Don’t mess with me on music!

Certain readers have taken umbrage at my contention some columns ago that a great deal of what passes for modern music is mindless garbage. And to think I thought I was putting it mildly.

“Shiny, Happy Person” of Edgemead accuses me of “sarcastic generalisations”, sweeping observations which she maintains are the result of prejudice, ignorance and a closed mind.

“Ode to Joy” of Claremont is even less flattering. He claims I know “sweet bee-all” about music of any variety or persuasion and should not have the gall to address the subject.

Well, “Ode to Joy” of Claremont, you have gone too far. And, having led with your chin, we shall see how much punishment that chin can absorb.

To start with, let me tell you that I was once a concert pianist! In fact, not once, but numerous times.

It happened in the Transkei when, as a matric pupil, I was a member of a travelling concert troupe called, somewhat obscurely, “The Ginger Nuts”. I was the nut on the keyboard for one whole season, playing classics and music hall selections.

My career might have blossomed further but prominent Umtata citizens persuaded my father to send me to university. Or anywhere, they said expansively.

At university in Durban, my thirst for musical knowledge was unquenchable. I played with a number of campus groups which all unfortunately – for one reason or another – fell into disarray. (Someone laughingly suggested I must be some sort of Jonah.) But those groups were great fun while they lasted.

Much of my spare time was spent browsing in libraries and second-hand bookshops or sitting around in sleazy bars, the sort of places where musicians of the time gathered. So a good measure of my musical education was ad hoc, as it were, although I learned the darndest things.

Are you aware, for example, “Ode to Joy” of Claremont, that Frederic Chopin never wrote all those nocturnes and polonaises for which he was given credit?

No, I thought not. They were composed, the whole lot of them, by an Irishman named Jack Clancy whom I actually met in one of those bars to which I refer.

We ran into each other a few times before Jack Clancy finally broke down and told me his story, in great confidence, one evening when he’d had a few beers. He must have been quite an old man by then, though he carried his age well.

But I don’t believe he can still be alive, which is why I feel free to relate this.

It seems Clancy encountered Chopin in a bordello in Berlin where he (Clancy) was working between concerts for the celebrated Prince Radziwill. Clancy happened to dash off on the resident baby grand a norturne (his very first) which he had written the previous evening.

Chopin was so impressed he entered into negotiations with Clancy that very night. And for 18 years Jack (as he insisted I call him) provided most of Chopin’s material. Clancy admitted he had some problems with the polonaises but was helped by the fact that his grandmother had been Polish and had imbued in him the spirit of resistance.

I said to Clancy that, had I been he, my spirit would have resisted fiercely the idea of my compositions being plagiarised for the price of a few regular vodkas (which apparently was the arrangement) but Clancy, essentially, was a humble man.

Yet a man big enough to concede that Frederic Chopin, at the end of the day, wasn’t at all a bad pianist.

Pursuit of musical knowledge has led me, over the years, down the highways (and the byways) into areas often murky. But, through my investigations, I have been able to overturn numerous popular myths.

How many people know that Wolfgang Amadeus Beethoven was not deaf at all?

It’s true. When Beethoven was a child, and was forced to do his scales and arpeggios every day, he formed such a dislike for the piano that he was driven to simulate deafness. It became a defence mechanism.

His mother would call him from the playground, where he and his mates were playing the German equivalent of cricket or touch rugby, and Wolfgang Amadeus would pretend not to hear. The louder his mother shouted, the more deaf he became.

Then a day dawned when the young Beethoven discovered he really enjoyed music – tinkling the old ivories and composing a bit on the side. By then, however, it was too late. He could not blow his cover without immense social implications, not to say deep filial problems. So he was stuck with his ear trumpet for life.

Coincidentally, a distant relative of Wolfgang Amadeus Beethoven did happen to be deaf. His name was Ludwig and, while W A Beethoven’s biographers fail to mention him, I have heard he did something in music too.

And what about that other immortal, Johann Sebastian Mozart, the babychair composer, generally adjudged to be the most precocious of them all?

After careful research, I am able to reveal another little-known fact. Which is that Mozart was born on February 29, 1756, a leap year. So he only celebrated his birthday every four years.

Thus his first attempts at composition, just after his fifth birthday, actually occurred when he was 20. And when Mozart died at the age of 35, he was indeed 140 – not a bad innings at all, all things considered.

Nor have my pursuits into the rutted field of music been confined to the classics. I could speak with authority about Fred Dillon, Malcolm Jackson, Noel Diamond, Fleetwood Mike et al.

And on another note, so to speak, how many people know that the Beatles were not actually brothers?

No, “Ode to Joy” of Claremont, my credentials to express an opinion on music of all kinds are impeccable. And if you cannot be civil, at least get your facts straight.

John Ryan’s Midweek column