My old school asked if I would like to write something for the school magazine. I thought I would share it with you. We are nearly 50 years on from these events.
With the exception of The Stansfield Arms, pretty much any destination on a journey whose starting point is the hallowed ancient stones that were and are our school, nestled as it is cheek-by-jowl with that graceful conveyor of leeches and effluent, Ol’ Man Aire, was always going to be up. The brave northern ascent out and away from the school meanders up past Brontë House before assailing the south face of Apperley Lane’s ferocious climb past Brontë’s main gate, then deceptively levelling out to almost breathable flatness before turning to wheeze up to the major intersection of A’s 658 and 65, at the Co-op – now. From there, the brave would restock their supplies and set their gimlet eyes on conquering Rawdon’s mighty fortress, atop the last climb at the cricket club, a place whither certain of the school population were of a habit to repair for surreptitious boozing (distant enough to be incognito, close enough to be okay about missing the last bus), where they’d be welcomed by the proud portal of that hallowed hostelry The Emmott Arms. The lap up to the Arms was known then and now as Over Lane, and about half-way up was located the bus (“road car”, to be precise) stop where, when his and my journeys coincided, there would alight/disembark one Duncan Burridge. Half-way up is, as the Grand Old Duke knows, neither up nor down, and whether it’s a place of discomfort for the likes of him of York, it was certainly a place of no comfort for an ageing bus (Bristol Lodekka, a cute term coined to allude to the vehicle’s “low” “high” roofline), which would reluctantly (downhill) or willingly (uphill) grind to a halt, then willingly (downhill) or reluctantly (uphill) moan to a start after gaining or shedding its passenger on the famed 55 route.
The 55 was the longest route plied by the West Yorkshire Road Car Company. It meandered between the cities of Leeds and Bradford, from Boar Lane to Exchange Square, a direct distance of 12 miles via Armley Gaol, New Pudsey and the hunting grounds of the Yorkshire Ripper. But, by describing a route that, instead, took in the cricket grounds of Headingley, the ripping urban district council areas of Horsforth, Rawdon, Yeadon and Guiseley, the “hold onto your hats” switchback past Bradford Golf Course, allowing for a final intake of breath at Shipley before the hurtle down to Frizinghall and, at last, signs of conurbation as the “other city” is approached past “Bradford’s other school”, it’s fairly clear that, despite its termini, its intended purpose was never to link the two metropolises (only bus spotters and the temporarily insane could ever have seriously used it to connect between them: I qualify on both counts). Had Lee Marvin ever hopped aboard, it’d no doubt be “born under a wand’rin’ star”. Over Lane, Rawdon, was but one fare stage of its obstacle course, but it was one that Duncan was grateful for. And Duncan was a boy that Woodhouse Grove was grateful for, for he played lead oboe in the First Orchestra, and very well he played too.
Woodhouse Grove generally put on two “public” concerts a year, autumn and springtime, apart from blasting out the national anthem and Χαιρετε, our school song, at Prize Day, and it was, as I recall, a pretty slick outfit. Pam Burrows was my oboe teacher, and she succeeding in coaching, coaxing and coxing me to Grade 3; she tried, in vain, to get me to excel to Duncan’s standard (Grade 3 from the Royal Schools was hailed, on top of a syllabus of 12 others, by my father as “equivalent to another ‘O’-level.” What cut ice with my dad didn’t always cut ice with university entrance committees, however.) Oboe’s very tiring: you have to purse your lips very tightly and for a long time. Mind you, pretty much anything you play in an orchestra, you have to purse something or other. Even a percussionist who’s banging out the timpani must have something of his pursed, if only for fear he’ll strike a sour, and very obvious, false note. But pursing, with whatever ease it may have come to others, proved not to be my forte. Not, that is, until the Grove came to enter a competition for orchestras some time in my 5th year. I can’t all remember what was on the programme that night, but it may have included John Foulds’ Keltic Lament – a orgy of pursing at Edwardian pathos, which Steven Tuffen would break hearts with on his cello – perchance Jeremy, the parson of Lincoln, who at one time played Merriman to my own Lady Bracknell (“No cucumbers, not even for ready money”) in the Fauré flutey thing or in Bizet’s L’Arlésienne – known in English as L’Arlésienne, I guess because many are unsure what an Arlésienne is, and partly because those that do, think that “Woman of Arles” just sounds like a daft name for a rather charming suite – charming, that is, until I had to triple-tongue the main theme (my lingual dexterity proving, if proof were necessary, the fallacy of its existence), while desperately trying to purse my lips, with my … whatever it is that percussionists purse, pursuing the lips at a close distance (I ended up paying “lip service” to the piece by hitting every third triplet; which I thought was better than nothing).
