Among those teachers to whom I owe gratitude is the late Ken Naylor. His teaching career was largely at the Leys, Cambridge, where he taught for 27 years, but the autumn of his career was spent at Christ's Hospital where he was manager of the Arts Centre. This was a terrific boon to the Music Department: Ken was a superb additional organist to the community, but he was also a wonderful arranger. I understand that he provided the fledgling King's Singers with some of their early arrangements; it was the elaborate, many-voiced arrangement of 'Lullaby of Broadway' which became a favourite with our close harmony Male Voice Choir (a curiously named ensemble in - as it was then - an all boys school!). I was very fortunate to have Ken teaching me the History of Music when I was in Year 12 (or the 'Deputy Grecians' as we were known in C.H. lingo).
It was only when life had moved on and I was into my career that I first came across Ken's wonderful tune 'Coe Fen' which he wrote to John Mason's hymn 'How shall I sing that majesty?'. Choosing Eb major and triple time is always a good start for a hymn tune, but Ken was on top form the day he wrote this tune: the way the highest note of each phrase creeps ever higher until the top Eb at the start of line 7 (after an exquisitely prolonged last note of line 6) is masterly, and there aren't many hymn tunes that start their second half on a half diminished 7th! The finest hymn singing I have ever heard was by Downside School at the memorial service for their Christ Hospital educated Director of Music, Chris Tambling: Coe Fen in truly monumental guise, and a wonderful tribute to a special man.
Now that composing has become my own career, I was asked to work on a hymn for communal singing during a local church event. With this occasion and Coe Fen in mind, it seemed to me that the one thing that Ken Naylor's great hymn tune lacked was a thrilling descant. So I set to work.
http://www.coefen.org/
It was only on completing my attempt and sharing it with other Coe Fen admirers that I discovered that Ken had written a descant to his tune. Had I known this, I would not have trodden upon such hallowed ground: it seems like disrespect, even at this distance down the years. I requested that the master's own descant be scanned and sent to me. At least there was some affirmation: like my descant, Ken had started his in bar 2, imitating the congregational tune one bar later at a higher pitch; but then, shock! I realised that Ken had committed one of those grave sins of good part-writing: on beats 2 and 3 he had his descant moving in parallel octaves with the bass line!
Perplexed, and - if I'm being honest - a little smug, I shared this discovery with a musical colleague. A day later he returned to the topic and gently pointed out that in my descant beats 2 and 3 moved in parallel 5ths with the congregational tune. Time for a quick revision and a portion of humble pie…
Download score here - How shall I sing that majesty
The music from this tradition was a secret until the inspiring Priest and musicologist Pyotr Nawrot arrived in the region half a lifetime ago. In King’s Place at the start of October, he gave a fascinating presentation about the repertoire, full of his wonderment and excitement for the tradition, mixed together with a beautiful modesty.
In the evening, the excellent 
There were some wonderful young singers taking part: 
Reflecting on these three October weekends, I recalled a poster I saw a few years ago in a school in Oxford:
I don’t sing because I’m happy,
I’m happy because I sing.
It is my guess that the Bolivian singers at King’s Place, Jamie Lonsdale and his guest soloists, and the good folk of the 1885 singers in Putney all finished their performances with a strong sense of happiness. Their faces certainly suggested this.
And then I turn my thoughts to our schools and ponder: why is it that singing is not more celebrated and promoted among our children? You would have thought that an activity that offers such inter-cultural connection, community cohesion and charitable benefit might be seized whole-heartedly by headteachers, and that the happiness it brings to those who participate might be so valued that there was none of the reluctance, sadly so often experienced by music teachers, to afford music departments ample time for the rehearsals that allow choirs to flourish.
After all, it’s not just the singing that would be flourishing … it would be the happiness too. Surely we can’t have too much of that?
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It took me back to my early piano lessons with the wonderful Vera Crawford-Phillips. A typical piano lesson (as I remember it) would end with her saying ‘Now dear, I’m just going to write what you need to do in your practice book, and whilst I do that, why don’t you play me what an elephant sounds like’ and – as a happy 6 year old, gloriously losing myself in the moment, I would go thump, thump, thump in the bass, the connection between the slowly lumbering beasts I had only ever seen in Bristol Zoo and the sounds I was making being (to my mind) patently clear. When, next week, the challenge was to play like a mouse, my hands would stretch in the opposite direction and go scurrying around the upper keys.
Children today typically spend far more time looking at a screen than I ever did (there was only grainy black and white television). It concerns me how an invitation to compose is met with an almost instantaneous desire to sit in front of a computer and have the focus of their brain dominated by the visual impact of the illuminated screen. The frame of the screen seems to imprison the reach of the imagination, and more often than not the only place to insert notes is on the stave (perhaps we need a NSPLL – a Notational Society for the Preservation of Leger Lines). It is as though they compose visually.
Yet children in their creative play, be it outdoors or on the stairs, are just as imaginative as they ever were. I used to dream of playing cricket for England, flying to Mars with my teddy bears or constructing elaborate mazes. And my wonderful piano teacher took that imagination and encouraged me to respond to it with musical invention. Of course the elephants went thump, thump in the heavy tones of the bass whilst the mice scurried lightly around the tiny strings at the top of the piano, but she made my brain make that connection and be delighted (as only a 6-year old could be) in the results of my creativeness.
