Thea Musgrave

Presenter0:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:02

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is Thea Musgrave, one of the most successful and well-respected composers of contemporary classical music in the world. Her extraordinary career has spanned seven decades and shows no signs of slowing down. 2018, her 90th birthday year, has been a cause for celebration and tributes throughout the classical world and beyond. There was a prom in her honour and she received the Queen's Medal for Music. Despite being a US resident since 1972, the landscapes and history of her home country have recurred in her work throughout her life, from Turner's paintings of the British countryside to the Loch Ness Monster and the life of Mary Queen of Scots. The rich drama of her creative output belies a pragmatic attitude and a wry sense of humour. Asked about her achievements in the traditionally male-dominated field of composition, she famously replied, Yes, I am a woman and I am a composer, but rarely at the same time. Thea Musgrave, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. So it's a landmark year, your 90th birthday, and it's been the cause for many celebrations. You've crossed the Atlantic four times so far this year, is that right?

Thea Musgrave1:56

But if you double it, you know it's there and back.

Thea Musgrave1:59

So we've done four and a half. Okay, okay.

Presenter2:01

Okay, so

Thea Musgrave2:04

Good.

Presenter2:04

Yeah.

Presenter2:05

How much does the reality of performed music differ from what you've written on a page as a composer?

Thea Musgrave2:11

Well, if it's different, you want to know why.

Thea Musgrave2:14

And sometimes it's your fault because you've written things that are just not possible, and sometimes it's their fault. So you if it's really important, you talk to the performers and sort it out. But I have to say that when I was starting out

Thea Musgrave2:32

I was very jealous of painters, because a painter could finish his or her work and put it up on the wall and invite friends around and they'd all say, Goodness, that's wonderful or you'd hope they'd say that. Now if I put a score up on the wall, who is going to be able to say that's wonderful? Most people would not know. So I learned very early on it was very important.

Thea Musgrave2:57

to make friends with performers, and they bring something of their own personality into the way they play it, so that no two performances if they're live, that is, not C D's obviously live performances are never exactly the same, and that's what makes a live concert so exciting.

Presenter3:16

You're still composing. Tell me a little bit about your composition process. Do you write every day?

Thea Musgrave3:22

I work every day. It's like staying in shape in exercise. You go to the gym hope I don't do that, but I know I should to stay in shape. So yes, I work every day. And at this point in my life, I probably work only about two or three hours every day. But they're very focussed. I really love to do that.

Presenter3:41

Time for some music. Tell me about your first piece today.

Thea Musgrave3:46

Well, I was talking a moment ago about performers, and one of the performers that I have met, Nicholas Daniel, a fabulous, fabulous oboe player. So I had this idea of

Thea Musgrave4:01

Helios.

Thea Musgrave4:02

That Nick would be Helios driving the sun god, driving his chariot over the world, and then at night coming back underground, under the world, and starting the next day. So, if you just imagine what a platform looks like with the orchestra sitting there, and you see the conductor in the middle with the soloist aside, and then the strings around. But what I did was to put right upstage the solar trumpet, then two horns, and then the four solo winds. And they're seated in such a way that in the middle of this journey by Helios, there's a storm, and Nick turned around face upstage, away from the audience, and beckoned these solo players to stand. And when they stand, you see a V with the trumpet, the two horns, and the winds. So it's as if he's driving his chariot.

Thea Musgrave4:59

But when we came to the performance, Nick arrived on stage in a bright red dinner jacket. He was the sun god.

Presenter6:07

Helios by my castaway Thea Musgrave, performed by Nicholas Daniel with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Kramer. Thea Musgrave, your ideas come from some very unusual places, and of course you're well known for developing a performance style that you call dramatic abstract. Apparently it was inspired by a dream.

Thea Musgrave6:27

That's right. And I remember this dream vividly today, even though it actually happened way in the middle of the nineteen sixties.

Thea Musgrave6:37

What I had just begun to conduct, and here I was in my dream conducting an orchestra.

Thea Musgrave6:45

And all of a sudden one of the players stood up and started playing something quite different.

