March 1969 - Colds in the head and chest, and an exciting win

10.3.69

Dear Mum, I’ve been meaning to get going on this letter all week, since I received your one about the Linguaphone records, but it has been one hell of a week and I just haven’t got round to it. Anyway, about the records: yes, I did bring them with me, and funnily enough, the day I received your letter I was taking them to Lindsay Campbell, who’d been asking me for them for about a month! Does that put you in a very awkward position? Certainly, as soon as Lindsay is finished with the, I’ll post them out if you’d like. [No idea why my mother wanted these records, which I must have brought over with me from NZ.]

About the Italian and German newspapers, I’m waiting for an opportunity to be in the West End at the time of day when the shops are open. I dare say there are other places, but Piccadilly is the only one I’ve been able to recall seeing foreign papers in. Actually I was there on Friday evening...and forgot!

Well, to bring you up to date on recent events. When I last wrote it was at the end of a day in bed, and I was just thinking that I was getting over that sore throat I had, when blow me down, I suddenly found I was the possessor of another cold! You wouldn’t believe it would you? Colds at home always used to start in the head and go down to my chest. But here they do what they please, and I’ve had them going up and down with great abandon. Anyway I had to go in on Friday (though they sent me home early in the end ˗ not for my sake, but for the singers!) and I thought that perhaps I could get something to knock the cold back, so I went and got some Coldrex tablets (which I wouldn’t normally touch, as they leave me feeling all drugged) and they did the trick eventually, by sort of holding the thing up in my head somewhere, and not letting it run all over the shop. I felt revolting, because I kept feeling as though I was in a permanent dream state, but they seemed to calm the effects of the cold down enough to enable me to go into this last week with some degree of calm. 

However, it left me with a most horrible chest cough ˗ one where the phlegm was so far down in my chest that I couldn’t cough it up. And though I took some cough medicine that someone at the Centre suggested it didn’t help. The same person suggested that I might be getting bronchitis, which gave me scare, as you’d expect, so when I got up to the Crowls on Friday night I said that I thought I’d better see a doctor soon, as the whole thing was worrying me terribly. Reg suggested we get hold of a doctor up here in Palmers Green, and tell him that I was just visiting up there and see if they would do something for me ˗ rather than wait until I could find out where the doctor hangs out in Blackheath. So yesterday morning, he rang up someone and they made an appointment for ten to ten, and I went round and a Lady doctor (it’s always embarrassing that ˗ now I know how it feels for a woman to have a male doctor examining her) listened to my chest and said I didn’t have bronchitis, and gave me some sickly sweet, but bitter, medicine which does seem to be doing some good. At least when I cough now, something dislodges, rather than staying there!

Back to last week ˗ and again, just to keep things in chronological order! On Sat morning, I hired a studio at the Blackheath Conservatoire ˗ like everything else, about two minutes walk ˗ and went in intending to do three hours work on the stuff for the re-audition of the Opera for All that was on the following Monday. However, about three-quarters of the way through my time, I was rung up by John Kentish (our Director of Studies, whatever that means, at the Centre, and a man who doesn’t even recognise me when I meet him round the place!) He wanted to know if I would come up in the afternoon and play Traviata for the people from the Opera Federation which was meeting at the Centre over the weekend. They must sing through the opera while James Robertson takes them thru it and gives them an idea of how it should go. Well, I wasn’t very keen, quite honestly, as I had all the weekend shopping to do, and also still felt rotten with my cold, but when he said the magic words: we’ll pay you, I accepted! (They paid me three guineas in the hand for two hours work ˗ and I didn’t play a good deal of the time! No wonder they don’t make any money. I felt a bit silly throughout, as my eyes were watering, and I couldn’t even concentrate on what I was doing completely.) Anyway, the people from the Opera Fed. Who are out and out amateurs, wouldn’t have worried because they barely seemed to know what they were doing, let alone anyone else.

