John Harle

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:09

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Cossaway this week is a saxophonist. He is in fact the most recorded saxophonist in the world, equally at home and equally acclaimed as both a classical virtuoso and a jazz improviser. He's composed concert works, film and television scores and made fifteen solo albums. His Terror and Magnificence went to number three in the classical charts. He started his career as a musician in the Coldstream Guards, won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, and moved quickly into the career that's made him an international celebrity. He's collaborated with many of the greats, from Bertwhistle to McCartney, and at the moment is writing the music for the BBC's Millennium production, The History of Britain. The saxophone, he says, is a direct representation of how you're feeling. He is John Hall. Do you mean when you say that, John, that the saxophone is very close to the singing voice?

John Harle1:22

It's not only very close to the singing voice, it actually uses the s w with the exception of the vocal cords, it uses the same uh bodily systems, the diaphragm and the lungs, all all fulfilling exactly the same function.

Presenter1:35

So you're blowing your whole character and personality down into the harrowing.

John Harle1:39

But

Presenter1:40

And when you growl, it growls.

John Harle1:40

And when

John Harle1:42

Yes, exactly.

Presenter1:44

When you cry, it cries.

John Harle1:46

That's true. It's it's it's a it's a peculiar sensation, but I do remember moving from the clarinet to the saxophone and feeling uh an amazing sense of relief and of freedom, because the saxophone offered this this breadth and this this variety of expression that I just had had no idea that I was capable of.

Presenter2:05

How did you how would you define the noise you make through it then? What what's the personality that's coming through when you play it?

John Harle2:13

What I strive for is a kind of purity and a purity of line and a purity of sound. That is, I suppose, unusual in saxophonists. Most saxophonists tend towards quite a gruff sound, especially in jazz. Although I do play in a jazz environment quite a lot of the time, my main background, as you know, is contemporary classical. And it's the idea of I suppose the purity of classical line in a jazz environment or sometimes the gruffness of a jazz sound in a classical environment that makes me a sort of moving target musically.

Presenter2:55

But are therefore classical aficionados um sniffy about the saxophone, because it's not a pure instrument that has a voice of its own? I mean, there are no Mozartian concertos for the saxophone, are there?

John Harle3:07

No, there aren't. And th the the classical world, I suppose, was fairly sniffy. But um it's a very young instrument in terms of its real development. I mean it it was only around from eighteen forty onwards and even then it was developed purely for military bands really and it was jazz musicians at the beginning of the twentieth century that actually saw its potential and its its um you know its expressive ability.

Presenter3:32

But now Harrison Burtwhistle has written a concerto for saxophone, which you premiered in at The Last Night of the Proms, wasn't it? 1993.

John Harle3:38

1993.

Presenter3:40

A filthy racket, said some.

John Harle3:42

Yes. Well, depending on how you view new music, it's either a filthy racket or twenty-five minutes of ecstasy.

Presenter3:51

But a hundred million people heard it, so it can't be bad. I mean, do you believe that what you care about, the accessibility of music? Is that important to you?

John Harle3:58

I do care about that deeply. I think also the manner of our presentation of it on The Last Night of The Proms was deeply disturbing to some because it wasn't apologetic. It was new music, it was dissonant, it was fiery, it was direct. You know, I played it looking at the audience full on, you know, moving up and down in a way that I suppose they've only seen jazz and pop musicians move before. It was a very unclassical way to present some very hard to listen to new music.

Presenter4:33

But you might have been up there on that stage playing the clarinet very demurely, as we shall hear. Because we shall hear about all these influences. But first of all, tell me about your first record.

John Harle4:39

Because we shall hear

John Harle4:43

My first record is a track of Duke Ellington's and it's a track called Le Sucrio Velour which is part of a suite that he wrote for Queen Elizabeth II. When he visited her in the early 60s he told her that he had recorded a piece of music especially for her and he'd written this wonderful Queen's suite and that he was only going to press one copy of it and that she was going to have it and that he would only release it to the public after he died. And this is exactly what happened. And the choice of this particular track is pretty clear. It's the saxophone section of the Ellington band at their peak with the lead alto saxophone of Johnny Hodges just ringing over the top with this incredible sound which to me, certainly as a young boy and teenager listening to the Ellington band in Newcastle City Hall, this sound of Johnny Hodges was the nearest thing I could imagine to the human voice coming from an instrument. The glamour of it, the golden look of it, Johnny Hodges standing there absolutely motionless while this amazing, this kind of siren song came out of his instrument.

