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The ICCM Journal | Summer 2021 | V89 No. 2
pulpit: John Lennon As a boy, in the 1950’s, and later as a young man in the 1960’s, I have to admit that I was not a fan of what is generally described as “popular” music. Where I was born and lived until the age of 20, in the grubby back streets of Manchester, which was then still a bomb site in large areas of the city, I instinctively preferred classical music to what was, and still is, called popular music.
Jean Metcalfe and Cliff Michelmore in 1950 who were married
On Sundays, the family listened to “Two way” or later “Three way” family favourites on the radio as we sat down to eat lunch. It was fronted by Jean Metcalfe and Cliff Michelmore. The programme was a knock-on application of the second world war broadcast, with soldiers still in Germany and other countries still mopping up after the war. The radio provision was 99% popular music, but, just at the end of the broadcast, they played a piece of popular classical music, perhaps Tchaikovsky or Borodin…something obvious to please us gormless working class listeners! Family Favourites was the successor to the wartime radio show which was styled BFPO, or British Forces Network, later known as British Forces Posted Overseas or Forces Favourites, broadcast at Sunday lunchtimes on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2 and the British Forces Broadcasting Service, amazingly until 1980.
Unlike my siblings, I remember being unattracted to the popular music and very interested in the classical. It was instinct, and although now I can see beauty in a variety of musical styles, I was, as a teenager, completely distracted by the beauty of the “classical” music that I heard, and in particular, when I finally heard Sir Edward Elgar’s 1st and 2nd symphonies, at the age of 16. I was overwhelmed. I rushed to the record shops to purchase what were then described as 33 rpm records and l listened to them on what was then a cheap Dansette record player night and day! (Although it would cost you a couple of hundred quid or more to buy one today!) Years later, it was a particular thrill to hear on BBC Radio 3 Anthony Payne’s reconstruction of Elgar’s 3rd Symphony in 1997, some 84 years after his death in 1934. It is another Elgar masterpiece and Anthony Payne deserves huge credit for interpreting Elgar’s notes and sketches into a major symphonic success. Left- Sir Edward Elgar and dogs!
When I visited Elgar’s grave in the churchyard of at St. Wulstan’s Church in Little Malvern, some years ago, (see TJ Winter, 2011) I was shocked that the gravestone made no reference to his major musical contribution to English and world music, and that (who could explain it?) no music was played at his funeral! How crass! The gravestone pays much more attention to his wife who was a member of an aristocratic line, and in those days, those in authority presumed that she deserved more attention than the major musical genius which was her husband! These days, a funeral at Westminster Abbey would have been deemed appropriate!! However, as I grew into adult life, two “popular” musicians made a deep impression on me. One was Karen Carpenter, born in 1950, and so younger than me, although she died in 1983,
Anthony Payne b. 1936
