Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock - Music in Time.

As Pat and lay in bed the other morning enjoying the first cup of tea of the day the radio played Mozart’s famous “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”. No matter how many times I hear this piece and no matter who is playing it I cannot listen to it without hearing a clock ticking away loudly in the background!

You see, just about the time that Pat and I got married we spent an evening babysitting for Pat’s sister. We were trying to build up a music collection but money was tight and buying records was one expense too far.  So, we broke all the copyright rules and used a reel to reel tape recorder (remember those?) to tape the records. When the house was quiet and the babies asleep we set it all up. Of course, this was all pretty primitive stuff. We took the tape recorder microphone, laid it on a cushion right in front of the record player speaker and hoped that we would get a reasonable recording! It was an old 1950’s record player so this was not advanced technology! While we were recording we had to keep quiet and hope the babies didn’t wake up! A couple of hours later we had recorded all the LPs we wanted.

A sketch done during the  concert of
Beethoven conducting the Ninth in 1824

When we returned home and played the tape the results were, surprisingly,  not too bad – certainly we used them for a year or two until we could afford something better. But in pieces where there were quiet sections (of which the “Eine Kleine Nacht” has many!) dominating the whole music was the sound of the clock ticking away in the mantelpiece! We had just not noticed the clock! Over the next year or two as we played our tape I got used to always associating the “Eine Kleine Nacht” with a ticking clock – now, no matter when I hear it, my brain automatically superimposes a clock. It did so this morning as we lay in bed listening to the radio!

By coincidence I had spent the previous evening downloading some tracks for my i-pod and as I lay in bed listening to the ticking clock in my brain I reflected upon how times have changed. Last night I was able to visit i-tunes or Amazon or some other web site and within seconds have virtually any piece of music in the world in my possession. In less than a minute or so I had downloaded two LPs (notice how I show my age – I refuse to call them “albums”!) and they were playing in my office. This morning I spent a couple of minutes on the computer transferring the LPs onto the SD card that sits in my car audio system so I can listen to them as I drive along anywhere in the country – or indeed in the world!  And I did all this without even leaving my office.

I suppose that young people take all this in their stride – for them it has always been thus. Maybe they can’t imagine a world other than where instant communication, instant access to goods and services  and immediate gratification is the norm. Whilst I wouldn’t go so far as the scientist Susan Greenfield's apocalyptic warning that: "We could be raising a hedonistic generation who live only in the thrill of the computer-generated moment and are in distinct danger of detaching themselves from what the rest of us would consider the real world" I nonetheless wonder if western society is reaching a point where we are all maybe becoming a bit out of touch with the realities of life. I’m not too sure that when I live in a world where virtually all that I need can be supplied by the push of a button or the click of my computer mouse that I can possibly empathise fully with the child who has to walk miles to his school under the blazing African sun or the Indian family living in the slums of some Mumbai shanty town or woman walking miles to the nearest well for life giving water for her family. I might feel sorry for them – but empathy is more than just feeling sorry. As western society increasingly moves away from a struggle to survive to one where, for most of us, our perceived “problems” are little more than small glitches in the routine of our often luxurious (compared with many millions throughout the world) lives I cannot believe that we can really have any concept of what life might be like for much of the world or indeed for ourselves if and when the computer ceases to work!

Peter, Paul & Mary singing "If I had  a hammer" at the march
on Washington in August 1963

But, to move musically on. In a recent TV series about the development of music through the ages the composer and TV presenter Howard Goodall made a very simple but at the same time pertinent observation. It was so obvious that when I heard it I wondered why it had never occurred to me before! I have thought about it often since. Goodall commented that until the invention of radio and the gramophone the musical experience of people was very limited and very different. That is pretty obvious but he went on to say that even for the very rich, who perhaps had access to attending concerts or to private musical evenings they might only hear a piece of music four of five times in their lifetime. Imagine, sitting in the audience at the premier of Beethoven’s 9th in 1824 and hearing a piece so different and which clearly changed the musical landscape but after the concert, when you have rushed home to tell your friends of the wonderful event........that’s it! You can’t rush out a buy a copy to play at home, you can’t switch the radio on and catch a recording of the concert. You have only heard it once so you will hardly be able to hum any of its tunes! All that you know is that you have heard the most glorious work – and that you might not hear it again for several years  - until, if you are lucky, another concert happens to occur near you and the orchestra is playing that piece.

Queen's"Bohemian Rhapsody" -
the iconic image - would the song have
become the classic it did without
technology?