Thea Musgrave6:50

So I tried to put my left hand up and sort of, you know, sit down and be quiet and so on. And he was very defiant and went on.

Thea Musgrave7:03

Finally I think I got all the brass to their feet and got them to blast him off. Anyway, I then woke up and started to laugh, and that same evening I went out to dinner with some friends and told them the dream and we all started laughing.

Speaker 17:18

Baffing

Thea Musgrave7:19

And

Thea Musgrave7:20

The very next morning I mean, I'm not joking, the very next morning

Thea Musgrave7:26

A letter arrived from the City of Birmingham Symphony.

Thea Musgrave7:30

Would I write an orchestra piece? Guess what happened? I wrote something which I called the Concerta for Orchestra, and about halfway through the piece, the clarinet player suddenly stands up and does something unexpected. And what's more, he then turns to some of the other players in the orchestra to stand up and he suggests themes for them to play. And so the conductor gets very upset and in the end brings all the brass section to their feet and shuts them up. So that is the piece which is essentially my dream. So I had the idea to call this kind of idea dramatic abstract because it's not based on a story or anything, it's just based on interplay between different players in the orchestra. And there are several pieces like that.

Thea Musgrave8:21

So it just shows that occasionally if you have a dream,

Thea Musgrave8:26

It's a good thing to think about it.

Presenter8:28

Thea Musgrave, tell me about your second disc.

Thea Musgrave8:31

We go way, way, way back to when I was at school.

Thea Musgrave8:35

And there was a wonderful sister of the headmistress who actually lived in London. She used to come up to visit her sister at the weekend, and she taught us dancing, not classical point dancing, but sort of I guess you'd call it modern dance. But what she did was that she always brought wonderful music that she invented the choreography to. And this, the Mozart G minor Symphony, was one of the works that I used to dance to. And so it brings back wonderful memories of learning music through your body, not playing it, but dancing it. So a little example from this would be wonderful.

Presenter10:14

The first movement from Mozart's Symphony No. forty in G minor, performed by the Staats Capella Dresden, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Sothia Musgrave, you were born in Edinburgh in nineteen twenty eight. What do you remember about your early childhood years?

Thea Musgrave10:30

As a kid I ran wild. We lived just outside Edinburgh.

Thea Musgrave10:35

I think probably it's inside Edinburgh now, but in those days it was a little bit outside Edinburgh, so I ran pretty wild. But then I had to be tamed to go to school. But then came the war.

Thea Musgrave10:45

World War Two

Thea Musgrave10:47

And at that point I had gone to boarding school.

Thea Musgrave10:52

Because my parents had split, but my mum worked for the Red Cross, and I think that she couldn't do that, and looked after me at the same time, so I sent off to boarding school. But I remember the day of Dunkirk.

Thea Musgrave11:04

Because it was in May, just before my birthday. And I remember thinking, at that point,

Thea Musgrave11:10

That the whole of the coast there we were from Norway all the way down to Spain was in Nazi hands and I felt so alone, as I guess my all my countrymen did too. But I remember the horror of that and I was still having nightmares about that when I married my husband, you know, many years later.

Thea Musgrave11:33

It stayed with me so that a lot of my work is about war and the horrors of war and how we have to get out of it.

Presenter11:40

You began having piano lessons when you were five. That's quite

Thea Musgrave11:43

That's quite a young age to start. Later on, when I went to my boarding school,

Thea Musgrave11:48

I learned the Beethoven symphonies by playing piano duets, not by listening to them as we do with a C D now. You know, we didn't have C D's, we had seventy eight s and so on. And hearing a live concert that just didn't happen at that point, not not at school. So I remember playing several of the Beethoven symphonies with my teacher as piano duet. It was absolutely wonderful. Tell me about your third disc. This carries on from learning the Beethoven symphonies with piano duet.

Thea Musgrave12:19

But why I chose this particular example, which is the last movement of the Beethoven Eighth Symphony.

