Musical Encounters

By Nigel Wilkins

Musical Encounters by Nigel Wilkins relates a journey from a childhood in Essex to a career as a Professor of Musicology in Paris. Interspersed with ‘Musical Encounters’ with various musicians, many of them famous, this is an insight into the life of an active musician and researcher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Jul 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463050965

Nigel Wilkins

Nigel Wilkins is Emeritus Professor of 10 Musicology at the Sorbonne in Paris and Life Fellow of 11 Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Although his 12 research is concentrated on music and poetry in the 13 Middle Ages, he has written on themes as varied as Erik 14 Satie, the Devil’s music or Nicolas Flamel ... 15 In addition, a life-long passion for music, as 16 viola player in many orchestras and ensembles, as well 17 as would-be composer, has guided his steps. He was 18 founder of the St. John’s Symphony orchestra in 19 Newfoundland and of the Scottish Early Music 20 Ensemble in St. Andrews.

Book preview

About the Author

Nigel Wilkins is Emeritus Professor of Musicology at the

Sorbonne in Paris and Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Although his research is concentrated on music and poetry in the Middle Ages, he has written on themes as varied as Erik Satie, the Devil’s music or Nicolas Flamel ...

In addition, a life-long passion for music, as viola player in many orchestras and ensembles, as well as would-be composer, has guided his steps. He was founder of the St.

John’s Symphony orchestra in Newfoundland and of the

Scottish Early Music Ensemble in St. Andrews.

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Dedication

To music

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Music Encounter

Published by Austin Macauley at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Nigel Wilkens

The right of Nigel Wilkins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is

available from the British Library.

www.austinmacauley.com

Musical Encounter

ISBN 978-1-78710-127-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78710-128-9 (E-Book)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

CGC-33-01, 25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf, London E14 5LQ

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Musical Encounters may take many forms:

– with people, of course, teachers, performers, conductors,composers, critics, scholars, students, colleagues, fellow listeners – but also with instruments, books and manuscripts; places too – concert halls, cathedrals, churches… and so on. As I approach the venerable ageof eighty, it strikes me that I have enjoyed an unusual variety of musical contacts and experiences and that these might be worth setting down. In an early Encounter,the composer Harrison Birtwistle gave me the sound advice to get something down on paper – so here goes!

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Contents

Buckhurst Hill

Oswestry

Nottingham

Newfoundland

St. Andrews

A Satie Interlude

Cambridge

Paris

Lyre

Publications by Nigel Wilkins

Index of Names

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Buckhurst Hill

I like to think that music was knocked into my head at an early age, literally, for the front room of our modest semi-detached home in Essex was dominated, or so it seemed, by our grand piano, enormous and black. My chief residence and hiding place was beneath the instrument. This must have been mainly in the war years, for I was born in 1936. The piano could have served as shelter in the event of bombing! Unlike some of my friends, we had no Morrison Shelter in the dining room. The instrument was a boudoir grand, bought cheap, I was told, in the dispersal of furniture from a ‘Big House’. Some ten years further on, my sister also discovered this hiding place.

The odd thing was that no-one, as I recall, actually played the instrument. My father sang and expected mother to accompany him, but this was beyond her; in later years, she managed to play hymns when she taught in a primary school, but I do not recall ever hearing her play. The very idea of having a piano in the ‘sitting room’ was, of course, inherited from the nineteenth century, when no respectable home was complete without this piece of furniture, whether it was played or not. In the days before radio, piano arrangements of orchestral compositions were the only way people in general could get to know such pieces. In my maternal grandparents’ very modest home in Cheshunt (Hertfordshire) there was an upright piano, no doubt purchased for the education of my mother and her three sisters. My only vivid memory of this instrument – which I never heard played – was of my poor grandmother cracking her head on the underside as she bent to pick something up, and having to be rushed to hospital stream- ing with blood! It was said that Grandmother in her youth had played the mandolin, but I have found no proof of this.

On my father’s side, the family had also been based in Hertfordshire, and the menfolk were all staunch members of the Great Amwell Church Choir. My paternal grandpar- ents later moved to Cudham, in Kent, and it was there, in about 1948, that I was shown grandfather’s clarinet. I never heard him play it but was told, in almost reverential tones, that he had once auditioned for Sir Thomas Beecham. The instrument came into my hands, by inheritance, only in 2015. Here it is:

It proved to be a simple system nstrument in C with few keys, probably late nineteenth-century German. If Grandfather had auditioned on this, I am not surprised that matters went no further! It was probably a military instrument, for, when called up for military service in 1916, he had joined the Royal Flying Corps Band, in which he also played the saxophone. He was said to be a passable pianist. Clarinets, as we shall see, were to feature at a later stage in my progress, and in similar circumstances. Like most school children of the time, I was taught to play the recorder (descant and treble) this was mainly the result of the work of Arnold Dolmetsch, based in Haslemere, who from the 1920s was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Early Music, by which was meant medieval and Renaissance. Very much later, in the 1960s, I was myself to become part of this revival, but little did I know it at the time. A photo of my paternal grandparents, a cook-gar- dener couple, happily playing recorder duets shows the extent of the Dolmetsch influence – it was not all sandals and floral dances!

My father, Sydney Wilkins, left our family home just after the War, and I had little contact with him thereafter, though, when I sketched a Family History,