Diverse origins of great music

By JULIAN LLOYD WEBBER


Last month my travels took me to two very different musical birthplaces. In Worcester, for the alarming pleasure of taking part in BBC TV's political flagship, Question Time, I could not resist driving those few extra kilometres to the village of Broadheath to revisit Elgar's birthplace and marvel once again at how a self-taught musician from such humble beginnings went on to become one of England's greatest composers.

The little cottage where Elgar was born is beautifully preserved - although the Elgar Foundation which looks after it is disgracefully underfunded.

After Worcester, my next stop was California, where I would play Elgar's Cello Concerto. From there to America's Midwest for further Elgar performances in places where his autumnal masterpiece had never been played before. Within days I had travelled from rolling Worcestershire countryside to the flattest place you could ever see. Think Lincolnshire for 300 kilometres in every direction and you have Lubbock, Texas - the birthplace of my second composer, Buddy Holly.

Suddenly I can feel hackles rising on both sides of the musical divide. How could a rock'n'roller from Texas possibly be mentioned in the same breath as Sir Edward Elgar? I admit the links are tenuous - although I am sure someone told me Buddy liked a dash of Worcestershire sauce with his chilli - but, as Elgar transformed English music, so Holly in the two years between making his first record and his tragically early death, aged 22, in a plane crash, transformed rock'n'roll.

It is impossible to imagine what Holly might have achieved because, both in his music and his thinking, he was way ahead of his time. Long before Paul McCartney recorded with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson, Holly was looking to make an album with Ray Charles in an era when it was unthinkable for a white Texan boy to work with a black singer. In the weeks before his death Holly confided to his wife that he wanted to write film scores and "maybe some kind of classical piece for the Spanish guitar". Then came February 3, 1959 - "the day the music died", as Don McLean lamented in American Pie.

Buddy Holly deserves his posthumous fame. Any doubters have only to listen to True Love Ways or Raining In My Heart from his final New York session to know that here was a musician with unique powers of expression. Holly died absurdly young, but in his two years of recording he achieved a directness of communication that few manage in a lifetime.

* A particularly pointless "survey", undertaken by an English university in a country restaurant, has revealed that playing classical music caused its clientele to "feel a bit posh". As a result they spent up to £2 a head more than when poor old Britney Spears was played.

What these pro-muzak lobbyists always conveniently forget is the people who avoid places that play piped music of any kind. If they can. Because muzak is everywhere: at bus stops (queuezak), in public toilets (loozak) and it is even being played to cows (presumably moozak) to increase milk production. I understand that Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is good fodder for squeezing that extra pint out of musically discerning Friesians.

But best of all in the musical mood-manipulation stakes is the deleterious effect of Delius' music on miscreants. Another stupefying survey showed vandals caught on CCTV at a neighbourhood shopping precinct "running scared" the moment Delius' On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring was played. Doubtless just as the composer intended.

* The death last month of tenor Franco Bonisolli left me feeling guilty. Readers may remember that I mocked his eccentric escapades during a production of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. But our robotic age needs more Bonisollis, not less. Arrivederci, Franco. Thanks for all the pleasure you gave us.