I am now a little sorry that I seem to have reached the end of this series of posts. It has been fun and quite enlightening, going through the music that has been important to me I find that much of it is melancholy and clearly spoke to my own underlying melancholy during my formative years. At the time I never thought of myself as sad or worried, I just thought that was the normal state of growing up, I didn't know that other people didn't regularly cry themselves to sleep or wish to wake up as somebody else. I had a comfortable home, a loving family, as good a school as could be had in the 70s and an active interest in life.
It is only with hindsight that I can now see the whole gender question was never far from the surface, influencing the type of person I was growing up to be.
But as my wife once very wisely told me (with some exasperation!) not everything is about gender!
Before I even started to play an instrument my Mother used to take my Brothers and I to the Arthur Davidson Family Concerts, a series of concerts held in the then new Fairfield Hall on Saturday Mornings ~ little did I know that I would later become a regular performer at these concerts ~ Straight away I knew that I wanted to be part of a orchestra, I instantly fell in love with the sound and the music. It was straight after one of these concerts that I bought my first record, I must have been a strange child because that record was of the Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals. My Mother was worried that I wouldn't like it because the record didn't have the narration, she couldn't and never did, understand the attraction of music.
I still have that record, now over 50 years old, and it still plays! However it is the "B" side that gets played more often. This is Ibert's Divertissement a piece for small orchestra, that is really rather silly. I have never played it as there is no part for an instrument I play, but this is one of those very rare pieces that I will dance to. For me this is just fun!
It is only with hindsight that I can now see the whole gender question was never far from the surface, influencing the type of person I was growing up to be.
But as my wife once very wisely told me (with some exasperation!) not everything is about gender!
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| My very first record! |
I still have that record, now over 50 years old, and it still plays! However it is the "B" side that gets played more often. This is Ibert's Divertissement a piece for small orchestra, that is really rather silly. I have never played it as there is no part for an instrument I play, but this is one of those very rare pieces that I will dance to. For me this is just fun!
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