Thea Musgrave12:26

is because

Thea Musgrave12:28

Now, I have to digress a moment about teachers. I had.

Thea Musgrave12:33

Lots of teachers actually, all the time. And I'm still being taught by certain people. But at that point, there were two main teachers, you know, in my twenties when I was really beginning. One,

Thea Musgrave12:44

who I never met, and the one, Nadie Boulanger, that I spent four years in Paris and studied with. Now the one I never met is in Edinburgh, Donald Francis Tovey.

Thea Musgrave12:54

And I never met him, although he was a professor at Edinburgh University, because he died just before I started, which was in 1947. But I studied piano with the person who worked with him and who wrote his biography later. And why I've chosen this particular example is because right near the beginning, which is in F, there's a sudden loud C sharp which doesn't really belong in F major. And Tovey explains that there's this sudden C sharp is only explained later in the movement.

Thea Musgrave13:32

I thought this was incredible. It's what he called long-term harmonic planning. When you're composing

Thea Musgrave13:40

Of course you think about moment to moment, how it all works, but you're also thinking of the journey of the whole piece, where you're going to go with this, what is the overall shape and what is going to happen and what leads to what.

Presenter14:53

Part of the final movement from Beethoven's Symphony No. Eight, performed by the Staatskapella Dresden, conducted by Sir Colin Davis.

Presenter15:02

Thea Musgrave, after school you went back to Edinburgh to study medicine at university, but it didn't take. Why not?

Thea Musgrave15:11

Well, with the arrogance of a young person, I decided music was always going to be part of my life, but as an amateur, but I was going to discover the cures for everything. And I wasn't going to practise medicine, no, I was going to find the cures for cancer, for T B. AIDS hadn't happened at that point, but of course that would have been part of it later on. And I had found that I hadn't done the right subjects to get right into medical school. I went into pre-med and I found myself doing sort of chemical experiments and cutting up frogs, and I didn't see how this was going to realise my dream.

Thea Musgrave15:50

Now it so happens in Edinburgh that the music school is immediately adjacent to the medical school.

Thea Musgrave15:57

So guess what, when I got very bored with cutting up frogs, I would find myself going into the music school to see what was happening, and I was much more intrigued with that than the frogs.

Thea Musgrave16:09

And so I made the inevitable decision. I thought you live once, you go where your passion lies.

Presenter16:16

So your first year at university was nineteen forty seven, and of course that coincided with the very first Edinburgh Festival, which nowadays is a huge event. I think almost half a million people attended last year. What was the first one like? What do you remember?

Thea Musgrave16:28

Last year.

Thea Musgrave16:30

Well, there was no fringe to begin with. But imagine this is just two years after the end of the war. We were still rationed. You only got, I think, about twenty five pounds to if you wanted to go abroad. It was all marked on your passport. My goodness, we were thankful the war was over. But things were pretty grey.

Thea Musgrave16:50

But the first Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh used to have trams, and I see now they've just come back, and on every holder where the lines of the electric lines were held, there was a huge bouquet of flowers all the way along the main street of Edinprinces Street. It was wonderful. That was just a glimmer of how it could be in peacetime.

Thea Musgrave17:12

And how did you get to see performances? I had very little money in those days, so I couldn't afford to go and hear all these incredible singers and performers. So we got to Usher and we got in free of charge. That was great.

Presenter17:26

Thea Musgrave, tell me about your fourth disc.

Thea Musgrave17:29

Monteverdi Octavia's Lament from Poppea. Why I chose this was that seeing this opera Poppaea.

Thea Musgrave17:38

made me realize what an absolutely superb opera composer he is, and how apt and well handled the libretto was, and it made me think about the relationship with librettist and composer. It is also a really beautiful piece of music and beautifully sung.

Thea Musgrave17:59

Dispreza por regino

Thea Musgrave18:04

Really graphic.

Speaker 118:12

Desperate so the regime of the monor Uh

Thea Musgrave18:16

We're very

Speaker 118:18

Uh

Thea Musgrave18:18

Click. We got a free

Speaker 118:21

Yeah.

