manifestations

multitasking

I turned my thoughts once again to my time as organist at St Peter’s Church in Fulham but once again my thoughts wanted to go off in a different direction. So I followed.

I came home to Harcourt Street in the summer of 1942 after completing the School Certificate of the Central Welsh Board with distinctions in Maths and Physics plus a number of credits but only a pass in Latin. In the earlier half of 1944 I enjoyed my first professional tour as a pianist. More of that later. In the months in between I appeared in different guises. In modern parlance I was multitasking while the default program ran quietly in the background.

On Sunday mornings and evenings I was the organist of the Church of St Peter in Fulham. In the interval between services I was a relative visiting that part of my mother’s family which lived in the street of terraced houses which once might have lined the drive leading up to the church. On Mondays through Fridays I was a member of the Lower VIth (Arts) at Mercers’ School. In the evenings there was school homework and piano practice. Saturdays saw me as a Special Talent Exhibitioner in Margaret Donnington’s Junior School at the Royal Academy of Music. And, on one evening each week, I was part of our Spiritualist séances in our large front room at home.

The manifestation in different guises was not new.

At the age of three I had displayed a liking for playing the piano. I guess this was a sign to my parents and formal lessons began soon afterwards. I do remember vividly walking onto the concert platform and performing in public for the very first time. My mother and I played a piano duet : four hands at one piano. It was called Winter Ride and we played with the printed score set out on the music rest in front of us. I had learned to ‘read’ music. I was four years old.

From then on, and through all my schooldays, I was set to practice the piano at home in the late afternoon or evening. In those earliest days my mother sat next to me and supervised my work. Outside in the street were the sounds of my classmates at play. Inside 23 Harcourt Street I was applied to yet another lesson : preparing for our weekly expedition to Seymour Place and Mr Moon’s Music Shop where Miss Beryl Knight sat in a little studio at the back, ready to lead me on the next step to proficiency.

A day in the warm and friendly atmosphere of St Mary’s (Church of England) Infants’ School followed by piano practice at home before anything else. And no going out to play with my friends in the street. These were the dual streams of my life at that early age. And there were family activities as well. A third stream of manifestation. And on Sundays, all was changed. We put on our Sunday Best and went to Paddington Chapel.

In time even my Paddington Chapel rôle diverged into two. At 11 o’clock I was part of the congregation sitting in the gallery. During the hymn before the sermon, we little ones filed quietly out and made our way to the basement room where we became the Children’s Church. And I was the player at the harmonium for the Moody & Sankey choruses.

As I grew older and moved into St Mary’s (Church of England) Elementary School Mr Owen Oliver, our Head Teacher, set three of us aside to receive special attention in preparation for the scholarship examination. An incipient stream of homework added its own flavour to the day. And my Sunday Best was replaced by the cassock and surplice proper to a boy on the Decani or South side of St Mary’s church choir. And on one evening a week I transformed into a wolf cub in the Paddington Chapel pack.

One man in his time plays many parts.

I was changed. Metamorphosed. From a cockney kid at St Mary’s (Church of England) school to a boy in the second form of Mercers’ School where aspiration to turn into a well-spoken English Gentleman was the unspoken unwritten but compulsory requirement. That, plus piano practice and school homework, was Mondays through Fridays. Saturdays was a different theatre. The stage was set for the Junior School of the Royal Academy of Music. And Sunday mornings and evenings saw me as part of the team – I played the harmonium – at our little Spiritualist Church in a front room on the first floor of a building alongside the Harrow Road.

 .. and that’s quite enough for now. I’m almost ready to return to the organ loft high above the chancel of the Church of St Peter in Fulham.

francis cameron, oxford

15 march 2012

Posted via email from franciscameron's posterous