goodness, there were nerves. I remember standing there, score in hand, with Noel before me as conductor, coaxing me, encouraging me – because he believed in me and knew I could do it.

But my parents couldn’t put their own beliefs aside to attend such an occasion.

The school was not Catholic. Noel was an Anglican.

But my parents could not set aside their own beliefs aside to support their own daughter.

These days I have no belief left in any god that has been described by any human civilisation.

But it doesn’t mean that I cannot still take great joy in music that was written for religious purposes. Only yesterday, I listened to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis for the first time – wow: simply wow.

Yet my parents could not set aside their most sectarian and puritanical instincts in order to support their own offspring.

Mind, they didn’t attend when I was a soloist when we performed Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols a year or so later either, and Britten was, like us, a Prod.

There are times when I wonder just what they were on.

And do you think I can talk to them about it?

No.

What good would it do? What would be the point?

In so many ways, it would seem so petty; so small-minded and so – arguably – disrespectful of clearly seriously-held beliefs.

Not that I didn’t keep trying, on the singing level, for many years.

Some years later, after I moved south to find work and spent some 18 months living with my parents in Reading and commuting to London every day, we hit a similar situation.

My father was, as that time, minister to a congregation that met at an old – well, ancient really – church in Henley on Thames, shared with the local Anglicans.

A concert was planned, with the Reading Male Voice Choir. They needed a soloist for a couple of interludes. My father volunteered me.

I was still trying to get into the business, and spending money on singing classes with a serious tutor. And I was just starting to understand that there was a whole range of female vocal styles out there that I had hardly even heard of – I’d just, for instance, ‘discovered’, Barbra Streisand.

So, four songs across two interludes.

My parents made it quite clear that they expected hymns or religious songs.

I went down the musicals route. I rehearsed with the conductor/pianist, who was wonderful (and himself, a clergy son).

In the end, the first three songs went – if not badly, then not inspirationally.

But something happened on the fourth. I’d just recently discovered Cole Porter’s Everytime We Say Goodbye (thanks to Mick Hucknell) and amazingly, it came off completely.

It was sung with eyes shut – not as a deliberate choice, but because that was what happened – and I could feel the mood in that ancient building change. For once, I got them and I held them.

I’ve done it again since, a few times – impromptu performances, usually in pubs: Porter again or Gershwin. Getting lost in the music and finding that the audience, in spite of any booze, goes completely quiet and listens.

Like so many other people, my life could have taken all sorts of different directions.

I don’t dislike – never mind hate – where I am now. But I do sometimes wonder about what might have been …

Why has all this come back again right now?

Well, partly because I have had that opportunity – which I’ve explained more than once recently – to listen to music more than usual.

I find myself having a remarkable amount of understanding – but not nearly as much as if I’d carried on with my music studies.

And perhaps rather unusually for me, I find myself regretting that I stopped learning about music for so long. Because going back to it now, with some intensity, reminds me of just how much it means to me.

More tripe about Manchester

So here we are, on the way 'oop North'.

In recent days, my mind has turned again to the Lancaster Footlights and a stage production that I saw them do (before I joined them) of Bill Tidy's wonderful strip cartoon, The Fosdyke Saga.

Set in Manchester, it tells of the trials and tribulations of tripe baron Josiah Fosdyke and his family, who are pitted in eternal battle against the dastardly Roger Ditchley.

Alan Plater, who wrote the script, is sadly no longer with us. He was a wonderful writer – particularly about the north of England – with a fabulous CV that, among the serious works such as A Very British Coup, includes the magnificent comedies, Beiderbecke Trilogy, Doggin' Around (please, somebody – release this on DVD!) and The Last of the Blonde Bombshells.

His works that are set in the north have a genuine warmth and self-deprecating quality. He was never mawkishly sentimental, but always had tremendous humanity.

The Fosdyke Saga is, since it's based on a cartoon, a little different, and takes the humour to more farcical extents. I remember it with massive pleasure and still have a copy of the script.

When the Footies did the play, the music – and there's plenty of it – was arranged by Noel McKee, my music teacher at the time. Later, I used one of the pieces from the play as an audition piece for college.

Noel, a Salford boy himself, spent the time to teach me the nuances of the accent, since my own northern tones, when I lapse from my practiced 'posh' into Northern, are actually those of Thameside, which is a little further to east of Manchester proper, edging onto the backbone of England, the Pennine chain.