Presenter18:23

Go!

Presenter18:24

A fait amoeba

Presenter18:32

Boo!

Thea Musgrave18:33

Oh this song

Thea Musgrave18:35

Keep pencil, keep pencil, oh maybe don't

Thea Musgrave18:41

Name is a war be sorry. See

Speaker 118:50

Uh

Presenter18:51

Immaculate, Immaculate.

Speaker 318:57

Yeah.

Speaker 118:58

Several.

Speaker 318:59

Yeah.

Presenter18:59

Uh

Speaker 118:59

Second chapter people who are

Speaker 119:03

Yeah.

Presenter19:05

Octavia's Lament from the Coronation of Poppaea by Monteverdi, sung by Cathy Barbarian, accompanied by the consentious Musicus from Vienna, conducted by Nicolaus Hahnencour.

Presenter19:18

You won a scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. Now other notable pupils of hers include Philip Glass, Charles Strauss, Quincy Jones. What kind of teacher was she?

Thea Musgrave19:30

She was absolutely amazing.

Thea Musgrave19:34

She could look at a score and know immediately what it sounded like and how to advise you and so on. But I'll tell you one story which sort of can show this. I was late, of course, and had just put in the bassoon part at the end just very quickly in order to get to my class on time.

Thea Musgrave19:53

And I put the music up on the stand and she looked right away at this what I just put in late. She said, Kes kse k sa what's that? I said well, you know, I was late and I put that in and she said, You just cannot do that. Nothing is going to be perfect, but you're going to make it as perfect as you possibly can.

Thea Musgrave20:13

She then?

Thea Musgrave20:14

took off her ring and she said, Look at this and looked at the top, and beautiful setting with stones and and so on. But then she turned it over and she said look underneath. Do you see it's also beautiful underneath.

Thea Musgrave20:29

In other words, you make things as perfect as you possibly can, so you don't put in a a note like that for the bassoon because you're late.

Presenter20:39

And what was life in Paris like as a student at that time?

Thea Musgrave20:43

One interesting thing was that she had what she called les Mercadie, the Wednesdays. Wednesday afternoon she would have a kind of gathering of people. Her students would come and various guests who might be in town and maybe somebody would play or she would talk or whatever. And they were really wonderful gatherings and I met several people through that as well. Later on it was not les Mercadie, but at another occasion with Bounanger,

Thea Musgrave21:11

There was Stravensky.

Thea Musgrave21:13

So, of course, I went up to him. I was too shy to say anything, so I was standing right behind him, and I saw this bald pate with just a few hairs carefully gathered across. That was very exciting to me. Thrilling. What did you say to him? I didn't. I was too shy. Now I would. However.

Thea Musgrave21:33

The next example is maybe we should play it first, and then we can talk a little bit about it, may we?

Presenter21:40

Let's hear it. Uh Thea Musgrave, this is your fifth disc.

Presenter22:48

The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Tell me about that choice, Thea Musgrave.

Thea Musgrave22:59

Who would have thought that those opening notes were right up there

Thea Musgrave23:04

It's a bassoon

Thea Musgrave23:06

He's usually playing two octaves lower, and there he is, right up on the top.

Thea Musgrave23:11

Sea above middle sea.

Thea Musgrave23:14

Incredible sound

Thea Musgrave23:16

And I think at the first performance there was a sort of outcry of rage from the audience and they left. And so this piece began as a scandal. Hard not to love the drama.

Presenter23:27

Yeah.

Presenter23:30

So when you moved to London in the mid 50s, you very quickly became part of the city's musical life. Thinking back about Britain in the 50s, I think of the post-war optimism that everybody talks about. And you see it in art, you see it in architecture. There's a desire to experiment and do things differently. Did you have that sense as a musician working in the city?

Thea Musgrave23:51

Absolutely. Yes. You one had a chance. I think there's always there, but I think it's much, much more difficult nowadays than it was then, partly because it was still very close to the war. People all remembered that, and here was a new beginning and a new era.

