I first discovered that it was possible to be a composer when visiting Drysdale’s music shop in Woolwich, in South-East London (see image), where I saw little books of blank music manuscript paper, six staves per page, on sale. Aged eight or nine, I couldn’t wait to buy a book or two and fill them up with new music to play on my Schott descant recorder, which had been purchased for me a few months earlier from the same shop.
Until I discovered the piano, and the delights of harmony, I wrote many pieces for the recorder in these little books, which joined my pile of music alongside a recorder tutor by Freda Dinn (what an appropriate name) and lots of little collections of recorder music published by Schotts. I can’t remember the pieces that I wrote now, and have lost my manuscript books (probably just as well) but it started me out on a lifetime of composition.
In the 1950s and 60s, many musicians had hardly woken up to the fact that the recorder could be s serious musical instrument, despite the efforts of the Dolmetsch family and others. In fact, one of the first ‘proper’ concerts that I went to was a recital by Carl Dolmetsch, at the Horniman Museum in South London (renowned for its collection of early wind instruments), which awakened me to the repertoire of the recorder as a solo instrument.
I never forgot the recorder, and forty years later I wrote some more descant recorder pieces, ‘Recipes’. I can’t remember exactly how these pieces came about, but I know that I originally wrote them as unaccompanied pieces for the recorder player John Turner. I think the subject matter must have appealed, and he asked me to write a guitar accompaniment, then a piano accompaniment, and then an accompaniment for string orchestra, all versions of which he performed and/or recorded.
Nowadays I think it is possible that there might be accusations of cultural tourism about these pieces – but that wasn’t really a thing in the last century and I hope the listener can simply enjoy the good humour, and flavour, of some of my favourite recipes! There are five light-hearted movements:
Coffee and Croissants
Barbecue Blues (when the fire goes out)
Prawn Paella
Special Chop Suey
Fish and Chips
They are not particularly easy, and I did have John Turner’s skill and virtuosity in mind when writing them, but they have been played by many young people, and some of the pieces have been set as examination pieces for the higher grades. As the titles suggest, the pieces vary from a blues to a Parisian waltz, a decorative modal study, and from a habanera (including a famous quotation) to a very British fair-ground / seaside scene.
The sheet music is published by Forsyth here.
If you have Spotify, you can hear John Turner and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conductor Gavin Sutherland, play them (the last five tracks) on the album English Recorder Music here.
A YouTube search will provide quite a number of performances, and here’s some good ones: here’s three of the movements, and here’s Coffee and Croissants, and here’s Fish and Chips!
So, thank you to Drysdale’s music shop and to Carl Dolmetsch (both now long gone) for starting me on my voyage of recorder discovery. And thank you to John Turner for helping it continue!