Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Tancock, Kathleen (O1993.8) |
| Interviewee | Hertford Choral Society: Ama Maynard (AM), Susan and Richard Hit |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR), Mary Ollis (MO) |
| Date | 01/01/1993 |
| Transcriber by | Susan Hunt |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 1993.8
Interviewee: Hertford Choral Society: Ama Maynard (AM), Susan and Richard Hitch (SH and RH), Kathleen Tancock (KT)
Venue: 14 Highfield Road, Hertford
Date: 1993
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR), Mary Ollis (MO)
Transcribed by: Susan Hunt
************** = unclear recording
[discussion] = untranscribed material/unclear recording
(NB in this transcription the owners of the voices are often unclear and may not be as stated).
PR: This is the Hertford Oral History Group’s venture into the cultural life of Hertford. First little step and we are at No 14, Mary, is it? Highfield Road. Mary Ollis’s. Mary is acting as technician for the evening and Mrs Ama Maynard of 22 Sandy Close once, and now 25 Railway Place; Kathleen Tancock of The Slopes, Port Hill, forever, and now at St Mary’s Lane, Brook Field; Richard and Susan Hitch. Hertford Choir, Hertford Choral Society is our first interest and we are going to try and trace if we can a few pictures of the life of the choir and the way it’s developed because everyone here has been associated with the choir in one way or another for quite a long time. Now, we are more interested I think in images and little events than, necessarily, dates and precise accuracy on dates, although of course they are always good to have as fixed markers, but I think if we can imagine ourselves offering something to people about 50 years ahead, about the time of my 100th birthday, to see how things have been and how they are now then rather than just list what can be written anywhere “We did this on a particular date.” Try and give some impression of what it’s been like to be associated with a very successful and happy part of Hertford’s cultural life, I suppose. It’s not a nice expression, “cultural life”, but it’s the best we can do at the moment. Could we begin by just describing the choir as it is now, how big it is and what it does in 1993, and the choir?
RH: Well it’s a choir of 140 singers. It can’t be any bigger because All Saints Church is where we usually perform and that is the optimum number within the church but that is about the size of the choir currently, and we put on probably 3 sometimes 4 performances in the church in a year and some other activities outside, such as we have for the last 10 years been part of a, we’ve been invited by the only free (“only three”?) music association in London who are keen amateur musicians and run a pretty good orchestra. They hire the Festival Hall once a year and we’ve been one of three choirs they have invited to assist them in a carol concert at Christmas time which has been quite an interesting thing to do. Um now
PR: There’s quite a network of um ancillary activities and bits and pieces, I mean the choir members know each other fairly well ..,
RH: Well it is a much more sociable body than it used to be, um, I don’t quite know when that started to happen but about ten years ago I think. It all depends on the right personalities being part of the choir at the right time I think but (machinery sounds) They do things now like walking on Sundays sometimes, you know that sort of thing. What else do we do that’s social?
SH: We have at least one or sometimes two real fund raising social events in the year like the promises auction. Next year we’re having a quiz night, that sort of thing, there’s always something of that sort.
PR: There’s always that very comprehensive newsletter that June Crew produces
SH: One of those a term
RH: Yes that is now a regular feature and of course it’s much bigger than anything we did in the distant past.
SH: Do you want to mention our projected big event next year. I mean that is really the sort of
RH: That’s really the sort of climax to the evening I think when we’ve .....will come to that at the end
PR: Certainly we can describe to people in the year 2000 and something, a choir in 1993 which is big flourishing socially successful and of a very high standard and recognised as such beyond the town of Hertford.
RH: Yes undoubtedly the standard is pretty high I think um....
PR: Are there recruitment problems now? Do you have to persuade people to join or are people having to climb over a few hurdles in order to get in?
RH: No, there’s never been a policy of hurdles, right from the beginning, as Ama will remember, um. If you knocked on the door and said “I’d like to come”, you came. That still applies, there are no voice tests.
PR: Good gracious!
RH: Um, and our present director is very keen to keep it that way which is probably quite unusual I think.
PR: Yes I’m very surprised at that
RH: What was your question about?
PR: Well, you’ve answered it really I thought that probably people had to stand behind a piano and prove themselves. Do a bit of sight reading and er…
KT: Could I add one er thing to that and that is that I joined the choir in some time in 1952 I think, but anyway it was during the period when we had Stephen Wilkinson as director and for a very brief period because I had to suffer it, he did introduce voice tests. I underwent a voice test in the old Hertford Grammar School (lots of laughter) given a lot of the Bach Chorales to sing, to sight read and so on, so there is one little period then, but after that I think not very many people were ......and it lapsed again.
RH: When he left?
KT: Well I don’t know you see you don’t know what goes on about people who are joining after you do. It certainly didn’t go on after Stephen, but he may have only had it for that particular year.