John Harle6:08

It was only later on that I managed to find out why it was that he stood so still, and this was apparently because he used to say that during his saxophone solos he used to have bets in the band and they used to count the exit signs in the theatre, which was heartbreaking for me.

Presenter6:53

Duke Ellington and his band playing the third part of The Queen's Suite Le Sucrie Velour that was recorded in nineteen fifty nine.

Presenter7:01

And at John Hall, you met the man himself. When and how, you and the Duke?

John Harle7:07

Um well, uh in nineteen seventy three I saw him for, I suppose, the sixth or seventh time in my life, and w my father and I made a special trip down to London. And uh

John Harle7:22

We had two of the most incredible seats for Duke Ellington's third sacred music concert, which was at Westminster Abbey. And Ellington, when we walked in, I suppose about ten past seven or a quarter past seven, Ellington was still rehearsing because, you know, as usual there'd been a problem. Paul Gonsalves, his tenor player, was absolutely out for the count in somebody's flat. There was all sorts of other things going on. And the whole band was there. And my father sort of nudged me really hard and he said, well, go on then, go on. I said, what do you mean, go on? Don't be stupid. And he said, no, go and talk to him. So I said, I can't talk to him. He said, just go and talk to him. You'll never get a chance like this again. So from the choir stalls, I walked up.

John Harle8:05

With my programme and I asked him to sign it and he said, Well, do you play? And I said, Yes, well, I play the clarinet and the saxophone. And he said, Well, you should meet these guys. And he took me along the line of saxophonists in the Ellington band. And I got all their autographs, you know, Harry Carney, Russell Procope, Norris Turney, all the people who were so massive in my mind as great definers of the sound of the saxophone. And so at the age of 15, there I was in my kind of stripey school blazer thinking, you know, I just cannot believe what I'm doing.

Speaker 28:20

Uh

Presenter8:40

And did you decide then that the saxophone was for you and not the clarinet? Is that was that part of the influence?

John Harle8:46

Oh yeah. And to this day I remember uh looking at the roof of Westminster Abbey while the concert was going on and crying.

John Harle8:54

Um because much of the music was so moving to me that here was here was a jazz orchestra in this in this incredible um uh inc incredible building and the the the power of the two things together just just completely finished me.

Presenter9:14

You still get upset by it.

John Harle9:15

Yeah.

John Harle9:16

I did.

Presenter9:18

Because it means so much.

John Harle9:18

Because it means

John Harle9:19

Yeah.

Presenter9:21

And you also met, or was it just after that, that you met Jack Brymer, the clarinetist?

John Harle9:27

Well, Jack, I I mean I've known him for now longer than I can uh longer than I can say really, but at about fifteen or sixteen, I went to a um a course called The Woodwind Workshop. And

John Harle9:41

He he gave me a short lesson and and and explained one or two things. And then he heard me play the s the clarinet and and and the the the very next thing he did was he looked into his instrument case and brought out a soprano saxophone and gave it to me. He said, I think you'd be happier playing one of these. How did he know? Because he's brilliant. Because he really could hear that I wanted to make a sound on a wind instrument that was wider than

John Harle10:05

The instrument I was currently playing.

Presenter10:06

Although you were still a little boy, I mean, you're a big chap now. But I mean, you know, he would he have known it's significant.

John Harle10:09

Yeah.

John Harle10:12

Yeah, but I was probably six feet maybe at that time.

Presenter10:15

Yeah.

John Harle10:17

extremely fit, and, you know, I was ready to blow into something very hard and make a big noise. And the clarinet really didn't do it for me.

Presenter10:26

Tell me about record number two.

John Harle10:28

Record number two is um by The Pentangle.

John Harle10:33

This group was so far ahead of its time, so hip, when it was almost unknown to it apart from Fairport, who were, I suppose, much more on the kind of rock side. These people were working with early music, with folk music, with a fusion of jazz, a fusion of sounds that I'd never heard, with this beautiful kind of ethereal sound of Jackie McShee on top. And they seemed to um they seemed to point me in a direction, I suppose, and this is why I was so attracted, because one was never sure what the music was. It it again was a moving target.