Went to bed reasonably early on both Sat and Sunday nights, and on Monday morn went to the first Fidelio with the 83-year-old [Otto] Klemperer conducting. Or so they say: to my eyes he appeared to be asleep most of the time. It seems a bit curious to me. I mean, when a man is so old that he can no longer do an even reasonably good job of work, I don’t see the point of his doing it ˗ however great he may have been. Klemperer has been a fine conductor, and perhaps some of the finer details of this production were due to him, but really it seemed more to me that the orchestra was looking after itself, and that the singers were doing likewise. Considering they couldn’t even see his beat, it was so tiny, I don’t see how they could have been following him! I’m told the prompter in the prompt box was really who was keeping the singers together! And it was so slow. [This slowness is confirmed by someone else online.] This is also due to his age, and while some small details, that might normally be overlooked, came to light, the thing fell apart dramatically. I didn’t stay for the second act (though I would have liked to ˗ because in spite of all I’ve said above, there was a curious fascination about it all. The soprano, some of whose singing was like mine ˗ horrifying ˗ had a lot of personality. Again she shouldn’t really be doing the part ˗ she can’t in actual fact sing a lot of it properly ˗ but she does make you watch her) but went back to the Opera Centre to do a bit more work on my audition music. (I don’t know what’s wrong with this typewriter but it’s constantly wrecking the side of this page and tearing it to pieces!)

act of a rehearsal of

The audition was later in the afternoon, and I was first. This time they really listened to us, by contrast with the previous occasion when they had raced through the reps. But in the end it made not much difference, as I didn’t get a job. Robertson called each of the reps into his office the next day, and had a long chat with them. Alistair [Dawes] got the English Opera For All tour, but the other job which was going hasn’t been filled at all for some reason. If Alistair hadn’t got it, I would have been a bit annoyed because he is the one who really deserves it, but I also feel that I could have done it. Anyway, Robertson and I had this talk, and it at least cleared a few things up. From what he says it is worthwhile my continuing in this profession, but he seems to feel that I have some catching up to do ˗ which is what I’d felt all along, because the others have all been doing full time music for so long.

continued on a second aerogram.

The problem is of course, how to do this catching up. He reckons I work very hard ˗ in fact he said he sometimes wonders if I don’t work too hard ˗ good grief! ˗ but as far as I can see, I’ve got to work hard to stay with the others. Isn’t it a problem? I just don’t know where to start to help myself. I’d thought perhaps of going to some small opera house in Germany or somewhere (there is a lot of work there) but it’s a matter of getting there. He suggested I might try teaching for a while but while I don’t fancy it it may do some good, even if it was only part time. I’d thought of some part time work ˗ preferably musical (for example with George Bamford if he’d take me on ˗ he obviously needs an assistant) and filling in the rest of the time with coaching. But here too I’m at a disadvantage, as I only know a limited number of people. I’d thought of going back to Aussie, where at least the standards aren’t quite so high [!], and where perhaps I could get the sort of experience I need to help me cope over here. But as Michael says it’s a long way away from the mainstream of things and it wouldn’t be worthwhile going back there unless I definitely had some work. And unless they’d take me on my Opera Centre background, I’d probably have to go all the way out there to audition or something. AAAAAAgh! (excuse me!) Whatever happens I’ll have to start getting onto people soon, and get something underway before the next term is too far advanced. So there we are.

On Wednesday, the Tauber competition was to take place in Wigmore Hall, and so Abigail [Ryan] and I went along, and found that we were something like eleventh on the list, out of twelve. What a long wait. From where we were it sounded as though Abigail didn’t stand a chance, the voices seemed to be so good, and when we did go on, I don’t really think she sang all that well. Anyway, after everyone was finished we went down into the hall, and waited with a whole pile of Abigail’s relations who had made an occasion of it and come down from Manchester. There was her mother, a lovely plump homely woman with the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen, and her aunt (whom I later found out was likely to burst into an old Music Hall song on the slightest pretext) and her two sisters, Mary (who was mad as a snake and three months pregnant)  and Vera, a rather more straight-laced girl, but still very friendly. And there was also Tommy her brother, a tall, balding very gentle man.

Eventually the judges came out and of course the hall was electric. They then announced after considerable spiel, that though there had been many lovely voices there this afternoon, the aim of the prize (a year in Vienna studying at the Academy with all expenses paid) was to help someone with potential to develop, and the prize therefore went to Abigail Ryan. Well, you’ve never seen anything like it. Abigail was by this time sitting with her sisters and aunt, while I was with her mother and her flatmate, a middle-aged spinster of American origin, and her young friend, an Anglican girl doctor (who practises in Wood Green ˗ I thought she might have turned out to be the lady doctor I was to have yesterday) who has recently come out of a convent where she spent 18 months before deciding it wasn’t for her.

