Here Comes Treble: Prelude
Isabel Bradley’s delicious account of her introduction to music is a foretaste of delights to come in her weekly Here Comes Treble column.
Prelude:
On being approached to write a weekly column, I had a “minor cadenza”. Whatever could I write about that people would be interested in; would I be able to repeat the process each week?
The Editor gave me carte blanche to write travel articles, short stories, poems – whatever my heart desired. This was not much help – where was the starting point? What title could I give this series of writings?
Then Leon, my Love, my wonderful husband, said, “You’re a musician – link your title to music!”
Let me introduce myself. I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, far too many years ago. It was during the days when South Africa was still a Union, a colony of England. There were changes for bad, and more recently, changes for good.
Through all the bad and good years in South Africa, I have been privileged in the life that I’ve led.
As a child I was loved and pampered by musical parents. My earliest memories are of one or other of my parents sitting at the piano to learn another song, another duet; or of Dad playing the flute. Dad was a baritone, Mum a soprano. They met as members of the Johannesburg Operatic and Dramatic Society, and spent their lives putting together musical evenings at home, concert parties to entertain at the many “old age homes” around the city – and ensuring that my brother and I both learnt to love music, laughter, and the English Language in all its many forms.
My brother, Roger, took piano lessons, and was soon good enough to accompany both Mum and Dad in their singing.
At the tender age of eight, I asked Dad to teach me to play the flute. The piece he played that I loved best was by an obscure composer, Paul Wetzger; a rippling bit of flute music called “Am Waldesbach” (By a Stream in the Woods…). It was years before I could play that piece, but it’s still part of my repertoire. Sitting side by side with Dad on the old green couch, my first music lessons were on his ebony piccolo, that shrill, small version of the flute. My fingers were far too small to reach the keys on Dad’s silver Boosey and Hawkes hand-made flute!
Within a year my little fingers had grown just enough, and Dad bought me my own flute. I took lessons with the best teachers in Johannesburg – Mrs. Cecilia (Chippy) Yutar, who instilled in me a love for making music, then later Monsieur Lucien Grujon. They were my “fluting parents” – I can still hear their wise words as I play…
Apart from my musical education, I spent twelve years at school learning all the usual things. My favourite subject at school was English. I passed all my school-leaving subjects adequately, but in English I received a distinction. Along with the “distinction” came a love of poetry, reading and writing. Any kind of writing.
After leaving school, I chose the path of the amateur musician – an “amateur” being one who does something for the love of it. I took a secretarial course at a business college, and worked as a secretary for many years, while remaining a member of various amateur orchestras and chamber-music groups. When I found myself working “mornings-only” as a school secretary, I took on flute students after working hours, teaching adults for at least twenty years.
Recently, I perform mainly as a soloist, and rarely teach. Writing and reading my own poetry as introductions or connections to the music I’m about to perform creates a special atmosphere and enjoyable and unusual programmes.
After the distractions of marriage, child-bearing, divorce, re-marriage and more child-bearing, came a time of relative peace in my life when I studied again, earning a flute teacher’s licentiate from Trinity College in London, and a diploma from The Writing School in South Africa. Sitting in a cupboard awaiting the effort of re-writing and finding a publisher, is my short novel.
Until now, my written musings have appeared in the FLUFSA Newsletter (Flute Federation of South Africa), The Write Stuff – newsletter of our Johannesburg writing circle, Writers 2000, and a short-story and poetry magazine called Gentle Reader. My newsletters from Namibia appeared on the World Wide Web recently as part of Openwriting.com.
I look forward to sharing the musings of a musician – on many and varied subjects, as the fancy takes me – over the next weeks, months, and perhaps even years! I hope you’ll join me in my mental meanderings.
Look out - Here Comes Treble!
© Copyright reserved