Presenter11:32

The Pentangle, performing hunting song. I get the impression, John Harle, that you are a bit of a subversive at school, a bit eccentric.

John Harle11:41

I suppose so. Um I I I went to I went to, I suppose

John Harle11:46

What you might describe as a highly academic, elitist, quite elitist school. And

John Harle11:54

It's one of these places where if you it's not a broad education, to be honest. It existed solely for the purpose of getting boys to Oxbridge.

Presenter12:06

This was Newcastle.

John Harle12:07

Yeah. And I found myself sort of retreating bit by bit from it and finding a sort of haven for myself, I suppose, in the art department, with two of the most charismatic teachers that I can remember, Peter Bennett and Kevin Egan Fowler, who were

John Harle12:27

An inspiration to me, more than the music department.

John Harle12:31

Um

Presenter12:31

Ha, what did they do?

John Harle12:33

I had my own area in the art room with my own record player. We used to play Pink Floyd.

John Harle12:39

All the time. And I used to just paint sort of hallucogenic paintings.

Presenter12:43

The headmaster probably knew about it, of course.

John Harle12:45

Yes. Oh, he did, of course. I'm sure it was um I'm sure it was tolerated. But that to me was a revelation, being told that I can actually express myself in the medium of of of fine art.

Presenter12:58

But you didn't feel encouraged by the music department. You d you know, they were a bit

John Harle13:01

Those

Presenter13:02

Four square, were they?

John Harle13:03

With the exception of of my own instrumental teacher, Martin Stevenson, it was a little bit four square I think one could safely say. I was, for example, forbidden for from applying to join the National Youth Orchestra because I was told I got enough music at school.

Presenter13:20

Tommy Barrackle number three.

John Harle13:22

Well, on one of my other trips to London with my parents, I went off on my own one evening, I suppose age of sixteen or seventeen, to the Albert Hall where I stood with the prommers in the arena and heard a concert which I will never forget, which was Peter Maxwell Davis conducting both his group The Fires of London and David Munro and the early music consort.

John Harle13:51

And this was a concert performance of a film score that Max had written called The Devils. It was the Ken Russell film, which I'd also seen the previous year. And I remember to this day the effect of the modern group on the one side and the early music group on the other, and hearing the juxtaposition of the two. And in this particular extract, this is the vision of Sister Jean. There's the the voice which reminds us of course of church music and of the sanctus, which just goes hard into the ensemble playing the most nightmarish music.

Speaker 214:38

I need exchange.

Presenter14:58

Part of Sister Jean's Vision by Peter Maxwell Davis from the soundtrack of Ken Russell's film The Devils.

Presenter15:04

The Coldstream guards come into your story next. An unlikely move for a kind of eccentric, subversive chap fascinated by avant garde music, if I may say so.

Presenter15:14

Yeah.

John Harle15:14

I think

John Harle15:16

I think for a start I was I was very keen on

John Harle15:20

Coming to London.

John Harle15:22

and I knew about this rather glamorous lifestyle that the sort of ceremonial side of the guards had, especially in the in the musical side. And um I answered an advert in Melody Maker.

John Harle15:36

Believe us or not. And I auditioned with the director of music who I genuinely liked at the time and who then saw me through Nella Hall and really the Royal Military School of Music. And I went there, I suppose, between 18 and 19.

Presenter15:49

What about the School of Music Economy?

Speaker 315:56

Hmm.

John Harle15:58

And this chap was Colonel Trevor Sharp, and he was, I suppose, the most glamorous of all the music directors, and I played to him and he said, Absolutely fine he said, you know, the job is yours and I don't suppose at the time I gave it much thought, but it di it did mean that I had to join the army to get in.

Presenter16:16

Um

Presenter16:18

And eventually you bought yourself out because you got a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. How did you fit in there? Did your tutors there understand musically where you were coming from?

John Harle16:28

I think so, but but by the time I arrived at the Royal College of Music I had concentrated on the saxophone m more and more and more. Um and there I won that Dan Reuter Prize, the Concerto Prize, much to the angst of all those cellists playing the Elgar and uh you know and pianists playing playing Beethoven.

Presenter16:47

Was this the one for which you got a hundred percent?

John Harle16:48

Okay.

John Harle16:49

No, then then then then uh my my last exam, the Royal College of Music, um my ARCM exam, I got a hundred percent for that. And there was only Nigel Kennedy who'd done that before, so we regarded that as something of a of an elite club.

