There is no doubt about it I have lived a "Strange Life". My playground was Wembley stadium, one of my schools was a palace the other Upstairs, Downstairs, one grandfather ran the 1948 Olympic Games, the other gave the world pneumatic golf balls and the golf umbrella and that was just the start! I am definitely an "Outsider".
But I do enjoy being "an outsider". All artists are "outsiders. We see the world differently. We can't help it. We just do and we recognise each other immediately. We also "move on" to the next adventure. Normal people will just have to forgive us. I am certainly not "Normal"! "Strange?" Maybe. I think "Eccentric" may be the best description. At my age I am old enough to be "Eccentric"!
2013 is the centenary year of Benjamin Britten's birth and it seems that it is open slather on his character. Everyone is having a 'go' and I find it all fascinating. I have been fascinated by Benjamin Britten ever since I saw his Opera 'Gloriana' at Covent Garden in 1953, Coronation year when I was just 10. I still have the programme.
You either seem to hate Britten or love him, there is no middle way. Books and biographies official and unofficial have been published each with more startling revelations than the past, unknown young loves appear mainly male and little boys are interviewed on their relationships with the composer. There is one particularly vicious web site that is quite outspokenly hostile and even a TV documentary on Britten's failure as a composer. The list goes on and on and yet Britten is still an enigma. What exactly makes the man tick?
I have been a bystander on the Britten scene since 1953 but to my surprise, in 1958 I became more than a bystander as I was employed by the English Opera Group to play Mrs Sem in the first production of Noyes Fludde. Unknown to me I was a success and became a Britten favourite. Unusual as I was a girl and for the next five years I was part of Britten's scene, not Aldeburgh's scene as the Aldeburgh set did not see me but I was there and I got to know Britten rather well.
It has taken me years to piece my experiences together but as everyone else has had a go perhaps it is my turn and this is how I explain the dark side of Benjamin Britten. Well at least it is food for thought and you never know I could be right.
The key to Britten's major work is his sexuality. It dominates everything he wrote.
Benjamin Britten the son of a Lowestoft dentist was a talented child who had the misfortune to be born into the middle class in 1913. This meant that at an early age he would be shoved off to an English Upper-Class boarding school, all male of course and from then on deprived of all-female company. The male precept of the period was 8 is a good age to cut the umbilical cord. Britten never recovered.
The British Public School of the 1930s has a lot to answer for. Boys who are segregated from the opposite sex and who have no other way of meeting girls fall in love with masters and other boys. This is a common occurrence and when the boys grow up usually they meet young girls of eighteen and all is well and put all that behind them.
Britten didn't. The young adolescent girl meeting period was left out. Britten was unlucky because he did not go to university but a music college and girls were not around as orchestras liked boys! Then he was attractive and was taken up by the WH Auden set and was probably bewitched by them. Gays definitely have more fun. Being a wonderful pianist he was soon captured by a tenor Peter Pears. Singers at that time were always on the lookout for an accompanist as it is cheaper and oh so useful and Pears never let go.
There is no doubt that Britten was unsure of his sexuality at that time and really for the rest of his life. Although bombarded by his gay peers he refused at first to submit and it was only after a few years and much courtship that Pears got to do the deed in the USA. Pears was gay and had many partners and this is when it is thought he gave Britten syphilis. Once Pears had Britten, Britten was trapped.
Up until 1964 homosexuality in the UK was a crime even with consenting adults in private. You went to prison if you got caught and many did. Pears had this hold over his partner. If you leave me I tell! They were stuck with each other. Unlike a marriage, there was no divorce. Britten and Pears had to live together whether they liked each other or not.
Artists write about what they know so Britten wrote about the darker side of male relationships. All his operas are centred on this theme. It is as if he were taking revenge on the all-male world in which he lived and thrived for preventing him from experiencing heterosexual love which he craved but has never consummated
Every part Britten wrote for his supposed lover Pears was a villain or a simpleton, a tyrant, a child abuser, a closet paedophile, a traitor. If Britten loved Pears he had a very strange way of showing it in the parts he wrote for his paramour. In the first opera, Peter Grimes is a child abuser and murderer and the list gets worse and worse.
It has only just been admitted that the partnership was more of a business arrangement than a love match. For long periods Britten and Pears lived separate lives only coming together when work called. I could have told you that.
It is in his masterpiece 'The Turn of the Screw' a novella by Henry James that the key to Britten's sexuality is revealed. It is there for all to see. 'The Screw' is based upon the sexual choice a male child is forced to make. The child has to choose between the homosexual love of a manservant and the heterosexual love of a naive, sexually innocent governess. The child cannot choose and loses his life either physically or metaphorically.
For child insert the name, Britten. It is Britten's problem. Britten is known to be bisexual although this is not widely appreciated. Many musicologists feel that Britten reached his peak with this opera and decline set in ever after. Britten's 'Screw' is a masterpiece to homo/ hetero erotic love with a dose of paedophilia included. Never has the seduction of a male child sounded so good. It is beautifully and touchingly described and remember artists write about what they know. Britten knew.
From then on the Britten and Pears romance faded. Peter went on to other loves and Britten became celibate and bitter. The eroding partnership was never made public. Britten never came out in his lifetime. He wanted to be considered normal and he would have sued anyone who said otherwise. It was only three years after his death that Pears made the announcement.
Personally, I think Britten came to loathe Pears and that is why the parts for Pears got progressively nastier till the last opera 'Death in Venice'a cruel depiction of a dying man lusting after a young pubescent boy when Pears went on record as saying that 'Ben is writing an evil opera and it is killing him.'