RH: I think originally the difficulty in building up the numbers was so great and I think for a good many years your father and Noel Morton were the only tenors (laughter) and erm Ernest Ruffles (Peter’s father)
KT: I remember the first time we did the ten part Scarlatti Stabat Mater. Do you remember, there were four soprano parts and the part I was in consisted of three people, one of whom, was definitely a passenger, myself and Jessie and my nightmare was that Jessie would get flu or something and it would just be (laughs) me!
PR: Jessie Hopkins?
KT: Yes!
PR: Ama you joined the choir as soon as you came to Hertford?.
AM: No there were two choirs in those days. One was called the Orpheus and I rather mistakenly joined that and someone pointed out to me that I ought to join the other choir which I did in about 1949 or 50 so.
PR: I remember that you came to St Andrews in about 1947 or 48.
AM: Yes I did
PR: So really you tipped into that part of Hertford life immediately and are still associated with it all. Socially, and yes.
AM: Yes that’s right.
RH: There’s a myth we should perhaps talk about that the choir was founded in 1951. It wasn’t in point of fact Stephen Wilkinson our conductor decided at that time that we should grow up and have a constitution and be a real society because before that we had merely been a class of the Hertfordshire Rural Music School based on Hitchin, which supplied Stephen Wilkinson as our conductor, um but I was speaking to Cleone Gardner last, a week ago, who always claims that she was in at the very beginning of the choir um in 1938 I think
PR: Yes, yes!
RH: Her mother apparently was a singer when they came to Hertford and she thought it wrong for the county town not to have a choir. This was in the mid ‘30s I think and she managed to assemble a group who started up under the Misses Bees, No 4 Bengeo Street. Transcriber's note: Mrs Bees was at Duncombe School, 4 Bengeo Street was the Misses Ewen or Misses Macklin.
PR: Yes, (laughter)
RH: And they were 12 in number I gather and they grew a little bit she said and by the time she left in 1946 there were about 30 of them and I think she said they rehearsed in the Shire Hall , um and they had two conductors supplied by the rural music school up to the time she left. One was a Miss Lamont I think or a French name I can’t remember I think it might have been Lamont, and the other was a Miss Nettleship. Do you remember?
PR: Ursula Nettleship! Yes (laughter)
RH: And um her memory of course, stops in 1946. Now this is the same as the Hertford Choir, it isn’t the Orpheus. It’s a genuine antecedent of the Hertford Choir. Um,
AM: I felt actually that the Music Master at Haileybury took it at one juncture.
RH: Snowdon was it?
AM: I believe so, but I wasn’t here then. I’ve heard that he took it on.
RH: If you joined in you think 1949
SH: It was definitely before then
RH: It must have been very soon before I joined but when I joined I regarded you and Alan as the sort of father and mother - (laughter) but you hadn’t been there all that long!
KT: When did you join Richard, exactly?
RH: Well I think it must have been ‘49, or ‘50. I can remember the day I joined. It was very strange (coughs) because I, I don’t know why I was in Hertford even, um but my mother, being my mother, typically said you’re interested in singing why don’t you go down there. There’s a choir called the Hertford Choir, go down and tell them you want to join. So being a dutiful son I went (laughter) down. I knocked on the door of the Friends Meeting House one winter night and I crept in and there was Stephen Wilkinson conducting a rehearsal from the piano. He hadn’t got an accompanist that evening. I don’t know whether he normally did. Um, and he said “Ha, Hurray!” You know. And signalled to the back………. so I went and sat next to George Smith and lo and behold I was a bass in the Hertford Choir.(laughs)
PR: Is that our George Smith. Why ******** The organist from 1 Nelson Street
AM: The organist at St Andrews. Yes yes
RH: That’s how it all started!
KT: When I started to sing with them we were largely performing in St Andrews Church because we were a lot smaller and then w nearly always performed without an orchestra, but with just an organ and George Smith played the organ very frequently, didn’t he?
RH: Because we were of a size and because Alan and Ama were a father and mother to us we naturally went to St Andrews Church to perform (laughter)
KT: We would have been lost in side All Saints I mean even if we’d aspired to it we would have.
RH: All Saints was really unfriendly to that sort of activity anyway in those days.
KT: Yes, but we should have rattled about in All Saints Church! The audience would have looked that size in a great big church. St Andrews made us look a little better somehow.
PR: I wonder if we could just sidestep a little as we go down the story line a little bit and pick up the Orpheus Choir and there was father was a member of something called the Saint Cecilia, the Cecilian Singers, do you remember that group? I don’t know, I mean he, I used to hear him practicing in the front room at home (laughs) for them and for the Hertford Choir but I can’t think, I’ve not heard anything of them for years and years and years and I can’t find anyone else that has I’m sure it’s a little, probably a little group that spring up for a season or two and then faded because
KT: Does that mean anything to you Richard?
RH: What was the Orpheus Choir?
AM: That was the first performance I went to run by a Dr Prince if you remember and he was mainly interested in opera and they did almost entirely concert versions of operas, which personally I didn’t enjoy very much so
PR: So, a specialist choir almost because of the Dr Prince’s er particular leanings.