I'm not sure the piece was fully appreciated by some of the stuffier interviewers – perhaps it lacked a classical touch? Although my other piece was a long speech by Paulina from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.

I've never actually eaten tripe – except in France, as andouillette, a tripe sausage, with a course mustard sauce. It was okay – I'd try it again, but I'm not falling over myself to eat tripe and onions, the classic way it used to be eaten in the north of England.

But here, with great a wave to the late, great Mr Plater – and to Noel, who died a couple of years ago, before I ever really got the chance to thank him really introducing me to classical music – is the poem he wrote for the The Fosdyke Saga and which formed half of my audition routine way back at the very beginning of the 1980s.

Sonnet to Manchester

Leeds hath not anything to show more fair
Thick as short planks be he who would pass by
A cloud so noxious in intensity
Manchester now doth like a string vest wear
The dankness of the morning: surly folk,
Pubs, pawnshops, doggy dirt and knackers' yards
And drunken Irish navvies playing cards
All dull and spluttering in the acrid smoke
Never did muck more masochistic crown
In chocking splendour, never to wash off.
Never saw I a town so dirty brown,
Canal so sluggish like a smoker's cough.
Dear God, the very houses seem to frown
And all that mighty heart says: Bugger off.

Of Wagner and some rather good dumplings

This is turning into a funny old year for finally doing musical things that I've dreamed of for around three decades.

In April, it was finally getting to see Ultravox live – and last week, it was seeing the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Indeed, not just seeing them, but seeing them in the Philharmonie, their own home concert hall.

I'd first become aware of the Berlin Phil back at the end of the 1970s, when I was studying music 'O' level at school, and that awareness developed when I started 'A' level studies.

My mother, delighted that I was listening to something other than 'pop', started buying me records at Christmas and birthday. Given the wide world of choice that is available in the classical music world, I had rapidly developed a mantra for her to remember: Deutsche Grammophon, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan: simple.

I have an absolutely specific memory from the time: we had started 'A' levels and were being introduced to one of our set works, Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. It was a recording by ... well, you can guess. The piece has remained one of my favourites, but as I sat in the tiny attic classroom, listening to this extraordinary music for the first time, I was transported to a pastoral paradise; a world of willows trailing their fronds into gently flowing water, of dappling sunlight and, of course, of a flute-playing faun. It was the most sensual music that I'd ever heard.

So when we booked our trip to Berlin, I leapt at the opportunity to see if it was possible to attend a concert.

If memory serves, they were performing three concerts in the city last week, but choice had been diminished by demand (including for a performance of Debussy's La Mer) so I simply grabbed what I could.

That was to be for the world premiere of a new piece for wind quintet and orchestra by German composer Siegfried Matthus, plus highlights of acts two and three of Wagner's Götterdämmerung to round out a complete programme.

Quick research told me little about Matthus, but I managed to find a recording of his Symphony No2 and Concerto for Violincello and orchestra to offer a taste of what we were getting ourselves into.

Gulp. This was very modern – at least, very atonal.

Now we're not averse to modern serious music, so we simply waited for the night itself.

It was a windy walk to the Philharmonie. We made sure we were in plenty of time. After taking a few snaps of Hans Scharoun's building, I collected my tickets. For pretty much the whole week I'd been in a calm glow – enjoying so much of the trip, but not being overly excitable about anything. At this point, as I came close to actually kissing my ticket, the realisation of just how much it meant started to dawn.

We raided the shop – a number of recordings to add to the collection – and then slowly headed to our seats upstairs. Up a lot of stairs, to be accurate.

As we waited in the remarkable auditorium, famous for its accoustics, my mind drifted back to those school music lessons. At 'A' level there had been just six of us. I wondered if any of the others had continued to listen to – or even play – music. And as the orchestra drifted in, I found myself thinking of Noel McKee, our wonderful teacher, and thinking that he'd be very proud, in his ever so slightly pretend-grumpy way, that at least one of his pupils had made it to where I was sitting.

The Matthus piece was first up. With a substantial orchestra plus the quintet, we were surprised when Sir Simon Rattle took his place at a set of kettle drums next to his conducting podium – and started the performance on these slightly off-tune instruments, before turning to step into his normal position (he returned to the drums to conclude the work too).

The piece was fascinating. It gave us reminders of the Classical, of the pastoral/Romantic and of the 20th century, with percussive sections that owed a great deal to jazz. And all linked by a scuttling theme.

