WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: MUSIC APPRECIATION WITH DR. CHATER
Peter Douglas writes:
Exactly whose idea it was is lost in misty time, but it
probably sounded a good idea when it was proposed. It was probably around
1959 or 1960 when someone in the school’s administration (or perhaps Dr. Chater
himself) suggested that senior pupils should have the benefit of a class called
“Music Appreciation.” I presume that the plan was to raise our level of
awareness and comprehension of music by exposing us to it. It was a noble
thought, of course, but one that was essentially wasted on our inattentive and
degenerate little minds.
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Dr Chater - Crayon Picture |
We all gathered as a class once a week in one of the Tower Block rooms in the
late afternoon. The ringmaster of this particular circus was Dr. Chater,
even though his academic interest was of the scientific kind. It was worth a try, and I’m sure he did a good
job, but it was really a lost cause. The classes were pretty much as you
might expect with 30-odd teenagers made to sit still and listen to music – and
classical music too, no Cliff Richard, Frankie Avalon, or Bobby Darin!
Dr. Chater explained what we were going to hear, and said something about the
composer before putting the LP on the record-player. We could have been
worse, but proper behaviour was asking a lot. There was a lot of fidgeting and
sniggering, whispering and note-passing, doodling, and covert attention to
homework. But the very worst was the silly giggling! Someone would
make a remark or a noise, and we’d be off. It spread like an epidemic, made
worse by our efforts to contain it. Eyes watered and noses snorted, and
usually someone let it go and tried to cover it with a cough. For the most
part, Dr. Chater seemed not to care or notice, and usually gazed out of the
window as the music played. I recall he was driven to call for silence
once on the occasion when an ill-suppressed fart squeaked out and set us off,
far worse than usual!
And yet for all this foolishness, one of my most vivid memories of these
sessions, what came to be known as “Music Depreciation,” was quite moving for
me, and I am impressed and a little embarrassed by it. Since that day, I
have heard the music in question a few times, and it has never failed to evoke
that far-off day at school.
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Dr Chater in 1958 |
It was a winter afternoon, and Dr. Chater’s treat that day for this gathering of
ungrateful clowns and time-wasters was to be Bedrich Smetana’s “Moldau.”
Not that we listened or cared a damn, but this is a symphonic poem written in
1874 as part of the Czech composer’s “Ma Vlast” (“My Country”). The Moldau
is a river, and the composition depicts its course as it flows through the
countryside, through forests and by fields, beneath rocks and ruined castles.
Dr. Chater was evidently quite familiar with the piece as he tried to set the
scene for us, outlining what we were about to hear. Two brooks were
represented by the flutes, the surging string melody was the main river, and
there were rapids and water nymphs (giggle), and ending with the river flowing
majestically through the Czech capital.
His brief preamble concluded, Chater set the phonograph spinning and the crackle
of the needle preceded the gentle start of the music. I wasn’t expecting
much; it sounded pretty good music to dream and snooze by, and it was certainly
better than tangling with the Corn Laws, quadratic equations, or, God forbid,
the rigours of the rugby field. I closed my eyes and let the notes wash
over me – well, it was a river, after all, so the metaphor’s apt. I
discovered that I found the music strangely moving for some reason, and I found
the burps and rumblings of the classroom drifting away. With my eyes
closed it was easy to follow that water’s course, each section of its passage
uniquely evoked by the subtle differences in the music, restful and quiet by the
meadows, accelerated and agitated when we reached the rapids!
It was very strange! For all the snickering and playing up around me, I
was able to tune it out and really concentrate on the swelling and collapsing
flow of the music. This was something new, a revelation of how music could
affect mood, could allow me some minutes of quiet contemplation (of what I
wasn’t sure) in this loony classroom. I opened my eyes and, happening to
be close to the window that faced west, I watched the low sun sinking into the
cold, red clouds at the horizon. I was drifting away, transfixed, almost
hypnotized, by the music. The view and the music seemed in harmony, the
splendid eternal daily ritual of nature, the falling sun, the Technicolor clouds
smothering it, this to me imaginary distant river flowing on, the evocative
melody filling my head, the mind of a long-dead composer sneaking into this
banal classroom sixty-something years after his death…
The music ended, as all music must. The Moldau met the Elbe and vanished
into it, and the noises of the classroom returned. They pushed their
ungainly way into my consciousness in the form of the titters and yawns of my
pals, and the stretching and shifting of bored and restless bodies. We had
all just listened to the same piece of music, but no one else seemed affected by it. Any discussion of what we’d heard was not an option. Make of it what you will, seemed to be the line. Everyone rushed out; I
just wanted to go for a long walk and hear the last dying notes of Smetana in my
head, letting the discordant world return if it must, but slowly. Yet I
scrambled out with the rest of them, of course, out into the rubber-floored
corridor and down the noisy, crowded staircase in a blur of green blazers and
jabbering, distracting voices.
But before I left the room I looked quickly back at Dr. Chater. He’d
removed the arm from the record and dismissed us with a languid and quite
unnecessary wave. He doubtless dismissed us in other ways too, as a pack
of unappreciative savages who had been offered a treasure and refused it.
I wanted to catch his eye, to let him know that this hour wasn’t wasted
entirely, that someone understood… or might
understand. Who appreciated. But he wasn’t paying any attention to any of
us. He was standing by the window, looking out at that sunset, at my
sunset, at that sad diminuendo of the day.
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