AM: I suppose so, but as I say I only joined for one season so what happened to it (laughter)
KT: That was the first thing, that’s what made me think I would join the choir.
PR: So what’s next?
SH: That’s the first thing Kathleen sang in.
KT: We came to live in Hertford in 1948 and that was the summer and that was the first thing I went to hear in Hertford.
PR: Well it’s a programme for 1/- (one shilling) which was quite a substantial entry fee
KT: That was an awful thing...
PR: All Saints Church Hertford, Messiah, 1948.
KT: A lot of the people I came to know in the Hertford Choir were singing in that you see!
PR: Yes, Robert Vivian was one of the soloists. Ann Wood and Margaret Field Howard
KT: Margaret Field Howard, yes.
PR: And there are choirs in this festival which was taking place at All Saints from Cheshunt, Haileybury, Hertford, Hoddesdon, Knebworth, Much Hadham Tewin - oh, Tewin Women’s Institute that is, that was a bit special bit erudite and from Ware, and you listened to this concert Kathleen, and then joined
KT: Yes, and this one which I passed to Richard which is
RH: Surprisingly this concert in 1950 we performed in All Saints.
KT: But the people I later came to know
RH: Terrible ... [*********two voices talking over each other and impossible to segregate]
RH: It was when there wasn’t any fuel and we did a concert in All Saints to a very small audience in the depth of winter and the scratch number of players played the Unfinished Symphony, wasn’t it, do you remember that? Really painful evening.
SH: Oh I remember that, a really horrendous evening (laughter).
AM: Was Mr Comley conducted the choir. I mean it was his choir then wasn’t it?
RH: Comley?
SH: I cannot remember what we did but I do remember the Unfinished Symphony.
RH: Was it not the same evening as the*********
SH: Possibly (****garbled chatter)
RH: It might not be in the same evening.
PR: You scratched the whole thing did you?
SH: It was a carol and we never got it going again!
PR: And this was by the time you were developing a pride and reputation?
SH: I suppose it must have been. Certainly by the time I joined we had a pride.
KT: Well, it really began to take off though, and it got much smaller again didn’t it under Stephen Wilkinson, really. He was really a sort of dynamic person who produced some good results.
PR: When I was singing a little bit probably in the late ‘50s I should think it was the Hertford Choir and when and I can guess why, but when did the change to its present title come?
RH: I can tell you that if I look at the posters which I’ve got.
PR: Oh yes
KT: It was under Kelynack, Hilaire Kelynack, but I can’t remember when
RH: It was decided Hertford Choir wasn’t grand enough! (laughter)
SH: It must have been in the early ‘60s I should think.
KT: It must have been, yes.
RH: Oh look at this! (rattling of poster paper making words inaudible) It’s not absolutely complete.
PR: Have you had pretty trouble free sort of thing. Must be careful about names but we’ve had I mean we’ve had great bust ups - it looks as if because of the number of people associated with for so long that there’s been a working friendship and music making thing.
SH: Can’t remember any major bust ups. The only bust up I can recall is that we found we had a certain…well, after Stephen Wilkinson left it was natural that whoever was appointed his successor at the Rural Music School should take over the Hertford Choir as well. This was someone called Webb, Evelyn Webb, and he was not a very dynamic personality I’m afraid and…
KT: Especially not following Stephen Wilkinson
RH: and the choir stagnated a bit, and there came a point where he might or might not take on another appointment, I think and as chairman I had to write and encourage him to take the other appointment! (laughs). That was the nearest thing to a bust up!
SH: That wasn’t a bust up, I mean it happened quite naturally in the end didn’t it?
KT: Yes, in the end, but I think we hovered on the brink of a bust up at a committee meeting before that.
RH: Yes, it was a painful time!
KT: It was a rather painful meeting wasn’t it!
RH: But apart from that......
KT: It was in your house wasn’t it Ama, that meeting with Evelyn Webb?
AM: Yes, yes ooh!
PR: Yes, well one imagines.....and so the choir...let’s get the officers right.
RH: Back in ‘69
PR: ’69 it changed to Hertford Choral Society. The structure is, the conductor is the professional leader as it were and tutor, or whatever one might call him.
KT: The Musical Director I think we call him these days
PR: And the choir is organised in a sort of committee structure with a chairman who would be responsible for what jobs in the society. What does the chairman need or have to do?.
RH: Well I suppose at the moment his job is policy I imagine and um. Perhaps if we go back a bit, see how it developed because in early days before Stephen called us to grow up and have a constitution we as I say were an evening choir [something banged here] and the constitution was, I think they had a model constitution which the music school had drawn up and probably persuaded lots of choirs to adopt so that they didn’t just rely on their musical directors as teacher and they were a clan but they had to organise their own affairs, you know. Grow up in fact. But we continued to be an evening class for quite a number of years, I can‘t remember how many, um and then we decided that perhaps it’s when we said good bye to Evelyn Webb we decided to become attached to the county council, is that right ?
