Music for Schools and Young People

Phyllis Tate was drawn towards composing for schools and young people throughout her life, from Tunes for my Violin  to ambitious and original compositions for school choirs and orchestras; her work in this genre spans a wide range. When asked about her aims in writing for young people, she replied  ‘I thoroughly enjoy writing for the young and regard my music for children just as I do my music for adults - except that it is on a simpler scale. Within these restrictions, I aim to introduce some freshness and to do something different ... Writing school music has taught me to be more economic in my other music - just to write notes that matter, because in school music the cardinal thing is to have the right note at the right place in the right register.’

The Story of Lieutenant Cockatoo

In the mid-1960s BBC TV entered into the business of schools music. Several composers, including Phyllis Tate, were willingly pressed into service to compose pieces suitable for learning and performance by young amateurs. The originator and inspirer of this enterprise, John Hosier, recalls ‘visiting a little village school in Sussex of sixty children between five and eleven who had no other effective contact with music and seeing a lavish production that they had mounted of Phyllis Tate’s The Story of Lieutenant Cockatoo, which they had learned entirely through a sequence of eight  twenty-minute programmes on television’.

The Story of Lieutenant Cockatoo was a musical play, commissioned by the BBC as part of the 1968 ‘Making Music’ series for children aged 10-11. The excellent libretto by Ronald Eyre is a potted version of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s lengthy poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. The voices have singable, melodious lines, accompanied by chime bars and the tuned and untuned percussion usually found in a primary school, with additional optional instrumentation available for a Gala Performance.

Scores available:

○ Available from archive supplier Banks

Front cover of original edition

Scores available:

○ Seven Lincolnshire Folk Songs. Song book out of print. Vocal score and parts on hire from Oxford University Press

○ Street Sounds. Available from archive supplier Banks, email : info@banksmusicpublications.co.uk Tel: 01653 628545

Audio clip performers:

Performers unknown

Youth Sings

In 1968 the EMI label released Youth Sings, a performance of arrangements and original music written by Phyllis Tate for the West London Youth Choir and the choir of Ealing Grammar School for Boys, conducted by John Railton. The album received glowing reviews: The Guardian described it as ‘extraordinarily vital’; the Gramophone review in March 1968 commented ‘I should like to think that this record will encourage many other schools to take up this original and entertaining music’.

Side One consists of Seven Lincolnshire Folk Songs, collected by Percy Grainger and arranged by Phyllis for choir, piano and percussion.

Side Two starts with a Concertante Suite for wordless choir, piano and percussion, Street Sounds, written by Phyllis specifically for the recording. In the publication Music Teacher in 1974 Brian Schotel wrote ‘It is a really adventurous cycle, likely to excite any class that has had some elementary instruction in rhythm and texture ... It was hilarious fun for teenage boys and girls to perform - and to hear. The voices have no words to their notes but only onomatopoeic sounds, which join with lively percussion and piano parts to promote vigorous scene-painting.’ Side Two ends with a series of French folk songs, arranged for chorus and piano with glockenspiel, double bass and percussion.

Album cover

A Pride of Lions

Words were of the utmost importance to Phyllis and she drew inspiration from poems and stories for much of her work. Writing for young people offered her the opportunity to collaborate with authors that she admired. One of her personal favourites among her compositions was A Pride of Lions. On this she collaborated with author Ian Seraillier (best known for his book The Silver Sword), who supplied the libretto, which was based on a Persian tale. The piece was composed for the 1970 Nottingham Festival and performed by children aged 8-11. It features voices with recorders, guitars, tuned and untuned percussion, with optional parts for flute, clarinet, horn, bassoon, guitar and additional percussion.

Music in Education in May 1972 said of the work ‘It requires a speaking narrator and singing treble chorus to cope with the words, while six characters (they could be puppets) mime the story. Accompaniment is for recorders, easy guitar and lots of percussion. The whole thing is tremendous fun with quite delightful words and music - the yawning chorus will become a sure hit. It is difficult to overpraise this 20-25 minute work which bright juniors will manage if a few adults help out here and there. The material is so versatile that it can easily be adapted to existing conditions with a little careful forethought.’

Scores available:

○ Available on hire from Oxford University Press

Audio clip performers: Croydon Schools Music Association, conducted by Roy Terry. Recorded at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon May 1973.

Front cover of original edition

Illustrations by Joanna Troughton

Phyllis was very aware of the care that is needed in handling boys’ voices in the years immediately after they have broken, with their lack of resonance and compass. In her fantasy operetta Twice in a Blue Moon (as in her Seven Lincolnshire Folk Songs) she often circumvents this sonority problem by writing for broken and unbroken voices in a bold unison.

This work has a libretto by Christopher Hassall and tells the amusing story of John Crome’s painting Mousehold Heath, cut in half to make more money for the painter in his lifetime and re-integrated a century later.

It was commissioned for the 1969 Farnham Festival to be performed by the Combined Farnham Boys‘ and Girls‘ Grammar Schools, and features baritone and mezzo soloists, speech chorus and double chorus of singers. Martin Cooper wrote in his review of the festival, ‘An opera for schoolchildren is one of the most testing commissions a composer can be given. To find a suitable subject is difficult enough, but easier than devising an idiom that is truly musical and alive, neither condescendingly trite nor impossibly ambitious. Phyllis Tate has certainly discovered one answer with her Twice in a Blue Moon. She elicited the most difficult, and certainly the best, of all musical solutions to this problem by writing what seems at first alarmingly simple music, but with unexpected accentuations, harmonic double entendres and melodic twists that proved perfectly manageable by teenage singers and avoided both banality and preciousness.’

Scores available:

○ Conductor’s score and parts and chorus parts available on hire from Oxford University Press

○ Vocal score available to buy from archive supplier Banks, email info@banksmusicpublications.co.uk Tel: 01653 628545

Twice in a Blue Moon

Front cover of original edition

Scarecrow was written for junior singers, actors and dancers with instrumental ensemble or piano and percussion. The libretto was supplied by Michael Morpurgo, a children’s author best known for Warhorse, and also, with his wife Clare, the founder of the charity Farms For City Children. The work was commissioned for the Birmingham Junior Schools Music Festival and performed at Birmingham Town Hall in June 1981. A letter to Phyllis from a parent of one of the performers reads … ‘I wanted to send our congratulations to you and the librettist for such a marvellous children’s opera. Our daughter was one of the scarecrows and we were so delighted that she was involved with a truly splendid piece, excellently produced, but above all, beautifully composed. The children at her school loved working on it (it really should be filmed for national TV) and its whole score, with its lovely and elegant melodies, was a true delight.’

Scores available:

○ Instrumental parts on hire from Oxford University Press

○ Vocal score and words available from archive supplier Banks http://www.banksmusicpublications.co.uk

Scarecrow

Front cover of original edition

Phyllis and Michael became friends and subsequently collaborated on Solar, a children’s musical for unison voices and orchestra. As with Scarecrow, it was commissioned by the Birmingham Junior Schools Festival committee. It was given its first performance in Birmingham Town Hall on 14 June 1983 and was conducted by Peter Davies. Michael Morpurgo wrote in the notes on production … ‘Solar can be performed on a grand scale or as a small class production. The only props needed are a park bench and a model of a Solar (visitors from another planet). There is great scope for costume, much of which can be left to the creativity of the children themselves. An audience is essential to the production, since they are very much part of the plot.’

Scores available:

○ Vocal score available from archive supplier Banks

○ Full score and parts available on hire from Oxford University Press

Solar

Front cover of original edition