A Musical Life - Overview

Beginnings

From my parents I inherited a useful combination of talents. My father was a gifted engineer (mostly electrical) and very practical, my mother fine water-colourist and instinctive piano player although she would choose not to recognise her talents.

At the age of ten my father and I were designing radio circuits but growing musical interests were overtaking things electrical and my mother painted the sound board of a psaltery (a plucked dulcimer) that I had just made.

Having played the piano from the age of five, I was always interested in keyboard instruments and when my piano teacher gave me a piano keyboard (the carcass having been burnt), I set about chalking up a design for a piano on the concrete floor of the garage.

Quite soon I realised it would be impossible and with the piano keyboard sticking out of the roof of the car, I arrived at Oundle where I was sent to study engineering.

About this time, my parents gave me a fabulous train set by Graham Farrish; I had ached for one several years before, but they thought with probable justification, that I would take it to bits as I always wanted to know how things worked. Within a week I had taken it to a Pawn Shop and swapped it for a Mandolin. I must say that I wish I still had the train set!!

A spell in the School workshops was required of each pupil, in fact one week of every term. I was in my element- but most boys were not!

It was James Armstrong, my piano teacher, who introduced me to early musical instruments and I realised quite quickly that part of the piano keyboard could be used to make a clavichord; and so it appeared in a Speech Day Exhibition- clumsy joints filled with spectacular amounts of plastic wood but it PLAYED! When my cabinet making improved, I saved the wood.

Then I started on a double manual Harpsichord (nothing seemed to daunt me) and I spent much free time in the workshops which were extremely well equipped. The instructors did not know how to teach me how to do inlay and crossbanding, so I read it up, and one evening veneered and crossbanded the whole bentside of the instrument. After that there was a queue of teachers to view this unusual phenomenon, and, having had a rather unhappy time at school I was completely nonplussed by the attention. The Harpsichord was used for many concerts and subsequently by the Philomusica of London.

Bob Thurston Dart was a terrific musical influence on me at this time, and I used to go to Cambridge and listen spellbound to his playing of Bach's 48 preludes and fugues on the clavichord in his rooms at Jesus College.

And then I discovered the HARP!

It had been dumped next to a pile of coal in the basement of the School Science Block. I already knew the instrument as it had been used in a cabaret given by the masters for the boys. A rather weedy biology master had strung the harp with rubber bands and flicked paper pellets into the audience.

So, I rescued the harp, dusted it down and strung it with harpsichord wire, painting the F and C strings the appropriate colours. And, as one master said "an inky fingered schoolboy, on a winters afternoon, sat down and learnt to play the harp." (note: I'm still learning!).

My father had a colleague whose wife played the harp- Mrs Alexander (Frances Callow) and she had studied in France with the great Henriette Reine. She showed me what real harp playing was like and gave me a good foundation. She left her beautiful Lyon and Healy Harp to me in her will and I have an everlasting gratitude for all the wonderful things she did for me.

At the time, I needed to get a more useful instrument and I bought an Erard Gothic Harp for £2-10s (£2.50). It wasn't in very good condition and my father was worried that I had been "ripped off"- but once polished, strung and regulated it turned out to be a rather good instrument.

I was 18, in my last year of school, when Ruth Rainlton came to audition Young musicians for the National Youth Orchestra. The Director of Music (who never liked me) pushed violinists, horn players and trombonists at her and was horrified when she chose me (I had only been learning for one year) and he paid me back during a rehearsal for Wagner's Mastersingers Overture.

I had to wheel the harp through town (perched on a gardener's trolley) to the jeers of the boys. He spent the whole rehearsal rehearsing all the passages without the harp. I overheard him saying to another music master "that will teach Watkins to think that the harp is the most important instrument in the orchestra."

Now things were getting serious. A concert with the NYO in the Colston Hall at Bristol (and a recording) conducted by Walter Susskind (May 1, 1913 – March 25, 1980), and my father was getting very worried. I overheard him, saying to my uncle on the phone-"My son wants to be a harpist- I thought harpists were ladies in long dresses," and to my headmaster he said "We must send him to a famous harpist who can get the silly idea out of his head".

In a letter dated 3rd May 1956, Marie Goossens (1894-1991) wrote:-
"David seems to me to be highly sensitive and was very nervous when he played. He nevertheless produced a good tone on the harp and I think with good tuition he should play well. He is so terribly keen that it would be cruel not, to let him have a musical training."

 

I obtained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music after Sir Thomas Armstrong (15 June 1898 – 26 June 1994) listened to me playing Bach's 5th Prelude and Fugue on the harpsichord. However I can't remember which harp piece I played.

Gwendolen Mason was the harp teacher - she had studied with John Thomas and had played for Queen Victoria and she was a great lady and a fine musician but "Elbow up a little higher dear"- Why - and, in exasperation "we always do it that way" wasn't a good enough answer for an enquiring mind.

The sight singing classes were hell- I was so terrified singing in front of the class that I cut them and got a bad reputation. A highpoint was my friendship with William Mathias and his lovely wife Yvonne. Bill wrote his wonderful "Improvisations" for me at this time and there were harp pieces from the composer Vladimir Rodzianko.

I was saved by winning a French Government Scholarship to study with Solange Renié. My father was still not quite convinced and contacted Sir Adrian Boult for advice. His letter was dated 20th April. 1960.

"Dear Mr Watkins,
I had the pleasure of seeing your son this afternoon, and would like to tell you that I was very much impressed with what he told me, and I am anxious to help him, if I can in any possible way.
I do hope his scheme for some months in Paris will come off because there is no question about it that the teacher with whom he wishes to study, Mdme Renie, has something to give him from which he will greatly profit, and it will put him in a position which will enable him to hold his head up beside any harpist in the country.

I was particularly impressed by the way he has buckled to in order to keep things going and has not hesitated to do other jobs in order to carry on with his main objective. He is almost unique among students of the present generation in realising the importance of technical proficiency. It is of tremendous importance, and terribly neglected nowadays.

Perhaps I may have special sympathy for your son, if I may say so, for you too because I too was an only son and when I was about 17 my father, who had hoped that I should carry on his business after him, decided to re-arrange his affairs in order that I might become a musician. I am glad to say he lived long enough to enable him not to regret that decision, and I much hope that you will be able to satisfy yourself on this score.

Yours Sincerely,
Adrian Boult.

Sir Adrian Boult wrote to me on 2nd May 1960

Dear Watkins,
Many Thanks for your letter: I am indeed glad that you have got that scholarship. I hope you will have a happy and successful time there.

Yours sincerely,

 Adrian Boult.

How wonderful for a student to receive such a blessing and support from such a great man and superb conductor.