AM: Yes I thnk it was then. [Kathleen and Richard talking over each other....]
RH: Later on, we very boldly decided to be freelance and cut adrift of the County Council. I can’t remember when that would have been either.
KT: Well I can tell you that I gave up being treasurer um when would it be about very late 1979 or something like that and we weren’t then freelance.
RH: Were we not?
KT: No.
RH: Quite late on.
SH: Yes Kathleen; and at that point I decided that I would give up being treasurer because I had found somebody who would be willing to do it but I thought with the size which we then were it was really too much to ask anyone to take on being treasurer and be membership secretary which I had been up to that time.
RH: It was quite a plunge because when one was the “class” of the County Council they provided the musical director, um, they provided the accompanist and the place of rehearsal so when we went freelance we had to find all those, um, the cost of all those ourselves. And we really were grown up.
KT: It must have been under Vic Knowles’ treasurership that we became freelance because it certainly wasn’t under mine.
RH: Ahh yes um
KT: I kept on being membership secretary and handed just the treasurership over
PR: I see: so the chairman leads on policy as it were and chairs the committee. And the committee, do you have elections then?
RH: Yes
AM: Of course the bigger the choir and the more ambitious the concert the larger the amount of money that has to be handled and they are unimaginable now. I mean from the 1950s I mean we now put on concerts with 5 figure budgets you know, that sort of thing.
PR: I wonder what the people listening in 50 years’ time will say about this conversation! (much laughter and muddled speaking) Yes, quite amusing isn’t it!
RH: So the treasurer’s job now is very important indeed, and we’ve now split the secretary and the membership secretary. They are separate jobs and there’s a third one - Ann Parcell is membership secretary Diana Salthouse is secretary but there is some other secretary ….
SH: Irene looks after all the bookings and so
RH: oh bookings.....
KT: Each of the jobs are now subdivided
PR: I’m sorry to appear so…………in fact it’s a good thing that I’m here totally ignorant of the workings of things because it will stop us assuming anything. We mustn’t make any assumptions that someone listening to this really understands anything at all. So how do you get these top quality soloists. How much do they cost? And how, what’s the mechanics, how do when we come as an audience to All Saints Church and there they are and we say isn’t it wonderful.
AM: We used to have an agent in London who provided them in my day, that’s how we, I don‘t know what they do now but
RH: I think they still do it in that way, you just ask for a level of soloist. We’ll have one that costs that now ********* but um
PR: Aaaah!
RH: It’s not entirely done that way I think it’s done through our musical director who has lots of contacts with the musical world and probably knows someone who he rather fancies he’d have. And
SH: *****Emma Kirkby
RH: Yes, books them up about two years ahead and gets um…
SH: Very often soloists come together especially if you are doing a work where they sing together as a quartet.
PR: I see
SH: A particular group who have sung together a lot and performed together as a quartet, that happens too.
RH: Another job I ought to mention and that is staging, which I have been intimately connected with for 40 years (laughter) um when we were in St Andrews it wasn’t particularly acute and one could get away with your rostrum in the middle you know, raised for a few people at the back, um, with one exception, after**********
End of side one .
and Ama and Kathleen will remind me which was the first big work we did.
KT: Well we did do the same work in 1953 but with the choir from Hitchin********and the first time we did it
AM: The B minor Mass I think
RH: Was it the B minor?
KT: No it was the St Matthew
SH: Was it? ********* [ a lot of rattling of paper]
PR: He was the Music Master at the Grammar School wasn’t he?
RH: Correct.
KT: Yes, and at that point when he came when we severed our connections with the rural music school because we’d automatically had their directors to be our conductor. And um we decided to go on with the grammar school master.
PR: And he, you call him Hilaire Kelynack. I thought, there was a Clifton somewhere
KT: Oh, that’s his second name but he used to sign himself H Clifton Kelynac, but Hilaire was the name he was known by.
PR: I see
KT: That’s the H that came first!
PR: Yes, yes. Right. Someone might look him up in this famous point ahead and need an explanation.
KT: When you were asking about *******things I have a very old book which I inherited from my predecessor as treasurer who was Maisie Ditton, and I see that in 1968 our expenditure came to £298-16s and a penny. ***. (laughter) good old Maisie. ****to pay our conductor or accompanist
RH: I can’t find the details but in the Kelynack period [lots of muddled talking over each other]
RH: In 1973 the Dream of Gerontius. And these of course are much bigger works and required bigger choirs and somehow the requirement for a bigger choir attract people to the choir and its remained at that size ever since .
