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 Publishers
• Release date: Feb 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781528913072

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.

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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.

To Music

Nigel Wilkins

Musical Encounters

Copyright © Nigel Wilkins (2018)

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 part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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

ISBN 978-1-52891-307-2 (E-Book)

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First Published (2018)

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Preliminary Remarks

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 age of 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!

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 streaming 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 grandparents 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 instrument 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-gardener 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, he did send some reminiscences of his own musical career. In the Church choir, he had sung the treble solos in anthems and oratorios. The choir had joined with the St. Albans Cathedral Choir to sing Handel, Spohr and Elgar. These early experiences, as is so often the case, marked him for life. His voice eventually changed to light baritone, then to bass-baritone.

He studied with Clifton Cooke in London, who was at that time a well-known vocal trainer in the bel canto style. Cooke had an annual open day to which he invited well-known musicians to hear his