By Diana Morley
I recently gave a lecture for the Malvern Festival on ‘Thomas Hardy and English Music’. It involved the delightful duty of re-reading Hardy’s novel Under the Greenwood Tree. I particularly relished the passage where the old established church musicians were ousted by the vicar in favour of an organ:
“Times have changed from the times they used to be”, said Mail, “People don’t care much about us now! I've been thinking we must be almost the last left in the county of the old string players? Barrel-organs, and the things next door to ’em that you blow wi’ your foot, have come in terribly of late years”.The situation is immortalized in Benjamin Britten’s brilliant and moving setting of Hardy’s poem The Choirmaster’s Burial.
“More’s the pity”, replied another. “Time was – long and merry ago now! – when not one of the varmits was to be heard of; but it served some of the quires right. They should have stuck to strings as we did, and kept out clarinets, and done away with serpents. If you’d thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says I”.
“Strings be safe soul-lifters, as far as that do go”, said Mr. Spinks.
“Yet there’s worse things than serpents”, said Mr. Penny. “Old things pass away, ’tis true; but a serpent was a good old note: a deep rich note was the serpent”.
“Joseph”, I said, says I, “depend upon’t, if so be you have them tooting clar’nets you’ll spoil the whole set-out. Clar’nets were not made for the service of the Lard; you can see it by looking at ’em”, I said. And what came o’t? Why, souls, the parson set up a barrel-organ on his own account within two years o’ the time I spoke, and the old quire went to nothing.
“As far as look is concerned”, said the tranter, “I don’t for my part see that a fiddle is much nearer heaven than a clar’net. ’Tis further off. There’s always a rakish, scampish twist about a fiddle’s looks.”
There is first-class professional music-making all around The Lee, to mention only the Little Missenden Festival, the Wendover summer concerts and the Amersham Music Club. Also, we all now have our record players, our iPods and our TVs: we can call up the best possible performances of masterpieces at the flick of a switch. So over the years music-making in many villages has suffered. There is however something special about doing it yourself. Standards matter, but personal involvement brings special insights. The character in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s bitter little story Winter in the Air draws comfort from the person in the flat above her, who “plays Bach by hand, which seems very old-fashioned and soothing”. In our village we are incredibly fortunate, as becomes more and more apparent, to be able to draw on the talents of many enthusiastic local musicians, professional and amateur.
This year music-lovers have been marking the fiftieth year since the death of Vaughan Williams, a fervent advocate and supporter of amateurs. His widow Ursula was a frequent visitor to Little Missenden and The Lee. So come on, The Lee, follow in the footsteps of Hardy and Vaughan Williams. Sing, scrape, blow or bang whatever you can – or simply listen and clap – and become ‘soul-lifters’ this Christmas.