PR: So that step into uncharted waters as it were [more talking over each other]
RH: And um****for 140 um to make them look anything was a problem **************first of all we improvised um and the next thing was to build some rather flimsy staging, tubular legs and clip on and chipboard floors, which worked well enough but a few years ago another architect joined the choir, he was a rather forceful character, and persuaded us to have constructed much more ambitious beautifully-made, tailor-made for All Saints Church, staging which we now use. I think he made a mistake, um in that it’s - oh check I must go back - um when we built our tubular, it supplemented staging which we had from Haileybury College who very kindly supplied this staging, they adapted some of their staging they had in the chapel to fit All Saints Church for us and, um, it was all there ready when we wanted to use it for a concert and they used to bring it down and help us to put it us take it away again for nothing. A very fine bit of sponsorship.
Um, suddenly for one concert I rang up in my usual way and spoke to them, The Clerk of Works at Haileybury, would it be alright to have the staging ? No, they’d scrapped it all! (laughter). So we had to do something which we had only done once before and that was for the big jaunt in the Synod year. Um when of course the Borough helped us with the cost of the staging and it had to be scaffolding and scaffold boards which were a bit dirty and covered in cement droppings (laughter) It wasn’t ideal but it worked. We had to go back to this for this one concert and that really stimulated the committee into deciding we must do something for themselves which they would own, so our friend Ralph Baldwin designed them the current staging which is very fine stuff but unfortunately it’s a little three dimensional, it doesn’t stack flat so you can’t get it into a volume less than a double garage! And originally he said well I’ve got a very big garage I can put it in the back of that, but after it was built he said we couldn’t and (laughter). Well, the Chairman looked round desperately to put it and we found that Munn’s farm, up at Cole Green…
PR: Yes
RH: ...Um had a disused barn and some disused buildings. In fact I think the whole thing is no longer a farm but, um, they had planning permission to turn this barn into offices um but because of the change in the financial climate this had never gone forward and the barn has remained empty and we occupied some of it, but when the climate improved and they want to turn that barn into offices we are in trouble. We won’t know where to put it.
PR: Yes yes. Ama, what, apart from being the mother of the choir and Alan the father as Richard has said earlier, what actual jobs did you do being mother and father is obviously a very warm and general job but
AM: The biggest job was arranging the concerts and managing the day. In those days we used to have an ad hoc orchestra. They came from all over the place and we had to find places for them to go for tea between the rehearsal and the concert and we had to look after the soloists and that sort of thing. Most of the work was at the concerts, wasn’t it Richard?
PR: Did you, was that at the time when you would have held an office like Secretary or something? Did it have a sort of label on it, did it? The job as well as
AM: Yes, yes
RH: But you had the label secretary when I joined before we had a constitution. You had to be a secretary to make the thing work. And I suppose we had to have a treasurer didn’t we?
All: Yes
AM: Yes I did the job for about 25years [all talking at once]
PR: I ought to say we are going to speak to Maisie anyway because this little chat is just a trial trip into the culture, and Maisie of course had fingers in other pies (laughs) - quite a number of cultural pies - and she is also super on things like shops of the town and other bits and pieces.
AM: She has a wonderful memory hasn’t she?
PR: Yes, it’s all there, so we’re going to I think just settle down with Maisie and one evening and talk Hertford Choir as well as um Operatic and Dramatic. Now is she Operatic and Dramatic Society or is she just COPS?
All: COPS **********
AM: Yes I think she was, but she’s been COPS ever since COPS was….
PR: Yes. Um, a personal question, Susan and Richard. There is a story about Hitchin (laughter)*******when you almost disgraced yourselves
SH: Well this story has become a sort of legend. It’s rather a shame to perhaps tell the actual prosaic truth about it, but in fact it did occur very shortly before we got engaged. It has to be said it was in fact not at all as it appeared. It was the occasion when we did the St Matthew Passion together with the Choir from Hitchin and it we went over to perform it there. There was a rehearsal in the afternoon and a performance in the evening and Richard happened to have an old family friend who lived in Hitchin, and as I had gone with him in his car, he kindly invited me to visit this old family friend with him, which we did. The old family friend I suppose gave us a gin and tonic or something, I can’t remember, and in course of the chat we were extremely late back and we did rather have to climb over people’s feet and made a bit of an exhibition of ourselves and there was a good deal of nudging and so forth - and it did so happen that we then announced our engagement fairly soon afterwards, about um, now let me see (laughter) about a month so - no wonder you know it became very much exaggerated and I don’t know what Richard’s trying to interrupt me with saying, those are the facts of the matter! (laughter)
RH: Perhaps you remember the family friend? Do you remember Kenneth Mahood (?)?
PR: Oh yes, I yes, yes
RH: The trouble was with his new wife they didn’t at all understand the obligation of somebody singing The St Matthew Passion at 8 o’clock sharp and they did press the gin on us rather hard. It was rather hard to get away and of course we got away too late, so…
PR: A good story because it actually indicates a lot about the choir and the fact that er ********
SH: We never lived it down! (laughter) it was trotted out for ever afterward
KT: ...and you were missing (loud laughter) and we thought we’d have to start without you.
