Living with the 'Open' (Bram Gay 2008)

I first met the ‘Open’ in 1943, when I was taken to Belle Vue by my father to play to HM. For me the day was almost unbelievably exciting. First, the great man’s playing was a revelation; then the contest which, to a young Salvationist bandsman taught from infancy that to play any music not published by SP&S was a sin even greater than a visit to the cinema or a football match, was an eye-opener and an ear-opener too. I very much enjoyed the playing of Handel’s Water-Music Suite by the Barrow Shipyard Band, to which HM, in the box, gave first prize, though I found it hard to come to terms with the fact that people could apparently play beautifully despite smoking and drinking before the performance.

I went back in September of the year to hear Bickershaw Colliery under William Haydock beat Fairey under HM with Denis Wright’s fine arrangement of Themes from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony; a decision which HM afterwards explained by the fact of his having conducted, for the first time at Belle Vue, with his jacket on. Previously he’d done that, as many Belle Vue conductors of the period, in his waistcoat, and his change of dress was occasioned by the fact of his new BBC appointment, one which seemed to demand a certain care in such matters. Importantly, though, DW’s second-hand Beethoven planted in my mind an interest in classical music that flowered years later. Elgar Howarth, also visiting his first Belle Vue contest, reacted to it in the same way; an argument, perhaps, for arranged music for bands.

Very soon after that, I found myself sitting next to the great flugel player, Hubert Shergold, in the Fodens bandroom, rehearsing on a Thursday evening a programme that we were to broadcast on Saturday. Fodens was a frequent broadcaster at that time, so it was not a new experience for the band, every member of which was old enough to be my dad, but the programme was pretty terrifying for a boy of nearly 13 who’d never seen anything more complicated than the SA Festival Series, Geehl’s On the Cornish Cast, a selection from Carmen and Fletcher’s An Epic Symphony. Listening to that wonderful work again a few weeks ago in Blackpool brought back vivid memories of the easy floating of the solo passages in the Elegy by HM and Charlie Cook, and the extraordinary lyric talent of Alex’s euphonium which followed.

In Fred Mortimer’s time, Fodens had little or nothing to do with Belle Vue. The reason the old man gave to the public for our absence (an extraordinary decision at a time when, owing to the war, the National Championship was asleep, awaiting the Daily Herald’s wake-up call in 1945) was that, while he was happy to compete against the bands, he wouldn’t take on the off-stage elephants nor the whoops of Bob’s Racer outside the King’s Hall doors. The truth was that, with the job of managing Fodens Band as well as conducting it, Fred avoided unnecessary contesting as a business risk. “The worst advertising in the world,” he once told me, “is Fodens Band, second prize. I hope I never live to see that.” In time, of course, he was to go once a year to the Crystal Palace, win, and forget contesting until next time. His band being then regarded as by far our best, with a busy concert season each year and an adoring audience everywhere it played, Fred wouldn’t endanger that situation by risk-taking at lesser events. Thus he secured the band’s reputation, and his own, through the war years. Today, had he lived, I think he’d have taken one look at the insanely-crowded contesting scene and confined himself to the ‘Open’.

Fred did conduct at Belle Vue once, 1944, with the band from the ICI firm, our neighbour at Northwich. The music was Johnstone’s The Tempest, a fantasy on Shakespeare which has died the death of most test-pieces, in this case a fate well deserved. The National Registry having not then been invented, I was one of eight Fodens players in the ICI band that day, but we couldn’t save the day for ICI. The pot went again to Fairey; there was no stopping HM’s sparkling young band at the time.

