Berkeley the Teacher

I remember it was quite a warm September afternoon in 1959 when I walked from Warwick Avenue tube station to the house at No 8, and stood at the doorway feeling both nervous and expectant. But before I rang the bell a strange thing happened. I glanced down at the doorstep and saw an empty milk bottle in which there was a piece of staved manuscript paper sticking out of the top. I simply had to inspect it – and found, amongst some scored-out notes and hieroglyphics, a message – ‘2 pints, please’! Gosh, I thought, a ‘real’ composer must live here – instructing the milkman with messages written on discarded fragments of his music. It made a mundane and ordinary gesture seem like an event.

A smiling Freda opened the door and ushered me into the front room, where Lennox was reading the newspaper. He jumped up at once and immediately greeted me with his wonderful charm and exquisite manners.

‘Ah now, where shall we start? I do think your incidental music for the play is quite a step forward from the songs’. Obviously he’d meticulously studied the bits and pieces I’d sent him – and we started from there.

In order to put all this into context I should go back to 1957 when I had just left the R.A.F. and managed to pass the entrance exam to the Royal Academy of Music, with clarinet as a first study and piano as second. Harmony and counterpoint lessons with Dr Frederick Durrant were the nearest thing I got to composition studies for two years – although I did a lot of score reading on my own. I took the clarinet very seriously indeed and studied with outstanding teachers. Firstly Jack Brymer, then, when he retired, the great Reginald Kell and, when he went back to America, I had Gervase de Peyer. All were a great inspiration, and I played regularly in ensembles and orchestras.

However, it was writing music that kept taking over at certain times, and, early in 1959, I decided to enter some songs for a RAM composition prize. It was open to all students – not just first study composers – and winning it gave me a certain amount of confidence to think about asking Lennox to take me on.

The other factor was that I shared a house in West Hampstead with Richard Stoker – who had won a composition scholarship to the RAM and was one of Lennox’s star pupils. He encouraged me to send some work to LB – ‘and see what happens’. A nice letter came back, saying he would like to take me on, and he would sort it out with the RAM. So clarinet and composition became a double first study, which meant a lot of hard work, but I was over the moon. I had heard a lot of Lennox’s music before then, and had seen the opera Nelson at Sadler’s Wells and I had also seen him conduct at the Proms. The Serenade for Strings and the Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila and many more works were very familiar to me at that time. I greatly admired his style and his position in British music.

For the next two years, Lennox had a great influence on my development both as a composer and as a professional musician. He never taught at the RAM itself but preferred pupils to come to his house (something that might be frowned upon in today’s changed social culture). But it was great for us studying with him, and brought us directly into his workshop. However, he always turned up at the RAM and other places if we were having a new piece performed. In that way he was very supportive of his pupils, and he had a habit of saying, ‘We composers’ when making a point, which always made one feel rather special.

Many people have asked why Lennox was such an influence as a teacher, and it’s difficult to pinpoint this. Certainly he was never dictatorial, and tried to see the musical value in whatever style one was writing in. I must admit that I feared at first he might pronounce – as did his teacher and mentor, Nadia Boulanger – that I musn’t compose for a year, and spend it working on sixteenth-century and free counterpoint. But, no – there was nothing like that at the start.

A typical lesson would begin by his going through anything I’d written that week, and discussing improvements or corrections. Then if there was any time left it would be a bit of analysis. I remember his love of Mozart chamber music and going through several of these scores pointing out the effective string or wind writing.

One day he produced a new Britten score – the Cantata Academica which he’d just got hold of and couldn’t wait to go through. From the opening twelve-note motif (‘Oh Ben’s gone into serial technique!’) we went through the entire piece, and that extended lesson lasted at least a couple of hours. But what a privilege.

He also had a wonderful knowledge of orchestral writing, and was always full of useful tips. Much of my orchestral output bears testament to his influence, ranging from the best colours when combining instruments to the spacing and dovetailing in certain passages. I remember once studying some of the orchestration in Daphnis and Chloe (the second series) and Lennox pointing out Ravel’s skill in making a passage (starting on the piccolo and ending on the alto flute) sound like one single instrument (Fig. 187 in the score, if anyone wants to look it up).

I remained good friends with Lennox and Freda long after I left the RAM, and I have many letters from Lennox commenting on performances of my music which he’d heard, or just chatting on various things we had in common. I knew he was very pleased when Michael and I both won the Guinness Prize in 1977 and 1979 respectively. In 1978 I was delighted to arrange for him to come to Edinburgh University for his seventy-fifth birthday celebrations, and a programme of his music at the Reid Concert Hall. That was a splendid occasion.

For his eightieth I, and fifteen of his ex-pupils, were invited by Sir John Manduell to write a variation on the ‘Reapers’ Chorus’ from Ruth, which was performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra at the 1983 Cheltenham Festival. Most of the featured composers were there, and we all rushed to the platform at the conclusion of the performance – an event remarked upon by The Times critic who likened us to ‘horses dashing to the finishing line at the Cheltenham Races’. This caused Lennox tremendous amusement. It was a very happy time for him and Freda.

Alas, living in Scotland , I didn’t see much of Lennox in his later years, but I knew they were troubled and difficult as the onset of his illness became more apparent. But in the last year or two we’ve been able to visit Freda and have some lovely reminiscences. Precious memories are like gold dust.