A Personal Reminiscence of Class teaching at Chetham's 1975-2005
I was invited to join the staff of Chetham's in 1975 after a period of study in Hungary. I stayed for 30 years. To stay quite so long had not been my original intention, of course. Events and circumstances determine these things; and besides, I’ve loved almost every minute! When I first arrived, I was shown to Room 3.20 by the Headmaster, John Vallins. It seemed rather dusty and dirty and not very welcoming. It also seemed to be far removed from the other teaching rooms on the floors below. However, I came to appreciate its isolation more and more as the years passed and it became the centre of operations in my teaching life. Its views over Salford Car Park and the noise of traffic on Deansgate below are not to everyone’s taste; but for me the room seemed to open out onto the world outside and was not at all claustrophobic like so many others. Even as I write, I miss it!
The room behind mine (now the Tudor uniform storeroom) was, unbelievably, at that time the Percussion Teaching room. You can imagine how difficult it was at times when dealing with intense aural-based class work to be suddenly interrupted by a fortissimo side drum roll. Interruptions to the lesson were frequent as pupils came and went: Stephen Hough aged 15 and as talented a percussionist as he was a pianist, was occasionally tempted to play fragments from his latest repertoire (I remember the Tippett Piano Concerto, for example) on the old honky-tonk piano which used to be in that room. You can see that life was always interesting but often annoying. The present generation of pupils- even staff- may not realise just quite how limited the facilities were at that time. The corridor which is presently devoted to Academic Music, for example, was Junior Boarding in those days; all meals were eating in the Baronial Hall; the Millgate building had yet to be acquired from the Teacher Training College, and the present, extensive, wonderful (!) practice facilities had not even been envisaged, never mind built. Our great pride and joy at the time was the new Piano Corridor opened, with great fanfares, by Lord Rhodes. This has probably long since been demoted to practice rooms as the school has expanded and improved immeasurably over the decades. So, enormous physical changes have been made for the better as we can now all see, and for me Room 3.20 was the constant.
I had had considerable experience in two other schools before Chets and thought, fairly enough, that I knew about things. But the school has constantly challenged my views about Music Education, continually requiring adjustment, rethinking and change -for the better, I hope. That Chetham's demanded new and high standards from staff as well as pupils became clear to me soon after an early Christmas Music. I had been pleased with the Choir’s performance, but Michael Brewer gently chided me on the tone quality which should have been better. This setting of standards and rising of expectation levels was what made teaching at Chets such an invigorating experience. No room for self-congratulation here!
The school, of course, had enormous challenges to face. Its precarious financial position (with no central government support at that time) meant that its dealings with the Local Education Authorities (and the Music Advisors in particular) who were expected to support the pupils from their area had, necessarily, to be harmonious and cooperative. How difficult it must have been at that time to balance an obsessive need to achieve "success" which the outside world required whilst at the same time nurturing the delicate talents of the individuals within the school. This charm offensive approach to the LEAs made observational visits to the class room inevitable. Those early years passed with hardly a day, it seemed, free from visitors. There was no better stimulus for good lesson preparation! But it also meant that for a long time I was able to take the Chetham's methods and style of teaching outside into 100s of Teacher Courses and Conferences here in the UK as well as abroad. We hoped at the time that it was seen as an example of "best practice", from which others learned just as we ourselves were stimulated by new curriculum developments.
I think a really seminal moment occurred in the 1980s when John Leach, the then Head of Academic Music, meticulously organised a 3-day conference for the Music Directors of the country's Independent Schools. This proved to be enormously successful as all the disparate threads that made up all aspects of the school’s music were drawn together; class work, choral and orchestral work, chamber music, practice, and so on were seen to be part of an inseparable whole. Wagner once described music as a "…peculiar abstract thing, floating between grammar and arithmetic and gymnastics…" How easy it is to separate these elements and allot responsibility for them to others. A visit from a very distinguished Hungarian teacher, Miklos Szabo, in the late 70s demonstrated to us the real possibility of teaching music as a musical, rather than academic activity. His work was extremely tough and left some of the best pupils at that time reeling. A purely academic system, often encouraged by exams and tests, easily renders the most exciting things tedious and boring. I'd like to think that seeds were sown at that time for the development of a distinctively Chetham's approach to class music through singing and musicianship work.
So much as changed over the decades, but so little too! We celebrated the BBC Young Musician successes of Stephen Hough, Anna Markland all those years ago with the same delight (and relief) as we do these days with Jennifer Pike, Guy Johnson and their successors. I love reading about the activities of former pupils: I still scour concert programmes searching for familiar names and am especially pleased when promising musicians have gone on to achieve wonderful things in other fields. I know that there are some interesting writers and scientists out there. I believe the school has achieved over the years the balance between the need for showcasing and celebrating the quite prestigious talents whilst nurturing the individual needs of its pupils, a really tricky task, which says a lot about the quality of all the teachers on the staff.
I've calculated that I must have taught something like 30,000 lessons during this time – there might have been some repetition here, I suspect! The pupils have almost without exception been great fun and challenging in every way. Was this work too easy? Could it have been too hard? Was it relevant to their musical development? Was it fun to do! It would be wrong to deny that everything has been plain sailing. Calm seas as well as choppy waters always made the journey interesting and I am able to look back on these years as a stimulating period of great happiness.
Peter Hatfield
Former Teacher of Academic Music