For many years, the Belle Vue September, like the immense contest held there in May each year, was the property of a businessman known to bandsmen everywhere simply as John Henry. He realised very early in his association with banding that the only way to make brass band music a serious business proposition was to own the whole movement. Having founded the ‘National’, he acquired the Belle Vue contests simply by buying Belle Vue itself. He then took over R. Smith, where the music used at either event was published and, finally, British Bandsman, the most potent publication for the formation of banding opinion. His grandson, John, remembers that when the family tried to caution JH about the money he spent on new music, he would cheerfully reply that it would all come back in ice-cream and pints. The Iles Empire simply couldn’t fail. It would have been in the same impregnable situation still, had not John Henry invested unwisely in a very different field. His gifting of the ‘National’ to The Daily Herald followed. With it came a complete revision of the contesting situation which had its effect on Belle Vue. In any case that rapidly deteriorating playground was doomed to fail under the developer’s steamroller. Seeming at the time to be a banding disaster, this was, I think, a blessing in disguise. Rescued by HM and later installed at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, the British Open, as it was called after the change, has ever since remained in the hands of the Mortimer family.

Private ownership of our great contests has provoked, from time to time, adverse comment here and abroad, but it can at least be said for the Mortimer family that it has provided stability for the ‘Open’ during a period when the ‘National’ has several times been bought and sold, with varying effects upon its success and prestige. The attitude of the family to the British Open was succinctly summed up by the late Mrs. Mortimer, who was, I think, the most successful of contest proprietors in artistic terms. “Bram,” said she, “the Open is not about money; it’s about securing a great tradition for bandsmen and for the nation.” Margaret’s attitude forms that of the entire management team to this day. It’s a team proud of what it does and what it achieves; an attitude that has made it, surely, the best of all contest-managements, or at least the one least complained about by bands and bandsmen. It’s also true that no one involved in it contributes for selfish reasons nor to secure prestige within brass bands for himself. Constantly pressurised by his hugely important job, it’s astonishing that Martin Mortimer himself copes with responsibility for the ‘Open’. Happily, he has Karyn to keep him on the rails and, happily too, he has the knack of delegation; but it remains true that every decision made by the ‘Open’ is Martin’s. Without basic banding or even musical experience, he values advice from those around him, but advice remains advice, for Martin’s acceptance or otherwise. What, then, is my function among those people? It’s hard to define, and it has arrived without conscious decision at any one time or by anyone. In HM’s time, all artistic decisions were his, while much of the rest, we all suspected, was covered by the wonderful Margaret, “My Margaret,” as he always called her to differentiate between his lady and mine, who was always “your Margaret.”

How did HM select the test-pieces, among the trickier parts of the job? The process began early in the year when he telephoned a number of folks who had what he regarded as the necessary musical experience and reliable judgement, asking us all what we thought. This I found flattering as, no doubt, did many others, until I began to realise that what he was really doing was to bounce a decision, one he had already made, off each one of us. None of us ever knew which way he’d eventually jump until the fact was announced. Naturally, such judgements were usually only possible to HM by reference back to music previously used. I thought, and still think that to have been a serious limitation, because I have always believed the creation of new brass band music to be a prime responsibility of the ‘Open’; one often neglected by other institutions of lesser prestige. Band music, like all music, begins in the heads of composers, the initiators of real progress. Little of their music lives to become repertoire, it’s true, but that has always been true of music in general. Posterity decides quality, and the opinion of posterity, while not infallible, is not to be discounted. If we look back over the post-war new brass band music, it is easy to see, with the wisdom time has given us, what has been worth keeping and what has been neglected and eventually forgotten. Naturally, among forgotten works are pieces which have influenced the development of the band and of its music. Among them are many which were thought exciting at the time of composition (or arranging, an unlooked-for resource; a course of action taken by the ‘Open’ in recent years only when newly commissioned originals have failed to satisfy us) but, in the main, only works which emerge as musically important can be seen as genuinely musical contributions. It’s difficult to catalogue those which, in my opinion, fill this difficult bill without giving offence to composer friends, but some works stand out. The pre-war decade, in which Moorside and Downland are important, and Pageantry the crowning glory, was a time of riches. If since then we’ve had a harder time, that fact reflects the difficulty experienced in all forms of music-making in a period when stylistic revolution has sometimes been indulged rather than the logical evolution on which music, like all art, depends. Still, we’ve had our successes. Consider Eric Ball’s Resurgam, Heaton’s Contest Music, McCabe’s Cloudcatcher Fells, and several pieces of Philip Wilby, and we see that the ‘Open’ and other contest organisers have served the bands and the art itself pretty well. Sometimes, naturally, they’ve boobed, as in the early dismissal of the Heaton, a mistake rectified only a decade on. Those responsible would argue, no doubt, that Contest Music was ahead of its time and that a ten-year wait was to Heaton’s benefit. I cannot agree; I believe the piece would have been received with the same enthusiasm in 1973 as it later was. As a member of the three-man committee which eventually selected it for the ‘National’, I remember the difficulty we had in persuading Wilfred to unearth the piece for the contest’s use. Who can know what wonderful further work he might have produced had he not been almost terminally discouraged at his first try?

