The pleasure of performing music lies deep within us all

Margaret Cook
Sunday July 10, 2005
The Observer

Television, said the late, bon vivant, Scottish MP Nicky Fairbairn, is not something you watch, it is something you appear on. The same principle – that the gifted few perform while the mass of lesser folk admire and revere – applies to music in a modern era. The supremely talented, the masters, the prodigies, the most exquisite expositions, are accessible to all through the media and concert halls, CDs and records.

Does this inhibit the also-rans, virtually all of us? Are we destined to be a race of listeners, part of the millions at Live8, T in the Park or the muddy masses at Glastonbury; fans of the Three Tenors or regulars at the Proms? I wonder if our need for music can be satisfied by merely listening and not performing.
I have this rosy notion of a past era, when families gathered round the piano or the family fiddler and enjoyed homemade music. Certainly, this was a feature of old-style Hogmanay parties. This year, we had silly games in which the price of failure was doing a party piece. To our amazement, people fell over themselves to stand up and sing, recite or even play.

The desire to perform is, I think, universally present, but the horror of failure or ridicule is almost as strong. Many people have had a eureka moment with music; a spark, a fuse, an explosion which might be talent revealed or, at least, the start of an enduring interest, love, even obsession. With my sister, it was Má Vlast by Smetana, a wonderful programme of music depicting a river.

For my partner, it was Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony, and he recalls the hair on the back of his neck standing on end with excitement. My elder son was transfixed aged nine by the opera Carmen Jones, especially the moment of drama when she foresees her own death by selecting the nine of clubs from a pack of cards.

My portent was a juvenile fascination with the piano, the actual instrument, just the pressing of those beautiful ivory and ebony keys. When I eventually began lessons, my mother was convinced I would be a genius. After all, a fixation can presage prodigality, as with Jacqueline du Pré and Anna Pavlova, who identified the cello and the ballet respectively as their spheres of supremacy at crazily young ages. Alas, it was not so with me.

Perhaps the talent for hearing and enjoying music is actually separate from the ability to produce it. I knew a woman who was an avid concertgoer, but who was so tone deaf that even her speech was a monotone. So maybe not all listeners are failed performers; they may be maestros in their own right, unusually excelling in a private, precious, non-competitive medium.

It is not very fashionable, after all, to admit to a liking for ‘classical’ music. It is fuddy-duddy, an establishment thing; not cool for rebellious, risk-loving kids, for whom pop and rock are part of the uniform. Yet even among this age group are crypto-classic aficionados. When the BBC held a celebration of Beethoven’s life recently, it made his first five symphonies available online.

More than 650,000 copies were downloaded in the first week, suggesting that there was a preponderance of computer literate, young people seizing the day. Popularisation of culture is emphatically to be encouraged, as with the three tenors and ‘Nessun Dorma’, Classic FM and the Top of the Pops-style music charts, CDs entitled Wagner’s Greatest Hits and the like.

The new BBC Prom season has a home page geared for family appeal. Music is good for the soul, maybe for pacification and relief of stress, and should be universally disseminated.

Sport is often quoted as the universal medium through which races learn to know and respect each other, but music can be an even more effective medium. We certainly found it so on a recent trip through Belarus and Russia on the trans-Siberian express.

On station platforms and the interior of St Basil’s cathedral, we were welcomed by traditional folk singers and dancers, playing fiddles and accordions. They broke off to gather up partners from the audience while the vodka circulated and much hair was let down. Many a dormant masculine heart was touched in the process.

On Arbat Street in Moscow, busking children no older than eight played violin and cello with consummate skill, gaining them many offerings from us tourists.

But for a memorable, timeless experience, there was nothing to match listening to a concert pianist, Alexander Block, playing a repertoire from Glinka to Shostakovitch to Gershwin, on an upright piano in the bar of our train, while we trundled round St Petersburg in the white nights of summer; the sun suspended as if by surface tension on the horizon. All of us transfixed and silent over our vodka and beer. It really doesn’t get any more magical than this.

Those of us who could play the piano kept our heads down, of course. But I have been inspired by his virtuosity since returning to the real world, to settle down to regular practice. A friend of mature vintage has actually purchased Book One and started to learn the instrument. Humans are irrepressibly competitive, so excellence begets endeavour, not inhibition. I should have known that.