NEWS FROM OLD EALONIANS

More musical memories

Richard Fortey

I was delighted to read Alistair Jones’ and Peter Hillman’s account of music at Ealing Grammar School for Boys during the fifties and early sixties. Alistair is right: the school choir attracted a national reputation. It was the best thing that happened to me at school, and implanted an abiding love of music. John Railton was a most exceptional teacher. I never saw him lose his temper, and he won over the most recalcitrant schoolboy with his sheer love of music. How else could he persuade us to get up early and arrive every day before school for choir practice? During my time in the choir Railton himself fell seriously ill with some kind of cancer on his arm. In those crude days the only recourse was amputation. He duly had his arm cut off – but it did not deter his music making one iota. He just used the other arm.

Music appreciation was held in a rather posh room (was it called the Ealonian Room?) which housed a grand piano and one of those new fangled record players that could do justice to LPs  that could hold a whole work on just one side. Boys voluntarily gave up lunch hours to sit in orderly rows to listen to the latest from Shostakovich or Vaughn Williams. There was the visceral excitement of Bartok’s Music for strings, percussion and celeste. We thought of ourselves as some sort of avant garde. David Charlton (who went on to have a distinguished musical career),  myself, Robert Gibbs and Dick Chappel even went on to the free Thursday Invitation Concerts at the BBC Maida Vale studios to listen to rhe really outre stuff emanating from the Continent. We saw the pianist John Ogden before he lost his mind.

But it was the choir that was the centre of the musical life of the school. Every year there was the service of nine lessons and carols, the latter sung from spanking new arrangements by the choirmster of Kings College Cambridge, David Willcocks (I still have my copy somewhere). The event traced my progression from boy soprano to baritone with no excuses while my voice broke in the middle.

For Railton that service was the bread and butter of the choir, but his ambitions stretched to more exotic fare. He loved Britten’s music and his church cantatas have been mentioed, but I recall Rejoice in the Lamb (setting Chrstipher Smart’s poems) with particular pleasure, and the choir was involved with early performances of The War Requiem. Wlaton’s Belshazzar’s Feast and Orff’s Carmina Burana have been mentioned, but I will never forget the brilliant version of Constant Lambert’s By the Rio Grande, with the young John Sivell tackling the bravura piano part with aplomb.

I too recall the appearance of the unassuming Lennox Barclay to hear his lovely Missa Brevis, but there was sterner stuff with Starvinsky’s Mass (no, Stavinsky didn’t turn up), and most difficult of all a work by a young enfent terrible Peter Maxwell Davies called O Magnum Mysterium. That really did stretch the boys to the limit. And Maxwell Davies himself arrived to hear us at work, and I will never forget the extraordinary, glittering intensity of his gaze while we were singing. I think it is best summed up by saying the Railton made us feel part of the London musical scene – and without the least vainglory on his part.

A curious postscript. Decades later I received a request from a choir in Devon to support the nomination for MBE for their choirmaster, one John Railton. Apparently after his retirement he had done similar wonders with his new local choir. It was a pleasure to be supportive, and he did eventually get his decoration, so well deserved, shortly before he died. Lennox Barclay had a son Michael (also a composer) who hosts a R3 show called Private Passions, in which guests are asked to select their music and explain why - a more exhaustive Desert Island Discs if you like. When I was a guest on the show I chose one number from Rejoice in the Lamb, and was able to explain the Railton connection, and the further connection to Michael’s father. My recording may still be on the BBC srchive.

I should not give the impression that John  Railton was the only special teacher at EGS. I should certainly add K E Williams to the tally, without whose  benign influence I would never have taken the scientific path I was to follow for so many years. Mr Bland, doyen of the art room, allowed me to go all the way to A level in art purely for enjoyment, while I was simultaneously doing the full quota of science suhjects. I doubt whether it would be either possible or legal in these more regimented times. Mr Shearn (or was it Sheehan?) gave me early encouragment in writing, which it would be remiss of me not to mention. They were good people.

I should perhaps add that some of these recollections will appear in a memoir to be published next year under the title A Curious Boy (Harpercollins)

Richard Fortey

MORE MUSICAL MEMORIES

Upon seeing others recollection of the fine music tradition at Ealing Grammar School, Richard Fortey has written to add his recollections. Richard was at Ealing Grammar School until 1965 and was Head Boy in his final year.  (Richard may be embarrassed that I should mention the personal distinction in his field of palaeontology.   The entry in Wikipedia, shown below, tells us more.    JH Ed)