So when I compose The Elephant and the Mouse today, little has changed. I now know that elephants can ‘trumpet’ – the ones in Bristol zoo never did that – so the trombone takes the elephant theme, but the bass still thumps in the cello, and the scurrying mouse is portrayed by the piccolo. Yes, I have more technical know-how these days, but that imagination is key, and I am so grateful that my piano teacher turned it on for me.
I believe we should be doing far more to encourage today’s young children to be thinking in similarly imaginative ways, not because the results at GCSE composition will improve (though that would be welcome) but because it is such a vital skill to ‘think outside the box’ – the box of the computer screen. Oh, and we do not need to assess and measure the results with all the trappings of targets, assessments and statistics, we just need to encourage them to be imaginative. Who knows what then they might be able to imagine in whatever area they subsequently gain the technical know-how, musical or otherwise.
The performance was Don Giovanni, and very fine it was. Erwin Schrott was an excellent Don, and ably supported by Simon Orfila’s Leporello. María Bayo as Donna Elvira was the pick of the female singers. There was a dazzling set, with much gold paint, not least on the wide picture frame which defined the proscenium arch. If the staging of the final scene was a little low on visual impact with the ghost of the Commendatore singing from the orchestra pit, this did little to dilute the power of the performance. Occasionally the orchestra was a little lacking in refinement, but it was great to see the onstage players at the end of Act I getting caught up in the action, some hiding behind double basses.
The whole experience was wonderful to witness: a capacity audience who were engrossed in the piece, and a theatre that offered everything you could want – comfy chairs, wide open sight-lines (I could see much of the orchestra too), and a wonderful acoustic. The ambience in the foyers and bars was friendly, unpretentious and elegant. I already am looking forward to my second visit – opera in the Colón very much remains on my ‘to do’ list.
Buenos Aires is, of course, the city of Tango. The night before I was at a small-scale tango show at the charming Café Tortoni. A famous venue in the centre of the city, the main room is all art deco and very atmospheric.
As to the show itself, there was an ensemble of three musicians (piano, bandoneón, and bass guitar), a singer and a dancing couple. It was undoubtedly authentic and without the trappings of the bigger touristic shows; on my first visit to Buenos Aires my enjoyment of a tango show was curtailed when they struck up with ‘Don’t cry for me, Argentina’. On this occasion, much as I respected the playing of the three highly experienced musicians, I confess I was a little underwhelmed by the performance. Fluent and stylish, yes, yet there virtually no eye contact between them – not that they needed it, so many times had they shared the repertoire, but that was perhaps the problem. The spirited (formidable, even) female singer belonged to the same tradition and delivered rather too many songs in full chest voice, further amplified by the PA system. It was left to the young dancers to inject some charisma; it would have been good had the programme featured rather more of them.
In fairness, the previous evening had raised the bar astronomically high. On this occasion I was at the wonderful Torquato Tasso Club to hear the Tango-Fusion group Escalandrum. They are a line-up of six musicians: two saxophonists, a bass clarinet, piano, string bass and drumkit. They gave one of the most memorable performances I have ever attended.
To select individual members of the team would be unfair – they are all fantastic musicians and a brilliant, creative group. Gustavo Musso on soprano and alto saxophones was simply stunning with his dazzling solos, often traversing the full range of the instrument in passages of breath-taking virtuosity at break-neck speed. There were some sensuous solos on tenor sax from Danián Fogiel, and the most amazing bass clarinet playing (including extraordinary heights and some highly colouristic ‘shronking’ sounds) from Martin Pantyer. Mariano Sivori (bass) and Nicolás Guerschberg (piano) were also utterly brilliant as the bedrock of the ensemble.
There was a star, however. At the drums was Daniel Piazzolla – grandson of the mighty Astor, whose music I have loved and admired for many years. He was so absorbed in his playing, always creative in rhythmic invention and palette of timbres, and it was clear that he was savouring every moment of the interaction of his band.
And the thing that was simply wonderful (and unforeseen) was that the entire programme was his Grandfather’s music, re-worked with such imagination to twist rhythms, harmonies and textures in fresh, piquant and witty ways that I can only imagine the great man would have himself been delighted, notwithstanding the lack of any bandoneón (which, strange to say, seemed not to matter at all). What a wonderful tribute from a highly talented grandson and his amigos.
I have always loved Buenos Aires, but these three consecutive evenings took the love affair to new heights. What a wonderful city to provide such musical riches: from a confident production of one of the great European operas in a decidedly marvellous opera house, to its own special voice of tango in guises both old and new.
On my final night before flying home, I walked at a late hour through Plaza Dorrego – the heart of tango. It was Monday, and San Telmo was stangely empty; a new week had begun, perhaps even the Porteños needed a few bars rest. But in one corner of the square a small group of players were having a gentle practice. The tango goes on…
I shall have to return.
And so it was on Easter Sunday evening I sat down to play Ar hyd y nos in a Welsh chapel in Patagonia. My limited Spanish, even my native English, cannot explain how the music filled the small chapel, the way Ellis produced books of music from yesteryear for me to play, or how it felt to be one of an unknown number that have sat and played hymns in that humble chapel, and – alas – I have no Welsh at all. But this I know: music has a unique power to change the ambience of a room and connect past and present. In those chords on that harmonium Ellis and I became friends.
My Great Grandfather: Albert Joseph Owen