It is not known if Britten ever experienced physical heterosexual love. He never got the chance. Britten was too well guarded. Britten certainly loved Galina Vishnevskaya and I know he liked me a lot and although Rita Thompson will never admit it Britten liked her too, banishing Pears to the USA.
Britten always loved looking at young boys whether he followed through is not known. Maybe his young groomed conquests are just too nice to say but if my experience is anything to go by Britten would have controlled himself. It is as if he had the classic Peter Pan complex about being a young boy forever and never grew up and pleasing himself by inviting children to the wonderful world of 'Aldeburgh Never Never Land' to make an opera. A case of arrested development pas excellence.
There is no doubt Britten loved men but he could have loved women too if given a chance, he wasn't and he made do with young boys.
My theory is that Britten's main tragedy is that of Miles in his masterpiece. Britten was just unable to choose and for him he had to live on in bitterness and disillusionment wondering what he had missed, hating his partner and taking horrible revenge by writing despicable roles for him for the rest of his life and regretting that he was never able to write an opera about heterosexual love.
I liked the man. He was one of my admirers, a notch on my belt, he had everything I wanted but too old. Pity he did not meet me when he was 19 or even 30! But it was too soon for me and too late for him. But Britten did give me my career and place in posterity and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Oriel College Oxford University - Wiki creative commons
I have always felt jealous of anyone who is clever and privileged enough to receive an Oxford/Cambridge education. Now as a 75 year woman who has had to go through life with no formal education at all, and most women of my age had to do this, Lady Di is a good example, she got just two GCEs and had to be Princess of Wales, I envy anyone male or female who has achieved and survived this exalted education.
If I had been a boy, my father who had the very best education money could buy would have seen to it that I went to decent schools and had I been bright I should have ended up at Oxford or Cambridge but in 1947, instead of the North London Collegiate that was at the bottom of my road I was sent to the local convent to be taught by Irish 18-year-old nuns who could barely read and write themselves and had no idea how to teach. I survived the first two years where I discovered that although everyone else could see God I could not and it was not until I was 7 that I got the hang of reading.
I had heard of a university but I could no more imagine going to one than flying to the moon. I was lucky because I self-educated right from the age of 5 as in 1945 my grandfather had one of the first televisions and Lord Reith who ran the BBC went in for Educate, Entertain and Inform and so I had seen most of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Wilde plays by the age of 11 not to mention operas and ballets. I had also seen Belsen and GB Shaw in an interview in 1949. When I could read I started on my grandfather's library but this self-education meant I had absolutely no formal qualifications at all. The only thing I knew positively about Oxford was that its colour was dark blue and it always lost the boat race.
I did learn Latin which in those days was necessary for university entrance. The nuns were good at Latin. At the age of 12, my father decided that as my educational standard was so low, I could not spell and one mark was taken off GCE O levels for every incorrect spelling so my chances of passing anything was nil. He thought all my brains must be in my feet. As I was good at ballet I was removed from the convent and sent to a ballet school in London, Portman Square just behind Selfridges at the age of 12. This was a secular specialist school which gave children the opportunity to be employed in professional productions as well as providing a basic education. Basic English, arithmetic (no algebra or geometry), French, history, and art for three hours a day. The rest was taken up with ballet, tap, drama etc and the chance to be on the stage and get paid if you were fortunate.
You can see my chances of an Oxford education were very minimal. I so admired my clever friends or anyone who got masses of O levels and A levels and who went to universities of any kind. I had no idea of how they did it or what they did when they got there. I was told it was magical and for many the years at Oxford was the best thing in their lives. They got into jobs of which I could only dream, the BBC, publishing and politics and I could only look on.
I was not alone. Most of my ordinary middle-class girlfriends were in the same boat. They became secretaries, nurses and teachers and the aim was to marry well. A teacher, a lawyer or a doctor, doctors who went to Oxford were the prizes as there were so few of them and strangely these clever men really had no choice but to marry us as there were so few female graduates and those that were available were generally blue stockings. Educated men had to put up with uneducated wives.
In May 2018 at the age of 75, I watched a YouTube Blog MollyatOxford of a charming, intelligent young woman who was studying Classics and English at Oriel College Oxford. She was doing the very thing that I dreamed of doing all those years ago. In 1964 I met a gorgeous Oxford educated GP, Oriel/St Mary's at Queens Ice rink in Bayswater. Doctors like ice-skating. It is splendid exercise, can be done alone and at any time. For 8 years I was just a pair of skates on legs and a useful ice dancing partner until one day he found out what I did for a living. He was amazed, took me to the opera at ENO that night and I married him a year later.
The first thing Miles did was to take me to Oxford and show me his college which was Oriel. I got a brief tour, just two quads and the staircase to his room. The delightful Oxford blogger did a much better job than my husband in this area but Miles was good on punts. My Oxford blogger has not ventured out in that area as yet. I became his Lady and overnight I had to be accepted by this privileged group of highly educated people. I still think some of them raise an eyebrow as to why a brilliant Oxford scholar should have chosen a ballet dancer as a partner and I bet none of them thought our marriage would last because I was considered uneducated.
As I said at the start until now I had no idea of what went on at Oxford or how they taught. My husband did medicine which is taught in a different manner to say that of Classics. It is usually a big secret so unknowingly my Oxford blogger, Molly has given me the opportunity to find out what I missed all those years ago. I found it riveting to see what Molly was doing between with her life between the years of 16 to say 23 getting all her O levels and A Level qualifications and compare it to what I was doing during those same teenage years with none. For a start just being a woman would have kept me out of my husband's college as Oriel was the last bastion of misogyny to fall. Took until 1990ish for women with qualifications to be admitted.