Abigail’s mother gave me a kiss and a hug (which nearly made me vanish from sight) then rushed over and hugged the American woman (Miriam is her name) and meanwhile Abigail had stood up, sat down again, been clapped, stood up again, tried to get out of the row she was in, walked briskly up the aisle to fin there was no way to get up on stage (!) walked round through the connecting doors and arrived on stage looking considerably confused, and there she was presented with a large bouquet of flowers, and congratulated by the judges and photographed by a funny little man who suddenly appeared from nowhere. I think we were all as excited as she was.

I was terribly pleased, especially as when I had been sitting down at first and Abigail had gone off to talk to someone (this was before the announcement) some idiot German woman behind me had been spouting off in a know-all fashion about this Abigail saying she shouldn’t be singing dramatic soprano, as though she was a specimen of some sort, and she had got a bit of a shock when she recognised the accompanist was sitting right in front of her ˗ I hope she got even more of a shock when the winner was announced. These people who have all the knowledge of the world tucked away in their brains annoy me not a little. [Possibly the pot calling the kettle black, I suspect.]

Naturally this all called for a celebration. I was the first to arrive backstage ˗ and Abigail gives me a big kiss ˗ in front of all the dignitaries and officials and judges. They didn’t seem to mind, and I can’t say I did either. Anyway, we all (family and friends) went off to the pub down the road, and stayed there for about an hour ˗ filling the air with laughter at a whole lot of in-Catholic jokes: the whole family is Catholic of course. And they’re terribly friendly people, and terribly funny. We all went off after this (we’d picked up another one of the students by this time, David Harrison, who’d just come into a whole lot of money and insisted on paying for things left right and centre ˗ the evening cost me practically nothing ˗ though I did try to pay ˗ and with him in tow, nine of us (Miriam had left by then) went to a restaurant called the La Laguna, near the Coliseum [Theatre], and took over the basement section. We must have been a bit noisy, as there were some other people there originally!) Then they went to another pub, and just sat, and then we all went to Miriam and Abigail’s flat in St John’s Wood (by tube) and stayed there for a while, watching a foggy TV picture (it starred the man all the women had seen in a musical in the West End the previous night and they’d all fallen in love with him) and playing some songs on the piano.

I left quite early as I still had a hectic couple of days to follow. I had to play for 5 of the singers auditioning at the Wells on Friday, and we were told on Thursday that instead of only having to sing one song each they should have two prepared, so this meant a whole lot of last minute work. I can’t say I felt particularly happy about any of the playing I did, and anyway, we all think that the whole business was merely a courtesy thing because the Wells always used to audition the singers that were leaving the Centre and had stopped doing this last year.

Yesterday, Reg and I went down to Southend, because in the last few days the sun has come back to us (we’ve hardly seen it all winter ˗ it’s horrible). We spent about four hours wandering around ˗ it’s a resort, of sorts, because it’s actually on the Thames estuary ˗ tho this is very wide. (They call it Southend-on-Mud!) It has the longest pier ˗ a mile ˗ and at the end of it are restaurants, cafes, theatres, etc. It’s quite a thing ˗ with even an electric railway running its length.

With a bit of luck the fresh air may have done some good ˗ lots of love, Mike.

10.11.68 End of term, Wigmore and Coventry Cathedral

This post consists of a very long letter - it was originally sent on two aerograms. 

10.11.68

Dearest of all dear old souls I know, I received your parcel with the jersey and biscuits and fudge in it a couple of days ago, (and after I’d spent nearly an hour getting it open had a marvellous time!)  The jersey is perhaps a bit big, but I don’t know – it’s long, but this doesn’t matter, and there’s plenty of room in the sleeves, but otherwise it’s fine, and I intend wearing it all the this week and to run it in so to speak.  [I don’t remember this jersey, but plainly it wasn’t up to my mother’s usual standards of fitting properly!]