Presenter17:04

Tell me about the next piece of music.

John Harle17:07

Well the next piece of music is by my very good friend Richard Rodney Bennett. One of the things that I do to relax is to watch sixties films. I love the whole world of Get Carter, of Dudley Moore, of Thirties a Dangerous Age, Cynthia, of Bedazzled, that whole thing. And this is a rather sort of sixties big band piece, but that's apart from the fact it would remind me of those films, I think within the writing of this jazz calendar you can hear the kind of elegance of Richard Rodney Bennett. You can hear in the contrapuntal writing, not only is it elegant and cool, but the sort of rhythmic poise of it just is so much the man that it would just be such a nice reminder of somebody whose friendship I really treasure.

Presenter18:28

Part of Tuesday's Child from Richard Rodney Bennett's Jazz Calendar played by the London Jazz Ensemble conducted by John Launchbury.

Presenter18:36

Um Richard Rodney Bennett, one of your collaborators who's composed for you. But these days you compose a lot yourself, not least for uh music for television. You've done Silent Witness, haven't you?

John Harle18:47

I've done um

John Harle18:48

About forty different um T V and well film and T V projects over the years.

Presenter18:54

But what happens where do you simply get a a brief safe asylum witness, you glamorous female forensic scientist, a bit spooky, knock something up for us? Or do you watch the piece? How do you do it?

John Harle19:05

I've always found working with film that

John Harle19:07

You don't really work as a musician attaching music to a film. You work as part of the film-making process, which means that to a certain extent great film music can be formless in terms of the normal architecture of a piece of music. That's why soundtrack albums sometimes are quite difficult to put together, because if the form of the music follows the shape of a scene, it's not necessarily a logical listening experience.

Presenter19:36

It may not stand alone.

John Harle19:38

It may not stand alone, but that doesn't mean that it's not.

John Harle19:41

A great use of applied music, because it's essentially we are talking about applied music and, to some extent, musical journalism.

Presenter19:48

And now, the history of Britain, a series for the millennium. How do you go about that? Do you sit and play to the moment?

John Harle19:55

Well at the moment at the moment that's still in planning stage, but it's um I think this will be the the biggest series since uh of a similar type since Kenneth Clarke's Civilization. This is Simon Sharma and the BBC History Unit, and it's sixteen hours of the whole history of Britain from

John Harle20:15

I think prehistory, right up to the First World War.

Presenter20:18

Will you be trying to choose the instruments and the style of music then to suit the period, or are you not going to be that uh literal about it?

John Harle20:25

I think the idea of these is that they're going to be contemporary films and there will be a contemporary score, but inevitably, like when I was mentioning about the Maxwell Davis, that the combination of the old and the new with the Munro and the Maxwell Davis together, and in fact like on my Terran Magnificents album where I'm resetting old words, I've always been fascinated by that collision of the old and the new and I think that this history of Britain will hopefully be something that comes from that mould.

Presenter20:51

What about the collision of the old and the new when you sat side by side with Paul McCartney?

John Harle20:56

Yeah.

Presenter20:57

That was another great collaboration for his Standing Stone. How did you get on, YouTube?

John Harle21:03

Well, I

Presenter21:03

Uh

John Harle21:03

Yeah.

Presenter21:03

Yeah.

John Harle21:03

Yeah.

John Harle21:04

This was four years' work, in fact.

John Harle21:10

We w it's with with him, I mean, he's such an open guy.

John Harle21:16

And he's so used to dealing with people who aren't open with him that it does take you genuinely a long time to get to know him.

John Harle21:24

But bit by bit we would find the barriers knocked knocked down so that we'd be working quite closely, sitting at the same keyboard or or something. And uh the next record that that I've chosen is a Beatles song. It's You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. And I I do remember when this first came out being so impressed because there was an alto flute at the end. He's so willing to accept strange ideas into his music and you know what one can tell this, but You've Got to Hide Your Love Away just about does it for me.

Speaker 221:55

Everywhere people step, each and every day.

Speaker 222:03

I can see them laugh at me, and I hear them say

Speaker 222:15

Hey, you've got to hide your love away.

Presenter22:18

Yeah.

