For John White
NO LONGER
Will I have my telephone calls answered with the cheery Wodehouseian
“What Ho?”
NOW, FOR EVER
Even the possibility of our two -piano-six-hands ensemble is reduced to four.
NO MORE
Will I be party to the creation of four symphonies during an early morning flight from Milano, suffering from a hangover.
GONE FOREVER
Is the almost infinite prolongation of post-concert toasts by countering the call of “l’ultimo brindisi” with “il penultimo brindisi.”
Now, John appears to have left us.
My life and work has been shaped, irrevocably, by my friendship with John.
THIS HAS SURVIVED
Occasions like deputising for him, and sight-reading, as musical director for the second of two Boxing Day performances of Death of a Salesman at the National Theatre, leaving me ‘in charge’ of a band whose members had been drinking non-stop between the two shows that day.
OR SIMILARLY
Deputising on stage as the MD for the white (sic) colonial band in an all-Caribbean production of Measure for Measure at the National Theatre, where he had arranged for all my cue and direction to be on tiny pieces of paper, stuck on the back of various props or costumes.
NOR WILL I EVER
Be able to repeat my tour-de-force of speaking on French radio to introduce a concert, given by staff and students from the music department I ran in Leicester at the conservatoire in Strasbourg as part of the EU ‘twinning’ celebrations. With our in-house concerts at Scraptoft, there was always debate about the dress code: should it be all-black? All–white? Black-with-a-dash-of-white? White-with-a-dash-of-colour…?? John had travelled separately from the rest of the group, as did I, but he didn’t know of our decision to wear all-white, and arrived dressed entirely in black… I was able to open the concert with an over-rehearsed introduction, “mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue à notre concert, dans lequel l’ensemble est tout habillé de blanc, sauf Monsieur Blanc, quit porte du noir…”
…For which he, eventually, graciously forgave me…
NO LONGER
Can I envy the depth and range of his musical knowledge, the seemingly effortless virtuosity of his performance, the astonishing fecundity of his musical imagination, to which I always aspired, and which shone out from the dross that constitutes the majority of what other composers produce.
NO LONGER
Need I desperately try to keep pace with the speed and originality of his wit: I will just tell jokes…
GONE IS THE PLEASURE
Of our two-piano recitals of ‘Satie and the British’ that brought light and happiness to the inhabitants of Rome and Amsterdam: his contribution to the programme including pieces with the title Grieg Takeaway, El Gorrago,….et maintenant adieu Francis, A Pretty Girl is like a Malady, My Phony Valediction, Strict Counterpoint with a Loose Lady…
LOST FOREVER
In all probability, is the tape recording of the interview that the Dutch radio producer Ted Szanto made with the two of us, after carrying the radio station’s portable professional Üher for two days following our Amsterdam concert, when we stayed at his home in Utrecht. We finally did the interview late at night, following many brandies, and finishing just in time to take a taxi for our return flight from Schipol at 6am: an interview that gradually descended into profanities, obscene expletives between every syllable of the names of Mi-chael Ny-man, Pe-ter Max-well Da-vies…
NOR WILL I EVER
Experience again the courage with which he confronted a New Music audience In a festival of electronic music in Cologne, the heart of Germany’s avant-garde electronic modernism, giving a concert of his lo-fi technology works, with their battery-operated monophonic Casio and Yamaha two-octave keyboards, utilizing every possible childlike pre-set rhythm and tone colour… an occasion that saw the second performance of his 8th Symphony – like Mahler’s 8th ‘ The Symphony of a Thousand’ – but his ‘thousand’ being not of performers but of notes…
AND I WILL BE ETERNALLY PROUD
To share what was probably our greatest critical acclaim, from The Observer’s Nicholas Kenyon:
“Satie with the wit; Ravel without the grace; Cage without the silence; Rachmaninov without the tunes: the recent music of Gavin Bryars and John White is all this, and less.”
SO FAREWELL MY DEAR FRIEND.
AS ALWAYS, WHERE YOU GO, I WILL ONE DAY FOLLOW…
Gavin Bryars