GEOFFREY REVISITED

“I was standing at the checkout in Tesco and a little girl about 10 years old started singing the theme from [the television version of] Narnia and I thought, ‘Wow, that is really nice’.” - Geoffrey Burgon

The first time I heard Aslan's theme by British composer Geoffrey Burgon I would have also been ten years old. The year was 1988 and it was my first introduction to C.S. Lewis's magical world of Narnia. The first episode of BBC's The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe aired on Sunday 13th November that year and I remember it distinctly because it was highly unusual for a new children's television series to premiere at a weekend.

Before the story and characters were even introduced, the atmosphere of the entire book was brought to life by the stirring sound of a noble horn representing Aslan the lion himself while tremolo harmonising strings shimmered like silver beneath it. The main theme conjured a feeling of something both important and forgotten being roused from slumber to return from faraway. It is for me (even to this day) the mystical sound of deep England and it clearly made an indelible impression on my younger self. The other music soundtracks that had evoked comparable atmosphere up until then were the original scores for BBC's The Box Of Delights (Roger Limb), ITV's The Wind In The Willows (Hopwood & Rowe), and Channel 4's The Snowman (Howard Blake). Perhaps it was something about that time, when children's television was left untouched by the pervasive hand of ideology that has now insidiously crept into so much of modern programming.

I would not have known at the time that I had already first been subliminally introduced to the music of Geoffrey Burgon via the ominous opening title music of the BBC's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1979 series and its sweetly haunting Nunc Dimitis end title music which I can vaguely remember hearing as the young treble's voice (Paul Phoenix) drifted up the staircase to my bedroom. As I continue to rewind through my mind like an old VHS videotape the chronology of time back then, the Nunc Dimittis would have been followed shortly after by the iconic theme tune for the highly acclaimed ITV series of Brideshead Revisited (1981) which my father had bought the soundtrack for on record.

I can vividly remember the locket shaped portrait photo of the three central characters on the front cover, especially as it had the teddy bear Aloysius to the far left of frame held aloft by that perpetual alcoholic/romantic Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews).

Aloysius bore a sort of loose resemblance to my own equally love worn threadbare teddy ("baby teddy").

Teddies were teddies back then.

If I had known when I was 10 years old that the composer of the Aslan theme which had so stirred my young heart would become one of the most significant figures in my adult life, I would have found it a more incredible notion than believing in the land of Narnia itself.

And yet, 15 years later, I would meet Geoffrey Burgon by a fireside in the Bisley Bear pub where he had unbelievably taken an interest in a speculative project of mine: a proposal to adapt Bruce Chatwin's masterpiece novel On The Black Hill for an opera.

What struck me instantly about Geoffrey, who was sitting against one of those large, curved back settle benches you find in old public houses, was just how genuinely fascinated he was in other people. I would have happily interrogated him for hours about his life as a composer but he appeared equally as fascinated with me and at a time when I had been suffering with a lack of confidence in life, it meant more than I ever sadly had the chance to tell him.  

As he stoked the fire with an old brass poker and the flames flickered back into life, I had a sudden memory come to mind of that cosy scene with Mr Tumnus and Lucy as they share afternoon tea in Narnia. My day dreaming reverie was quickly broken by Geoffrey's dismissive and somewhat brutal appraisal of the initial sketches for scenes for Black Hill I had prepared for our informal pub meeting.

"I wouldn't be able to compose anything to these," he said as he proceeded to down the remainder of his pint (either Timothy Taylor Landlord or Budding was his preferred pale ale if memory almost serves).

When someone of such professional excellence as Geoffrey criticises your work, you don't take it personally. You go back and revise it so he won't have cause to do it again. Which is exactly what I did.

But work aside, from that first evening in that most Hobbit like of pubs (echoes of The Prancing Pony came to mind) our bond of friendship was assured. I felt as if I had found a mentor, my own personal Aslan to help guide me out of my current rocky patch of mid to late 20's personal catastrophe.

Geoffrey had the assured air of the King of Narnia even if he shared no obvious physical resemblance to the fictional lion.

The generosity (by which I mean mostly his time) bestowed upon me in the ensuing days and weeks by this very definition of an English gentleman of French ancestry was hugely significant to me at the time. Perhaps the composer recognised in me some part of the creative struggle he'd once suffered himself as a young man before securing his own first professional successes.

