Musical Memories (17 March 1978)

I am very pleased that the Milton Keynes Festival of the Arts has achieved its 10^th birthday and is well poised for the next decade.  I admit that when the festival was projected 10 years ago I was not very sanguine about its prospects.  I believed that such events, so popular at one time, had had their day.  Indeed, I think that at least one in the region has ceased to exist since that time.  In the case of Milton Keynes, however, it seems that I was wrong.  There have been some dull years, but now there are more entries than ever before.  Therefore, I must congratulate the organisers not only on their work, but also on their faith and foresight.

As I looked and listened to the many splendid items at the prize winners’ concert my mind went back many years to the time when I myself took part in something similar.  It was not called a festival, nor an Eisteddfod, but the idea was the same.

I was aged about 12 at the time.  In the case of Milton piano-playing class of my age group.  The competitions were held in a school much later than our village school, but close by.  As the day drew nigh there was a good deal of excitement, though more on the part of parents than of the entrants.  I forget what other sections there were besides those for piano-playing and singing, but in each of those cases you were judged solely on your ability to play or sing one particular piece.  The “own choice” idea would have been looked at with contempt as an easy way of making up lost marks!

Our test piece was Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song.”  There was quite a queue of young hopefuls and when my turn came I was petrified – as I still am when called upon to face an assembly for any purpose whatever.  Nevertheless, I managed to gain second place, the winner being the daughter of my piano teacher, who received a shilling a week from my parents for teaching me, plus any profit he made on the sheet music or volumes which they had to buy.

The singing was judged in the main hall.  All the singers were girls.  Boys were cunningly debarred by the choice of test piece, which was that good old classic beginning “My mother bids me bind my hair with hands of rosy hue” What boy would want to sing that?   Especially the next two lines which I believe are “Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare and lace my bodice blue.”

How’s that for a bit of old time sex discrimination?  A girl would either play or sing or do both, but a boy could not sing unless he didn’t mind looking a cissy.  However, nobody noticed this at the time, for in those days’ boys were supposed to be boys and girls were supposed to be girls and that was that.  No talk of “conditioning” them.

REMARKABLE

Singing sometimes does come naturally.  At least, the possession of a voice that can be cultivated does.  I remember a girl in our little school who could sing loudly and clearly more than an octave higher than any normal child.  She was a born singer, but she was one of a poor family, as rough and tough as any of her numerous brothers and could not have cared less about her remarkable gift.

Just one lad made the big time.  He came from the colliery village of West Ardsley and he was a violinist.  Those were the days of big oratorios, with big choirs and big orchestras, one of which was led on the first violin by my immediate boss.

One day this boy, who was aged 13 or 14, approached my boss and asked permission to play with the second violins at the next performance.  My boss thought he could do no harm by letting the lad have a go.  It was a bit risky with having no rehearsal, but the leader of the seconds would no doubt stop the lad after only a few notes of the overture if he was making a hash of it.

The performance took place on a Sunday.  Next morning my boss came into the office beaming.  “My word, that Ardsley lad really can play,” he said.  “I shall have to look after my laurels.”

The boy’s first professional job was in a trio with a cellist and pianist at the local cinema.  He was Tom Jenkins, who preceded Max Jaffa as leader of the Palm Court Orchestra.  But right to the end of his all-too-short life he remained as modest and diffident as ever.  Sometimes he was asked to play with the BC Symphony Orchestra – but it was always among the second violins, where he had made his first public appearance as a boy.