The Oxford Undergraduate experience is considered the pinnacle of education and will lead on to an enhanced status for the rest of their lives so what makes it so special?
Getting to Oxford as an undergraduate seems to be the major obstacle and major achievement. It is a long hard academic slog, many are called but few are chosen, but once there it really seems to someone like me who worked my way through the teenage years a really cushy existence and about two hundred miles from reality. How can this cosy isolation arm you for life in the real world? Where is the real world?
Only short terms, 8 weeks in very pleasant surroundings and accommodation, all food found for four years of the most formative years of one's life. For Molly, her life consists of writing an assignment a week and a few exams at the end of the first year with the next set of exams three years down the track. No travelling involved, a social life provided if you care to partake, some lectures to attend, a tutor to give you hints and put you on the right track and really no responsibility at all while one lives in this enchanting atmosphere and architecture. The life of a student under these circumstances is very gemütlich indeed! The only fear is not handing in the assignment on time.
It is learning for the sake of learning as most of what students has been well trodden before and the opportunity to find something original in Classical texts that are over 2,000 years old is highly unlikely. Molly had not studied Latin at school so coming to Oxford unprepared in this area and expected to do translation in her first set of exams must have been daunting. My Latin was possibly better than hers at first and I am no Latin scholar although I do enjoy it now. I know how it feels to behind in an essential subject. Oxford ought to have warned her of this. How can you translate if you don't know the language? Takes years to really learn Latin.
Next thing that surprised me was Molly's weekly search for books. Really two days of each week were taken up in the hunt for the set texts. What a waste of time and energy. Surely Oxford should supply these books online to its students. This would give the undergraduate more time for study and less foraging around. Actually, this book weekly book search shocked me. Molly seemed to have little time left for socialising which is an important part of university life, for life after university perhaps the most important part. Molly rarely attends the lunch so possibly does not gain as much as she should in this area as she does not meet students from other disciplines on a daily basis to broaden her knowledge of real life if there is such a thing in Oxford. Does Molly get out on a punt a la Dorothy L. Sayers?
By Molly's age, I had mixed with princes and spent time at the local Labour Exchange with the unemployed. I was often one of the unemployed. I had travelled the length and breadth of UK on a train. I saw the poverty and hopelessness of the way many citizens lived. Bradford was an awful wasteland in 1964 and still is today. Glyndebourne, where I wined and dined, was very different. I became an Equity deputy and I admired Venessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson with whom I worked.
The May Ball, which I had been lead to believe was the height of sophistication looked disappointing too. In a tent with earphones. Now Sandhurst Ball was quite something in my day. Very elegant. I had expected the May Ball to be like that. First night of theatrical productions in the West End are good too with lots of champagne and flowers whether they are successes or not.
Socialising is so important and seems to be getting lost in hunting for books and essays on time. For me, rehearsals were the perfect time to meet and talk with cast members and musicians and management. You get to know them well on long train journeys too. I learned from the best this way and as I was interesting to talk to and had original ideas I was accepted. Molly doesn't seem to meet anyone above her on a daily basis. Only a tutor once a week. It seems very limited to me.
Molly's sole day trip to London was a highlight of her week but she went to a Harry Potter Exhibition! Admittedly she did go to the Ashmolean and has a student ticket for Radcliff Camera for her book search but after school, I could go anywhere. I lived at the Wallace collection and National Gallery and while working on the opera The Turn of The Screw for TV for six weeks I had the British Museum every day at lunch. She went on a family holiday to Croatia and spent one holiday as an intern for work experience.
I worked full time for a living and learned on the job. You have to be better than the best. There are no second chances in the West End and London Theatre. This started young. At 12, I got up at 7am, walked a mile to the station, took the tube from Canons Park, Changed at Wembley Park for Baker Street, then walked or took a bus to Portman Square all by myself. Ballet class was at 9.30 am followed by another vocational subject. After lunch, school till 4.30, the English was excellent. I can parse my way out of a paper bag. Then off to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for the ballet performances. This usually finished at 10.30 pm where my mother would come up and take me on the long journey home. Ballet dancers have to be ready for professional work at 16 and some become ballerinas at 18. Life is short in ballet. Ballet dancers are brilliant, know how to work and deferred gratification. Very different from Oxford essays. I did this for two years.
At the age of 12, I was out in the world doing voice-overs for commercials. Huntley & Palmers Biscuits relied on me on TV to sell Ginger Nuts! At the age of 14, I was chosen to be in The Royal Ballets first performance of Petrushka in 1957 at a Gala Performance. The two children were something of a hit and I spent the next two years with the Royal Ballet where I met everyone from Margot Fonteyn, Fredrick Ashton to Sir Malcolm Sargeant.
In 1958 at 15 I was chosen by Benjamin Britten for the first performance of Noyes Fludde at Aldeburgh and then in 1959 for his opera as Flora in the "Turn of the Screw" live on British Television and at Aldeburgh. Because of my knowledge of opera and ballet, I got to know Britten well and in fact all my papers of that time and my score signed by all the cast I have left to the Bodleian Library. I deserve a PhD for my take on whyFlora is so important in her own right and not as a back up for the boy! I can tell you Britten never told me all this. Britten would not have dared. I had to work it out myself. Britten admired me for doing this.