I'm still waiting for mine.

I often felt like an imposter in those first few months that we got to know each other, still keen to prove that I was able to match his music with my writing. That was no doubt more to do with my having spent many years of my 20's wracked with unexplained anxiety. The mind can play funny tricks on your perception of yourself when it's been weighed down with endless rumination and perpetual doubt. Nevertheless, I soon began to feel as if I had a protector spirit in my life who genuinely wanted the best for me and that meant everything.

Now as I look back, I realise this was just how Geoffrey was with those he spent time with. If he liked you, then the entire Burgon world opened up to you and you'd find enjoying the warmth of his home and sipping champagne and eating mince pies (no Turkish Delight!) on Christmas day at his cottage with his family as well as the rest of the ecelectic coterie of local eccentrics, bohemian aristos, and creatives he enjoyed the company of.  

And on long, hot summer nights we would sit in his beautiful garden which itself resembled something from an old fashioned children's book as deer roamed quietly nearby in the distant wood whilst wine was poured and conversations about future projects discussed. There was a tangible atmosphere of both Narnia and Brideshead about it all, a midsummer serenity of good company and hopeful dreams.

Perhaps this is partly romantic projection on my behalf about the atmosphere back then, but the more I got to know the composer the easier it was to see how that perfectly evocative music I had grown up with was composed by Geoffrey. It was an extension of his entire sensibility and humanity as a human being.

Often his musical career had critics pit his commercial work (film and television scores) against his serious work (concertos, requiems, song cycles). Deep down, I believe for him there wasn't any real separation in his mind between these two realms.

After all, it was all his music. It was all Geoffrey.

But as I came to learn, sometimes painfully, when I later worked for him as a sort of secret agent/representative for dormant projects of his that his publishers had less time to focus on, the classical world, especially in Britain, can be awfully snobbish if you dare to compose anything the public might whistle. Something like Aslan's theme, which lodged itself in the ears and hearts of an entire generation growing up, would be like a picnic basket of garlic to a vampire for much of the music establishment of this country.

I think Geoffrey knew that he had won the affection of the public; even if they didn't always know his name, they knew the music. To further illustrate the point, I remember Geoffrey playing the great theme on the piano to my young daughter who was becoming well acquainted with the original BBC series that I had watched back in my own childhood. That simple yet enchanting melody cast a spell on her just as it had for me.

The power of great music has an enduring legacy that is often not something determined by music academics or critics. It is something felt in the heart and retained in the mind.

Just like friendship.

"This world is bursting with life for these few days because the song with which I called it into life still hangs in the air and rumbles in the ground." - Aslan from C.S Lewis's The Magician's Nephew

And then, after many years of sharing great affinities and working together on numerous projects, including the arduous, ongoing saga to find a commission to get our Black Hill finally staged, the dream we first shared over a pint was finally undone by illness.

I remember a dream I had months after Geoffrey had been diagnosed where we both met for a drink in a pub. He looked as well as the first time I met him and we talked long into the night as a folk band played music in the background.

He would have been excessively over the limit by the time we left the place, but because it was a dream, it was perfectly acceptable for him to drive me home in his cherished Bristol 405 vintage car.

I remember my last words to him as I got out of the car.

"Will you be alright?"

"No problem. See you soon!"

And with a final wave I watched him disappear up the hill toward Bisley into darkness.  

At his funeral in the small, but beautiful, Bisley Church where the service was held, just a few yards from where we had our first drink in the Bear, I remember vividly the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the reds, blues and whites of the stained glass windows onto Geoffrey's coffin wrapped with a faded Union Jack flag.

And while we all stood for Geoffrey, a small string ensemble played Aslan's theme as perfectly as it had ever been played and I wept.

I was now 32 years old and Narnia was winter again.

But spring returned as it always must.

The time, effort and energy Geoffrey had put into our friendship was a long term investment, paying dividends long after he left us in the form of my enduring connection with his son and wife who remain to this day like family to me.

And Geoffrey's music, like Aslan, will forever melt the snows of winter with its warmth, humanity and eternal sense of summer.