McCarthy drilled us like troopers in preparation for the competition and had kindly dragged in some vaguely recognisable pieces from the orchestral repertoire (just to put us truly through our paces). His aim was that the three or four chosen dances from Swan Lake no less (or was it Nutcracker?) should ultimately be all too recognisable, and thus was the gage he hurled before us in preparation for said competition (trusting, no doubt, that their recognisability would remain unimpeached over the course of the rehearsal process). One of them entailed a rather skilfully executed oboe solo from our Duncan, as it happens. Never was I so glad to be shielded at the back of the harmonies with my second oboe part. Simply put: Duncan did it good, and I … didn’t. This shield, such as it was, was of ephemeral quality, alas; for so long it served and protected me, sheltered me from the wildfire of top C’s and sweet leading melodies that titillated the hearer like only the tonal impression of a duck can, but its unforeseen whisking-away was to leave me feeling naked, exposed and slightly overwhelmed; the distress was felt in no small measure by me when it came, and would soon, I feared, be similarly felt by the remainder of the orchestra’s complement. For, at the lunchtime rehearsal that preceded our sortie to Burley-in-Wharfedale – the amphitheatre of the musical titans – news was imparted that sounded in my ears as would have a leaden cymbal crash: Duncan was ill and wouldn’t be coming.Would Graham mind stepping up to first oboe? Note, it was in the interrogative form, and might therefore have been validly answered with, “Not on your nelly”; but, there was a breach and it is forth into a breach, so we are raised, and told by Byron into the bargain, that brave men, they do sally. Enthusiastic assent was what, I surmised, was required in the moment, and, in the moment, that was what was delivered, moreover: “Yes.”
By some device, we arrived, I seem to recall, at the scholastic venue for the competition late. Late in time, but just in time. After a quick warm-up, word came from the stage hand (or perhaps the institution’s headmaster – he looked a bit like a stage hand), “You’re next up.” And up we were, traipsing into limelight, exchanging clattering, ungainly music stands and instrumental parts (wouldn’t do for violins to end up with the triangle’s score). My mother was in the audience and related to me afterwards that there were at this juncture, among those present, murmurings, of haughty disdain: “Just who is this, now, haw, haw haw?!”Even before the quality of the playing had been so much as dégustée, the home side had written off the width of our suiting as dégoûtante. As they would soon learn: never mind the width! Feel the quality! This all came about because, for all McCarthy had honed our musical talents to quite a pitch, he had somehow failed in sharpening our collective dress sense. The brass section preferred to wear their ties with buttons nos. one and two of the shirt (counting from the neck) undone, the tie itself then barely dropping below the third; and our dress code of “blazer or clerical grey suit” was fine in a Latin period, but somehow jarred on the eyes when the multifarious clothing choices were assembled on a theatrical green. Mrs Shepherd will have donned something both fitting and that fitted, but have eschewed the “finery” of the concert (what? for a school concert? Please.) There was a charming and utterly loved little violin teacher, a treasure of a chap, who, I believe, smoked a pipe to boot, which was at the time viewed as quaint and not grounds for deportation; anyway, come to think of it, “extremely faded tweed” was all he ever wore, concert or no. For the rest of the band, it being a weekday night, there’d been no time to change before whipping from last period into the coach and, burly or otherwise, burling off to Burley. Thus it was – it would be reported to me posterior – that our antics at swapping violin and triangle parts and increasingly ungainly music stands as our soon-to-be-pursed “percussionists’ parts” squiggled into place on the dais conjured a visual dissonance that elicited on the lips of the audience curls of disdain generally reserved for something picked up on the shoe where dogs are generally walked. My own, personal posterior was especially pursed, with the prospect of full, unremitting, leaden-weighted responsibility for safeguarding the grace and elegance of a Sugar Plum Fairy, or whatever I might very easily be charged with unashamedly and without compunction abusing first hand before the very ears of the world, or such of it as by happenstance were in that pocket of Burley-in-Wharfedale on the night of. My mum was meanwhile convinced we hadn’t a chance; not if the looks on the audience’s visages had anything to say about the fate that lay in store for us.