Indeed, a few months ago that happened to Pat and I. The Halle Orchestra performed the Ninth here in Nottingham. It was a glorious event ending in a long standing ovation. We wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It had not been performed in Nottingham for ten years – the last time was just a few days before our first grand-daughter was born and Pat was singing in the choir for the concert that night. We forever associate the Ninth with our grand-daughter’s birth. But of course, that wasn’t the last time we heard it – in the ten intervening  years we have listened to it on TV, radio, stereo, car radio, i-pod and a thousand other technological ways. We know every note and Pat, as a singer, every word. But of course, to those in the first audience in 1824 all of that would not have been an option - ten years might have passed before they heard it again!.

Of course, this doesn’t only refer to bits of classical music. The same might be true of any piece. It is only with the help of technology that we can listen regularly to the pop songs of the day. Imagine hearing Bob Dylan only once and then not again for another few years until he next came to your town. In 1964 I saw the Beatles in concert – the one and only time. Since then it is by record, tape and radio that I have learned their songs. Would I have remembered their songs if it was based purely on that one concert? Of course not! Would they have achieved the fame they did on a few disparate concerts? I think not. Easy accessibility and opportunities to repeatedly enjoy a piece of music has changed how we perceive, respond to and celebrate music. The technology of the past century, and especially of the past few years, as computers have impacted upon our lives is enormous – and nowhere more so that in the field of music. Today, pop stars achieve their fame not via concerts but by videos. I suppose it is perfectly possible to for a performer to achieve world fame and wealth without actually performing in front of anyone – their repertoire and image made famous by technology!

If I listen to Finzi it's this
sort of scene I see!

But, just as Beethoven changed the musical world when he conducted the first performance of his Ninth all those years ago, so too, today, there are still pieces of music that can and do change the world or, at least,  somehow define the age and its music. Indeed, the advent of modern technology assures that.  Personal favourites will of course play a part in this – what defines the age to one might not to another but a number  of pieces spring to my mind which I guess might bring back the emotions, excitement, culture, sights, sounds or even smells of the time. I was reminded of this a few nights ago when we watched a TV programme about the Martin Luther King “I have a dream” speech and the civil rights march on Washington on August 28th 1963. As we watched how the march was organised and the historical/political/social context of the event there suddenly flashed onto  the screen a few seconds of the folk group Peter Paul & Mary singing “If I had a hammer” in front of the vast crowd. I hadn’t thought of this song for years but in those few seconds the whole emotion, excitement and expectation of the time came back to me. My old record of the group singing this song has long since disappeared but a wave of nostalgia overcame me as my eyes watched Mary Travers, Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey sing and my ears took in the words – and my brain, just as with the ticking clock,  bridged fifty years as if they had never happened. Such is the power of music – helped today with technology - to impact upon our lives. And it was those few seconds of old film that prompted my visit to i-tunes the other night – I now have Peter Paul and Mary back in my collection!

Eddie Cochran - "Summertime
Blues", "C'mon Everybody" and
the rest take me back to my
misspent teens

Everyone will have their own list but Sgt Pepper, Bohemian Rhapsody, Bridge Over troubled Water, American Pie, Imagine, Rock Around the Clock and others can claim just as much right to stand alongside the great classical works such as Beethoven’s Ninth, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s B Minor Mass  or Mozart’s Requiem  in terms of their influence upon music and the times in which they were composed or performed. And artists and composers, too, can have that same impact. Mention Bach to me and my brain clicks into the world of the 17th century – men with swords at their side, ladies in crinolines; Beethoven - and I am half way to sitting in some grand concert hall surrounded by Jane Austen type characters and with Napoleon in the far distance; Vaughan Williams or Gerald Finzi and I am surrounded by rosy cheeked Thomas Hardy type maidens, apple orchards and Autumn dusks – overwhelmingly England. In the past few days I have been helping Pat to write her next choir concert programme. They are performing one of the world’s very great pieces – Mozart’s Requiem. As well as the glory of the music that has been buzzing around my head there has also been the eerie and mysterious story of its composition as Mozart lay dying – visits by strangers wearing masks, the composer’s awareness that this would be his epitaph, mysterious contracts and Mozart’s death with the piece unfinished. Music is, indeed, much more than just a few notes arranged in a certain order. It is inextricably linked with its time and with people and as such great music of any kind can, should and will evoke deep emotions and far off memories. It is not just great classical music with this propensity -  pop music, too, has the same role. I only have to hear the guitar intro to Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues  and  it’s 1958. I’m just into my teens and at the Whitsuntide Fair in Preston surrounded by fast moving fairground rides,  a world of girls with pony tails and bright red lipstick,  boys with brylcreamed hair and slim jim ties (yes, I had both!), rock and roll and teenage love - the world of Grease come alive!  A few bars of  the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood and I can smell my college room and still see the pictures on the wall and the books on the shelf; I’m listening to my old Dansette record player while outside Bob Davison is playing cards in the common room and singing the Animals' We gotta get out of this place at the top of his voice! And Simon and Garfunkel still resonate across the years - Bridge over Troubled Water  cannot be played without me suddenly being back in our first house and I standing on the ladder hanging bright orange wallpaper in our hall. We played and played that record as we decorated in that Spring of 1970! I could go on – all personal choices and inextricably linked with my life. Everyone’s list will be different but music has the power to associate us with important parts of our lives, transport us to times past and to connect with the essential us.