Far more obviously melodic than expected, it seemed to be telling the listener that nothing is new – and that we can never fully escape all previous forms: that history, if you will, is always with us; that everything is a circle. And the idea of a musical past woven into a musical present seemed to perfectly reflect this city of history on every corner too.

This being a world premiere, we were treated to that most unusual sight at a 'classical' concert – the composer, who took his place alongside Rattle at the end for our plaudits.

A fascinating and enjoyable work, I'm hoping it'll be released on disc – not least because I want to actually listen to it carefully again.

And Rattle is an intriguing conductor to watch – his style is almost as bubbly as his distinctive hair; he can hardly stand still. And yet, like all the best conductors – and after eight years in Berlin, Rattle's showing he's no mug at this game – he exudes authority. It's something that I find fascinating. Von Karajan almost always conducted with his eyes closed, sometimes barely moving. Yet he exerted complete control over the musicians (not without a few highly-strung souls amongst them either). On one occasion at a rehearsal, a brass player apparently made a slight mistake. All Von K did was open an eye to look briefly in his direction. The man later recorded that he felt compelled not to make the same error again.

After a break – always interesting to watch the stage hands change things around for different orchestrations – Rattle let the orchestra rip. If anyone was in any doubt that this was going to be full-blown (some would say overblown) 19th century German romanticism, then the presence of an amazing four harps on stage, plus around 45 violins (according to The Other Half, who counted them) should have acted as a warning. It's no wonder Wagner needed to build his own opera house. Although, to be fair, he was hardly the only composer of the period who scored for big bands – Mahler and Richard Strauss were not very far behind.

Now I appreciate that Wagner is an acquired taste, but whilst I'm still not hugely up on the singing bits, the straight orchestral stuff can send me into ecstasy. With added goosebumps. It's music that has a G factor, forceing you back into your seat, holding you there and demanding you pay attention.

And when a clear, piercing brass theme emerged above the quivering strings in the funeral march, I was almost reduced to total mush.

As we left the auditorium, The Other Half asked how I was. "I'm going to try to start breathing again," was all I could muster, as I attempted to make my insides relax.

We walked in silence from the Philharmonie toward Potsdamer Platz. Food was required. Amid the neon and steel and glass, Weinhaus Huth stands as the one remaining pre-war building, but Diekmann, the highly-lauded restaurant there, was accepting no new customers that night.

We found a large, modern venue still serving and settled down with beers (a dark Franzikaner for me – oh joy), trying to order our thoughts, having ordered the food.

Although assorted guides to the city berate the area for its lack of quality eating places (apart from Diekmann), I very much enjoyed a dish of Königsberger Klopse – veal meatballs, served with a traditional caper sauce, plus a gem lettuce salad and, of course, potatoes. The meatballs, I'm delighted to say, were light as a feather and very tasty.

It really was not a bad way to conclude a night I'd waited 30 years for. And are the Berlin Phil really good? Oh yes – very!

The school day that went with a bang

If I’d wanted to announce my arrival at my new school any more spectacularly, I’d have had some difficulty.

There I was, nearly 17 and having flunked most of my ‘O’ levels. The exams were taken a couple of months before the family moved from just outside Manchester, which had been our home for eight years, to Lancaster, somewhat further north.

My father, clearly so pissed off with the lack of academic achievement that would allow him to boast about my prowess, mentioned this to our family doctor, who in turn suggested that my exam performance had quite probably been hindered by the impending move after the longest period of stability in my life to that point.

Fortunately, this argument seemed to placate my parents. And the school that I had been intended to enter in order to do my ‘A’ levels took me on anyway – on the proviso that I did my fifth year and my ‘O’ levels all over again.

So I started at LGGS. And somehow – although for the life of me I can’t imagine how – found myself getting attached quite quickly to a circle of girls from various years, all of whom were linked by varying degrees of the sort of eccentricity that teachers at my previous school had so nervously reported to my parents as present in me.

And then, for some reason or other, in my third week at the school, I accepted a dare.

You used to be able to buy little twists of paper that had some powder in them, which would make a very pleasing ‘bang’ when dropped forcefully.

One day, early in the morning, I took three of these things and, using Blu-tac, attached them underneath the pedals of the grand piano in the school hall. Then I let events unfold.

