Music matters
I used to be an avid follower of pop music till the 1980s but now have moved to classical music. It took a bit of time to discover in the broad spectrum of classical music what I particularly enjoyed. That turned out to be compositions based on folklore like Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances or Brahms’ Hungarian Dances or Vaughan Williams song cycle based on rustic Somerset tunes.
What in music is interpretation and what is plagiarism? This was a question I discussed with one of my godchildren Hugo Valentine, a performing musician and songwriter, who happened to be in my area as he was playing a gig.
He is an accomplished musician, so versatile that at my 50th birthday he played at the piano all manner of songs. He now writes and performs his own songs and here is a link to one of them – HUGO VALENTINE
I asked him about the creative process of composition. Did a tune just come into his head? As one interested in art forgery I asked him about reproduction as to whether you might subconsciously hear a tune and adopt it without realising. He replied that this could easily happen but gave chapter and verse on case studies of plagiarism notably George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord which was allegedly based upon the earlier Ronnie Mack song He’s So Fine, a hit for the girl group the Chiffons. Warming to the theme I told him that Lionel Bart did the ultimate – he plagiarised one of his own songs.
I recall years ago playing a song at home called It’s Four in the Morning by Faron Young. My late mother recognised the tune, burrowed into the house record collections, which in those days were kept in sleeves in one cupboard, and located there a disc of some Yiddish songs performed by Theodore Bikel. She played one – Reyzl – which was virtually identical.
To return to the my godson’s music. I was pleasantly surpassed as I expected something atonal, headbanging or downright incomprehensible only to listen to 4 tracks of pleasant melody and harmonisation impressed he could play so many instruments. My p/a Polly then arrived with Grania and I was interested in their views being of the same generation as Hugo. They too very much liked his music and after they left I played the CD of four songs several times. Sadly a bad cold prevented me from hearing him live at the gig which would have been something of first – i.e. to go to a pub music venue as opposed to some huge auditorium. I thought of the Kinks playing their first and last gigs at the Clissold Arms and how you made the journey from aspiring and talented songwriter to Ed Sheehan.
One person I could ask is Sir Harvey Goldsmith with whom I had dealings in the 80s. Like many great businessmen he made things simple, explaining to me the secret of financing a successful gig was to get all the money in and hold onto it, however much the pressure, till it was safe to be distributed. He started locally studying pharmacy at Sussex University and I was impressed that if some speaker needed moving he did not order some underling to do so but did it himself. I guess to be successful you need good management, talent, determination, self-belief and – most of all – luck.