That, I suppose, is where my personal influence on such events began and when HM began to think of me as a serious source of advice. He knew of my work at Novello publishing and, while he seemed to regard publishers generally as fairly suspect people where bands were concerned, he did understand that my day-to-day contact with composers and a major publisher could be useful. Smaller works by new composers like Bryan Kelly and Joseph Horovitz had already emerged and had been enjoyed. The achievement in that field of which I most proud, McCabe’s Cloudcatcher, also produced my greatest headache, since John sent it to me in orchestralbrass form with horns in the orchestral key, trombones in real clefs and basses (all four of them!) in bass. I had, as I remember, eight days to rescore that lovely work (with what minor changes I thought essential) before it went to print. Small wonder that the first printing, almost completely unproofed (at that time publishers so often resented the need to pay proof-readers in brass band works; perhaps they thought wrong notes of little importance to musical peasants!) contained so many errors that John demanded, and got, a complete reprint of the parts before the work was issued to bands. The score, which was much cleaner, I myself corrected with pen-and-ink! Still, it was worth the trouble; and further good things have come from that remarkable composer, happily undeterred by BB’s editorial description of one of his pieces as ‘tuneless cacophony’. I was lucky with Novello. The firm itself was even more fortunate when Dr. Wilby’s publisher showed himself to be reluctant to take his brass band works. Philip promptly brought them to Novello, where they were joyfully received. Philip I think to be the most important contributor to brass band repertoire of the past two decades. While he would not thank me for rating him above McCabe, for instance, he has, I think, the more instinctive approach to the band as an instrument. He has also an extraordinary gift for drawing the line just short of the place where bandsmen would part company with him.

HM having left us for another place, (“I don’t know,” he used to say, “whether I shall go up or down; but it isn’t important as I’ve got lots of friends in both places!”) Margaret showed herself more adventurous in her musical tastes. Wilby’s Revelation, with its extemporised cadenza for the whole band, would, I think, have got a prompt negative from HM, and Masquerade he’d have dismissed as unplayable. The composer himself smilingly still describes it as such.

I sometimes wish that HM’s love of the Rimmer scores had been expressed in his ‘Open’ choices. He often spoke to me of a wish to set Rimmer’s Liszt selection. Certainly the ‘Open’ audience would have loved it, as they would have loved many others from the same pen.

This brings me to a discussion on the merits of arranged music in general. It’s a style I enjoy, provided that the scores provide genuine accounts of what the composers wrote. That’s the catch, of course; they rarely do. We’ve had more of them at the ‘National’ than at the ‘Open’, especially during one period when the chap selecting the pieces chose to exploit the opportunity for scoring the pieces himself. I rarely hear such works without wishing the bands that play them had heard the original more often. Had they done so, their enthusiasm for some of those arranged scores would have been much reduced. Still, I believe that bands need repertoire from the classical and romantic periods. There is no other way that bandsmen and their conductors, who are generally not great attenders at orchestral concerts, can develop musical style as players nor musical taste as listeners. Orchestral players face the music of the present century with the confi dence and technique developed in the playing of centuries of music in many styles, while bandsmen, especially the younger players who are still forming their musical minds, often know nothing even of brass band music earlier than Gilbert Vinter. This is no exaggeration; while rehearsing a band, one which had quite recently been a National Champion, some years ago, I discovered that only three members present had heard Pageantry. At the other end of the scale, in arranged music, I asked a similar band how many present had heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, to find that only three had done so. These are musical problems, needing urgent solutions, not least because these extraordinarily talented people deserve a wider musical experience than band contesting can give them. There are, after all, more important questions than that of who will write next year’s ‘Open’ test-piece.