RH: That was where we were we were actually. Could I remember before I forget, talking about staging, um how lucky we’ve been with the last two vicars. Mowbray and Mr Kemm who have welcomed us into the church and allowed us - which was never contemplated under Rev Haw - allowed us to move pews to make room for an orchestra and it’s made it marvellous, it really makes the church much easier for staging concerts and its we’ve been really, so welcome us in there now which is very nice indeed.
PR: Well, the reputation of the choir is such now that for just this season All Saints is in crisis in terms of its stones and mortars, but one of the strong lines in the town about a possible closure of the church which at one time was just in an alarmist way I think, um, indicated, was what on earth would happen to the choir and to the orchestra in Hertford should that building be changed to another use? And although it’s a place for worship, many people do worship though their music and much of the music that is sung there is direct for worship [something pinging in the background] but it has been quite a strong argument that the church must remain open for Hertford Choral Society as well as any other minor activities! [all talking together]
RH: Do you know a body called the National Federation of Music Societies? They sort of look after the interests of societies like Hertford Choral and they used to be quite a power in the land with government money to sponsor concerts. In fact they contributed to ours quite considerably, um, and for some years I was representative from this area - not specifically the Choral Society - to the East Midlands area, and when you come on the committee of the National Federation of Music Societies, um, you go round in pairs to all the music societies in the district just to visit them and let them know you are interested, and also you are supposed to report back to say they are performing in a satisfactory way and they are not misspending the money which they have been granted. Um there was a lot of argument about it - ought to be done by professional musicians who could really asses the quality of the performances but that’s not really the point. Amateur music society performers could very well make a judgment of how other amateur music societies are doing and I think the system now has more or less folded because East Herts association has been given most of the powers which the National Federation used to have. The National Federation is now more or less a sorting office for people who need copies of music and can’t find them anywhere else. [‘tinging’ and ‘ringing’ in the background] *********I’m afraid.
But going around other music societies made one appreciate how lucky the Hertford Choral Society is in having a very large church to perform in. Most choral societies like say Tring, just one that comes out of the hat, perform in a church but it isn’t as big as All Saints and if you’ve got a big church and you put on a big concert you can generate a big audience so you can generate a fairly big income so you can afford better soloists. That’s how it happens. That is how lucky we are in this.
PR: With that cathedral size almost building - well not quite - but just yes, it’s a bit of very good fortune. Sorry I’m feeling round to find another tape because we’ve actually been talking on tape for a long time, well over an hour.
I want just to ask you about some people, without putting you in the way of a lawsuit or something! Um because characters, individuals are always interesting, especially when being described by their contemporaries as it were. Who um, whose were the most memorable voices in the parts. Not necessarily of soloists but where have there been people that you have said “I have loved that voice”. I mean I’ve loved Ama’s. I remember being in the Corn Exchange um in the gallery for some reason, in that little tiny gallery in the Corn Exchange and when you were singing the contralto solo in something I remember so clearly your voice then. Obviously it was an important voice in the ranks of the choir as well as [mixed chatter and pinging]
AM: I think we should mention Noel Marton’s
SH: Can’t answer that question now at all; I mean in our very early days one did know who was where the good voice is but now the choir is so good they are there
KT: I think there is another category beside that of the actual voice and that is the person who is always reliable, and I think the most outstanding one we have ever had was Jessie Hopkins.
PR: I wondered if you were going to say that
KT: You could be absolutely certain that Jessie would be spot on
SH: Very true yes, spot on she was.
KT: Anybody who was slightly uncertain about an entry, Jessie would be there.
PR: Yes, for so long she’s been sure-footed I’m sure.
KT: When I first joined the choir, the people who were there the sort of backbone - and this was 1952 I suppose - were still round about, but outstanding people were Ama, and Alan and Richard and Noel and Maisie and Jessie. And of those I suppose it’s only Richard, and Jessie and Maisie who are still in the choir. (laughter)
RH: One person I think we might mention and that is Richard Morton Noel’s son, who was a very fine bass for a few years um. He had been a King’s Scholar he was, he did stand out.
PR: Yes, I remember Richard was a pupil at my school, when I first went to teach at Broxbourne and until just last year a brass rubbing *****at Broxbourne Church - very big rubbing - has been on the school stairs and he’s left school. I don’t know what age he is but he’s probably late 30s, but this rubbing of a knight, late medieval knight in armour, done by him when I think he was in the second or third year at school, 12 or 13, has stayed as a pompous piece of decoration till very recently! Well that’s interesting, you’ve named names that you know I certainly know and can remember. No awkward customers I suppose? [laughter]
SH: We can all think of one I’m sure. Yes yes...Alan Webb!
PR: Oh yes I remember ****with a basket on his arm****
KT: When you speak about awkward customers who are sort of unintentionally awkward. That’s what I meant when I referred to somebody being one of three in a pot - er in the Scarlatti Stabat Mater - er one in particular was always in the front because she was very small and couldn’t see and I remember a great altercation in the committee meeting or a private meeting - I forget which - with Hilaire who said I will not have that woman in the front row. She does not open her mouth and everyone can see her. That was a great bit of trouble. Who was going to tell her she couldn’t be in the front row!
