Memories of Berkeley the teacher

Scottish composer Rory Boyle reflects on his time as Lennox Berkeley’s student

I remember so well my early trips to Warwick Avenue as a postgraduate pupil of Lennox. I started my lessons in 1973, and it was always Freda who welcomed me at the door, with her wonderful beaming smile and friendly personality. She was amazing as Lennox’s right-hand prompter and guide, since she was able to organise his diary as well as to remind him who was due to arrive next. Where would he have been without her, I wonder?

Rory Boyle
Rory Boyle

The weekend before his 80th birthday in 1983, when so many events were being organised – most of them intended as a surprise – Freda took Lennox to a hotel for some peace and quiet. But someone from his publisher, Chester’s, had to get in touch to discuss something that was going to happen. Unfortunately the telephone was answered by Lennox, so the caller asked if she could speak to Lady Berkeley. ‘Lady who?’, said Lennox. ‘Your wife, Sir Lennox’, explained Chester’s. The story may be apocryphal, but Lennox was known to be somewhat vague at times.

A gentler, more kind-hearted man you could not imagine, and, like a number of his composition pupils, I had to find my own way of getting the advice I so badly needed. At my first few lessons, I would play through my latest scores at the piano, and Lennox would say that, although my musical language was a little different from his, he did like the music very much.

At about my third lesson, I decided to take the bull by the horns. After I had played him my latest effort, he turned to me and told me again how much he liked the music. This time I said there was one passage that I was not happy about. He asked me if I would mind playing the relevant bit again. I did, and he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, yes, it is a little bit awkward, isn’t it?’ When he saw that I was not in the least upset by this, he asked me to play it a third time, and after I had finished he said, ‘Yes, it’s really rather clumsy. Perhaps you could play it to me again.’ I did, and after that he was able to get to the nub of the problem, and give me his invaluable advice. The point is that he was such a kind soul, and one had to find a way to convince him that criticism was not hurtful, but positively helpful. Once this had been achieved, help flowed.

I like to think that amongst so much I took from Lennox, I learned particularly about economy and the use of colour in the orchestra, which I know enabled me to achieve more clarity in my writing.

In one lesson, when we were talking about a particular musical point, Lennox started to reminisce in his wonderfully velvet tones: ‘I remember talking about this with friends some time ago when I was in France’, he said. ‘Now, let me see – I’m sure we were in a café, and Maurice [Ravel] was there, Francis [Poulenc] too, and I think that Igor [Stravinsky] was there that day’. All these musical giants were quite suddenly and quite magically in Lennox’s study with us, and I moved happily into another time and another place just for that moment.

Lennox Berkeley, centre with bouquet, at his 80th birthday concert in Cheltenham Town Hall, 2 July 1983, when the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Brian Priestman played Variations on a Theme by Lennox Berkeley. Each of the sixteen one-minute variations on the ‘Reapers’ Chorus’ from the opera Ruth was written by a former pupil. Eleven are shown in this photo (left to right): Brian Chapple, Jonathan Rutherford, Sir John Manduell, Sally Beamish, the late William Mathias, Lennox, Michael Berkeley, Sir John Tavener, Rory Boyle, Richard Stoker, Roy Teed, John McLeod. The others were: the late David Bedford, Christopher Brown, the late Christopher Headington, the late Nicholas Maw.
Lennox Berkeley, centre with bouquet, at his 80th birthday concert in Cheltenham Town Hall, 2 July 1983, when the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Brian Priestman played Variations on a Theme by Lennox Berkeley. Each of the sixteen one-minute variations on the ‘Reapers’ Chorus’ from the opera Ruth was written by a former pupil. Eleven are shown in this photo (left to right): Brian Chapple, Jonathan Rutherford, Sir John Manduell, Sally Beamish, the late William Mathias, Lennox, Michael Berkeley, Sir John Tavener, Rory Boyle, Richard Stoker, Roy Teed, John McLeod. The others were: the late David Bedford, Christopher Brown, the late Christopher Headington, the late Nicholas Maw.