I have three O levels which I taught myself as I had to change to a school that did not do GCE's. I had a brilliant headmistress who taught me the three English Lit books in just three weeks. I got 87% and the remark that "as my spelling was so bad we would never know your true academic value". Yet I am considered uneducated. Many of my schoolmates were in the same position. One Jackie Collins went on to have quite a career. She never passed anything.
At 17 went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama where at 18 I won the Production Prize but could not get a job as BBC did not employ women and preferred male graduates from Oxford and Cambridge and yet I was really good. I met this obstacle constantly but eventually, I did sell a ballet series to BBC. I had to go to New Zealand to do this 16 years later.
Spent next two years working my way up in musicals, eight performances a week starting with a major tour of "Stop the World I want to get off" around 14 of the major towns in England including The Oxford Royal. Visiting these towns was a great educational eyeopener. We travelled by British Rail on a Sunday, for 14 weeks. These journeys were again and eye-opening experience. We were paid a pittance and the work was never ending. We had no day off.
Then I had to do pantomimes as a principal girl. This is the University of Musicals and stage productions. Sometimes 12 shows a week for over two months in the bleak provencial cities. Very hard work. I also did drama, films and TV productions.
By the age of 24 I was starring in the West End. For a year it was 8 shows a week. We had nightly audiences of over 2000. The responsibility for quality performance was enormous. You don't get a BA for doing this and yet you should.
My workload makes Molly's weekly essay and life experience look like an afternoon picnic on a sunny summer's day. It is so isolated from real life.
However, Molly is officially recognised as educated and I am not. Her BA from Oxford for a few essays will trump my University of Life any day of the week. I am just astounded at how easy it is Oxford graduates to succeed in life. My husband was an example. He was given an MA Oxon for just completing his medical degree. Not an essay in sight! Everything was given to him on a plate including a wonderful pension. Artists do not get pensions as Margot Fonteyn found out.
Up until yesterday, I envied Molly and her sojourn in Oxford. Surprisingly, I think the University of Life is far richer than the Oxbridge University version. At a pinch I could do what Molly does very easily, I should have to revise my Latin and use a spell check but don't we all. There is no way that Molly could do what I do or have done with her education which seems so limited. I was lucky not to be able to spell and sent to a ballet school but I should have liked a PhD and a pension of my own and to be recognised as educated in my own right.
I was lucky to experience Oxford second hand via my husband who always said there is only time in life or the best and he chose to marry me. I suppose that is a compliment. However, if I had been given the opportunity to go to Oxford when I was Molly's age I think I should have taken it and look what I should have missed.
This recipe was given to me a long time ago in the 1980s by an old friend. I found out later that she had made it up with food she had had in her larder and had no idea what she had done! It was magic then and magic now. My friends and family think it is the best ever and it is truly delicious but takes an age to make. So I thought this year I would share the recipe with you and what is more the best way to make it. For Xmas it takes 4 days and I cook it in last weekend in October. It takes about 8 weeks to age and feed with a little brandy. ( seriously not too much as if you over do the brandy it ruins the lovely flavours.)
Day 1 Buying and collecting Ingredients
(maybe 2, 3 or 4 days if ingredients hard to find. Last year no almond essence, not even for ready money!)
1 tsp Vanilla and almond essence (go easy on this) grated orange peel and juice
Grated lemon peel and juice to one cup
Grated orange peel and juice
1/2 cup brandy
1/2 cup sherry
5 large eggs.
A good square Xmas Cake tine 9 inches, 20 cm
Try to buy real glace cherries but if stuck and you have to use red gelatine blobs for colour give them a good wash. I do not use angelica or the green blobs!
I find cooked walnuts make cakes bitter so do not add to cake. You can decorate with them though. I add sliced almonds for crunch.
2nd Day - Preparation
Prepare to soak all the fruits, peel, figs, glace cherries in the brandy and sherry and leave to soak overnight. I wash my fruit but I suppose the brandy would kill off any nasties. Do not bother soaking the currants as they don't soak. I wash these. Waste of effort! I prepare the baking tin brown and non stick baking papers and line the tin box with foil and grease proof paper and I get out all the packets of ingredients. I write a list so I can check them off as it is easy to forget something. Before I begin baking I add everything that is wet, like lemon and orange juice, currants, almonds, treacle,essence, coffee etc. I leave the butter out over night too to soften. If you forget this give a very quick 10 sec micro wave when it is cut into pieces, no more. Overnight softening makes life easier.
Day 3 Cooking and baking
First I was my hands really well and I get out all of the utensils that I think I might need. I shall forget some but having most of what I need to hand helps as this is a massive job. I paste inside the tin with melted butter and stick the baking papers to it. Then I give a good melted buttering to the inside. I take care over this as it protects the cake from burning when cooking. I use the Delia Smith method and take ages over the creaming of sugar and butter. See YouTube. down below. I am very careful about adding the 5 beaten eggs. This can take many minutes, 20 in fact as you do not want the mixture to curdle. I do it desert spoon at a time, little and beat in well. If it does it does not matter but cake won't rise as much.You can add a little flour to try and get it together but I don't find this helps. If you are brave you can use very dark Demerara sugar in NZ it is Billingtons but this is harder to use than soft dark brown sugar as it is gritty. Makes a wonderful cake though.
Then when all is mixed and sort of fluffy fold in flour, and I mean fold with figure of 8 gently all the dry goods, salt, ground almonds, spices and anything that you have forgotten. This is hard work if you do not have a big chef machine. (coffee?)
When all dry goods are in add the fruits. I have to do this in two batches as my bowl is not big enough. I do this with my hand mixer but it does not take long. Then into baking tin. Mine is 9 ins 20 cm I think. All the mixture goes in surprisingly.
