These recollections have been contributed by Troon exile David
Scantlebury (formerly of New Road)
Three Beats on Hark
Musical recollections of a Troon childhood©
by
David Scantlebury
I never understood why the Toc H choir came together each year to practice the carols before the annual performances at Christmas. Everyone knew them completely by heart. Maybe it was to correct a local interpretation and bring us back to the written score. There was always the temptation to give Hark! what equal weight in the start of Hark! What music which had to be ironed out annually but I think it more likely that it was just the joy of singing that encouraged the annual gathering in what father used to call Mr. Carter's room in Troon school. Mr. Carter had long since ceased teaching at Troon and the classroom was no longer used as such. In my time it was a sports room and a long rope hung from a huge cross beam in the ceiling. I remember Mr. Roach climbing up to the top with ease.
I made my first official trip from School House to Troon School nearly fifty years ago. A group of us started at the same time; Valerie Williams, Sidney Moyle, Greta Floyd, Geoffrey Truan, Joy Davies, John Keverne and Mervyn Davies. Our teacher was Miss Bryant and I was put to sit next to Greta. Her first task was to teach me to spell her name. Miss Bryant left and was replaced by a lady from Padstow called Miss Chidgey. To avoid the complicated consonant combinations in her name she was soon known by some as Miss Tidgey. She was an accomplished pianist and an even more accomplished singer. My first musical recollection was the arrival of a box of percussion instruments. Triangles, tambourines, drums, cymbals were all there. Miss Chidgey arranged one of Tschaikowsky's Nutcracker Suites for piano and infants. My job was to crash the cymbals at the end of each musical phrase - tum tididy tum tum, tum tum tum CRASH!. Great fun! I moved to Mrs. Clark's class where I sat beside Sidney Moyle. Sidney was always full of fun; much noise and giggles soon followed. Sadly we were soon separated and I was put with the more sedate Chester Toy.
By this time, there was the weekly walk down to the end of New Road to the house adjacent to Trebilcock's draper's shop to visit Walter Roberts who was my first piano teacher. We soon went through Every good boy something something and embarked on Step by Step with the Classics. I loved playing the piano, especially the simple pieces Bach wrote for his daughter Anna Magdalena.
At Troon School, it was time for a change; to move through the gap in the wall from the infants to the boys school and to remain in (virtually) all male education for the next fourteen years. Mr. Roach, a formidable teacher, well structured and well organized had me sit next to Michael Pascoe. The worst point of the week was Wednesday mornings, week in week out, a spelling test. A spell checker was unimaginable.
Mr. Roach was an enthusiastic singer who gave complete heart and dedication to the song. Anyone who ever watched him sing will confirm this. He was not a trained musician, but he could pick out a tune on the piano. Father was certainly no musician although he could appreciate a good tune. The burden of musical education in the boys school, as well as geography and history was taken by the BBC radio broadcasts to schools. Every week, Monday mornings I recall, the school wireless, a cube of sheet steel with a huge tuning dial on one side was made ready. A wooden extension speaker was placed in front of us near the coke fire and the voice of William Appleby said Good morning schools, its time for singing together. The BBC took us through the English and American folk song tradition (thanks to Cecil Sharp), with some European songs as well. A great favourite which we had not known before was we wish you a merry Christmas! Once the BBC brought the programme to Cornwall and we all went to St John's Hall in Penzance to take part in a mass singing together. We sat on the stage.
Walter Roberts retired and I changed piano teacher; a lady on Mount Pleasant Road, Mrs. Hazel Edwards. It was a convenient place since the Grenville bus passed by her door every half hour. It was rumoured at the time that the buses had to take that route as they would be incapable of making the steep incline up Camborne Hill. Mrs. Edwards ironed out my excessive wrist movements and I embarked on a musical journey through the most wonderful piano music of Scarlatti, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Schuman, Brahms. I made that trip down Mount Pleasant Road for a further eight years, working my way through the grades. During all that time I only went to two live concerts; once a pianist called Jean Vallier came to the girls county school at the bottom of Camborne hill and played the Beethoven Moonlight sonata. I had been struggling with its easy bits, the first two movements, but Vallier powered his way through the final movement beginning with the ascending C sharp minor arpeggio. I was totally bowled over. The second concert was in my late teens; the Bournmouth Symphony Orchestra came down and played in the Flamingo ballroom in Pool just off the (old) A30. It was the Beethoven third Symphony, the Eroica. Since it was not then a familiar piece, it did not make such an impression on me as it would do now.
Every year, a blind man, Richard Apps used to come up to Troon to tune the school pianos. A warm, generous and enthusiastic man, he could play like an angel. I sat beside him many hours listening to his playing. He had an uncanny sense of direction. He could often be seen plotting a course up the middle of New Road (there must have been a lot less traffic then) towards a farm he owned somewhere up towards Black Rock.
After leaving Mrs. Edwards, I made a half hearted attempt at the church organ. The high point was Sibelius' Finlandia on the organ at St. John's (I wonder why they changed its name?) watched over by Roy Thomas. There was a tremendous noise from the bass notes and the chapel foundations shook. How the old men's workings under the chapel must have echoed. To use a modern day adjective, the amount of power under the fingertips and toes was awesome. However, I leap ahead of myself.