Presenter24:07

And what were you seeing? How much of what you were seeing did you enjoy? I want to know what you're like as an audience member.

Thea Musgrave24:12

I think I went out almost every night to something or other, you know, to concerts, to opera from time to time, to ballet, often to the festival hall, to as many rehearsals as I could, because, you know, it was expensive.

Presenter24:25

Were you a kind of adventurous audience member as well as an experimental audience?

Thea Musgrave24:29

Oh yes, I want to everything.

Thea Musgrave24:32

Yeah.

Presenter24:32

You bet. Absolutely everything new.

Presenter24:34

You're asked about gender a lot and you said that there were battles to be fought, but I decided that it wasn't my battle, it was a big enough battle to be a good composer.

Thea Musgrave24:45

That was my battle. You know, later on, particularly when I went to America, there were all sorts of outcries and people writing about it and so on. I thought, I haven't time to do that. It's taking all my energy and all my time to be a really good composer. It takes time to learn all this stuff. I tell you, I'm still I'm ninety, I'm still learning.

Thea Musgrave25:07

So that's why I put my energy was in into the works, and hopefully then they will speak for themselves one way or another.

Presenter25:13

We're going to hear your sixth disc now, if you wouldn't mind, Thea Musgrave. Tell me about this one.

Thea Musgrave25:18

I was commissioned by the Scottish Opera, and I decided that I was going to write about Mary, Queen of Scots. And I remember when I was writing the libretto, I said, Mary, don't marry Bothwell, can't you see? That was a really stupid idea. Well, she didn't take my advice, and look what happened.

Presenter26:31

Mary's lullaby from Thea Musgrave's opera Mary, Queen of Scots, sung by Ashley Putnam and Gloria Capone, accompanied by the Virginia Opera Orchestra with Peter Mark conducting. What's it like hearing that again? Can you remember being at the

Thea Musgrave26:44

That is incredibly exciting.

Thea Musgrave26:47

To hear that again, and to hear Ashley, who we see sometimes in New York, alas no longer singing, but she's a wonderful teacher.

Presenter26:55

And am I right in thinking that when the opera was transferred to America, you used quite an unusual method to transport the costumes?

Thea Musgrave27:03

Because Norfolk is a major naval base.

Thea Musgrave27:06

On the East Coast, through our contacts who are all our incredible board members, they managed to arrange that the costumes would come from Scottish Opera, was a nuclear submarine that lived in Holy Loch. The costumes from Scottish Opera put aboard the submarine and brought to Charleston, and then they came by truck up to the opera. So I thought that was rather nice that these contemporary submarines.

Thea Musgrave27:32

Would you be used to transport the costumes for the opera company?

Presenter27:37

Thoughts as to me.

Thea Musgrave27:37

To me, I found it.

Presenter27:38

So the two of you have been married forty seven years and counting. Thea, you told us about long term harmonic planning earlier. What's the secret to a long term harmonic marriage?

Thea Musgrave27:50

That's a very good question. Ah, I don't know. I think you have to be yourself and you talk about things if but and that not to hide them, if something is not good, is to talk about it, but hopefully without being too angry about it or too accusing about it, and to sort where you can to sort it out. It takes time and a lot of patience. I always feel I have more patience than him, but I think he would disagree.

Presenter28:21

Theo Musgrave, tell me about your seventh disc.

Thea Musgrave28:23

I was a very good friend with Richard Rodney Bennett. So when we got married, he decided to give us a wedding present. And the wedding present was when he wrote his next film score for Lady Caroline Lamb for viola solo and orchestra. And my husband at that point was still playing viola and he included Peter in this. And there we were up in the Abbey Road studios recording this music for Lady Caroline Lamb.

Presenter29:57

Lady Caroline Lamb by Richard Rodney Bennett, Elegy for Viola and Orchestra, with Peter Mark on Viola, accompanied by the New Philharmonia Orchestra and conducted by Marcus Dodds.

Presenter30:09

Artists rely on their physical senses, of course, and these days you struggle a little bit with some hearing loss. Has that affected your work?

