how did it happen?

how did it happen?

I had started to write about my experience as organist of St Peter’s Church in Fulham when my thoughts led off in another direction. How exactly did it happen that I came to be there in the first place? I have no memory of saying I wanted to be a church organist. Yet here I was. Perched on the player’s stool in the organ loft high up on the south side of the chancel.

I’m not concerned with the mundane process of seeing an advertisement; applying; going for interview; being appointed. It’s what leads up to it. Deciding to look in that direction in the first place.

And, in the case of St Peter’s Fulham, the decision to apply was made for me. I did what was expected of me. That was what I did in 1943 when I was just 15 years old.

But then my mind went back along the same track. When did I start making choices for myself? When did I begin to create my own future? There are two occasions of note.

It’s 1959 and I’m moving along in my early 30s – though that was not in my conscious mind at the time. My daytime job was teaching music in a boys’ grammar school. I’d gone there three years before to set up a music department where none existed. I’d made quite a decent fist of it. But I wasn’t fully satisfied. I felt the urge to move on. To better myself. I remember having one of those internal wranglings with myself. There were two simple alternatives. IF you are going to stay in teaching THEN it’s time to look for a position in a good school where you are Director of Music. IF you are NOT going to stay in teaching THEN it’s time to start looking for something else.

A few days later I was not really surprised to open The Times and read of an impending vacancy for someone suitably qualified and experienced to take over from George Malcolm as Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral. I did what was necessary. A new phase of my life began.

Move on to 1968. I’m a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music. It’s a good place to be. And I’m not the only one to recognise I’m doing a very good job.

My 40th birthday hovers on the far horizon. Every magazine I pick up has an article on this event which draws a line and says “You’ve got this far. This is as far as you’re going to go.” Perhaps it was that which made me give thought to my future. I was happy. I was comfortable. I could go on doing more of the same until the end of my working life. I didn’t enjoy the prospect. It was time to look around.

Ten days later I was not at all surprised to open the Sunday papers and see the invitation for those suitably qualified and experienced to apply for the new position of Assistant Director at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music in Sydney. I did what was necessary and in the November of that year we set sail from Tilbury on the old Iberia. We were on our way to the other side of the world.

Those are not the only two crucial choices I’ve made for myself. I’ve come to be aware we make choices all the time as we create momentous or trivial paths to travel. It’s what I now know to be part of Weaving the Web of Wird – as our Saxon predecessors did when they landed in those three keels.

francis cameron, oxford

14 march 2012

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