Rod Stewart on stage at Sheffield

The "Time" LP

Two or three months ago Pat and went to a concert in Sheffield. We joined 10,000 others to enjoy Rod Stewart at the Sheffield Arena. Stewart was superb and by half way through we were waving and clapping with the rest of the audience as he sang his hits – Maggie May, Atlantic Crossing, First Cut is the Deepest and the rest - and at the same time reminding us all of our misspent youth! For a couple of hours we were no longer senior citizens with our aches and pains but youngsters again reliving our past! The Concert was called “Time” – to link in with the star’s latest LP of the same name. We hadn’t heard the music from the LP before but throughout the night he sang most of the songs from the record. We were smitten – not simply because the music was wonderful but because the theme of the LP in recording events, people and times in Stewart’s own life was novel.

First thing next morning a visit to i-tunes gave us a copy of the record and since then it has been played on every conceivable type of technology – CD player, car audio, SD card, Pat has it on her phone and whenever I drive her car as I switch the ignition on immediately Stewart’s voice drifts out of the speakers! One of the songs (my favourite) is Brighton Beach  a song Stewart wrote this to record an affair he had with a girl in the mid sixties. The words tell of the doomed affair but they also speak of the times:

................Oh what a time it was
What a time to be alive
Remember Janice and Jimmy
Kennedy and King
How we cried
I sang to you the songs of Lamb and Jack
You were Greta Garbo and I was Kerouac
And we played so hard and we loved so hard
Seemed we never ever slept
There were crazy days, there were wonderful days
And I loved you with all of my heart
Seems like only yesterday
Under the stars on Brighton beach............

Yes, the years fell away (and the popcorn
disappeared) as we listened to Rod!

And this is what music does, it speaks to us – either directly of past times as Stewart’s song does or indirectly as it links us with our pasts. Whether it be songs we learned at school, songs we danced to on our first date, music we came to love because it became part of a great event in our life or works that we have come to love and cherish simply because of their quality or musical history it imprints itself upon our brain and our inner being. It becomes part of us and what we are.  Brighton Beach is about the 1960s – Kennedy, Luther King, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix – it reminds me of those times and takes me back. Hearing the name Kerouac reminded me that back then just before I went to college I had begun reading Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road, a book that influenced a generation - the Beat Generation - through the writing, the  poetry and music of Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and especially Neal Cassady. The book is described by Dylan as "changing my life like it changed everybody elses". He was not wrong it is one of the roots of the sixties musical and social revolution, of flower power, of Woodstock and of Timothy Leary's famous quote "Turn on, tune in drop out". In short one of the foundation stones of the modern world that we all now take for granted. My friend Dave Nightingale had loaned it to me but before I could finish it I  had to leave Preston to come to college here in Nottingham so I returned the book to Dave unfinished. I hadn't thought of it since but Kerouac's name leapt out to me as I heard Stewart’s song and all the memories from across the years came flooding back. I now have a copy and will do battle with it again!

But if the song reminded me of my past so, too, did the concert. I cannot now listen to Brighton Beach or indeed any other of the songs from the Time LP without once again be sitting with 10,000 others in that Sheffield Arena and when, for a few hours, I was no longer a 68 year old with a dodgy heart but a youngster ready to dance and sing with the rest! I don’t think that I could disagree with Bono – U2 front man, musician and activist – who famously noted that “Music can change the world because it can change people.”  I would totally agree – even  when there is a clock ticking in the background!