I’ve been a little distracted by other noises in the house – TV, loud and jolly conversations, the ordinary sounds of other people, nothing inconsiderate, just the sort of things you can hear at home. I’m trying to edit a story for a competition, and I really need to concentrate, and just shutting doors doesn’t help. So I put my earphones on and listen to familiar music – when I say listen, what I mean is I can hear it, but it’s so familiar that it’s just background to my thoughts, and a baffle to everything else.
I have many favourites on YouTube, which I must have listened to tens, dozens, if not hundreds of times. The Pet Shop Boys, The Lotus Eaters, Joe Jackson, The Waterboys – oh and many more. Yesterday I was deciding what to have tootling away in the background as I wrote, and I thought of a piece of music I first heard when I was at school. When we were at junior school and we had assembly in the hall, we always left afterwards to a piece of music on a record played on a gramophone. I guess they were all popular classics, easily recognised melodies, quite cheery, usually orchestral, but maybe there were occasional songs too. When I moved to secondary school there was also music played, but as we were older it was sometimes more serious and on occasion, more unusual. I know I now recognise a lot of classical music because I heard it so often as a child leaving assembly.
There was a most unusual piece of music played one day, which so struck me, so intrigued me, that I went to the music teacher, who was a bit scary, and asked her what it was. We were beginning to learn French so I understood what ‘La Création du Monde‘ meant. I wonder how I remembered the composer’s name, Darius Milhaud? Darius I would have recognised from children’s history books telling of Darius the Great Persian king, but Milhaud? Somehow I remembered it. We didn’t have a lot of pocket money as children, but maybe a kind aunty or uncle had given me some, or maybe I discovered Milhaud around the time of Christmas or my birthday and had received some then. However, I had £1 10s – £1.50p which was what a record cost then, and although Mum was very dubious, she came with me to buy it.
When I got it home to play it on my Dansette record player was I a little nervous that I wouldn’t like it, only having heard it once in assembly – and only heard what would have been a short extract. I can’t remember. I do, however, know that I liked it as much listening to it at home in the bedroom I shared with my sister, as I did when I first heard it at school. I haven’t listened to it for a long time, but now I can hear it through my headphones while writing, and it’s marvellous!
‘La Création du monde’… is a 15-minute-long ballet composed by Darius Milhaud in 1922–23 to a libretto by Blaise Cendrars, which outlines the creation of the world based on African folk mythology. The premiere took place on 25 October 1923 at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Wikipedia
Darius Milhaud – 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and Brazilian music and make extensive use of polytonality. Milhaud is considered one of the key modernist composers. A renowned teacher, he taught many future jazz and classical composers, including Burt Bacharach, Dave Brubeck, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis among others.
Wikipedia
Lois Elsden 