Speaker 222:22

Hey, you got the h

Presenter22:25

The Beatles and You've Got to Hide Your Love Away. Terror and Magnificence was your biggest hit album a couple of years ago, number three here, number one in Japan, I think. You must be very rich.

John Harle22:34

Yeah.

Presenter22:36

Tell me about the 20 minute

John Harle22:38

Wait a minute.

Presenter22:39

The twenty minute title piece itself, because I think you were inspired to write that by by a church in Spitalfields, is that right?

John Harle22:47

Yes, um I I I've became interested in books by Iain Sinclair and Peter Aykroyd around Christchurch Spittlefields, because I'd always felt myself playing in the church that it had a special sort of feel to it. And I I've played in Spitalfields Festival many times and just the the aura, the sense of the place had a particular kind of sort of majesty to me, I suppose.

Presenter23:12

It's a Hawkesmoor church.

John Harle23:13

It's a Hawkesmoor church. It's one of the London churches that he built when he was under the tutelage of Wren. And as well as being an amazing building, it has a kind of sense of threat to it, I think. And it's the sense of dark and light in that church particularly that turned me on to the idea of this terror and magnificence.

Presenter23:37

And to go back to the mention of the saxophone, you feel that that instrument was right in in that kind of setting, do you? That that there is something, although we've said the saxophone is a very young instrument, that there's something

John Harle23:47

Sure.

Presenter23:49

very early about it.

John Harle23:51

Well, exactly. I mean uh

John Harle23:54

At the moment, I'm considering writing a second opera on the subject of Adolph Sachs because.

Presenter24:01

Who invented the saxophone?

John Harle24:02

Well, my assertion is that although he's known for that, my assertion is that he didn't invent the saxophone.

Presenter24:08

Hmm.

John Harle24:09

And I know this might sound like I should be taken away by men in white coats, but I think that Adolph Sachs was responsible for bringing into the public eye the modern family of saxophones. But the idea of

John Harle24:23

Iconically bored metal instrument blown by a reed is as ancient as Egypt and Greece. And one of the areas that I've always felt that the saxophone is, and in fact Terran Magnuson's definitely reflects this, one of the areas that the saxophone is equally at home in as well as modern music is in ancient music. And the idea of it as almost like a primitive reed pipe with a lot of folk influences and a lot of early music influences is very dear to me. That's where all the information that I distilled as a youth listening to Pentangle and listening to that Maxwell Davis Devil's music and all those areas.

John Harle25:07

seemed to me to point towards the idea of early music or medieval music or ancient music as a kind of playground for a contemporary musician.

Presenter25:17

Number six.

John Harle25:19

Um

John Harle25:21

All the way along, I mean it must be quite obvious to you now, I suppose, that that I am attracted by strangeness in music.

John Harle25:28

You know, even through my childhood, through school, through the army, through the Royal College for Music, etc., I've always been attracted by oddness. And within, I suppose, the very Englishness of my upbringing, I suppose this idea of sort of nightmare English folklore is very strong within me.

John Harle25:54

I dream about this, you know, about this nightmare English Victorian toy shop world, and this next piece, which is Punch's lullaby from Harrison Birkwhistle's chamber opera Punch and Judy, is like a nightmare come true for me.

Speaker 226:15

Dancy Bay The Dan C.

Speaker 226:22

How we children gather up and prancing.

Speaker 226:28

Sit on my knee, now kissy me Doncy, baby, Duncy.

Speaker 226:42

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Presenter26:45

Stephen Roberts singing Punch's lullaby from Harrison Bert Whistle's opera Punch and Judy, with the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Atherton. So that's the stuff John Harle's dreams are made of, isn't it?

Speaker 226:56

Wow.

Presenter26:57

Are you inspired by your dreams to write certain pieces or to play certain pieces in a particular way?

John Harle27:03

Yes, very much so. Um I I hear music in dreams, like in Terror and Magnificence, the disembodied voice that talks to us through the piece, that directs the piece, that tells the players what to play. This is a direct quote from a dream. I mean this is this is I heard this.

Presenter27:22

Direct lift from your own dream. What about the way in which you might play a piece of music? Are you again inspired in sleep, in dream?

John Harle27:23

Yeah.

John Harle27:31

I am, yeah. I find that also playing, especially from memory, the whole area of making one's mind blank, like like in the semi-sleep, is for me the way to do it. I find that I can look straight ahead, eyes open, and just turn my mind off completely and st and play, and for some reason all the thoughts that I would be having seem to go through the instrument.