For Martin, and for me, though, the question always simmers. At the moment, we have a fairly clear idea of the answers as they apply to the next two years, but it must be remembered that good composers are not queuing up to write for bands, and that when they agree to do so, it must be in response to a commission fee of some magnitude. Contrary to the impression in many minds, music does not fall eff ortlessly from heaven into the heads of unusually gifted folks who have then only to write it down. Composition is a slog, a slow job; and those who do it well usually have a waiting list of commissions from other bodies, all of which are richer than even the best of band contests. Thus the question of who to commission for a new work gets harder every year. So, what do we ask of a composer for the Open? Obviously he must test the bands, including the solo players and the conductors too; he must interest the players condemned to prepare his piece and must (please!) keep the audience happy. Perhaps lastly, from the point of view of contest management, but from my own viewpoint the first requirement, it must be music; not mere note-spinning, but genuine art, the product of a musician of integrity, written from his heart and his brain combined. These requirements are not easily met, and those few musicians who hope to meet them ask fees reflecting the time and effort required.

Commissioning is always a minefield. It would be so even if the funds available were unlimited, and they are not. During the time in which I’ve been (more or less!) responsible for choices, we’ve only twice found ourselves, as a result, with music we couldn’t use at the ‘Open’. In both cases, the composers chosen were brass-experienced people, highly successful in other fi elds; yet though the quality of the music itself was first-rate, the works did not satisfy our needs as outlined. At least these works are in print, so even in failing to provide test-pieces, we’ve contributed, surely, valuable music. The ideal test-piece? That’s easily answered. Fletcher’s An Epic Symphony is perfect in every respect. Argue, if you will, that it is not finger-and-tongue difficult enough for the ‘Open’ nowadays, but I suggest that one of the many ways in which Epic compensates is the way it tests conductors. To hear a long list of performances by competent bands ruined by unthinking direction, I have only to attend a contest where the piece is set. It remains true, of course, that among bands as among symphony orchestras the world over, conductors are rarely worthy of those who play; a fact of musical life, conducting being surely the most difficult of all performing arts. Having found our test-piece, we must nominate the judges. What are the criteria there? Only musicians of experience, whether within or without the band movement, who have given proof of their judgement over years in other places will do. In making such choices, what matters most is the respect of the participating bands, who are not obliged, after all, to turn up each year to be demoralised by judges’ mistakes. We are constantly asked why we don’t spread the net wider, and why not include younger people? In recent years we’ve gone some way to answer criticism with regard to age without, I think, lowering the standard. As for casting a wider net, many of those who suggest admirable and exciting new names would be astonished to hear how many of those people have already declined my offer of what bandsmen regard as the honour of judging the ‘Open’. Still, we manage to supply good teams and without repeating ourselves too often nor too obviously. Some of the very best chaps, though, tempt us every year. Contest managers, like bandsmen, prefer sound results and few people have the knack of providing them consistently.

The constant demand for younger people, whether as judges or as conductors, worries me. Ageism is rampant among bandsmen, and it is not a good thing. Of course, the young must be given experience, or there’s no future; but age and experience usually bring judgement. I look around our contest audiences and see marvellously talented and experienced old hands who would do so much better, in my opinion, than most of the sweating young acrobats on the rostrum. In mainstream music, professional players expect little from a conductor of less than 50 years, and some of the finest have done wonderful work in their 80s.

