Blog post #33 - Kate goes to Trinity (Part 2)

youtu.be/Pt19nrxdVb4?si=aBB64a4tD72HBR95
The truth is I was hopelessly out of my depth!

​I’d had music all around me, subliminal and otherwise of course, but my teens were spent mooning around with my guitar singing soulful folk songs and gospelling around the countryside; Both Sides Now, What A Friend We Have In Jesus, a few bit parts in my dad’s shows thrown in and that was it.

​But I just knew how to do that singing thing.
Once at Trinity, overwhelmed and intimidated, within a few short weeks I discovered that I didn’t.
So many petty mortifications litter my recollections of my early days there.

My assigned singing teacher was a no mean tenor at Covent Garden. The upside was that I scored freebies to dress rehearsals and got to see Placido as Don José and Kiri as The Countess.
The downside was that he was probably strapped for cash and doing the teaching thing on the side.
When I first sang for him, (“The Singer” again) he looked disdainfully at me and with a supercilious curl of his upper lip said, “well, it seems that you can sell a song.” Maybe he was charmed and I misread him….
I have been known to say, “we can hear the singer thinking, and if they’re not thinking anything, we’re not hearing anything.”
And I could hear him thinking loud and clear, “what have they sent me this silly little girl for?”

I guess we did some mindless voice exercises and then he asked what sheet music I had brought. I know this is kind of weird, but it hadn’t occurred to me to bring sheet music to London. I suppose I didn’t really have any of my own. All our song books at home belonged to my mum.
Anyway, he was astonished at my lack and rolling his eyes suggested that since I was at an international conservatoire, I should acquaint myself with the library and choose a song before my next lesson.

So off I went into that bewildering labyrinth of fusty corners and dusty shelves, walking up and down the aisles, pulling out this book, that volume and the other collection.
I espied Schubert! Schirmer edition. A-ha!
The same one as my mum’s. There was a god after all! (Oops, yes, I forgot that I already concluded that in Part 1!)
Then hurrying back to my hostel I skuttled down to the little piano room and leafed over the pages. My mum had sung these songs in English. That wasn’t so uncommon then, but instinct told me that I’d need to be checking out the German for the playing field I was on.
Luckily, we’d holidayed in Germany the summer before I went to Trinity and I’d picked up the lingo pretty well, or the pronunciation of it at least, in that short time. So I puzzled my way through it, painfully working out the melody with my scant O-level music as my only guide.

I did my best and was able to go to lesson 2 with something in hand. An Die Musik I think it was and I was right about the German; thank heavens for that little point of redemption and I’d taught myself the melody quite well.
In hindsight I suspect it was actually one of my mum’s “kitchen sink” songs so I was probably familiar with it; although I expect I chose it because it only had two verses and the tune was the same for both!

To this day, I do not know what he taught me really.
Sometimes he’d look up in astonishment at me. I couldn’t be sure, but I think I’d done okay when he did that.
He used to mark my music, saying “sing this vowel open, but this one closed” and he had hieroglyphics to indicate this instruction. c for open and o for closed.
I still have books with his little pencil markings on the songs I learnt.
I’ve been a singing teacher for a very long time now, yet I have no idea what he was talking about!

In second year I lost my voice for most of the year.
I guess I lost my voice, full stop.

But, before we get too gloomy,  I must share with you my hilarious experience of sight singing class.

Charlie Proctor took the class and he trundled in with a pile of books rescued from Noah’s Ark, dog-eared and yellow paged; harrumphing as he sat his large personage on the piano stool.
The grand took up most of one side of the room and we were on chairs lining the other half, maybe a dozen or so of us.
Charlie was an imposing man, jowl-jawed, steely blue eyes peering over his half moon glasses; suit, shiny with wear and a dubiously grubby handkerchief tumbling from his breast pocket. I actually don’t think he was unkind, but certainly gruff and scary to me not least because of his teaching “technique.”
He glared over the rims of his glasses, scanning the faces of his charges until he alighted on his choice. Drawing an arthritic finger up to point he said, “you; exercise number seven!” And proceeded to plonk down the tonic chord, whereupon one was expected to make mincemeat of the banal dots and finish on doh with a flourish! Except I rarely did!

Those who did were invited to leave the room and join the second year class.
But I was stuck there week after week, cracking jokes because I was so bad. To his credit I did make Charlie smile from time to time and as I belonged to most of the ensembles, large and small, my musicianship did improve and I started to catch up with my fellow first years, all two years older than me.

Some of my fondest memories were of a group of us called the Mandeville Consort, some alumni and some of us still within the hallowed halls of Trinity.
Our conductor got us paid gigs in the city of London to do lunchtime concerts, usually in some centuries old church.
We’d arrive at 12.00, music would be dished out, we’d top and tail, maybe check out the tricky bits for half an hour, sing the show to the sandwich munching city gents (yes, all gents!); then with our ill gotten gains, we’d hightail to spend the lot in the nearest hostelry before afternoon closing at 3pm.

Many love the tale of Mr Toon, my harmony teacher. For that was his name, bless him!
Another fine musician who had failed the finer things of his aspiration and was stuck with me presenting my appalling four part harmony, counterpoint and that peak of compositional achievement, the fugue; with all the pretty, petty rules cast aside, scribbled on my lap on the Tube.
Well at least, I did it. Which is more than can be said for my school homework (which was routinely eaten by the dog, you may recall!)

Well Mr Toon. I may have failed you and caused you to despair, but may you be smiling in heaven at the many KateSongs which have delighted a few sweet souls Downunder.

Best we listen to An Die Musik methinks. Dame Janet of course.
https://youtu.be/Pt19nrxdVb4?si=aBB64a4tD72HBR95

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