A relationship of love and hate, of ups and downs, of tears, joy, love, expression, and above all music. A relationship that all started with a gift of a tiny Bank of Scotland freebie translucent blue radio from my Grandmother when I couldn't have been more than 5 or 6 and the habitual listening that developed when the only noises I liked upon swizzling the dial floated out of Classic FM and Radio 3.
This relationship with classical music continued into my teenage years with that ever trusty boarding school companion - my Walkman and it's corresponding CD case latterly replaced by an equally brightly coloured iPod (green this time) - both littered liberally with the Corries, Gilbert and Sullivan, Rachmaninoff, Schumann...oh and the Shrek soundtrack...Curiously nobody wanted to borrow my CD's...apart from Shrek actually. I think Neil Diamond's 'I'm a Believer' went through a bit of a renaissance in Talbot Heath's boarding house circa 2004.
On and on classical music and I went, with the odd nod to folk, through specialist music school and out the other end on to conservatoire. But by this point it was all going slightly wrong. Something that had been the soundtrack to my life, my raison-d'etre, and my means of expression began to go sour little by little. As Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome erupted with full force bringing with it dislocating joints, chronic pain, and chronic fatigue the full weight of classical music institution's conservative perfectionist expectations fell down upon me. The competition, the sheer talent and skill of my colleagues, the exams, the technical assessments, the constant comparisons being made between us...What resulted was a haze of self-doubt, performance nerves, artistic constriction and a fundamental belief that my musical success - my 'worth' at the cello - was directly correlated to my worth as a human being. Gradually disenchantment crept over me - the consequence of pursuing a goal with such single-minded brain-washed intent and with no allowances for my physical condition - all I was aware of was pain and crushing, obliviating exhaustion.
The relationship a musician has with their instrument is truly unique. An inanimate object can become in your hands a fully sentient, responsive, and at times contrary, vehicle for it's owner's feelings and voice along with their ambition and hopes and fears for the future. But when playing that instrument only ever causes you pain that relationship becomes poisoned. I remember breaking down on my poor long suffering saint of a Professor at the RAM when I realised that I could no longer remember what it felt like to play the cello pain free. Sure sometimes adrenaline took over to a certain extent but overwhelmingly my impressions of playing the cello were full of tension, pain, grinding joints and strained muscles. Not to mention the negative connotations of the constant disappointments and missed auditions, exams, and concerts. I remember feeling overwhelmed with jealousy looking at my colleagues who seemed to play with such physical freedom. By the end of my undergraduate I was barely able to play without dosing myself up on pain killers and I felt like the world and life to which I had given so much, sacrificed so much - missed countless familial gatherings - was casting me out. I was destined to always be on the outside looking in but fully aware of what I was missing out on.
So I came out the other end of conservatoire barely touching my iPod and forced to look elsewhere for a career with increasing optimism but whilst still grieving. As I started my research masters, continued piping, did a bit of travelling, and started working towards breaking into music broadcasting I barely touched by cello. It felt like someone had torn a huge hole through my chest but it also felt necessary. Like the distance you might impose after a bad break up with a partner. I went from spending 8-10 hours a day with my cello to a handful of interactions in nearly a year and barely listening to a single piece of classical music. I just couldn't. I was so angry with Mozart, Beethoven. Schumann, Respighi, Bach....anyone who had dared write a piece of music that I was unable to play. I couldn't bear to learn to understand the world that I had known so well and loved as anything other than a practitioner. So I threw myself back into my first love - folk; I studied and started writing again and I found bits and bobs of work. Fundamentally I spent time gradually and unconsciously learning the most important lesson of all. I learnt who I was if I wasn't a cellist. I learnt that I could be a valid and interesting person without my cello.
And then something unbelievable happened when I got a job working for the BBC Proms Television team. Initially feeling a little fraudulent for professing to love an area of music when actually I wasn't sure if me and music were even speaking or not I have spent the last 3 months completely immersed in classical music. In albums, scores, concerts, orchestras, soloists, choirs....I've listened to the whole Proms season already (that's over 75 days worth) whilst checking the camera scores and in doing so have listened to more symphonies and concertos in a month than I have in years. Suddenly having studiously ignored the classical music world for a year I have been listening and watching a rotating roster of world-class musicians back to back every single night. And what's more I haven't been just passively listening. Subconsciously I was REALLY listening again. Automatically filing away nuggets of musical analysis about a performance, making observations on intonation, tempi, the artistic interpretation. And through my work as a researcher on the TV scripts I have been immersing myself in the historical context and relevance of classical music once more. I have been learning and re-learning and had the revelation that there is as much joy in curating and disseminating music that you care about via a broadcast into someones home as there is in giving its performance in the concert hall.
I have fallen back in love with music. And there's a tear on my cheek as I write this because I realise that I have spent the last year without it somewhat adrift. The Proms have brought me back in. Broadcasting classical music and editorially justifying it to an audience forces you to fundamentally reassess your relationship with something, what it actually means, and why it's important. It's like music and I went through a traumatic break up and yet sitting watching the Staatskapelle Berlin from the RAH presenter box as magical wordsmith Tom Service spoke with such animated passion and devotion about the music for listeners at home I realised that Elgar and I were reconciling - music and I in general. I realised that I was listening actively to the music and analysing it but not as a practitioner - as an observer, And this was OK. It was like discovering a more adult relationship - a calmer more mature interaction - with something wherein I could accept the limits of what something could offer me and it was OK. But startlingly whilst initially I though this musical relationship was limited in that I can no longer have the Elgar or Dvorak concertos under my fingers, this new arrangement actually feels limitless.
Beethoven now seems to encapsulate everything to me - in a timeless manner he covered everything. There's Beethoven for everything, for every possible feeling, sentiment and moment...and he's not alone. It feels like I'm rediscovering anyone and everything. This new adult relationship with music is new and diverse and unique to me. It can fit in with everything else without being the suffocating focal point or being relegated to the background. It is now informing the everyday work I do, inspiring me to continue with broadcasting, with writing, with starting to play again bit by physio fuelled bit. My cello and I aren't quite at forgiveness yet but we're nearly there and we're speaking again. At the very least he is no longer covered in dust and we have a super exciting folk gig in October...
As I listened to the phenomenal pianist Beatrice Rana last week weave such a stunningly beautiful narrative with her performance of Schumann's piano concerto (Prom 13) I was moved in a way that I couldn't recall ever being by a piece of music. Because instead of over-analysing as a musician I was allowing myself to be carried by the music - to be carried by what it had to say for itself instead of overlaying it with my own interpretation. Nestled in a dark corner of the cramped broadcast gallery watching 9 heads intently listening to and watching the multiple screens with Rana's fingers rippling backwards and forwards across them, hearing the constant micro adjustments spoken to the cameras, the script supervisor counting us through the score like a metronome, and the Producer's intense scrutiny of the finished product to be beamed into someones home, I realised that there is so much more to sharing music than just playing it. There are so many other meaningful ways to interact with and form a unique and complex relationship with music. People all around me are doing it every single day.
So can I live with still being able to ghost feel what it feels to be playing a particular orchestral part when I hear it and the desperate yearning that comes with not being able to, or the fact that I may never have the Dvorak concerto under my fingers again? I'll have to. It's getting easier. Especially as what I CAN play is expanding and I have countless reels, jigs, and folk tunes under my fingers instead that are far less demanding on unstable pain filled fingers. And at the end of the day learning to listen without being able to play is an incredibly enriching experience and one that has made me realise something - how incredibly lucky am I to have had both?
Classical music and I have had our moments, but we're done with break ups. Now it's all about the future....