I composed copiously
as a child. This continued with abandon throughout my years
as a chorister of St Paul's Cathedral, inspired by the masterly
creative interpretations, most mornings before choir practice,
by our beloved organist, John Dykes-Bower, of what I'd written
during the sleepless unofficial small hours. His piano playing
made this rubbish sound miles better than it was. It included,
amidst dozens of would-be evocative/poetic piano pieces, a full-length
opera, in full score, on Hans Andersen's Snow
Queen, and an orchestral
triptych based obviously and feebly on Debussy's La
Mer.
In teens, then student days at Cambridge,
the impulse wavered under repeated waves of stimulating yet inhibiting
new musical intake — VW, Britten, Tippett, Bartók and Stravinsky,
Schönberg and Berg, Janáček, Mahler, Boulez, Stockhausen —
the Usuals! Though I managed to finish a few pieces, little of
those selfconscious or strangulated efforts got anywhere at all. |