Gyles Brandreth is a very familiar face on British television screens, known for his bright knitwear and wonderful way with words. The former MP would be the first to admit he’s not the most musical person in the world, but, Gyles being Gyles, he still has plenty to say on the subject.
We chatted to him recently for our Christmas issue ‘Music That Changed Me’ slot, but we couldn’t fit it all in, so here’s a little extra from one of Britain’s very best raconteurs.
This is Gyles Brandreth on…
Church music and Practical Cats…
We might as well start with church music, only because when I was a little boy I spent a lot of time in church; and when I say a lot of time in church I mean a great deal of time! I don’t really remember much about the music [at St Stephen’s Gloucester Road], because I wasn’t in the choir. I was the ‘boat boy’ – this is the child who walks beside the priest, who is the Thurifer holding the Thurible containing the incense. I loved that, and what I remember most about that church was that one of the sidesmen was the poet TS Eliot. One Christmas I read the lesson – I was about seven or eight – and he very kindly congratulated me. The priest in charge said, ‘do you know who this is?,’ and I didn’t of course; I looked up at the old gentleman with the glasses and then he said, ‘this is TS Eliot’ the famous poet. I asked him about his poetry, and of course he didn’t tell me about his great serious poetry, he told me about his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. He suggested I learn one of them for him, and so I learned ‘Macavity the Mytsery Cat’, which I won’t recite for you now, but take it from me I could!
Words are more important to me than music; words are my music, and one of the things I later learned from TS Eliot is that poetry is a bit like music; you don’t need to be able to understand it always to appreciate it. He was quite hot on that; he would say, ‘you don’t have to exactly understand what’s going on in a piece of music to get something out of it,’ and he felt the same about poetry.
So my introduction to music was through church. I can’t have been very good, because I really was very unmusical, and yet you got badges – I think it was from the Royal College of Music; you could take exams and get badges. The badge was according to the colour of the ribbon, so I got a Blue Badge and went up to a red one. I loved being a choirboy and so I love church music.
His ballet phase, and opera…
My wife and I went through a phase of going to the ballet a lot when we were younger. I have a favourite ballet, Mayerling, with music by Liszt, and I met its choreographer, Kenneth MacMillan. He loved Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra as a child, so I came up with the idea that we should do Kenneth MacMillan’s Guide to the Ballet, which would tell the whole history of ballet and introduces it to young people. Sadly he died before we could make it happen. I’m not an opera buff, but I do go to opera; I love the ENO and if I have to go to Manchester I will. The words are important to me, so that’s slightly my problem. Curiously, I like a story well told and if the opera is in a foreign langauge I almost don’t want the words; I think that’s why I went through a ballet phase.
Shaking Brahms’s hand (sort of) and living in Handel’s house (sort of)…
I’ve met some very distinguished people in the world of music, and I was a proper friend of Sir Robert Mayer. In the 1920s he started something called the ‘Children’s Concerts’; he was a philanthropist and a great man. His claim to fame was that he had been taught by Brahms, so I have shaken the hand that shook the hand of Johannes Brahms! You can’t do much better than that… or maybe you can, because I live in a house in Barnes, South West London, that is built on the site of a house owned by a man named Heidegger. He was a great impresario in the 18th century and he ran the Italian opera in London; it was Heidegger who invited Handel to come to London. Handel arrived in 1712 and moved into a house that was on the site of where my house is today.
A memorable encounter with Yehudi Menuhin…
While I’m namedropping, years ago, in 1971, almost the first television documentary I made was about the murder of Thomas à Becket. I think it was the 800th anniversary of his death – you will remember he was murdered by the four knights at Canterbury Cathedral. It was a famous play by TS Eliot called Murder in the Cathedral. Anyway, I made a documentary about this for ITV, and the climax was to be an interview by me with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, and Yehudi Menuhin playing unaccompanied Bach on the very spot where Becket had been murdered.
Yehudi Menuhin arrives and I’m waiting at the top of the steps leading down to the crypt, with the Archbishop of Canterbury; we were slightly surprised to see that him carrying his violin case, padlocked to his wrist! Anyway, we say, ‘what’s the padlock about?,’ and he tells us ‘the insurance company insists because this is a Stradivarius, I’m going to play on one of my Stradivarius violins, because this is such a special occasion.’ He took out a key, undid the padlock, opened the violin case and showed us the Stradivarius violin. And he said to us, ‘this is a Stradivarius made by the Father of the Stradivarius family, and it is the oldest Stradivarius in the world still being played.’ I said, ‘well, that’s exciting Mr Menuhin,’ this was before he became Sir Yehudi, ‘I’ve never held a Stradivarius, could I hold your violin?’ So he gave me the Stradivarius, and I felt very excited to be holding it and turned to the Archbishop of Canterbury and said, ‘Oh look, Archbishop, I’m holding Yehudi Menuhin’s Stradavarius!’ Well, I must have turned too sharply because, as I turned, the Stradivarius slipped out of my hand and the Archbishop and I tried to catch it, but instead of catching it we tipped it into the air and it went spinning, like Wayne Rooney doing a somersault, up into the air it went and down onto the hard stone steps leading into the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. It bounced, bang, bang, boing.. SMASH! You can see this Stradivarius to this day, because it’s on display at the Royal College of Music. You will find it, because it’s the one that’s got all the marks from where it was broken. So I’m the fellow who broke Yehudi Menuhin’s Stradavarius.
After that the Archbishop said ‘what are we going to do now?’ I said, we could pray for a miracle, Archbishop.’ But then Yehudi Menuhin said, ‘well, I do always carry a spare, I’ve got another violin in the boot!’ I asked if I could fetch it and he said, ‘no, thank you!’ He still played extremely well on an everyday violin.
So for musical namedropping you can’t do better than that, and this from a man who hasn’t a musical note in his head!
Gyles Brandreth shares ‘Music That Changed Me’ in our Christmas issue. Out now.
His new book, ‘Elizabeth – An Intimate Portrait’, is out now and you can see Gyles in conversation with composer Debbie Wiseman at the Barnes Music Festival on Sunday 12 March. Tickets are available from 16 January.