Music makes world smaller (v2)

I heard Nicholas Wilks, the Second Master (Deputy Head) of Winchester, speak about the existential dilemmas of heroines in the novels of George Eliot to students in the Chapel yesterday. Little did I know we would talk about music and life the following day. This version of the text also includes corrections that Mr Nicholas graciously offered.

I did conduct that concert in Rudolfinum in Prague in Augsut 2004. I was then Musical Director of the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra. We were not sure if we would get a good audience - you never really know with youth orchestra concerts. We had a good crowd  in the end.

I was not at Winchester College then. In fact, I joined Winchester as Master of Music the following autumn.

Back in 1998 the Hampshire County Youth Orchestra also went to South Africa. We were the first British youth orchestra to do so after the fall of apartheid.

Winchester College pupils have also visited South Africa (we took St Michael’s Choir our junior chapel choir there in 2006) and we have taken two trips to Colombia (Bogota and Cartagena), and played with their youth orchestras on a few occasions. One of the community concerts started half an hour late, and somebody selling ice creams in the square outside the church kept hitting bells outside every now and then. Still, it was great concert.

I read English at university, then took on a post-graduate teaching course in London. Eventually, I decided to study music - conducting. I was not sure what I wanted to focus on, but did I want to study music. I taught part-time to support myself while studying music - these were busy days. I think it is right to do what excites you. Applying for the post of the Director of Music here was one such thing. Becoming Second Master has been another wonderful opportunity to explore new and exciting possibilities in the field of education.

Music is excellent for building and maintaining focus. You cannot be on your phone when listening to music – it needs all your attention. It also builds endurance and resilience. Whenever my youth orchestra players complained about their workload, I could point to their South American counterparts who travel miles across Bogota to practice for 2-3 hours every single day.

People have been trying to improve the lives kids living in Raplock, Stirling through involving them in the youth orchestra programme based on the Venezuelan model, El Sistema. Some cynical newspaper reports speculated when this project was set up that giving musical instruments to those kids would result in them selling them immediately and using the proceeds to buy drugs. How wrong they have been proved. This has not happened, and the lives of the children and their families have been transformed through the sense of mutual co-operation and respect which music generates.  

Music offers a unique means of communication. It is a very different way - especially in education, which tends to be exclusively verbal. Music is not: you communicate through notes, through music. Also, whenever you play with others, you need to get it right together, to listen, to cooperate. These are wonderfully rewarding disciplines. And then there is the audience. Music is your way of communicating with them. This is a two-way street: you give them music, they give you something back. Good musicians will always be listening to their audience as much as the audience is listening to them. 

St Michael’s Choir, Winchester College,  in South Africa