Where will we go from here? Everyone, it seems, wants change from contest managers; but what change do they want? The ‘Open’, as it presently stands, faces no complaints from bands, nor from judges, nor from audiences except when the music is said to be ‘over-the-top’. The old advice, that ‘if it ain’t bust, don’t fix it’, is sound; but if the institution can change for the better, then yes, we should and do listen to sensible suggestions. Audiences seem thinner nowadays, though we feel no lessening demand for tickets. People are not sitting through the whole day, then; a disadvantage to the less famous bands. Someone wrote to 4barsrest recently to say that, even when Black Dyke played last year, Symphony Hall was only half full. If that was true (and I don’t believe it) then it must be the case that, while tickets are bought for wives and families, the ladies often give the thing up after a performance or two and go shopping in the City, something which was nearly impossible at Belle Vue and remains quite difficult at the Royal Albert Hall. It’s also true that Symphony Hall, with its bars and restaurants galore, provides wonderful socialising facilities. We are suffering, perhaps, from the excellence of our venue? If so, then suffer we will; I know of no one, other than those who live within a tram ride of the Bridgewater, who thinks that we would be better off there; least of all the bands, which value the dressing rooms, the warm-up room and all the other luxuries available in Birmingham. Audiences, too, ought to value the superior listening-acoustic there.

We often hear that the general public disdains contests because of the primitive system, as they see it, of putting the judges into a box. I don’t believe that. I’m sure that the reason the general musical public doesn’t attend, and never has attended, is because it cannot enjoy hearing the same work played over and over all day, It’s not a musical experience; it’s a demonstration of banding excellence for the band enthusiast and band technician. As for the box, the bands want it, as do the judges. Does anyone believe, as some writers of the letters to the websites tell us, that the system insults the judges by a show of mistrust? Rubbish! The mobile telephone could provide an easy means of discovering the draw, but that’s the last thing the judges want. They need uncluttered minds, free of that knowledge, with the relaxed comfort and frank exchanges of opinion that the box provides. Such can never be possible under the constant scrutiny of an audience. The idea of separate judges has been tried elsewhere and subsequently dumped; in fact, I invented it and used it at the Granada Festival for 17 years. There it worked decently. Individual decisions proved pleasingly similar year by year, and anyway, we all realised that Granada’s TV producer would always load his marking so as to have his own winner on TV. The ultimate show was, as we all knew, his responsibility, and with playing of such consistency all day, who would blame him for so often forcing the choice? There was little to choose, technically, between our ten best bands, over a half-hour programme, and the thing was won usually by conductors with ideas and the talent for scoring exciting new music. The idea, though, is not one for the ‘Open’ or any other conventional contest. Three-in-a-box is the ideal. When a difference of opinion comes up it obliges each judge to justify his opinions to the others, and since no-one hears everything that’s played and every human being is capable of getting a bee in his bonnet, the system is as safe and fair as it can be. We watch with interest different approaches to the problem in other countries, as do competing bands, and we have yet to be convinced that they work better than our own.

Comfort-breaks? I’ve always found them distracting. Concentration is the priority, and in the box where concentration reigns, the day passes much more quickly than it does for the audience. As for meals, a Mars bar and orange juice sustains. I do think it an dvantage, in the case of a new piece, to have a composer among our three in the box. Composers live by transferring sounds from their imagination into ink on paper, and it is logical that they can better reverse that process than most of us. The job of thoroughly learning the score is easier for them. Bands sometime imagine that, until the first band plays, the judges don’t know how the piece will sound. That is not true of good judges, people who read and learn the work as they ought. To make the matter even easier for them, we arrange a private play-through on the day before the contest, with the opportunity to do a little gentle sorting-out of the performance if they wish. A split draw is often thought to be an advantage to the bands. It certainly would be one for any band living close enough to Birmingham to leave decisions on rehearsal and departure until the last moment. For others it would not, except that some would be spared an early getting-up (can anyone really rehearse at 7.30am?) and a long wait; but a draw made early enough to be generally useful would certainly leak to the public and the consequences might be very dangerous. Imagine a day when Black Dyke, Fodens, Cory, Grimethorpe and Brighouse and Rastrick were all drawn late. What sort of audience would be present for the first nine bands? No; the thing is better left alone. That, I believe, is true of practically everything attendant on this event. The argument that, after a century and a half of current practices, it must be possible to change them for the better is often heard. A weak and illogical piece of thinking, it can be countered by the reverse; that if the system was truly faulty it would have been cured long since or it would have collapsed. That, with all readers of British Bandsman, is a catastrophe the team is dedicated to prevent.

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