We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; –
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
Arthur O’Shaughnessy
Our rehearsal schedule has been intense as we prepare to sing some of the best-loved of British music. It is twenty-three years since the London Symphony Chorus last sang Elgar’s Music Makers which we perform this evening alongside Holst’s Hymn of Jesus and Vaughan William’s Towards The Unknown Region.
In our final tutti rehearsal we are tired and it’s hard to imagine that we might invoke the spirit of music making less than two hours after we finish our rehearsal. Thank heavens that, when the time comes, our adrenalin kicks in to supply the physical resources we need to sustain a committed performance.
Our concert this evening is a performance, yes. Perhaps more significantly it is an act of love and devotion as we remember Richard Hickox with whom we worked so closely until his untimely death on 23rd November 2008. It also marks the inauguration of the Richard Hickox Foundation with its aim to cherish and support those interests that were close to Richard’s heart.
Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s words, set to music by Edward Elgar in 1912, remind us of the legacy that the music makers create and leave behind. Can we fail to think of Richard and of his extraordinary legacy – the groups, orchestras and festivals he initiated, the musicians whose careers he sponsored, the composers whose music he cherished, his recordings (more than 280 with Chandos alone)? It is not so much that this legacy consoles us as that it reminds us of the man he was. The time will come when we shall cease to have been separated by death and yet, meantime, our preparations for this concert serve to remind us of our loss and sense of separation.
In rehearsal Elgar’s stirring and somehow quintessentially English music reminds me of my own musical inheritance. For in 1975 at the age of twelve I took part in my first choral concert, singing The Music Makers alongside Rubbra’s Dark Night of the Soul at the Newbury Music Festival. I remember how my mother feared this music might put me off for ever. Singing The Music Makers for the first time since 1975, I am suddenly and deeply aware of the consequences throughout the whole of my life of that early decision to sing. Can there be any gift for which I can feel more grateful to my parents than for this gift of music?
We are the music makers.