my 1965

The girl in the film was reminiscing about the summer of 1965 and that struck a chord for me. 1965 was the year I went to Canada to adjudicate for their Federation of Music Festivals. I was one of three judges from the UK who went out in January each year. From time to time one of those judges decided to stay. I came back to my jobs at the Royal Academy of Music and at the Church of the Assumption in Warwick Street (just round the corner from Carnaby Street, as one journalist put it). It was also the year when I began examining for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. The year when once again I worked for the summer season as Assistant Director of Music for the Parks Department of the London County Council. The year when the Roman Catholic parish churches in Canada began celebrating the Mass in English on the First Sunday of Lent. The year that the RCs later held a one day conference in London to talk about the kinds of texts that might eventually be approved for singing in the Englishing  of the liturgy.

At home my children sang the Beatles’ songs. I made tape recordings of the Thursday Concerts from the BBC Third Programme. I listened to some of the items over and over again while I processed films in the darkroom. Webern began to make sense to me. The Berg Violin Concerto seduced me with its beauty. I took students to hear Boulez at the Royal Festival Hall. I gave first performances of new music in some of my organ recitals. In the evenings, after work, there were interesting coffee bars here and there in Soho. The one in Meard Street had Night on a Bare Mountain on the juke box and the tables were shaped like little coffins.

New York was the great experience at the start of my American tour. It felt like all the pictures I had seen in art books were actually there on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum. Columbia had a splendid modern organ for my recital there. A friend gave me a ticket for Radio City Music Hall. I did the tourist thing with Grand Central and the Empire State. And fell in love with the Chrysler Building, still one of my top favourites. I was in Los Angeles for Palm Sunday, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Forest Lawn, and the Oceanarium. Back to New York for Good Friday and, thanks to Harold Axe and one of the rare coincidences of the calendar, was a guest at his family’s Passover Celebration in New Jersey.

1965. Swinging London was the place where things were happening. And perhaps it was also the year when, somewhere within the confines of the metropolis, I began to yearn once more for the wide open spaces.

francis cameron, oxford, 17 june 2012

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