When I was nine or ten, several of us were invited to join the TocH choir as true altos as opposed to the occasional falsetto. As far as I can remember there was Kenneth Thomas, John Keverne, Geof Truan, Mervyn Davies and myself and we all trooped over to Laity Road to be schooled by the conductor, Mr. Lawrence and his wife on piano. It was such a pleasure to join the choir and be part of the solid block of sound, Like a signal in the skies, in unison. When the Lawrence's moved away from Troon, the new conductor was Stuart Davies; sometimes I was allowed to play the piano for the rehearsals, a great honour. A dilemma soon followed. I was not too happy with the key of E major; four sharps were too many, so for Hark the Glad Sound, the whole carol was transposed down one semitone to the key of E flat. I could cope with three flats. I now ask forgiveness of the choir for making them sing this carol in the wrong key. Mr. Davies would not have minded, he was such a kind man.
Every Christmas we would trek around the village, whatever the weather, singing our carols. One year, the weather was so bad I remember taking shelter in an old disused shop on the corner just down the road from School House. Somehow the more formal chapel extravaganzas, Plain-an Gwarry in Redruth and Camborne Wesley never had the same appeal. Partly there was the matter of the battle against the elements and partly the chapel Carolaires concentrated on the Merritt carols whereas I tended to prefer the Heath and Warmington collections. Who messers Heath and Warmington were and where they found their carols I do not know.
Later, for my first job I worked in the assay labs in Crofty and met two musical brothers, Wilfred and Alfie Bray from Lanner, descendants (they said) of Billy. They both sang like larks and Wilfred knew the Methodist hymn book backwards. As a light relief after crowst, Wilfred used to compose hymn tunes. I still have some that he gave me, handwritten in pencil. Wilfred was an expert with a vanning shovel; they said he could van tin from the dirt on the sides of the road.
Sometime during the early 1950's I attended a concert in the infants school; maybe the time of the Coronation. The main feature of the evening was a recital by a local quartet, the Grenville quartet. Morley Harris, Dan Williams, Stanley Luke and Bill Rashleigh. Each part was a single voice sung with confidence and pleasure. I still recall the wonderful sound they made.
The next musical recollection is somewhat later in my story and is centered around the church hall where every Saturday evening there was Olde Tyme dancing. The average age of the participants (excluding two couples) was about seventeen. Any unwilling new male or female was grabbed by Mrs. Pascoe, a retired infant teacher, and was marched round the room by her sturdy frame. She could dance both parts. A wrong foot movement became impossible against her. The organizers were Mr. and Mrs. Harold Pellow. At that age, a gap of one year implied almost a generation. Frequent attendees who were a year or two older than me and therefore much more accomplished dancers were Harry Catteral, David Treloar, Treve Dunstan, Roger Bennetts and Mike King. Our group consisted of Paul and Brian Bennetts, John Keverne, Ann Hobbs, Sidney Moyle, Geoff Truan, Mervyn Bell, Lorna Laity, Margaret Harnett and Sheila Tiddy. A favourite dance of ours was a quickstep called the Georgella Blues. I still recollect the music that accompanied this dance, a piano medley beginning with The last train to San Fernando. The pure pleasure of matching body movement to music is indeed a treasured memory. For three years, from the age of fifteen until I left Troon at eighteen, the Troon Dance was the weekly event. We covered Old Time, some square dancing, quadrilles, gavottes and some American country dancing.
At around that time, reel to reel tape recorders became fashionable and I was given one. It is still sitting in a remote corner of our house and it still works. I became an ardent and persistent borrower of other people's records. For my present love of Jazz, I must thank John Bennetts, Paul's eldest brother. Old 78's of the Louis Armstrong Hot Five and Seven, Kid Ory, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton all found their way from Laity farm along the back lane behind New Street to School House where they got recorded. John, if you are reading this, I still have them!
Now, I dance never and play the piano rarely. My critical faculties are now much greater and my personal technique is much worse. I still love singing and turn out every week during term to the Manchester University chorus (second bass). The Bach Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio, Brahms German Requiem, Britten's War Requiem, Tippett, Child of Our time, and many others have all suffered from my performances. But every year at Christmas, I get out my tape of the TocH choir which starts with the oh so familiar E major chord
Hark the Glad Sound! and my skin still tingles.©
David Scantlebury
This piece may not be reproduced in any way without the
permission of the author.
Troon Tales 1 -
Rosemary Pooley Chaffe - 'Gran's Story'
Troon
Tales 3 - Trevor Andrews - 'Charlie Pascoe'
Troon Tales 4
- David Oates - 'Sound, sound your instruments of joy!'
Troon Tales 5
- David Oates - 'Tryphena'
Cornish
interest contributions - Trevor
Andrews -'Abednego Uren'
Poetry
contributions- David Oates 1.
Pain of parting ©
2. Redruth railway station at night ©