Of and by this fact, however, we on the dais were blithely unaware and still less daunted. At length (about his customary 6’1”), conductor McCarthy took the rostrum; was persuaded to return it; stood thereon in his blue pin-stripe and prepared to give us some stick. All was placid, all was as usual. The horsing around ebbed; the horse was to water. By now the audience’s curled lips were positively deforming their faces. So, up the band struck. And the horse, it did drink.
As Ippolitov-Ivanov’s Sirdar’s Procession wove its languid journey across the auditorium, mother casually glanced to right and to left to see how the grimacing of the home team was faring. Why, she had to conclude: the Age of Miracles was indeed not past! No longer were the lips curled: mouths stood universally agape, disdain was turned to wonderment, foreboding to nascent hunger; for more, for more, for MORE!
[Buffs nails] We acquitted ourselves okay that night. Tchaikovsky’s soul remained unstirred in its grave, unworried by my temporary promotion to the ranks of the first oboe; Duncan nursed his ailment in Over Lane (likewise unworried), and our feigned tenterhooks upon the announcement of the victors was short as we soon learned we’d carried off the silverware.
A few days later, that pocky little violin teacher would turn up to lead a rehearsal of the Second Orchestra, and with Peter Ilyich still echoing in our sugar plum ears, clutched as he did so in his arms his Roland to McCarthy’s Oliver: a new piece from the great classical repertory for us in the B team to cut our teeth on. Not, this time, Tchaikovsky. No, for once, a single, one-off endeavour launched at nothing less than the classic piece of all classic pieces: yes, on that day, Second Orchestra battled, lilted and accomplished a run-though of the first movement from Beethoven’s Fifth – oboe solos and all, with due panache. I can name many a piece I played in orchestra at school, but none rises so magnificently head and shoulders above all the others than does that day we played Beethoven’s Fifth. It proved that perfection doesn’t come easily; we could never have played this piece straight off without a lot of work. The aim was not to present ourselves with easy perfection that day. The aim was far more important than that: it was to instil in us a will, make us want to achieve. He showed that a teacher’s task, counter-intuitively, is not to teach his pupils that which he knows, but to reach into them and draw out of them a yearning for betterment. To do this, he must exercise judgment in setting the challenges that will allow the pupil to progress.
Duncan got over whatever had lain him low and soon returned from his Over Lane residence, back down the valley and into the fold; he acknowledged with all due grace the quiet gratitude that McCarthy had kindly expressed to me, and effortlessly resumed his role as first oboe; I returned to the ranks. David McCarthy had voiced his characteristic team-spiritedness over the matter of this Russian Fairy. Second is only second by virtue of the first. But, when first fails for whatever reason, second comes as invaluable back-up, if not as the saviour of the moment; and it behoves him to step up when called to duty. He may fall short in his level of accomplishment; he may not fall short in his response to his duty. “Not on your nelly” truly isn’t in.
That night in Burley-in-Wharfedale, the honours were ours; though mother did detect a sense of poor sportsmanship among the local crowd, overhearing as she did “catty” remarks from the audience as they gathered their coats to head home: “Woodhouse Grove had far too many adults playing for them!” Mother deftly intercepted the assist and kicked this nefarious ball well into safety with her own characteristic geniality: “Yes, indeed; but didn’t they play ever so well?” Concessions forthcoming on cue, as befitted the occasion: “Well, yes, they did, very much, indeed!”
Nails are for biting, not spitting.
November 2022 © Graham J. C. Vincent