I’m writing this letter on Reg’s typewriter, in order to post it to you this arvo, but it’s resulting in a bit more mess than usual.  Since I last wrote I’ve been, as usual, rather flat out – even though I stayed home on both Monday and Tuesday nights.  Part of the trouble was that I’d got an idea to write some music, from Norman Thorn, [a Dunedin amateur conductor - not the one who's still conducting in the city, however] before I left home (whether it will actually come to anything finally I don’t know, but I’d like to try it) and this has taken up more time than I expected.  Also, one of the NZ students at the school happened to hear that I’d written some music – from me, of course; got to blow my own trumpet -  and it must be of some interest if Don Mackenzie [organiser of the Summer Music Schools held in Dunedin] wasn’t too rude about it, and he said he’d like me to write some songs for him some time, but though I’m very keen, it’s a matter of time, and also finding the right sort of words for this particular singer – he’s a bass, Kurt Gänzl is his name – he was Brian Gallins [actually ‘Gallas’] till he came here – he’s adopted his own family name again! – and to my way of thinking songs for basses aren’t necessarily the same type of thing as songs for soprano!  Norman Thorn had said on the way to Invercargill that time that it had surprised him that no one had ever written any music on the theme of the Stations of the Cross – so I wanted to see if I could and use a brass band into the bargain.  This of course necessitated some research into brass band orchestration.  [I don’t think anything came of any of this – when I did write some bass songs – to words by Thomas Hardy – a year or so later, I think I’d by that time lost touch with Kurt. As for there not being any music on the Stations of the Cross, a quick search on Google proves how wrong I was. I finally wrote music for brass band many years later, in the 21^st century, and that was after I’d had considerable experience playing for brass players.]

At the Centre we’re into work on the two end of term productions: Albert Herring, which I’m NOT concerned with (?) and Dido and Aeneas coupled with a curious modern French comic opera called Angelique which is all about a man whose wife is such a witch that he conspires with a friend to sell her, and the chaos that ensues – even the Devil won’t have her!  It’s mad, and horribly tricky, but generally I’ve been managing to play it.  [Angelique, which I don’t remember at all, was by Jacques Ibert. Kiri te Kanawa sang Dido, and was really very good in it. The question mark after Albert Herring may indicate that I was surprised not to have been involved with it, since I'd worked on it with the NZ Opera Co.]

On Wednesday night we went somewhere, oh, yes to the Wigmore Hall – where one of the second year students was giving a concert.  The Wigmore, as you no doubt know, is the place where most young musicians make their debut.  She was on with a clarinettist, whom I thought was very much under par, probably through nervousness, but whom the critics seemed to think was pretty good?  I’m definitely beginning to distrust the critics here. There seems to be some shifty work going on backstage somehow.  [I apparently spent my time disagreeing with the critics.] The girl who sang wasn’t bad, although some of her music I didn’t find all that interesting, but she sang a new song cycle by a London bloke, which though it was scarcely terribly original was quite pleasant – I’d played a few of them for her one day at a coaching session, and quite liked them. [Unhelpfully, I don’t tell my mother who the composer was.] The accompanist was very good but inclined to overshadow his accompanees, to coin a word, probably because he was so much more experienced. It was hearing these new songs however that prompted the conversation with between Kurt and myself. 

After this, I went for a short time to a party being held in the same street, by one of our stage managers (at her flat, it was, on the fifth floor!) but didn’t stay late, though it was a nice quiet party, which is what I enjoy.  The next day David Syrus had invited me to accompany him to dinner at a lady friend (of his)‘s place, and this was equally quiet and enjoyable.  There are four girls actually at this basement flat, but the one David knows, from his University days, Mary, is an archivist now and at present is working in Lambeth House, the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  She is cataloguing letters and such belonging to various previous archbishops from the 19^th century.  Another girl joined us for tea, Frances, who works in the Tate Gallery (an art gallery) as a secretary.  We spent so much of the meal talking, that the three courses took from about 7.45 till 10.15! (at least, Mary did most of the talking, not in a brash overbearing way, but just quietly and interestingly.  We other three probably said less together than she!)  They live in Pimlico, very near the Thames, in St George’s Square, where, presumably, most of the four or 5 storeyed houses have been converted into flats. 