Then place brown paper on outside held with string and into oven at 140c. For me with a Bosch oven it is on the lowest shelf but for other ovens one shelf below centre.
I pre-heat my oven but ovens go down to zero when a cold dish is inserted so you could start from cold I suppose. I do sprinkle a little water on top and place 2 folds of baking paper lightly on the top with a hole in the middle.
Now here is the spooky bit. For a nine inch tin bake at 140c for 4.5 hours and do not, repeat do NOT be tempted to open the oven door until 4 hours is up. Then you may. Your cake may be cooked. You can see I have an oven thermometer for accuracy but the Bosch oven is absolutely accurate so I ned not have bothered. This timing is for Bake NOT Fan bake. I don't like fan bake as I find it dries my cakes up.
I won't patronise you by telling you how to check but if the pin does not come clean just keep on testing every 10 minutes till it does. Mine was cooked at 4 hours but I gave it a bit longer.
During this time you can wash up. The washing up is colossal and will take 4.5 hours even with a dishwasher.
4.5 hours later and here it is! Wow what a smell. Leave in tin till cold.
This one rose beautifully!
When cold wrap in grease proof paper and foil and put away for a month in a cool place. Not the fridge!
Based on the Die Winterreise song cycle by Franz Schubert
In life, everyone should have a project. I go from project to project and if one ends, even if I don't want it to, I start another maybe in a completely different field or maybe sometimes more of the same. I can get tunnel vision which is a good thing as I get things done and cut out distractions. Not so easy now I am older as living takes a lot of my time. Seeing the house does not fall down, the garden gets done takes time.
In 2015 I had to do an upgrade on my technical skills. In 2015 the technology made a big leap and it took me months to catch up. I had to upgrade my website janette-miller.com to Muse from Dreamweaver and this was a challenge as Muse is still a very new platform but oh what you can do with it. It took me the last three months of 2015 to do it. Huge job but tis done. I have an ulterior motive in doing this as it is the basis for My Winter Journey.
Ever since I first heard Die Winterreiseat Aldeburgh I knew I one day would have a go at this. Britten and Pears loved Lieder or Songs as Peter would pontificate when making me feel awfully small. Peter was so good at this. Peter always said he was afraid of this cycle and it could only be sung in maturity which of course is a lot of rubbish as the story is about a young rejected suitor and the devastation of unrequited love which the young lover gets over. However I did not know this then and I thought, wrongly, at the age of 16 with nil German, that it was about an old man approaching death and I think half the audience did too and still do if they cannot speak German. Certainly, a lot of elderly men sing it!
As Peter Pears made clear, a young girl could sing some Lieder but Winterreise was off the menu for me as it was a man's cycle so I never bothered with it until....ah! that little word until...until my husband died. We had been working on Die Winterreise at the time and The Organ Grinderthe last song in the cycle was the last song we ever sang together. The hardest song I have ever recorded.
Years later I discovered iMove2 and put up an appreciation for Miles using this song and I again let it go because although we had recorded the whole cycle some of it was just not up to standard as we had done it so quickly and I could not afford to pay an accompanist or pay for transposing the songs into more suitable keys for me.
But then came Garageband and all changed. I could write out my accompaniments and sing again. I recorded Die Schone Mullerin and then I thought about Die Winterreise. Why not?
Well, there is a hundred reason Why Not? All of them good but I have not been anL'Enfant terrible all my life for nothing and quite frankly I do not see why men should have all the good songs and young maidens encounter unrequited love too. Winterreise is not an old man's song. It is a young person's cycle. and luckily my voice sounds quite young.
There are 24 songs in all and each song can be taken as an individual item. I have been working on the complete cycle all my life. The first was On the River with my first DVD movie camera. I had a friend's daughter for Norway staying with me and she kindly let me film her just before Miles died in 2001. You can see her in the trail above.
I have joined it all together but and it is almost roughed out and if I die before I have finished the world can get a rough idea. Styles and technical formats and styles change too and I have allowed for those. I have also altered the running order of the last 12 songs. Shock Horror! But no one knows what order these are supposed to be in, not even Schubert because like me, Schubert did not encounter them in order. Anyone can see that the order after the first 12 songs is wrong so I have put them in the order I think they should be.
2016's project is about to start. I need a website so that I can let anyone know who is interested where I am at, I need to finish the 25 songs, yes - there is one extra, which may come as a surprise to purists but this is my personal journey and I can do what I like. At 73 I can do what I like and I do hope you will come along with me. I know that my friends on FB find it hard to watch and much prefer my garden when it comes to the Like button but I do live in hope that one day they will enjoy it too.
How to Produce The Nightingale by Alban Berg for YouTube
This shouldn't be difficult. The song, Die Nactigall by a young Alban Berg is just 1 minute 45 seconds long and is one of those songs one just has to sing. I know Art Songs are out of fashion and almost off the menu but they are magnificent and in life there is only time for the best as my late husband and accompanist would say. Benjamin Britten also loved Berg and encouraged me to get to know the composer's work so regardless of the fact that I knew at the start that I should not have a vast public, to obtain maximum view Bookbinding, Butchering and Darwin are required but I live in hope of a few.
The general public and my friends have no idea of just how long a little task like this takes or the skills that are required so after a disappointing early response I thought the world should know just how time consuming and clever one has to be to achieve the above just in case anyone should wish to try the same. I love YouTube as it is a place where one can be creative and try things one could never usually afford to do. It is a place where one can make mistakes but just occasionally one gets it right and it is so gratifying. Of course you have to learn how to do this and I was lucky because I got in at the beginning in about 2007 when iMovie was at its easiest and best. I leaned how to video edit on iMovie 2 and eventually reluctantly upgraded as it was gradually withdrawn. It was too good to be free.