Miss Owen, our headmistress, cut an imposing figure. Tall and rather large, she had permed white hair, wore thick-rimmed spectacles, had a booming voice and absolutely no taste in clothes whatsoever. A familiar ensemble consisted of a dress in wide stripes of pink and purple, with a red cardigan on top. And always, always a string of double pearls. Her geometry lessons were generally considered to be ‘character building’. Fortunately – or perhaps not – I escaped ever having my character subject to such an exercise in construction.

Biggo had a loyal deputy called Mrs Rigby, who was tiny and ran around the school in ‘badger boots' (black footwear with a white stripe down the middle). Riggers (or ‘Rigour Mortis’ as she was also known), usually wore an academic gown, which floated out, Batman-like, as she stalked the corridors hunting for girls whose shoes had heels that were more than the prescribed height.

She had a ruler for that purpose, and when fashion created heels that were deceptively curved, she changed it for a flexible ruler. You didn’t get much past Riggers – who was also renowned for wearing hats to speech day that looked like upturned jelly moulds or unexploded nuclear bombs.

Then there was Mr McKee, the music teacher – and obligatory eccentric conductor of the school choir and orchestra. He and Biggo were arch enemies – although to be fair, pretty much every teacher in the school was an enemy of Biggo: if she achieved nothing else, she united the girls and staff against her. Noel was just rather more obviously so an enemy and everyone knew it.

One of the most dismally flunked of my ‘O’ levels had been in music, but at that point, it was the one course that I absolutely did not want to repeat, having been constantly vilified by my previous teacher for what I later realised were her failings: I’d barely been taught half the course – which Noel went on to do in his spare time, helping me catch up and get my qualification. But that's another story. However, Biggo – possibly thinking that Noel could do with a particularly reluctant student – insisted I retake music.

One of Noel’s particular ways of irritating our esteemed head was to be rather clever with his selection of music to be played as we exited the hall after morning assembly. On one occasion, for instance, he crept behind his curtain and set the record player to blast out the can-can from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld.

Biggo’s expression was one of horror when her girls gave in to the irresistible urge to grab skirts and kick their legs into the air.

On the day of my dare, Noel was seated at his piano, waiting to play the hymn, as Biggo marched from her office, up the stairs and onto the stage.

“We will now sing,” she intoned, before a single ‘bang’ interrupted her.

She looked around, unable to work out what had happened. In the gallery, one teacher turned to another and said (rather optimistically, I thought): “Someone’s shot Miss Owen!”

Biggo waited and then tried again.

“We will now sing hymn number …”

BANG!!

We did manage to get through assembly. Just.

A few days later, as I was carrying a record player from a classroom to the storeroom for Noel, he turned on me.

“You put snaps on my piano,” he growled. One of those who had dared me had, it appeared, squealed under pressure.

“Yes,” I said simply. Which considerably appeased Noel, who sniffed and said, with a modicum of respect: “Well, at least you’ve got the guts to admit it,” before informing me that, after assembly the following day, I was to join him for a visit to Biggo. It seemed that in the absence of any other culprit, he was in Biggo’s firing line.

The next day, somewhat nervously, I waited silently outside her office for my interview. When the little traffic lights outside eventually turned to green, Noel opened the dark door, ushered me in and, with the words “here’s our explosives expert,” left.

The thing was, if I’d been nervous, that comment left me struggling not to guffaw. I stared at the floor desperately fighting the urge to giggle. Biggo took that for embarrassment – or downright shame.

“I assume that this is the sort of thing that went on in your previous school,” she boomed from behind her desk. Oh if only she’d known – I’d never done anything remotely like that in my life before.

“So I’ll put this on your school record and we shall leave it there.”

I fled gratefully, hoping that it would all die down, and thinking I’d got off really rather lightly.

But in the coming weeks, the story did the rounds of the city. Biggo was a legend – and any such event took on legendary status too. Eventually – inevitably – it found it’s way to my father, who related it over dinner one evening to the full family. And perhaps most surprisingly of all, it turned out that that was one of a very limited number of occasions on which he was actually proud of me.

Break the rules and cause a stir in the city and, apparently, you’re in favour. Perhaps it was one of the few times when I reminded him of how he’d like to see himself?

There are many more stories from my days at LGGS, which were really remarkably like one of those old school books for girls, penned by Angela Brazil or Enid Blyton. But for the time being, suffice it to say that Noel became a good friend, that those eccentric girls became The Rat Pack and that that was far from the last of my encounters with the legendary Biggo.