On Friday at our lunch-time lecture we had Ronald Dowd, an Aussie tenor, whose been over here for some years now, and he was interesting in a waffly sort of way.  I don’t think I told you that we’d had Professor Thurston Dart the week before, lecturing on Dido and Aeneas, and bringing the whole tragedy to the level of ordinary people in a very funny way. At the lecture he seemed like a very friendly if rather cynical man – and yet, in the afternoon when he took those concerned through the music of Dido, he was frequently very rude to the singers without appearing to try and understand their reason for not having done a thing the way Purcell wanted it – this last was his most heard comment throughout the afternoon, and we were a bit taken aback by his rather surly tongue. 

On Friday night I came out to the Crowls, and listened to The Magic Flute on the radio with Reg, trying to explain what it was all about as we went along.  I’ll see if it’s possible to get some free seats for them for a performance, which will make up a little for all their generosity. I’d come out the day earlier so that we could leave early in the morning to go to Coventry to see the Cathedral that’s there. That’s the one built adjoining the ruins of the old, where The War Requiem was first performed.  It’s really unbelievable in a modern architectural way, and some of it is beyond description, I think.  Here goes. We went there via the M1 (just Reg and I; Mavis has been feeling a bit crook, and the other two had been fairly recently) and this road alone is worth comment.  We couldn’t see anything on the way, and not much more on the way back because the fog was too thick. In some places, unpleasantly so, and it’s a bit worrying to not be able to see far ahead of you on such a fast road. Reg is a good driver, I think, although sometimes he goes a little too fast for my liking. 70, for instance!  In spite of its six lanes, I dare say the M1 is very safe, but the traffic weaves in and out a lot (there are three speeds, so to speak, according to the three lanes) and though I didn’t see anything troublesome on the trip I didn’t always feel too happy. Coventry is not a very large city – I should think smaller than Dunedin, although I couldn’t always see it all for the fog, which did clear in the town at least,  - but it’s very new, particularly in the centre, and well-designed for a modern city.  The Cathedral isn’t the only decent piece of architecture.  The very centre of the town has a huge shopping mall (this part is called Broadgate) which the traffic goes around, or parks inside a large parking building, and it’s very busy as far as the pedestrians are concerned.  We didn’t stop to look at that – it was too cold to stop and look at anything...  [handwritten] to be continued.  Love Mike

Part II

because the weather for the last week has been very bitter indeed, and though I haven’t been wearing a coat yet, I have made considerable use of that scarf you gave me, and my gloves.  (And also, to digress even further, on Tuesday last, Mrs Marshall got us some coal – on our behalf – and we’ve been using that for the time since.  It’s cheaper than the electricity – and possibly more economical altogether, because the coal burns SO slowly that we hardly use any in a night). 

The sun was shining and the day was beautiful to look at in a sort of frostbitten way, but not the best to stand around in.  So we headed across this Broadgate – me leading Reg – he says he can never remember more than the first of a set of instructions on how to get to a place – we’d acquired these from a lady, who instantly knew we were strangers – not only because we were asking the way to the church, but because we said ‘where is St Michael’s Cathedral, and she only knew it as the Cathedral!  Anyway, as you go into the Cathedral two things hit you.  The massive window on your right made of about fifty or more stained-glass windows ranging from yellow and gold at the base to green and reds and blue and purples. This is all over the top of the baptismal font area.  The font is a huge rock from Bethlehem with just a niche carved into the top.  The other thing is the Graham Sutherland Tapestry, which frankly I find even less impressive in life than in the photos.  It has Christ in majesty seated with the four evangelists in their usual guises of lion, ass – or horse, perhaps – man, is it, and eagle, surrounding him.  But it’s all done in a sort of off-white and green, and to my way of thinking isn’t particularly attractive in any sense of the word.

