A POINT OF VIEW
Johnny Dankworth’s death reminds us that music, once the realm of the wealthy and educated, is an integral part of every well-balanced life, writes Lisa Jardine.
Marcel Proust persuaded us that simply by nibbling on a small, scallop-shaped madeleine cake dipped in tea, one might involuntarily recall the sensory experiences of an entire childhood.
But I have always found music to lodge particularly deeply in the memory and to stimulate the richest and most intense recollections. A snatch of an overheard melody will have me humming a song or a symphony for the rest of the day.
A track from an album – for those of you who can remember such things – can trigger with eerie precision, involuntary memories of times past.
Last weekend Cleo Laine, that most virtuoso of jazz vocalists, announced the death of her husband, the great jazz saxophonist and band leader Johnny Dankworth.
She did so onstage, just before the finale of the concert they had planned together to mark the 40th anniversary of The Stables venue in Wavendon that they had created together in 1969.
The venue manager paid tribute to the decision of Dame Cleo and her two jazz-musician children to perform.
"She felt that it was really important to go ahead with the show. She wanted to maintain a sense of the concert being a celebration. The sheer grit and will of the family, to go on in those circumstances, was astounding."
The snatches of Dankworth’s compositions, played the following day along with the tributes, brought musical recollections flooding back to me.
Jazz was the music of my growing up. If we could convince the doorman of the Marquee Club we were old enough, we could eke out a couple of drinks for a long night’s listening, and bop till almost dawn to the Johnny Dankworth orchestra, or Humphrey Lyttelton, or Tubby Hayes.
But it is Cleo Laine scat singing with Dankworth I have had running round in my head all week, lobbing the melody backwards and forwards between them in numbers like It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).
Laine’s astonishingly flexible voice was a perfect match for Dankworth’s melodic saxophone, dashing upwards into its highest register, then swooping downwards to echo full-bloodedly its lowest notes, no lyrics to distract, but just the achingly pure sound of the voice itself.
"Jazz was the music of my growing up"
Proper lessons
Cleo Laine has always insisted that no musician, however naturally gifted, could succeed without encouragement, particularly from teachers.
"At my school in Southall," she said, "there was a teacher there who saw, or rather heard, I had some sort of talent and nurtured it. You have to have those sorts of people who will give you confidence."
In Dankworth’s case it was his mother who recognised and encouraged his musical talents. He fell in love with the clarinet at the age of 16, after hearing a record of the Benny Goodman Quartet, and then, inspired by Johnny Hodges, transferred his affections to the alto saxophone, and she made sure he took proper lessons.
Music lessons have long been regarded by parents as a way of setting their children (they hope) on the pathway to success.
Sir Constantijn Huygens, secretary to the Dutch Stadholder – or head of state – in the first half of the 17th Century, was on his first diplomatic mission to London in the early 1620s, when he caught the attention of the English King James I by playing excellently on the lute in his presence.
James promptly knighted the young Dutchman. Not surprisingly then, as soon as Huygens’s own children were old enough, their father made sure that they too had musical skills that would help them get on in court circles.
In July 1638, Huygens wrote from The Hague to one of his well-connected cousins in London to say that he was anxious to purchase a good-quality consort or chest of viols – a collection of stringed instruments of various sizes and ranging from bass to treble.
The cousin sought the advice of the leading musician at the English court, Nicholas Lanier. Within weeks, Lanier had located "a consort of six old viols, the most excellent one could possibly find", and recommended them.
The price was, however, Huygens’s cousin wrote, unacceptably high. "They are asking an outlandish price, in my opinion, that is to say, 30 pounds sterling. So I need to know as soon as possible what to do, and your last word as to what should be my highest offer. Please reply promptly to my father-in-law’s house in London."
Four months on, the cousin let Huygens know that the outcome of his extended negotiations concerning the musical instruments had been successful. One of Huygens’s oldest English friends, Lady Mary Killigrew, a considerable chamber musician, had helped him by examining the viols herself, and had confirmed them to be "extremely excellent and rare, and well worth the price asked".
Between them they had succeeded in getting the price down to 27-and-a-half pounds sterling, plus "a grey Holland beaver hat" thrown in – a fashionable piece of headgear depicted in at least one of Vermeer’s paintings.
The fragile musical instruments were on their way to Huygens, in a custom-made packing case. The total shipping price was eight shillings, which included a trusted carrier to deliver the precious cargo safely to Huygens’s door. Would Huygens please send the hat as soon as the viols had arrived, and he judged them to be to his satisfaction
All this elaborate international bargaining and effort, it turns out, was part of the arrangements to begin the formal music education of Huygens’s two eldest children, Constantijn and Christiaan, aged 10 and nine respectively at the time. In early 1639, Huygens recorded in his journal:
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"On the 6 March I arranged for Christiaan to begin lessons on the Viola de Gamba, and to that purpose acquired a Consort from England, at a cost of 300 guilders. And the children applied themselves so assiduously to playing the instruments, and made such good progress, that in only a week Christiaan had perfected the melody of the 117th Psalm."
Christiaan, he added, was showing significantly more aptitude musically than his older brother.
This was music training as a means to preferment. Christiaan Huygens went on to become a distinguished scientist, while his older brother came to England with William III in 1688, as his personal secretary. Neither pursued their music except recreationally. But the ability to perform as part of a chamber music ensemble, in Dutch drawing rooms, formed part of their genteel upbringing.
Lasting love
The Huygens story made me feel the need to acknowledge something like the same strategy in my own family. In the 1980s a talented graduate student of mine got into financial difficulties and decided he had to sell his trumpet to make ends meet. Anxious to help, I bought it.
"What should I do with it" I asked a university colleague the next day at lunch. "Don’t you have a daughter" was his response. That was how my nine-year-old daughter began trumpet lessons, and became the enthusiastic musician she is today.
It was jazz, though, that kindled her lasting love of her instrument. During a semester spent at Princeton High School in the United States, she became a member of the school jazz ensemble, under the direction of the charismatic Mr B.
It was during that visit too that we went to one of Dizzy Gillespie’s last concerts, and she heard virtuoso trumpeter Wynton Marsalis play.
Sir John Dankworth and Dame Cleo Laine – both were honoured for their services to music – wanted to take music out of the privileged milieu of Huygens and – to a lesser extent – myself.
They believed it ought to be available to everyone. They used their fame, and the thrill their playing gave to their audiences to generate a grass roots movement in music.
In 1970, at the height of their careers as performers, they set up their "Wavendon AllMusic Plan", at The Stables, to encourage people of all ages, levels of ability and backgrounds to participate in music-making activities. Its events were in every way inclusive, crossing traditional barriers by bringing jazz, rock, pop, classical, and world music together.
Their National Youth Music camps welcomed young people from throughout the UK and abroad, to pitch their tents in the grounds of their home and enjoy intensive music making.
They still offer everything from orchestral playing to jazz improvisation, from harmonica sessions to steel band performance, and from music theatre production to recorder and rock ensembles. Generations of young musicians cherish their memories of those galvanising and accessible events.
As the world mourns the loss of Johnny Dankworth and the bewitching sound of his saxophone, we can at least be sure that his musical legacy will live on.
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