A Singer’s Life
Once upon a time, a boy at a prestigious school in Edinburgh, where shorts were worn until the end of S2 and where teachers could strike children violently on the hand with a leather strap to enforce discipline, decided that, when his voice broke, he wanted to be an opera singer. He received mixed messages from his two music teachers: one ignored him because he didn’t study music while the other, who incidentally founded Scottish Opera with Sir Alexander Gibson, encouraged him to go to concerts and operas, furnishing him on occasions with free tickets. He became obsessed with Mozart and Wagner, and learned soprano and tenor arias and scenes at a lower pitch and for no good reason. He went in for the school singing prize, and, much to the head music master’s disgust, won. Then he won it the next year, and the next.
In his final year, a new music teacher arrived and immediately recognised the boy’s potential, sending him to audition at the famous Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. The Principal of this august establishment invited him to enrol the following year, but the boy’s mother, a wise owl with a clear head, told him to wait. To go to University (still an elite institution with only 10% of school leavers), and mature socially and vocally. If he still wished to pursue the (rather odd) path of professional singing, his parents would help out financially if necessary (thinking, no doubt, it’s a fad, he’ll grow out of it!).
So off he went, skipping and jumping, to St Andrews University, where he studied French, English, Philosophy and Mediaeval History, finally obtaining a Master of Arts Degree with Honours in French and Mediaeval History.
During his four years at St Andrews, every second Wednesday, he drove his little car to Leuchars station where he took a train to Edinburgh. There he changed to another train to Glasgow, where he had a singing lesson, initially of 30 minutes, expanding to one hour after a year or two. A train back to Edinburgh, a couple of pints in Jinglin’ Geordie’s with Edinburgh based school friends and then back on the last train to Leuchars, where his little car awaited him. No breathalysers then, so a carefree drive back to his Hall of Residence!
While at St Andrews, the old nonsense of disinterest on the part of official channels for someone not studying music manifested itself again. No solos were offered him in choral works, but he amused himself by learning German Lieder and operatic arias. The English lecturer and Town Organist TGD, encouraged him however, offering him solos in Messiah and the Vaughan Williams Mass in G Minor, and he sang three days a week with the Renaissance Group and toured with them, often singing solos . He made lifetime friends in the Ren Group and also met his wife, to whom he has been married for nearly 41 years.
His voice matured well and sensibly, and after Graduation, he remained in Scotland, taking a teacher training course at Moray House in Edinburgh, while his girlfriend, now wife, finished her degree, and continued his lessons at the RSAMD.
In 1978, the pair moved to London, she training to be a Chartered Accountant, and he starting a Post Graduate course at the Guildhall School of Music, studying with the celebrated teacher, Laura Sarti. Initially joining the general music course, and finding it rather slow, he was lucky enough to benefit from Laura’s Italian mentality when she stormed into the Principal’s office to tell him that this boy should be on the Opera Course as he was far too advanced for the general one! The Principal, taken aback by the Mediterranean whirlwind, agreed and so he found himself on the full post graduate course of language classes, song classes, movement and drama and opera. Financed by those long suffering parents and by a very generous scholarship from the Sir James Caird Trust in Dundee, the boy, now 22, so a man, so to speak, thrived at the Guildhall, being cast as Don Magnifico in Cenerentola, Seneca in Poppea and Figaro in Mozart’s classic. He learned how to sing in French, German and Italian, and learned a little bit about stagecraft (although not a lot, at this stage) and self-confidence (perhaps a little too much!). The one thing lacking was any real understanding of Musical Theory, a lack that stayed with him throughout his career. Having never studied music or piano, his knowledge of theory has remained steadfastly limited, although it doesn’t seem to have done him any great harm. However, to this day, he keeps very quiet when colleagues go into great detail about keys, harmony and modality!!
In the summer months, he studied with esteemed legends of the music world at the Britten-Pears Summer School at Snape, near Aldeburgh, and began to be seen as a rising star. He was selected for the 1980 televised masterclasses given by Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf at the Edinburgh Festival (available to see now on YouTube. Oops! We’ve given the boy’s/man’s name away at last!) which exponentially raised his profile in the music world, and when, in 1981, he won the Decca Kathleen Ferrier Prize in the Wigmore Hall in London, with a panel of Dame Janet Baker, Gerald Moore and John Shirley-Quirk, he had become one of the most talked about young singers in the country.
To be continued.
