Tag Archives: Handel

‘You’re David Baker?’ the man whispered. His face shrieked incredulity.

‘Really?’

I nodded, apologetically.

‘Well’, he continued disappointedly, ‘I have always admired your work and I must thank you for your excellent conference presentation here today but, I have to tell you…’

He hesitated as I waited for what I assumed was to be the final superlative.

‘You’re a lot fatter than you write’.

‘Thank you’, I smiled. We shook hands and parted.

I was not offended. Nor was I surprised. Rather, he confirmed my own experience. Indeed, I knew exactly what he meant. I had come across similar mismatches between individual and output. I had read books and articles by eminent professionals in my main specialisms, formed images of them in my mind and then – when I had met them – found that they rarely looked anything my mental image of them.

Not only that, but I had spent a lifetime reading novels, developing an image of the main characters in my mind and then, when some of my favourite titles had been dramatised on film or television, been horribly disappointed with the results. I will never forgive whoever cast Janet Suzman as Hilda Lessways in Arnold Bennett’s Clayhanger trilogy.      

Wikipedia states that:

The English idiom ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is a metaphorical phrase which means ‘you shouldn’t prejudge the worth or value of something by its outward appearance alone’.

The trouble is, often, we do, because we all have our prejudices, however hard we may try to be non-judgmental. I once got in a London taxi, late for a meeting. My heart sank when I saw the age of the driver – he must have been well into his 80s – yet he knew all the shortcuts around central London, to the point where I arrived in time for the opening agenda item!

Remember when Susan Boyle first appeared on television? Everybody laughed at her because she was fat and gauche; but then she opened her mouth and started singing.

What about the difference between Handel the man and Handel the composer? How could someone who wrote such sublime music be a glutton, a gourmand; so much so that he could be depicted by a contemporary cartoonist as an organ-playing pig? Perhaps this was an extreme case of the musical thin man trying to get out of the binge-eating fat man.  

I have often thought about the girls at the Ospedale della Pieta where Vivaldi worked for much of his career. The women performed from behind grilles. The beauty of their music attracted many lucrative proposals of marriage until, that is, their suitors saw what some of the players looked like.  

‘All that glitters is not gold’, though Goetze and Gwynn, organ builders, might say otherwise after their experiences of restoring one old organ. The casework was refurbished first. Even though they had not begun work on the innards, everybody said how much better the instrument sounded!

Perhaps that is the exception that proves the rule. Many years ago, as a pipe organ mad teenager holidaying every year with my parents in Bournemouth, I would write in advance (enclosing a stamped addressed envelope, of course) to organists in the area, asking if I could ‘have a go’ when we were next on vacation.

Part of the annual trip was invariably attendance at the weekly recitals at nearby Christchurch Priory, given by Geoffrey Tristram, organist there. Tristram was a brilliant player: how I longed to be like him! What a role model! What a hero! Even his name sounded heroic!

At the end of each recital – which always included some of the most difficult parts of the organ repertoire – audience members (or at least the anoraks) would cluster round the strange ‘chantry chapel’ that enclosed the organ console. Having waited expectantly for several minutes, a tall handsome man, casually dressed in sports jacket, trousers and cricket sweater would appear, to be mobbed by the admiring crowd. As we walked away, my father and I would always notice a short, stocky, balding man would emerge and lock the door to the chantry chapel. We decided that this must be the page turner.

I became confident enough as a player to write to the great Geoffrey Tristram himself, never expecting him to reply. Remarkably, he did, and gave me a date and time to report to his fine Georgian house near the Priory. I could not wait until the great day arrived. My father and I stood at the front door at ‘Church Hatch’. The Priory clock struck the correct hour. I pressed the bell. The door opened. The short, stocky, balding man stood there.

‘We have an appointment to see Geoffrey Tristram. Is he available?’ my father said.

‘I am he’, came the reply.