I even started a Channel to teach others how to do this but what with YouTube losing my legacy channel and the fact that I seem to be in a minority when it comes to video editing and the fact that today it is just not possible to start from scratch on an easy application. Today one has to begin with the hard stuff and Premier Pro and Final Cut X are daunting and take forever to do what iMovie 2 did in minutes.
So how did I do it? Today because of the copyright situation one has to own every frame of your video that means no songs after 1923. Alban Berg's was written in 1906. It was a song I did not know so first I had to find and download the sheet music which I did from Petrucci Music Library.
I do not play the piano and I no longer have a tame pianist. To learn a song to professional performance means practising it every day for at least a couple of weeks and this is where brilliance of Garageband comes in. This is a free Midi app. After Miles died I had no accompanist. I lost husband and accompanist and as we had sung every morning for 30 years this was a blow. Then came Computers and Garageband . For years I just used it using the loops and the one night I need to change a few notes and I thought if I could do this perhaps I could write out the piano accompaniments to my Schubert Songs. I did and this is the first song I did. Note the wonderful uncompressed sound and warmth of the recording on tape which is no longer available today.
Writing out the piano version took about 3 hours, then I had to translate it from the German, I have to own the translations. Orchestrating it and this took considerable longer because one has to get it to sound good on digital. It was two weeks before I was satisfied with the key and orchestration and tempo and it took about a week to record as I have had whooping cough and this did not help. Some days I could sing it and some I couldn't. This song was very difficult to make sound good on small speakers. Mixing can take hours too and sound mixing is an art in itself. It sounds terrific on high quality speakers and through earphones but even on my best computer with excellent small speakers it does not sound great. The range of the song is not favoured microphones. This is annoying because I know the vast majority of the audience will only hear my song on small speakers. Ah me!
Next the visuals. Here again one has to own or have permission for every frame. I do not have or have access to footage of nightingales so at first I tried the image effects answer. For this I use Motion. This is a very complicated application that allows one to manipulate video. I played about for about a week but the results did not do justice to the song so I looked for some nightingale footage on YouTube as none was available for free use. There was only one channel. Bram Siertsema had taken some glorious HD footage of nightingales that one could die for. I had no way of getting in touch other than a video comment but I just asked him if I could use it to sing too. To my delight he said yes.
Usually I have to go out and take live footage my self which has meant learning how to use a HD SLR video camera.
The only way to get the footage was to download it legally from YouTube as a full Quicktime Movie. This I did using YouTube Video Converter. Then I had to load it into Premier Pro for editing. The footage was in daylight so I had to send it to Speedgrade to change day into night. Video editing can be intensive and take hours and hours but the problem comes when one has to render. Rendering takes hours and hours and sometime hours more. A short heavily edited 1 minute 45 sec can take up to 45 minutes or longer if not tackled in the right way and I have a super fast set up. If you get it wrong and I was unsatisfied with the sound mix and still am the rendering time is horrendous.
Then off to Photoshopfor the graphics.
Back to Motion to have the titles and Motion effects put on and more rendering. Then one has a final check, render and off to the Flash encoder to get it ready for YouTube. Another 2 hours can be spent doing this. Off to DropBox which plays .flv's to see what it looks like and then fingers crossed the YouTube upload. If I don't like it I have to do all this again till I do.
Then it is a lottery to see if I get a matched content notice. Being in public domain and well out of copyright doesn't mean you don't get one of these. A dispute can mean three weeks of wait or a demand to take the video down. This happens first and you argue later.
And then at last it is time to publish to your friends who are blissfully unaware of the work involved. Proust once sent copies of his famous novel to all his friends who it seemed had great difficulty opening the envelope. I know just how he feels. If lucky I shall get about 50 views for this but Berg is worth it. One day I tell myself my work will be appreciated. I know of no one else who could do all of this, except one who could if he had the time. Maestro Wenarto is the only other person who I know who could do this if he chose as he too has the creative vision however if it required 32 fouettes he might be stumped.
Why do I bother to go to all this trouble? Th skills needed to produce this short video are considerable and out of the question if one had to pay the going rate. I reckon about $50,000. Because these songs need to be sung. Unless they are sung they will be lost in time and that is a pity because they are wonderful when the songs of the Beatles have vanished as they will this song will still hold it's place in the musical hierarchy. Thanks to the computer and the magic applications I can sing and interpret these songs in my way.
Why don't other singers do this? I have found it is no good waiting for someone to do this for you and yet singers do. They sit and wait when the tools for them to reach a huge audience are there to be used. Sometimes I do it for others and that gives me pleasure too because in a way I give them their posterity like John Prichett below. He wrote many West End revues and musicals and yet the song he wrote for me is the only one on YouTube. A moving picture is worth a thousand Wiki references. I am so lucky being able to do this.
The following is part of the opening chapters of a novel I have written based on my youthful experiences. It is based on Schubert's song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin which tells the tale of a young miller who falls in love. You can find the earlier chapters on this blog. One day I'll put the whole thing up as a iBook.
The Beautiful Miller Maid Chapter 3 Halt by the Brook part 2
Tring retired to the tiny
kitchen and King continued to talk to this fascinating young lady. He had never
spoken to a young pubescent girl before. This was a first for him. King felt
strangely drawn to her. He wanted to know all about her and the time flew.
