Music and Movies

Aug 20, 2020 | Welcome Column

The current pandemic is a difficult time for us all, and it helps to be able to escape from the daily stress and worry for a while by making some music. I’ve also found that after a session with my mandolin in the evening it’s good to relax with a bit of television.

The BBC has been using the last few months not only to recycle some great musical performances but also to show again some of their classic dramas. The 1995 production of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ directed by Simon Langton has been a great draw. As well as the superb performances by the likes of Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle I’ve been struck by Jane Austen’s obvious interest in music and dancing. Music features frequently in her novels, and adaptations for film pick up on the opportunity for dances and musical performances. And being Jane Austen she never misses a chance to satirise the pretentious, for example the insufferable Lady Catherine de Bourgh who remarks “Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.” Ouch!

Jane Austen herself was by all accounts an excellent pianist. She had lessons until she was 21, studying with George Chard, an organist from Winchester Cathedral. For years she practised every day before breakfast; the large household was so busy she would not have had the opportunity for the rest of the day. She also took pleasure in transcribing music, and compiled her own albums of sheet music. Her musical tastes tended towards the popular songs of her era and she played country dances to keep her nephews and nieces entertained. The dances and musical occasions featured in film dramatisations are probably in keeping with what Jane Austen would have taken part in herself. In ‘Emma’ she is surely expressing her own feelings when she has Mrs Elton say, “I absolutely cannot do without music…… without music, life would be a blank to me.

When I reflect on the time and attention I have devoted to music during my own life it’s very easy to see it as a personal indulgence. I’ve never pretended that it is a way of making money, and have never expected any payment for my modest efforts, which is just as well! But instead of learning to play instruments (and writing articles) I could have used my music time to give more attention to maintenance of the house and garden and all the other responsibilities which consume our time outside the hours at the day job. On the other hand I’ve learned from experience that if I go without playing an instrument for any length of time it feels like the loss of something essential, and the only way to get back up is to open the instrument cases again.

I find it greatly reassuring that so many people who are prominent for other skills and achievements have also been devoted musicians. Some are in fact more widely known for their music but have held down full-time professional jobs. John Starling of the Seldom Scene was a hospital surgeon, who used to say that he couldn’t travel with a band as he needed to be at work to keep check on the progress of the patients he was treating. The guitarist Dave Laibman is a university professor of economics in New York, but as his Wikipedia page notes “he is also a fingerstyle guitarist”. He broke new ground with his arrangements of ragtime music, and explains in the liner notes of ‘The New Ragtime Guitar’ album that it all started for him in 1959 hearing Mike Seeger playing ‘Dallas Rag’ on the mandolin in a New Lost City Ramblers concert. “My guitar fingers during my first year at Antioch College in 1960, were looking for something new to do, and this was it. After ‘Dallas Rag’ one thing just led to another….” Tom Lehrer is undoubtedly better known by a wider public for his satirical songs but as a Harvard graduate he had an academic career covering a range of disciplines from mathematics to political science. In 2001, Lehrer taught his last mathematics class, on the topic of infinity, and retired from academia, but his music lives on into the digital age.

So if you are feeling low, ask yourself “When was the last time I practised?” It’s all there to play for!

John Baldry

August 2020

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