Presenter28:01

And now you've written an opera, Angel Magic, which is being premiered this week at the Salisbury Festival. What's it about?

John Harle28:06

Yeah.

John Harle28:08

It's set in the Elizabethan period. It's the scientist in Queen Elizabeth's court, Dr. John Dee. He was an alchemist, an astrologer, a geographer, an astronomer, all those things, all the arts and sciences of that period. He was almost, I suppose, like the last of the medieval alchemists before the rationalists of Isaac Newton and the Royal Society. He stood at the end of a period of darkness almost as a Renaissance man.

John Harle28:43

Pivoting on the edge, really, of having universal knowledge. This sense that he and Giordano Bruno from Italy and people were capable of being so learned that they knew virtually everything. He had the largest library in London, he had 4,000 books. And in the second half of his life, he descended in an almost sort of Faustian pact into angelic calling with a scriar, a crystal ball gazer called Edward Kelly. And to a certain extent, it's a fantasy built around historical truth.

John Harle29:19

Record number seven.

John Harle29:21

Record number seven is Michael Nyman.

John Harle29:26

I've been associated with Michael Nyman's band for, I suppose, getting on for 15 years and the area that I suppose I love the most of his music is to do with Peter Greenaway and the film scores that I played on all those years ago. The draftsman's contract, all those blaring saxophones, that's particularly evocative for me. But here I've picked a piece of choral music. It's from The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. It's that moment where Michael Gambon runs back from his feast that he's having. He's going, where is she? Where is she? looking for Helen Mirren. And there's this beautiful angelic boy singing at the washing up tub where he's clanking away, have mercy upon us. And it's just that, again, I mean obviously it's it's a very English thing, but it's to do with things not being what they seem.

Presenter30:59

The Miserary, composed by Michael Nyman for Peter Greenaway's film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, performed by London Voices with the Michael Nyman Band, conducted by Michael Nyman. Here's a good desert island question. If you could only play one kind of music, John, jazz, classical, or contemporary classical, which would you choose?

John Harle31:21

I think I would choose classical.

John Harle31:24

Classical.

Presenter31:24

Classical catalogue.

John Harle31:26

Yeah.

John Harle31:27

I think so. Yeah. Because I

John Harle31:30

I find the open-endedness of much jazz very unsatisfactory, which is why I suppose my great jazz heroes are people like Ellington who knew how to structure a long piece, also Gill Evans and Miles Davis, especially that Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain period. They're the classic bits of jazz that people who are really classical musicians like.

John Harle31:56

I don't find the open-endedness of bebopping, bebop soloing to be anything that I want to listen to. I just don't I don't feel anything for it.

Presenter32:05

Last record.

John Harle32:06

My last record is really it's to remind me while while I'm while I'm sort of moping around on my own on the desert island of my family, of my wife Julia and Matthew and Daniel. There was a compilation came out of Uncle Mac a few years ago called Hello Children Everywhere. And we play this endlessly driving through France on holiday and endlessly driving down to Cornwall where we've got a a country house. And the one I've chosen is Henry Hall and his orchestra with Teddy Bears Picnic.

Speaker 232:43

If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise. If you go down in the woods today, you better go in disguise. For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain, because today's the day the teddy bears have their pee.

Presenter33:10

Henry Hall and his orchestra playing Teddy Bear's Picnic. If you could only take one of those records, John, which one would it be?

John Harle33:16

I would take Pentangle.

Presenter33:19

And your book?

John Harle33:20

I've picked a book by Roger Scruton called The Aesthetics of Music which touches on music as an object and music in a place in philosophy and in the world and because it touches on so many issues from the from the subject of music if I was ever interested in expanding my mind I would probably use that book to do it and it it's for that reason it's it's quite an incredible achievement I think.

Presenter33:52

What about you, luxury?

John Harle33:55

Well, if I couldn't have a Mercedes S five hundred, I'd have a lute and a good lute tutor and an endless supply of strings, because I think that with the time that I had I would enjoy teaching myself to play another musical instrument, because it would help pass the time, but really I'd be desperate to be taken away by uh a helicopter or something into and dropped in the middle of Soho Square.

Presenter34:23

John Hall, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

John Harle34:26

It's my pleasure.

Speaker 334:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.