Programmed music
Alexander Chancellor
Music: A Joy for Life Edward Heath (Sidgwick and Jackson 25.95) In 1972, when I was a correspondent in Italy, the British Prime Minister came to Rome on an official visit. His engagements included an audience with the Pope, who at that time was being rather helpful to the British Government with his denunciations of IRA violence in Northern Ireland. When the Pope meets a foreign statesman, it is customary for them to exchange gifts. I telephoned the Vatican to find out what the Pope had given Mr Heath, and what Mr Heath had given the Pope. The Pope, it turned out, had ordered his archivists to make facsimiles of all the original manuscripts of Palestrina in the Vatican Library and bind them in a number of handsome volumes which he duly presented to the Prime Minister. What a good present, I thought. And what did the Prime Minister give the Pope ? The answer took me aback : a signed photograph of Mr Heath and a gramophone record of himself conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
In his book Mr Heath gives no account of this little episode, which is strange, if only because the pages are littered with anecdotes of a similar nature and certainly no less boring. I am surprised that he does not list the Palestrina volumes among the other 'treasured possessions' acquired over the years—the battered old baton case of Sir John Barbirolli, a letter from Richard Strauss to his wife, the hairs from a broken violin bow of Isaac Stern set in a transparent plastic block. I am also surprised that the Pope's peculiar and noncommittal remark on receiving Mr Heath's gramophone record —*I have seen you conducting on the television' (a remark reported to me by Mr Heath himself)—has not been thought worthy of mention.
Perhaps it was not flattering enough, for quotations are liberally used in the book to encourage a feeling of confidence in Mr Heath's musicianship. Sir Georg Solti: 'I have never before met a Prime Minister who knew what the chord of B major was, let alone discussed it with me after the last chord of Tristan und ; a member of the English Chamber Orchestra: We must have played Mozart twenty-nine dozens of times but this is the first occasion for years that we have been made to go through it section by section, and at times bar by bar to get exactly what the conductor [Mr Heath] wanted' ; best of all, a member of the London Symphony Orchestra: 'I have played this thing dozens of times, but I learned more from him of what it is really about than learned from all previous rehearsals and performances put together.'
How good a musician is Mr Heath ?Good enough, I expect, but I am embarrassed by his way of writing about music as if he were addressing a music appreciation class for the very young.
For Helen in Howards End, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is full of goblins and dancing elephants; like her, Mr Heath seems happiest with a piece of music when it conjures up visual images. In The Seasons by Haydn, Mr Heath admires the way in which the orchestral accompaniment illustrates the text : 'One of the best examples of this is in the brass aria "Behold the dewy grass, in search of scent the spaniel roves." As he does so you visualise his nose moving from side to side; and when "The startled fowl flies instant up" we hear him go winging skyward. Of course, no orchestral instrument can give a perfect imitation of a bird flying or a dog sniffing around . . , What instruments can do is to give an indication in recognisable musical language of what is going on.'
Mr Heath even makes the confession that, when introducing a Handel organ concerto at a children's concert, I tried to explain to the children the dialogue between the organ and the orchestra in terms of boy meeting girl and what happened thereafter, a simple "word-picture" . . which held their attention because it related their own experience as young people to the music.' When music is not susceptible to such analysis, Mr Heath is in search of uplift and a sense of purpose: he criticises a piece by Delius called Sea Drift on the ground that it leaves him 'feeling purposeless.' What purpose can be found in a sea drift ?
The book is what the blurb says it is, a musical autobiography. As a little boy, Edward Heath used to listen to his aunt, an amateur pianist, play a minuet by Paderewski which 'gave her an opportunity to explain to me how this simple, catchy work had been composed by a man who was not only one of the greatest pianists of his day, but had also been Prime Minister of his country.' Naturally, after this there was no stopping him. He was soon learning the piano himself, but not, like the rest of us, doing boring exercises but 'playing scales of every type and range and sweeping arpeggios covering a scale with three leaps at a time.'
He became a chorister in the local church at St Peter's Broadstairs.started learning the
organ, and at an early age was conducting a mixed voice choir. His biographer, George Hutchinson, has demonstrated that Mr Heath, from his earliest years, has been deeply interested in power. It is natural, therefore, that conducting and playing the organ (he won an organ scholarship to Balliol) should have become his preferred forms of music-making. As a boy, Mr Heath declares, 'I became intrigued by the whole process of conducting. It seemed to me that having control over a choir and orchestra. shaping them to produce the sound one wanted, having soloists singing out of one s hand, so to speak, was really something worthwhile.'
The ultimate fulfilment came in Novem: ber, 1971 when, at the invitation of Andre Previn, Mr Heath conducted Elgar's Cockaigne Overture with the LSO in the Festival Hall and 'suddenly [I] realised how fully the orchestra, together and as individuals, were responding to me. I felt I could do almost anything I wanted with them.' As to the organ, Mr Heath admits that it gives him a feeling of power, 'but not of power over people: it is the power of contributing sound to the general uplift of those making music together.'
When Mr Heath became Prime Minister, his ability to contribute to the general uplift was greatly enhanced. At last, he was able to fulfil his life-long dream of conducting a symphony orchestra. A piano (the first Mr Heath had ever owned), a clavichord, and what sounds like a tiresomely elaborate stereo system were installed in Downing Street. There were sung graces before dinner, and more part-singing afterwards. Famous musicians gave concerts at Checlo" ers. The annual Broadstairs carol concert became a national television event. Mr Heath now had the power not only to surround himself with music but to make others listen to it, too. If there were an.Y among his immediate circle whom music failed to uplift, they must have had sonle trying times. The most trying of all, I imagine, would have been the evening of 28 October, 1971' after Parliament finally voted Britain int° Europe. Mr Heath recalls: 'NaturallY, everyone wanted to celebrate and the chain' pagne was ready to flow. . . For me the Si nificance was too great ... foi the popPing corks. With just a few friends, those who ha' been closest to me throughout all this time, I went quietly back to No 10 and up to my sitting room. There, as they stood by. played Bach's First Prelude and Fugue tor the Well-Tempered Clavier.' That is Mr Heath for you. The best one can say of this self-indulgent and badlY written book, is that it is sincere: it presents a convincing picture of Mr Heath's character. In many ways, he is an admirable marl; but he is a man of supreme egotism an driving ambition. These characteristics are more suitably applied to politics than to the gentle art of amateur music-making. Thank God Mrs Thatcher has (household painting apart) no known hobbies.
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