St Mike and the Devil - photo taken by me in 2007

The building is of a pink-gray stone outside (with an immense statue of St Mike with a long spear, standing over the Devil in chains – both of them obviously attached to the wall but somehow appearing to not be attached) and the inside is a white stone with a great deal of wood panelling, carving, ceiling, planking, seating, you name it, etc.  On the left, inside, is the Chapel of Unity, with the Star of Bethlehem set in the floor in sort of a marble type of mosaic, but not as small as mosaic is.  In the prongs of the star are, again, representations of the evangelists, considerably modern in style, and designs representing the five continents. Further into the centre are typical Christian symbols.  The points of the star go into the walls which are not just flat, but (in an already circular room) are separated by both ordinary glass in extremely narrow windows, and also by stained glass in a variety of hues, which are always darker at the base than the top.

Outside in the main church, as one goes towards the altar, you realise that there are other windows besides the huge one over the font.   But these are all so designed that you can’t see them unless you look from the altar end.  Those on one side are connected with God or the spiritual side of man, and the others with his human side.  There are five windows on each side, perhaps three yards across, each, and they represent man’s journey through life, the green ones at the far end of the Church being his childhood, the red ones next showing his passion in youth, etc, the next are multi-coloured showing middle life, with all the trials and tribulations belonging – these aren’t shown in so many pictures, but are all sort of abstract! – the next with deep purples and blues and golds show wisdom, etc, and the next, which my guide book doesn’t mention, are curious.  On one side there is a very pale window, off whites and pale yellow, and on the other a different thing again.  Anyway, presumably it means you reached your goal! 

As you come down both sides of the church there are five panels (on each side) with Christian texts, sort of roughly carved in nearly foot high letters.  If one turns round and looks at the back of the church you can see the completely glass-covered back wall with figures of saints and angels set into them.  These are modern too, naturally, but interesting, and like so much else in the church, intricately designed.  There are sets of organ pipes on both sides of the principal altar (but I couldn’t see the organ).  There is a little archway beneath these pipes on each side leading round behind the main area to the altar beneath the Tapestry.  On the way on the left side is a little collection of the various opening ceremony implements, and yet another set of stained glass windows.  crossing over to the right we come to another chapel, Christ in Gethsemane, with a frame of the crown of thorns through which the, I think, bronze angel set with coloured glass holding the cup can be seen.  This is lit by three narrow unseen windows. 

There is yet another altar (like the Chapel, sort of outside the main structure of the church) the Chapel of Christ the Servant.  It is fairly simple in design and has windows looking over the surrounding town area.  Other features of the church are the Iron Bird ?? with the three nails taken from the old Cathedral embedded between its body and the pedestal, the canopy made up of dozens of three-pointed wooden things over the Bishop’s seat, and each of the accompanying seats has one too.  I see now that my description of the Baptismal window is inaccurate.  The centre is of yellow and gold, the surrounds vary from blue to green to red.  There is a new addition to the Church.  A crucifix, about ten foot high, hanging near the font.  It is a gift from Czechoslovakia.  The whole building is very angular, and yet doesn’t make it uncomfortable to be inside. 

We went outside after and had a look at the shell of the old church, with the cross made from the wreckage, and the altar made from the stone.  The entire bell-tower is still standing and most of the walls.  Crazy, isn’t it.  We also had a look (after lunch in the Cathedral Refectory Restaurant) (!) at the church next door, which except for the loss of its original stained glass was scarcely touched (it now has a new and very detailed window facing the altar, with a very athletic Christ, and a host of well-known saints) – and it dates from 1200 or something. It’s much cosier than the other church, although its spire must be equally as big, and there are some very old things remaining in it.  The lectern dates from the origin of the church, but looks like new!, and there is a lovely carved fresco of Christ and the 12 apostles all standing about 8 inches high.  Over the altar is another carving, this one in stone (the other is wood) with the usual Christian scenes on it. Each of the pew-ends has a different type of leaf shown on it, although at first glance it appears there are only two patterns. 

That’s about it.  Last night Reg and I played firstly Scrabble with Mavis, and then played through a couple of chess games from a book by Gerald Abrahams.  The second game was that played by two computers!  I’m leaving here early today, to meet Kevin in town about five, since this is his only afternoon off!  He has Thursday off, all day off, but of course that’s no use to me.  I’ve got most of Monday off.  Might be able to catch up a little.  [handwritten] This term seems to have gone terribly quickly – finish on the 21^st Dec.  We start about 6^th Jan again. Thanks again for parcel. Mike

Another photo taken at Coventry in 2007