Memoirs of a Music Man – Part Seven: The Marlborough Years (1) – The Early Years

In the autumn of 1982 I became a “Marlborough beak”.   After 16 years directing music in three different state schools I had finally “defected to the private sector” in the view of some of my former colleagues, and gone for the charmed life (?) in pastures new.

The process of my appointment was somewhat protracted-interviews one day, then a recall to conduct the orchestra and the choir and chair a staff meeting.  And all this a year before my arrival, with an inter-regnum appointed in between. Headmaster Roger Ellis met me at a point equidistant between Marlborough and my home in Brill, 12 miles NE of Oxford-a rather pleasant pub in Wantage! 

He was aware that I didn’t fit the traditional mould of an Independent School Director of Music:  I hadn’t been a pupil or taught or ran a department in one.  With a polo-neck sweater, a mop of hair and a Datsun Cherry car my image as well as my style of teaching and music-making was informal and my comments and corrections were delivered to youngsters from the hip, without much thought for protocol.

Amongst other nuggets of advice Mister Ellis pointed out that when conducting choir in the College Chapel, which included members of the Common Room, my style might just need to be..well, a little more err…calm and diplomatic perhaps?  And of course, I agreed with him (i.e. no swearing in Chapel!)

With so much time before starting at Marlborough I needed some basic guidelines as to the running of a large department, bearing in mind the previous D.O.M. had left none.  I spent an interesting morning with Graham Smallbone, the one before and by then the Eton Precentor, who still retained a pencil copy of his handover notes when he left Marlborough.  This turned out to be a reassuring and very useful few hours.

Later, on a visit to the College, I happened on a book entitled “Boys and Music” by John Ivimey, whose musical reign at Marlborough was in the 1920’s and 30’s.  I wondered whether this little book, with its chapter on his college years, might get to the essence of how to successfully inspire public school boys to great musical feats.  It was not a comfortable read, as these extracts demonstrate:

“Though I had come to Marlborough to look after the music I soon found that one of the most important parts of my work was to be carving at lunch…..roughly two joints of meat are allotted to each table, which means that the boys at dinner consume say 34 joints in as many minutes, to say nothing of puddings…”

“I discovered that several pianos of German manufacture had had their ivory keys ripped off by some ultra-patriotic pupils…”

“It struck me as a curious thing that the music-school should have been built opposite the sick-house, although music under certain circumstances might be said to have a healing influence….”

“The Gramophone Society flourished for some years…its demise was due in part to the jazz virus, which spread through the school in spite of all my attempts to stamp it out.”

Once at Marlborough things did gradually begin to take shape and I took advantage of the excellent Sturmey Archer bicycle I had been given by my previous school as a leaving present to get myself around the College and its spacious grounds.  Useful in tracking down pupils who had missed music lessons and choir practises it covered many miles in 21 years, finally giving up the ghost from rust, neglect and overuse on the very day of my retirement in July 2003.

In my first term Mr Ellis encouraged me to broaden the musical spectrum, thus expanding the influence and performance of music beyond the circle of the 40 or 50 devotees: perhaps reviving the House Shout, or putting on a Musical?

The House Shout sounded barbaric, but when I found out that it used to involve the whole school, with each House in turn putting on a song in the Memorial Hall I could see it was worth considering.  Defunct for a number of years, I gathered that Smallbone had abandoned musical events that involved the giving out of marks and prizes, and it is also possible that it had become riotous and totally ungovernable.

I found an old, deformed piece of silverware in a wine cupboard behind the Common Room dining area:  it was the House Shout Cup, and once straightened out and polished by Deacons the Jewellers it was as good as new.  My former pupil Howard Goodall agreed to be adjudicator and the event was reborn. Howard appeared on the stage with a black pullover engraved with golden crotchets and quavers and talked a language the pupils understood and liked.  It was a hugely successful evening, mostly down to the professional attitude of the House leaders suddenly entrusted with putting on their own musical performances.

The Marlburians loved the event and it was later improved by the inclusion of House Harmonies and particularly with the advent of girls throughout the college rather than just at sixth form level. Judges were chosen from the world of music and entertainment:  Richard Stilgoe (songwriter and lyricist), Simon Park (composer of “Eye Level”) and Kings Singer Simon Carrington.

As costumes and routines got more risky things it became more difficult to keep the lid on the evening, and the girls house performances were beginning to conspicuously outshine those of the all-male houses.  In retaliation the boys contrived various ways in which to put the girls off, and when paper missiles were showered onto the stage I had to halt proceedings and call for order and fair play. 