Eventually he thought the time had arrived for her to sing. Actually he was
dreading it as he was so afraid that she would not be able to mange the part
and he would be left Phebe-less. He knew without a young Phebe his Ghosts would remain on the shelf. Fortunately the potential Phebe was totally in the dark about this.
The baby grand was by the
wall and almost filled the tiny room. Simon placed her on his left side and she
was right against the wall and up beside his ear. There was not room to swat a
fly.
“Now
give me the score!” he demanded.
“I am awfully sorry but I
don’t have any music. Miss Salmon did not give me one”.
“Look I am awfully sorry
Antoinette but although I write this stuff I can only play it from music!” said
an exasperated King. “Tring!”
The next quarter of an hour
was taken up with a hilarious search of the flat by the two bachelors until
eventually by luck one was found.
The moment now could not be
put off any longer and Antoinette started to sing the difficult little lullaby
that Phebe sings to her doll. The
moment Antoinette started to sing it was as if they were still lost again in the dream
on the stage at Churston.
She sang it beautifully, dead
in time dead in tune he couldn’t believe his luck. King looked at her seriously
straight into her eyes.
"Well you can manage that!" was all he said. No notes, no "this could be taken faster" just "Well I think you can manage that."
“How many rehearsals did you
have to learn this?” he enquired “And when was your last practice?”
“Three
hours only. The last was about ten days ago”
“Pansy
is a devil” he thought. “Gosh this child is clever.”
“Let’s do it again!” There
was no need to ‘Do it again!” as she had sung it perfectly. For the television
it was not necessary for her voice to fill a two thousand-seater theatre if she
could do The Anger Quartet she would be perfect but he wanted her to “do it
again” simply because he had enjoyed the experience of singing with a young
girl standing close to his ear. He found the soft feel of her body up so close
exceptionally comforting and to his surprise enjoyable. He had never felt like this before.
He found he enjoyed playing
and making music with her and this would be his only chance. The lullaby had
never sounded so good. He never went to rehearsals and he could never ever ask
her, a young girl to come to his flat again. So it was now or never.
She was so near and he could
feel her soft breath on the back of his neck. It was so sexy. He discovered he
loved to hear her soft female voice in his ear. It made him want to kiss her.
He loved the smell of her. She was slightly sweaty as she had been dancing all
day but he found her smell so enticing. He never, never felt like this with
Tring! Tring was kept on the other side of the piano but how nice it was to
have someone close beside you blowing softly in one’s ear. Like a cat purring on your shoulder saying “I love you! Unconditionally, Love me” in your ear.
King made the audition last
as long as he could. He went through “the Anger” aria twice and she just told
him the top ‘A’ was too high. “I just cannot sing it. I have a light voice but
not a high voice. Please you said you would re write to make it easier for me”.
“I did indeed, but you can
sing this. Phebe although a child
is an old, old woman, so my writing is for an old woman but it is so effective
if you could sing it as is.” Also King knew re orchestration was expensive and
it would put the oboe into a difficult key.
Again she was perfect and he
offered not one word of advice or correction. King knew he had found his Phebe but he was not going to tell her just yet.
He did not want her to
go. None of his little boys had
been able to talk to me like this as an equal. He talked and talked about music
and Devon about the poems of Thomas Hardy which she was studying. He even got
her to recite one but by half past nine a 15 year old Antoinette really had to go. He took both her
hands and squeezed with feeling as if to say once again thank you.
“I enjoyed our evening making
music together. Tring is right ! You should learn “Die Schöne Müllerin”. If you
do we could sing it together for fun.”
“I’ll do my best Mr. King. I
cannot promise. I have to take my intermediate ballet exam next month and my GCE’s.”
With that Antoinette put on her school hat and the pretty Miller’s maid said
goodnight to the two bachelors walked the mile in the of late night to the tube
station and went home to Hillingdon. She arrived at eleven o’clock and her
parents did not bat an eyelid.
But that night a15 year
old Antoinette too felt that something special had happened. She too felt close
to Simon and had fallen under his spell. To be honest for once Simon had not
done this deliberately as he had planned originally as he really, really needed
a young Phebe. He genuinely liked
and admired her as a colleague but she was just15 and a child, a pretty
little ballet dancer with a small but accurate voice and at the moment
extremely useful so must be cultivated. No Phebe no TV Ghosts and that meant a lot to him.
Tring was amused and went
around humming “Die Schöne Müllerin” and from that moment Antoinette’s nickname
became “Die Schöne Müllerin” between themselves, although the rest of the
entourage eventually called her Phebe. It was
the start of a strange menage a trios that would lead to tragedy like the song
cycle.
For the next few years
Antoinette was not to feature in Mr. Tring’s life and he hardly gave her
another thought although Pansy Salmon did.
Simon King was just relieved to have found a young Phebe.
He felt sure he had done enough to entice Miss Miller to accept the role and
from then on took little interest. "If that concert is anything to go by she
will be fine but perhaps I’ll put her on the Xmas card list" and Miss Miller almost became a ghost!
Thank you all for reading this 'trail'. The response has encouraged me to try to make an iBook! Then for a few dollars you can find out what happened.
The following is part of the opening chapters of a novel I have written based on my youthful experiences. It is based on Schubert's song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin which tells the tale of a young miller who falls in love. You can find the earlier chapters on this blog. One day I'll put the whole thing up as a iBook.
The Beautiful Miller Maid by Janette Miller Chapter 3 Halt by the Brook Part 1
“I think she will do for Phebe” said Simon. “I’ll get Louis Crick to write to her
school. I’ll get Pansy to teach her the two little arias and see if she is up
to it. I’ll tell her school I am prepared to rewrite.”
