News & Views
I came across a reference the other day on the website of Christopher Fowler to the films of HAMMER HOUSE OF HORRORS, that brought back quite a few memories. For a start I'm not that interested in film... not at all... and if I were it would not be horror films ! Christopher Fowler is an author with an auto-biog just out titled 'PAPERBOY', but who normally writes novels of 'urban unease, dark comedy, mystery and horror.'
I sent in a comment to his (very short) blog on the subject of HHH, as follows...
"Back in the 60s my connection with HHH was that I played (trumpet) on many Hammer film sessions at a Beaconsfield recording studio (name in the cells somewhere) for the venerable and estimable MD Phil Martell. Getting up very early to make it so far out of town was rewarded with a fine greasy spoon breakfast (before the days of guilt, self-loathing and five portions of fruit per day), then an enjoyable day’s work with a fine pro and many of London’s best musicians.
Never got to see the films as we sat generally with backs to the screen, so all the flickering images seemed the same. A bit of this, a bit of that and occasionally the other, when we all turned round to look.
The roster of composers was very high-class indeed, from Richard Bennett (a friend and contemporary at the Royal Academy of Music) to Malcolm Arnold (a former trumpet player) across to some otherwise very choosy highbrow Third-Programme moderns, including Elizabeth Lutyens, Franz Reizenstein and Benjamin Frankel … something to do with money perhaps … or even their innermost dreams of vulgar fame. Good job the Thin Kontroller at the BBC, Wilhelm Glock, didn’t know his creatures were fooling around with ordinary chords and tunes, however weird. Aaaaaargh indeed ! Ferryman, take them straight to Outer Darkness !"
Anyone who wrote a tune or a melodic line, was immediately excommunicated by William Glock and his henchies... except for one or two personal favourites and friends... and considering the power that he wielded through BBC commissions of untold largesse, and his total control of whose music was played and whose was not, many fine and some great composers were effectively silenced, as far as Radio Three (then called the Third Programme) was concerned. Only music of extreme modernity was countenanced and for any composer to be caught playing footsie with a horrid horror film, that would have meant certain curtains and the professional acid bath. Oh ! Aaaaargh and thrice Aaaaargh !
I stopped off at Frankfurt Airport recently to meet a trumpet friend, VALENTIN GARVIE, a former Royal Academy Student of mine who now plays in the Ensemble Modern in that city. Argentinian by birth but in Europe for almost a decade, firstly in England and now in Germany, Valentin is multi-talented both technically and stylistically. More simply, he is just a terrific musician.
He is in the process of recording his first solo CD, and having heard some of the tracks it will be a must for all those interested in the trumpet. His jazz recordings show a sound quality that I can only call deeply poetic and subtle. Any of the concerns that I voiced in The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be do not apply in the slightest to performance of this quality. If only most modern string players, pianists and singers could achieve this level of expression, the musical world would be a much more enjoyable place. If only most of them knew what was needed!
When available I will put some audio files up.
Focal Dystonia
I noticed the following item with reference to a problem that has afflicted more than a few brass players – some well known to me - and which is a great deal wider spread across other instruments than I had imagined. FOCAL DYSTONIA is the name given to a neurological condition which causes a performer’s brain to lose control over some part of the body’s muscles that are used in the playing of their instrument.
The American pianist Leon Fleischer, aged now 80, and whose career crashed in 1964 because of this condition, for 30 years unsuccessfully sought a cure. His career had begun at the highest level of achievement and expectation. As with most medical discoveries, the doctors who recently found that regular injection of botox into the stricken area gradually released the problem, was accidental.
Fleischer, whom I remember performing with the LSO in the early 1960s, describes musicians as ‘athletes of small muscles’. In spite of his experiences having led him to conclude that once a dystonic, always one, he has now taken up his career again in a modified form and believes that he has learned significant musico-physical lessons in the process. (That these views agree wholly with my pre-existing ones - see The Trumpet and The Art of Practice – may or may not be of value or interest.) Doctors do not know the exact cause, but Fleischer clearly points the finger at the wrong kind of musical thinking and therefore practice, combined with over-work.
As this is the first I have heard of this particular solution, even though I have talked to musicians suffering dystonia, I don’t know whether this pianist’s solution has any possibility of being extended to other instrumentalists. I pass on the link in the hope that any small snippet of information might be of help.