PR: Yes.
SH: Alan Webb wasn’t an awkward customer exactly, just a bore I think, always piped up didn’t he, asked the awkward questions [mumbled words]. Especially at A.G.M this business training.
PR: Such characters are to be enjoyed aren’t they, especially in retrospect?
KT: They can be tiresome at this time, but not so much in retrospect!
All: Yes, yes, yes.
PR: Was he anything to do with the Webbs the glove factory?
All: Yes yes
SH: He was very pedantic
KT: I don’t know whether they would be interested to have on tape the terrible adventures we had when we did the Dream of Gerontius for the Synod.
PR: Oh yes, yes
SH: We were remembering, coming up in the car.
RH: That was the first time we really had, well again with the help of the borough, engaged really top names to sing. One was Robert Tear and one was Alfreda Hodgeson. On the morning of the concert - now this is 1973 - the Synod celebrations. I should perhaps mention that this was the first concert under our new conductor Ed Wilson. Hilaire Kelynack suddenly retired rather abruptly having logged the Dream of Gerontius then poor Ed had to pick up the pieces and do it. Um, we’d engaged these high powered soloists and on the morning of the concert both their agents informed us they had sore throats and couldn’t sing! And I was telling them, coming along in the car, that I can remember Ed telling me that they had failed to materialise in church while we were putting up the staging and I was the chairman at the time and I swore in church (loud laughter!)
PR: What happened?
RH: Well the agencies had to pull out all the stops and get somebody else. ************ Kenneth Woolham who’s **************found substitute people who were very good in fact.
AM: It was the same agent who had to do with both these “delinquents” as it were. And they found………they were very good in fact.
PR: Oh were they, yes.
AM: At the very last minute
PR: Out of the Ashes
RH: Kenneth Woolham had to give up a dinner engagement to come and sing for us, but when you are a top professional like that you can sing the Dream of Gerontius at the drop of a hat.
PR: This next bit...we must really round up now mustn’t we now I think will be edited out by Eve Sangster because I had awful trouble last time we made a tape and went to talk to two of the school teachers at St Andrews primary school and I’ve been a pupil there and I over indulged my personal references. (laughter) Well I couldn’t help it and Eve’s very polite about these things but I think she really would like to cut it out, but my old man, this is what I want to say, erm, was come from a musical family, military really, training in their music. His father was a regular soldier and a bandsman and played a clarinet I think, and is still talked about in Bury St Edmunds a long, long time afterwards. In fact the chap called Nunn who ran some musical events at the Methodist Church
KT: Oh Ray Nunn! Used to play the double bass for us when we had scratch orchestras always
PR: Yes, well Ray Nunn remembered my grandfather who died at the end of the war from Bury St Edmunds days. In fact Ray has now returned to Bury St Edmunds but he was there as a child, so father’s brought his music to Hertford and found when he had been demobbed at the end of the war a great deal to help him really in his worship at All Saints church while we went to St Andrews - mother and the children. Father was a member of All Saints choir for 34 years because of the music and, er, Hertford Choir and this enigmatic St Cecilia singers whoever they were. But um how would you describe his voice. It was tenor and a fairly light voice. Was he accurate?
RH: We can’t really remember
PR: No, I’ve never really known whether he went along for the ride and greatly enjoyed it or whether he was able to be. I mean, Brian Bromley always says yes he could find the note well, easily, and sight-read quite well, very well really and but when it came to the performance his voice was lighter and very often once others had had the courage was lost in the….though he did sing solo tenor parts at All Saints quite a bit. He was very important to Mr Comley I think.
RH: Peter, If you are thinking of closing ......
KT: **********........St Matthew all on our own and then the B minor and then the Verdi Requiem for the first time, yes
RH: We talked about how marvellous it is to have a big building to perform in but the most important thing is to have a good musical director, and of course early on when I first joined we had a marvellous one in David Wilkinson who left to become the musical director of the BBC Northern Singers and made a great career of that for the rest of his days. And Hilaire (well Ron Burrows he only was with us for a year) Kelynack who helped us to grow up, um then we took on Derek Harrison whom we now have and I would like to say what a splendid conductor he is. Full of music.
PR: How do you see the next few chapters in the life of the choir? How will things, what’s on the stocks and how will things go ahead?
RH: I don’t know.
SH: You kept what’s on the stocks for this grand climax, I said at the beginning we ought to tell them what’s *******
RH: Oh the grand climax, yes well, this is an example of Derek’s initiative you see. He went to Evron, he and our chairman, Harold Baines got us to go to Evron and that’s quite a initiative.