“Do what you like” said a
disinterested Tring “but I shall never sing Rawlings again even for British Television” and Tring lost
interest. It was now another rival that took up the cudgels against Antoinette
who was in the future to prove deadly.
Pansy Salmon was duly
instructed to teach Antoinette the fiendishly difficult little aria that Phebe
sings to her doll. Pansy by now was
completely jealous. Her best friend had played the first Phebe and it seemed inconceivable that this chit of a girl
with no musical background should usurp the role. Pansy’s strategy was masterly
inactivity, just three one hour sessions and no score to the applicant.
“That should put paid to her
chances” thought Pansy who was a first class unmarried bitch.
November came and the BBC decided to do The Ghosts so it became imperative to see if Antoinette was up
to it. It was arranged that she should come to Simon’s flat in Swiss Cottage at
5 pm on a dark cold night in November and sing for him. He forgot and it was
around about six o’clock when he and Tring arrived in the
dark at their London “pad”.
The flats on the second floor had a flight of steps leading up to it. The entrance was forbidding. It was of the hideous red brick Edwardian era and resembled the blocks of council flats in the next suburb. The flats also had the sort of
lights that turn themselves off when not needed to save electricity and when the happy party pushed
the button and turned on the lights they were in for the shock of their lives.
There was a young schoolgirl in full uniform sitting on the door step of their
flat who was overjoyed to see them.
“I’m awfully sorry” said
Simon, “How long have you been here? We were delayed.”
The child very composed stood
up and said “Since five. The lights went out and I had no idea where I was. I
was afraid to move for fear of falling down the stairs. I have never seen this
type of light before.
My chaperone just bought me
here and dumped me. I mean you were supposed to be here at 5 pm. Then all the
lights in the passage went out and I was stuck. I mean you are sort of on the
second floor and I have only been here once.”
Antoinette sound like a very
young and “Not amused” Queen Victoria. It was hard to say who was the most
embarrassed, Antoinette or the naughty and rude grown men who ought to
have known better. Actually her school should have known better! Taking a child to a man's flat and then leaving her alone on the doorstep would not be allowed today!
Antoinette was ushered in to
the tiny and to her disappointing flat of the major English Opera composer. It
was small, dark, dingy and depressing and she felt unworthy of so great a man.
Tring was dispatched to make tea.
“Indian or China” he called
out in his upper middle class voice. This would be enough to intimidate any
working class or lower middle class child as he well knew but he was greeted with the words.
“Russian,
please but if you have no lemon china will do!" came the confident reply.
Simon could not help
laughing. He knew exactly what Tring was up too. Putting Antoinette in her
place! There was no lemon!
For the first time Simon
decided he better get to know this young girl a little better so he sat down
and started to ask her a few questions. He did this with his little boy friends
all the time. Cars and aeroplanes were his usual openers but here was a little
girl. King was at a bit of a loss and then he remembered that Antoinette had
seen his disastrous production of“Henry VIII” at the Royal
Opera House so he asked her about that.
He discovered she was a
little ballet dancer who had worked at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
since the age of twelve in the ballets and consequently had had an almost
impeccable musical education. That is why she knew all his ballet music so
well. It seemed she had grown to love opera and ballet and besides watching
rehearsal from the wings queued for tickets in the gallery for the operas and
ballet.
She was astoundingly
knowledgeable especially in modern music, which she loved. She could talk knowledgeably about Beethoven, Berlioz, Herne Heinz, Wagner and Stravinsky as well as himself.
“You
should try Mahler” Simon said.
“I don’t do symphonic music.
I get so bored at concerts as I am always waiting for the curtain to go up. That's why I like opera”
Simon was not impressed that this young lady with impeccable taste did not like Mahler and told her she would learn to love Mahler as she grew
older. He suggested Symphony 2 Second Movement as a start. In her school uniform Antoinette still looked 12 years old. She
had not grown one inch.
She looked him straight in the eyes and said seriously. "Mahler is never performed and I cannot afford the records! Long playing records are expensive".
Tea was served, China as there was no lemon and Tring, trying to be helpful suggested that Antoinette should learn Schubert. Antoinette had a small voice
but would be suitable for this genre. Antoinette was at a disadvantage, as she
had never come across Schubert. Tchaikovsky, and Stravinsky wrote ballet music
and it appeared that Schubert wrote songs.
“My dear young lady, you
should sing Schubert, I know it is written for the male voice but your tiny
voice would suit it and it is not as if you will ever be performing it in
public, is it” Tring delivered in a condescending manner.
Antoinette looked at Tring
rather like Alice in Wonderland looking at the caterpillar on the mushroom.
“Tring
and I perform the two Schubert cycles often” said Simon softly. He could see
that Tring was in danger of putting Antoinette off
“ I’ll make a point of
looking up the songs up when I get home. I am not a singer I am a ballet
dancer.” said Antoinette defensively.
“Antoinette Miller,” said
Tring for that was her surname and this was the first time he had grasped the
suitability of the name , “ Why ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’ Tring exclaimed in glee sounding more like Lewis Carrol's caterpillar than ever!
‘Yes, you shall be King’s
“Schöne Müllerin”
King too was struck by the aptness of Miss
Miller’s surname and both of the mature men giggled like naughty boys and the
“in” joke went far above Antoinette’s head as although she spoke French she did
not have one word of German. Translated “Die Schöne Müllerin” means “Beautiful
Miller Maid”. It was a joke that would come to haunt them all.
