Eagle News Jan 2012 - Bedford Modern School

No Room For for Crooners in In the Choir
No Room for Crooners
in the Choir
by Andrew Sewell (1957-64)
When I stir the thick soup of my memories, I am surprised to
find personalities and events to whom and to which I have
given no thought for more than half a life-time, suddenly arise
fresh and clear. The trigger (or soup spoon?) in this instance is
the mention in the May issue of the 80th birthday of Paul
Paviour (1940-48), OAM. Paul, however, is preceded in this
reminiscence by John Railton (Staff 1951-57), because in my
youthful experience the two are connected as follows.
My elder brother David (known as Sam, 1954-59, who died in
1992), had been recruited by John Railton into the choir of St.
Andrew’s Church in Bedford where John was organist and
choirmaster, much admired and respected for the quality of the
music made under his direction. Meanwhile, at my primary
school, a certain Miss Jordan had discovered I could sing well,
in tune and with a pleasant tone, and she encouraged me to
improve and develop. My brother, having attended a concert
where a choir of which I was part gave a rendition of All in the
April Evening sufficiently well to melt the hearts of the captive
audience of doting parents, announced he would arrange an
audition for me with John Railton. This duly happened: I sang
a few scales for him, he set me a few tricky intervals with the
good old tonic sol-fa, and I was in, aged ten, and so came under
the tutelage of a fine BMS musician before actually getting to
the School.
John was a gentle and softly-spoken person, but he was
uncompromising in his pursuit of excellence in music-making.
On one occasion I yawned during a choir practice, and he
rounded on me: ‘You are no use to me like that. Go home!’ I
walked home in floods of tears because I thought, in my tenyear-old
mind, that I had been ejected permanently, and that
was very distressing to me. Even my stolid, rather taciturn
father could see how distraught I was, and roused himself to go
to the church to find out what was up, but they had all gone
home by then. It took a lot of coaxing and assurance from my
brother to get me to return, and when I did, John Railton shook
my hand, said ‘Welcome back,’ and added with a smile, ‘I hope
you got enough sleep last night!’
John Railton was a wonderful pianist. Unlike Norman Frost
(Staff 1941-67) who used to throw himself around at the
keyboard, John would sit perfectly still, his face a mask, while
beneath his fingertips exquisitely shaped musical phrases and
cadences would emerge from the piano as if he and it were in
a private dialogue on to which we were lucky to be allowed to
eavesdrop. Once heard, never forgotten. When it was time for
him to move on to greater things, he chose as his farewell gift
the multi-volume Grove’s Dictionary of Music, and each
choirboy was detailed to present a volume. He received Volume
7 from my hands, with a smile and a thank-you.
Clearly, John Railton’s shoes were going to be very difficult to
fill at St. Andrew’s, but by a stroke of great good fortune Paul
Paviour came forward. He seemed to be hardly older than we
were – though in truth he was 26 – but it became clear very
soon that he had rigorous ideas, and great energy in pursuing
them, and there would be no retreat from the standard of
choral singing he had inherited. He was brimful of innovations
in the repertoire of anthems we learned, and forthright in his
criticism of any kind of slackness in their execution. He would
not tolerate, for instance, any slurring or swooping between the
intervals of notes in any piece. ‘There is no room in this choir
for Bing Crosby!’ he would declare. Apart from my brother
David and myself there were other Modernians in the choir,
most notably Tim Souster (1952-61) who achieved a high
reputation as a musician and composer, prior to his death in
1994, aged 51, and Nicholas Legge (1952-60) who could play
on the church organ, with great aplomb, any Bach Prelude &
Fugue one cared to specify.
My cynical friends would say that the main attraction for me of
choir membership was threepence (1.25p) per service and
half-a-crown (12.5p) for weddings and funerals. Not so. Paul
made the singing rewarding in itself, with the added
satisfaction that under his guidance one had a sense of doing
something well as a result of his desire for excellence. After
the serious business, Paul would relax and show a more funloving
side. He was capable, I remember, of wonderful
improvisations at the piano, and we would gather round and
challenge him with such requests as Happy Birthday to You in
the style of Mozart or Yankee Doodle Dandy in the style of
Beethoven, or God Save the Queen in the style of Bach, and
off he would go extempore to the delight and amusement of us
all.
Paul’s indefatigable music-making showed itself another way:
he ran a choir called The Elizabethan Singers in Bedford, and I
was flattered to be asked by him to join it. It performed
successfully at Bedford Music Festival by winning, I remember,
a prize for sight reading, and a trophy for choral singing. In the
following Monday’s English lesson, when ‘Toots’ Cooper (Staff
1926-68), having been in the Corn Exchange audience that
night, congratulated me on the choir’s success, he added ‘I
hope your Exeat was in order.’ I was aghast because I had
forgotten to get Dan Dickey (Staff 1949-80) to sign an Exeat
for me, and we all knew what condign punishment awaited
those out after Lock-Up with no Exeat! Fortunately, ‘Toots’ was
only teasing.
I could say more, but this is probably enough, except to assure
Paul, aged 80, that he is fondly remembered back in Bedford,
where he made more impact that perhaps he knows on the
lives of some singers, amongst whom I am happy to number
myself.
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