PR: Yes, yes
RH: And we have annual master classes now, weekends in the summer (loud bang!) um making music and trying to improve our technique. And next month we are off to Wildeshausen which is possibly going to be our other twin, but they’ve now excelled themselves in that we got together with one of the other choirs which we shared Christmas carols in the Festival Hall through our Harpenden choir um and they acquired the interests of a lot of other choirs in the county and Hertfordshire Youth Orchestra and we’ve hired the Albert Hall and…
PR: Mary, are you tuned into this? Richard just said something fairly stupendous.......... (laughter)
RH: This November twelve month we’re going to actually put on a performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and that will be a sort of peak.....don’t know what we’ll do after that! (laughter)
PR: Albert Hall hmm!! Well, if I were the Mayor I’d be able to say now thank you very much for all you do for Hertford (laughter) but that’s the sort of thing that’s really good for our town as well as the community looking for a little bit of outreach in a big way. What about Hitchbricks?
RH: Hitchbricks, ah! um well they were invented about 1830 by someone called Caleb Hitch who wasn’t I think…my family were Ware Hitchs and he was a Ware Hitch but they were on parallel lines. They weren’t sort of very closely related though obviously were and Caleb Hitch was obviously a man of great inventiveness and one of his inventions was the Hitch Brick. The Hitch Brick is about eighteen inches long and six inches wide and six inches high. With two great big frogs in it. Um and his idea obviously was that you could build walls quicker with this bigger unit and never mind insulation which must have been appalling with buildings built with it, um, but he kind of got into terrible trouble with the nonstandard bits which would be necessary because you couldn’t use them like an ordinary brick and cut it when you wanted a half brick.
PR: Yes
RH: Or you wanted to turn a corner, so you have an enormous number of specials and he obviously had access to it might even have been - I don’t know a local brick field in Ware - but of course a lot of people did I think. I think my grandfather may even have been, who was a builder in Ware, um had some connection with a local brick - all the bricks were locally-made I think, and he probably had them all locally made I imagine, um but that’s the Hitch Brick. There are a few walls - a few buildings left with them, the best example I think is Bengeo Old Hall where, um, Savory lived.
PR: Oh yes, yes.
RH: Um, or a Victorian wing of that is Hitch Brick, there are some in Byde Street and some have been rendered over so you can’t see the bricks. Some have been painted so it makes it more difficult and you can’t recognise them. But there are a few examples dotted about the county
PR: The ones in the cottages in Bengeo Street opposite the co-op are not - they’ve got a county brick but they are not Hitch bricks as far as you know are they?
RH: Are they red?
PR: I think they are, yes. So they are unlikely to be - a Hitch brick is what colour?
RH: Always yellow I think
PR: Always yellow, yes, yes. Kathleen could I um be personal as far as you’re concerned for our listeners, really (laughter) ! When did you come to Hertford?
KT: 1948
PR: And joined the choir immediately?
KT: No, no not for a year or two because I was doing a job of voluntary work in London at that time and it took place on a Tuesday which was the choir rehearsal night and I didn’t think I could do it you know, get back from London and appear at the rehearsal of the choir, but I got so hooked on it that in the end I managed it somehow!
PR: And did you move into The Slopes at the outset?
KT: In 1948 when we first came to Hertford
RH: You and Leonard joined together I presume? He didn’t join before you?
KT: Oh no, I learned first because Leonard had a meeting always on a Tuesday evening which didn’t begin until 5.30 after work was finished so he couldn’t manage it. He joined in ‘54.
PR: Oh did he?
KT: When he came off that committee. Yes.
PR: I can picture his happy face - the shine on his face when singing
KT: He was very envious of me because I managed it before he did.
PR: Ah, ah. It must have given you both great joy as well as a lot of work in the course of time. That really is the abiding picture of both of you. He in particular had this this sort of radiance while making music!
KT: I know! It was an enormous pleasure you know we had an enormous lot of pleasure and fun and er quite a lot of hard work, certainly on my part though’ not as hard as Ama or Richard. But at that period of the choir, the committee existed but I think you could say that the jobs were not distributed around the committee in the way they are more recently. And so all the work was done by three people, Ama, Richard and when I took over as Treasurer from Maisie - who was the other kingpin of performing - I took over as Treasurer in I think 1957 and, er, because Maisie had some extra classes and did the extra qualifications she wanted to do which meant that she couldn’t give the time.
PR: Someone will probably look you up in years to come and wonder whether he was a general practitioner in the town, but he wasn’t was he?
KT: Oh, no no not that sort (laughs)
PR: No, no, so could you tell us what he did?
KT: Oh yes I can, he was at that time he was a lecturer and then became a reader in French at University College London. So that er that was why I say he couldn’t join when I did because there were all sorts of committees at the college that served on for various lengths of time but nothing could begin till after half past five because lectures went on until 6 O’clock or 5 O’clock so you couldn’t be at a committee until 5.30 and he happened to be on the particular committee which er functioned on a Tuesday.
PR: Yes, yes. Well, Mary, have you heard enough?
End of tape