THE MUSIC OF GHOSTS

I'm told that if you stand outside the grounds of Gloucester Cathedral late at night and shut your eyes, you may just hear above the occasional car horn blast and drunk mutant hollering the faint sound of ghostly music from centuries past hanging in the air, like phantom notes that never die, carried on the sighs of the dead.

The vibrations of historic performances once performed there still permeate the sacred site like the musical equivalent of vapour trails in the sky, except in this instance they've irrevocably altered the atmosphere of the place for eternity. If, as Schlegel once said, 'architecture is frozen music' then music itself must be invisible architecture whose structures float like ghost ships through the night.

Back on a September night in 1910, Vaughan Williams conducted his 'Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis' with the London Symphony Orchestra followed by Elgar conducting his own religous oratorio 'The Dream Of Gerontius'. The poet/composer Ivor Gurney was also in attendance that evening along with his fellow friend/organ scholar and composer Herbert Howells. Later, they roamed the streets of Gloucester until the early hours of the following morning in awe of what they'd both just heard. Howells later reminisced about that iconic night, “For a music-bewildered youth of 17, it was an overwhelming evening, so disturbing and moving that I even asked RVW for his autograph – and got it!” The 'Thomas Tallis' piece itself was a cosmic linking of music from the Tudor age brought into the 20th century with a new orchestration by Vaughan Williams. The very notion of time itself is dissolved in this fusion of past and present with the Gloucestershire composer's unique re-imagining of Tallis's music. And what a confluence of musical destiny was brought under that sacred vaulted roof, that historic evening at the Three Choirs Festival over one hundred years ago.

This week the much beloved English conductor, Sir Andrew Davis sadly passed away at the age of 80. Davis belonged as part of that same lineage which stretched all the way back to that 1910 premiere. Davis was a musical shepherd of Britain's classical music of the past one hundred years or more, along with Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Barbirolli, Vernon Handley, Bryden Thomson and Richard Hickox who have all steadfastly preserved the legacies of this island's greatest composers like faithful servants.

Davis himself re-created the original premiere performance of Williams's 'Fantasia On A Theme By Thomas Tallis' in Gloucester Cathedral in a filmed concert for the BBC that is thankfully freely available on You Tube. I was reminded of this special performance by a close friend of mine, who, when still living in England, used to make regular pilgrimages with me to sit in the cathedral, It was our way of atoning for making our expensive purchases in our favourite classical music shop 'Audio Sonic’ on College Street, which sadly is no longer there.

Watching and listening to the Davis performance of 'Fantasia' and thinking of his recent death, I was reminded of just how fragile all of our lives are, in much the same way as the solemn 'Tallis' theme is barely held together other than through the elusive and mysterious use of a conductor's baton like a sorcerer's wand, co-ordinating the spirits, minds and hearts of the musicians sat before him in that same hallowed space many of us have shared at different intervals of our lives.

These threads of fate, both visible and invisible that maintain our histories, are sometimes tenuous and delicate but make no mistake they are there like the air we breathe and the sounds carried on it.

Rest in Peace, Sir Andrew Davis (2 February 1944 – 20 April 2024)