Disappointment
As I wrote the title here, I could hear my Mum’s voice. “Oh Gillian”, she’d have said (because I was/am always Gillian in such circumstances) “if that’s all you have to be disappointed about, then you must be very lucky”. And she’d be right, of course.
Let me explain.
As I was in the bathroom this morning, the radio was tuned to our usual BBC Radio 3, the classical music station. The presenter was introducing the next track on his playlist, which promised to be something special. “Imagine hearing a favourite piece of music in a new and amazing interpretation, so spectacular that you’ll believe you are hearing it for the very first time” he said.
Wow. What was it going to be, I wondered? As I cleaned my teeth, I skimmed through several of my favourites in my head - maybe a Brahms Piano Concerto or a favourite Tchaikowsky Symphony perhaps? Thankfully my toothbrush had stopped in time for the first notes of this wondrous performance…
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
My all time bête noire and a piece I can hardly bear to listen to. With a grump, I turned the radio off.
My Hero well knows how I feel about it and around here we slot another word in between Sorcerer’s and Apprentice which I won’t add here but leave to your imagination. But it was some years after we’d been married that he asked why I disliked it so.
In the dim and distant past, when I was a student teacher, I was completing my final teaching practice in an idyllic village school just north of York. There were just eighteen children in the single classroom and it was the summertime. As a student teacher, I was obliged to follow the direction of the teacher in charge - the Headmistress - who set the agenda for each day’s work. On one particular occasion, she suggested I lead some creative writing activity, starting with a piece of music.
Being a musician, still actively involved in youth orchestras and fresh from my own school music activity, my head buzzed with ideas for a starting point. I thought it would be best for the children to begin with a piece of music they’d not heard before; one which would provoke rich images in their imagination and over the weekend I came up with a few suggestions. Maybe one of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, for example? But when I arrived in school the next day, the headmistress had other ideas. She thought The Sorcerer’s Apprentice would be just the ticket, had brought her own recording of it and that was that. My instructions were clear. By the time I came to teach the lesson, I had already built up plenty of resentment, felt I could have put something so much better together and I was not happy!
Needless to say, at least one of the children had already seen Fantasia and the result was eighteen variations on Mickey Mouse and a few broomsticks. Reviewing the disappointing outcome of the activity with the Headmistress later left me wondering whether she had actually seen the film or had any knowledge of Mickey Mouse wearing a blue pointy hat. She certainly didn’t appear to recognise the character. But the damage was done and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice was forever marked in my psyche. She, of course, thought that I had wasted a perfect creative opportunity.
All was not lost, however, for I learned a valuable lesson when I discussed it all with my tutor later. His advice was never to teach someone else’s plan or expect someone else to teach mine, for it seldom works! Wise words which still hold true today.
Years later, with a class of my own to work with, I took the opportunity to lay the ghost of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice by using music to prompt some creative writing. This time, however, I used a piece of music I was sure the children would never have heard before but which was a particular favourite of mine at the time. Though I had a clear picture in my own mind provoked by the sounds I heard, I kept those very much to myself.
a tiger walking through the jungle during a rainstorm :-)
I remember the outcome as being really great, but there was one story in particular which made a deep and lasting impression, so much so, I remember it all these years later (and the girl who wrote it, too). When looking for the track to include on a link here however, my memory failed me. I played endless tracks on Spotify, feeling sure I knew the band who played it: Sky. but my search was in vain.
Until yesterday afternoon, when my Hero - who I thought knew what I was searching for - corrected me, “I’m sure it’s by Jean Michel Jarre and not Sky at all” For the next hour or so, we listened to JMJ’s recordings from around that time and thankfully, soon came across it. Equinoxe Pt.8.
Now Arthur is in our lives, we’re always on the lookout for music he’ll enjoy; weird and wonderful sounds and rhythms which make him dance, clap and beat his hands. I think he will enjoy Equinoxe 8, for sure, though perhaps he’s a little young to dream of tigers walking through a rainstorm in the jungle (which is the image in my mind) or the elderly gentleman sitting by his fairground carousel in the rain in the hope of one last customer, who finally comes running up feeling thrilled to have the ride to herself (Alison’s story).
Listening to Sky, Jean Michel Jarre and other artists whose vinyl LPs we have recently donated (because we can hear them all on Spotify) is sure to prompt images in my head, mostly memories from the 1980s. Very good they are too!
And my Mum was absolutely right of course, not only was it a very trivial disappointment but actually, a prompt for all kinds of memories and a rediscovery of old favourites, long forgotten. In particular JMJ’s China Concerts which one track in particular will always take me back to flying into HongKong in the mid 1980s when I had that particular track playing on my headphones as we landed at the old airport with the hair raising runway and which is playing as I type.
Of course, now I see that it really wasn’t a disappointment at all.
