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If it doesn't flow, I can't dance to it.
Early lessons in Ben's musical education
8/4/2006 9:10 AMI began banging about on the piano at five or six, much to the dismay of my father, who hated klimpering and would have much preferred diligent practicing for several hours a day.
Cello lessons began at 9, first with a nice lady called Mrs. Jacoby who vainly struggled against the competition of soccer, ever more so as our school team remained unbeaten throughout the season. My only really treasured memory of my years as the goal keeper of that redoubtable team was a single save I made which involved a Harry Potter-like leap clear across the goal mouth in a horizontal position. I have no idea what propelled me into flight for that brief moment, but I savor the sensation to this day.
I began to compose at nine and wrote a number of compositions of modest pretensions, three of which my mother entered into the local Arts Festival in the village of Gerrards Cross in Buckinghampshire where we lived. The Adjudicator, the composer Michael Head, down from London to judge the competition, decided that the compositions were unworthy of consideration and actually said out loud in front of the large crowd gathered that afternoon in the Village Hall, that "this young man should be discouraged from ever composing again." It seems now, in retrospect a most peculiar thing to say about a nine-year-old, but my mother's response, in the absence of my much more knowledgeable father in India, was even more peculiar.
Instead of comforting me, complaining to the organizers or boxing Mr Head's ears, my mother gathered my compositions together in an envelope, together with a note she had written and the comments of Mr Head and sent them to Benjamin Britten, England's leading composer. Four days later the telephone rang. It was Ben Britten. He reassured my mother that the compositions were perfectly appropriate for a kid of my age, and that if the family would like to spend the summer holidays in Aldeburgh, the seaside village in Suffolk where he lived, he would be delighted to keep an eye on my musical development.
So for three summers the entire Zander family went to Aldeburgh for the holidays. To say I studied with Britten would be an exaggeration. I met with him frequently at his house on 4, Crab Lane, usually around tea time, and after tea, he would look at my compositions and make comments, especially about the songs. He was always fascinated by the words. When I played and sang to him my highly dramatic rendition of the tale of Casey Jones, he called in his partner, the great tenor Peter Pears, to hear it. They took down various books of folk poetry and showed me different versions. I remember asking anxiously if I had set the wrong version, which they greeted with peels of kindly laughter.
It was at this time that Ben Britten suggested that my father should ask Imogen Holst to teach me. At first she turned down the idea. It was too far to travel for her and she had too much to do for Ben. One morning, as we were in the rowing boat on the sea, we told Britten that she had refused. "Do you think it might help if I asked her?", Britten inquired ingenuously. "Yes" said my father. He did and this time she agreed. Imo, as she was known, was a peerless teacher. She travelled from Aldeburgh to my home in Gerrards Cross in Buckinghampshire by train once a week and gave me what I remember as lessons in the dance. Not that I actually danced! But she did. She would waft around the room as I played by harmony and counterpoint excercises. It was from Imo that I learned that music is a kinetic art - essentially about the dance.
"It doesn't flow", she would say, "I can't dance to it."
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