Having Frankie Howerd to judge the House Shout was a mistake.  He just wanted to tell the students a few stories, and they weren’t very funny ones at that, and it was left to me and the music staff to come up with the marks: not popular!  In due course the House Shout folded, despite the pleadings of the youngsters, but it sowed the seeds for the advent of more substantial entertainment.

I had been keen to get musical productions put on at the College from the start, but this proved a little more difficult than I imagined.  I had taken 150 students to the National Theatre’s famed production of Guys and Dolls at the Bristol Hippodrome, which was a start. However, despite the enthusiasm of most Housemasters, one would not let his junior students attend, and since he was the Head of English and Director of all dramatic productions this did not bode well.  He later dismissed musicals as “light froth” and an excuse for “unnecessary showing off”, so if we were to put one on he wasn’t going to be involved.

Something I noticed in my earliest years at Marlborough was the donnishness of some of the beaks.  Oxbridge products, specialists in their subject, opinionated and eccentric in their ways, their intellect created a cult following and their cliquishness manifested itself at common room tea, when they would get together, chew the fat and find something about the running of the College to find fault with.  The idea that they might run a game or drive a minibus, which today is the norm, was unthinkable.  I remember hurrying past a particularly entrenched member of this clan (no doubt on a mission to popularise music in my first term) while he sang in a low voice “Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run!”  It was kind of amusing and yet I sensed a mocking tone addressed to a young common room upstart trying to make an early impression.

The first few amateurish efforts at musical productions were put on in the modest-sized Bradleian Theatre, mostly with Junior participants.  Exact details elude me but I remember a production of Bugsy Malone directed by a “rentaroo”, Marlborough slang for an Australian exchange graduate.  I wanted the Head of English to see how much fun the students were having and I persuaded him to look in on our Dress Rehearsal.  He sat stoney-faced at the front, his miniature dachshund on his lap.  There was a fair amount of shaving foam littering the floor (splurge guns) but worst still, as the rentaroo slapped the side of the stage with his hockey stick and bellowed “Action!”, part of the set-a flat bearing the words “Fat Sam’s Grand Slam”- fell off the stage and nearly decapitated the little Dachsund.  Exit the Head of English.

Musical productions really took off with “Anything Goes” on the Memorial Hall stage, and continued with “Guys and Dolls” and “Cabaret” put on by a junior member of the English staff with one of the music staff.  With the advent of a Head of Drama and a Drama Curriculum, musical productions had more political clout and stage expertise-performers in the production of Jesus Christ Superstar had headset microphones and the costumes and set were West End standard. There would be further rocky times but for the moment musicals engaged the student participants at a high level and delighted the parents.

Though I was an innocent bystander and never directly involved “The Celebration of the Individual” was an annual if not termly ritual involving members of the Rock Society in making very loud music in the Memorial Hall.  Such was the delirium it produced with the Marlburian audiences the stage had to be protected with wooden barriers separating the audience from the performers.  This was a potential training ground for Toby Graffety-Smith, later Toby Smith of Jamiroquai, a music scholar in the late 80’s who was beginning to be fascinated by jazz music and improvisation.  Toby died tragically young in 2017 and his life was recently commemorated in a special Celebration of the Individual event at the College.  Once again it was uninhibited music-making with the students at the centre-composing, creating, performing, entertaining.  Some of it was good, some downright horrible.It tended to occur the night before the main choral concert in the chapel, so I always worried about some of the performers supposedly singing a challenging choral work with me the next day. I was on Vice on the day of one of these Celebrations:  Vice Squad was the name for the cohort of two beak and a couple of prefects charged with keeping discipline patrolling the campus on a weekly rota system.  Amongst various duties we had to visit the latest smoking hot-spots, and supplied with 2 £ coins we were detailed to visit one of the Marlborough pubs and buy a drink for our assigned prefect (with 2 £’s!)

Approaching the Memorial Hall at 10.00pm the noise was deafening, and through the strobe lighting and the stage smoke effects it was hard to identify the performers gyrating on the stage.  The lead singer, dressed in black with a Dead Kennedy’s t shirt, was singing (more like shouting) into his microphone at full volume.   It was punk rock and not nice to listen to. I turned to Doctor Hamilton, History of Art specialist who was standing by me.

“Who the hell is that making that terrible noise?” I asked him.“That, Robin is your son!”

Not for the first time my work and my private life collided, but there’s a happy end to this little tale.  It was Doc H who instilled a passion for Art History into my ex chorister teenage son, who is now a highly successful teacher, writer and lecturer on the subject!

Robin Nelson April 2020…..to be continued! 

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