Was it fate or just a series of lucky
breaks?
My mother declared that she’d had no
more than six months piano tuition. But I recall, in my
childhood, hearing her playing “Ballads” (so-called, I
suppose, as this was before the Fox-trot was invented, with its
steady four-in-a-bar) in the “spread-fingers” style
that those pre-1914 pieces seem, now, to have required. Looking
back, I am impressed with what a teenager could achieve. But
another surprise was once hearing my mother’s mother (Nana)
sit at the piano and play “Won’t you buy my pretty
flowers?” This was one of the beginner’s pieces that
came in Smallwood’s Piano Tutor; it was a very popular book,
but I never asked how she learnt it.
So, did I show
any signs of talent or even the ability to finger a version of
“Little Grey Home in the West”? I don’t think so.
But I did start piano lessons with a local teacher in 1929 at
nine years of age and achieved the not very impressive pass in
Grade Two of the Victoria School of Music!
I became a member
as a boy in the choir of the local C of E
It didn’t
take long before I persuaded my parents to pay the church
organist to give me lessons on the church organ — at the
expense of the local lady teacher. She had raised me to the level
of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata. (Fast movements a bit
tricky!)
Mr. Coles, now my
teacher for both piano and organ, didn’t have a very large
repertoire, although he did have the first volume of
Augener’s Edition of Bach’s Organ Works “The Great
Preludes and Fugues”, though I was attracted by his
performance of Wolstenholme’s Allegretto in E flat. After
more than sixty-five years of humming it, I’ve bought my own
copy. I note that it was originally written for Viola. But it
transforms itself very smoothly into an attractive
“lollipop” (thank you, Sir Thomas!).
I did manage to
get my own two-volume collection of Bach’s Chorale Preludes
and my musical education was improved by a couple of visits to
the Chapel of King’s College, in the
My organ-playing
studies at this time — I was still only about fifteen years
of age — led me to enter for the Talent contest set up by
the Manager of the Trocadero Cinema — remember that
four-manual console? It wasn’t a success. I was told that
the show was running late, so I decided to help by abandoning my
chosen solo “Evensong” by Easthope Martin and, instead,
play a jazzy quickstep. This was total rubbish, I virtually
committed suicide at the console!
Once at
Still, I
couldn’t stay away from Jazz. I’d done lots of
“gigging” whilst still at school and now had the
opportunity of becoming pianist to the University Dance Band, but
with ready access to the college two-manual Father Willis I think
I did improve my performance of organ music, particularly Bach.
Then I had more
than five years War Service in the Royal Navy. Not much organ
playing, but I did have permission to play the organ in Gibraltar
C of E Cathedral. The only music available was a volume of Hymns
A&M, still, better than nothing.
After I’d
taken my degree, I had to find a job. At the same time I asked
the Organist of the Trocadero — at that time Rudy Lewis
— if he would give me lessons in theatre organ playing. I
was lucky that he agreed to do so. I discovered that whilst a
student at the Royal Academy of Music he had studied under York
Bowen, and the legendary G.D. Cunningham. He’d left after
four years’ study with a teacher’s diploma, and a
certificate for the highest award of the Academy!
Shortly after
taking a job in London, and moving into “digs” at Herne
Hill, I looked up an old friend, whom I’d first become
acquainted with as our piano tuner. He was also a church organist
and I was invited to his church, St. Andrew’s, Stockwell
Green. I tried his three-manual Norman and Beard organ, met the
vicar and found that I’d been appointed Organist and
Choirmaster, to start in a couple of weeks time! My friend
reckoned he needed a break.
The Church was
“very high”, so a good introduction to church music; we
— including congregation — sang the Psalms to
plainsong! As time progressed I had some marvellous instruction
in playing from Arnold Grier and achieved a life-time ambition,
to be organist at St. Giles, Camberwell, with its three-manual
Bishop, built in 1844, and designed by Samuel Sebastian Wesley,
who gave the opening recital. By the time I arrived there was an
electric blower, but appallingly noisy, one could barely hear the
service proceed above the noise of the blower!
By now I’d
become a very enthusiastic member of the newly inaugurated Cinema
Organ Society, in addition to membership of the respective
I was fortunate
to have some lessons from another brilliant organist, Gerald
Shaw. He told me his tutor thought that three lessons were
sufficient if one showed a satisfactory response, so three was
all I was going to get!
One final
excitement. I went to visit the man who played the organ at the
Trocadero for the children’s Saturday morning film shows. He
was organist at
The Manager was
agreeable, so I was “Uncle Dennis” to about 850
children every Saturday morning. This was in 1952 and I had eight
very wonderful years. Quite honestly, not many of us had such an
opportunity. Even the tuners came every three weeks —
honest! It continued until the cinema closed and the Cinema Organ
Society was able to buy the organ.
As a church
organist I’d developed a great interest in the RSCM and the
teaching it could offer to amateurs like myself. This also
coincided with a move to the