Thea Musgrave30:17

It it's affect my work in the sense that I can't listen to things so easily anymore because my ears things get mushed up and I don't know how to cure that. I have hearing aids, so speech usually is okay. But hearing live concerts, it depends. Some halls are easier than others. But I work mostly in my head. I mean I work at a desk and in my head, so that's fine. My my imagination can go all sorts of places my ears won't follow.

Presenter30:49

So your hearing and your imagination is perfect.

Thea Musgrave30:52

Perfect no.

Thea Musgrave30:53

But I do what I want.

Presenter30:55

Uh

Presenter30:57

Thea Musgrave, I am of course about to cast you away to solitary life on a desert island. How are your survival skills, I wonder?

Thea Musgrave31:05

Very bad.

Thea Musgrave31:08

How big is the desert island we're stranded on, I wonder. Are there dates hanging on trees? That would be the easiest, and you don't have to cook, or you have to gather sticks and things, and learn how to rub them together to get a flame to start a fire. A lot of things to have to learn.

Presenter31:25

Yeah.

Thea Musgrave31:25

Okay.

Presenter31:25

Thea Musgrave, it's time for your eighth disc. Tell me about this one.

Thea Musgrave31:29

I chose a work of Benjamin Britton, who I knew, and I have an immense admiration for him, for his operas, and also for his imagination in instrumental work. So I chose an instrumental work, which is the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

Thea Musgrave31:48

Britain put the instruction for the horn not to use the valves, but to play on open horn. Now it's a very strange thing. It's that some of the notes that are played on a natural horn

Thea Musgrave32:03

Sound to us out of tune. But in fact, they're not, they're in tune, but because of the very strange thing that

Thea Musgrave32:13

certain notes like an F sharp and a G flat.

Thea Musgrave32:17

actually on the piano, of course, are the same note, but if you play certain harmonies with it, it can sound like an F sharp or like a G flat. When Britain said play on the natural horn, it's the same kind of idea, that it sounds to us out of tune.

Thea Musgrave32:36

And I think on the example we'll hear. But I have a funny story about that. There's a very well-known horn player, or he was very well known when I was still living here. And I met him by chance and we got talking. And he suddenly said to me, You know, I'm not going to play what Ben said. I'm going to use the valves.

Thea Musgrave32:58

Because I said, Well, why did you do that? But Ben would be furious. He said, I know but the thing is that the critics keep saying I'm playing out of tune, and it's damaging my career. I said, Don't the critics know that that's what Ben wanted?

Presenter33:14

Uh

Thea Musgrave33:15

Parts in the

Presenter33:16

But

Thea Musgrave33:16

Yeah.

Presenter33:16

Yeah. Well, we all know better now, so let's hear it. Theoremus grave your eighth.

Thea Musgrave34:02

Uh

Presenter34:14

The Prologue from Britain's Serenade for Tenna, Horn and Strings, performed by Dennis Brain, conducted by Eugene Goosens. So, Thea Musgrave, I'm sending you away to the island with three books, the Bible, and the complete works of Shakspere, and one of your choosing. What will it be?

Presenter34:31

I came across

Thea Musgrave34:31

There was a wonderful book recently called

Thea Musgrave34:34

Anthology of World Poetry

Thea Musgrave34:38

And it was first printed in America in 1925, and I think it was one of the first books of poetry which showed poems of all centuries worldwide. They're actually all in English translation. But that's an incredible book. I had no idea of the range of stuff because it's, you know, in lot of different language. I can deal with European languages'cause you can find translations or you you know something about the language. But these were poems that were absolutely out of my knowledge, and so I think that would be

Presenter35:16

Great. Then you shall have it. And a luxury, something that will make the time on the island more bearable for you.

Thea Musgrave35:22

Well, I wanted actually to take my iPad along with a solar charger. But I heard that that's not allowed.

Presenter35:30

Question it

Thea Musgrave35:30

It's too bad.

Presenter35:31

I would if I could, but I

Thea Musgrave35:32

I can't. So what you must give me are two packs of cards.

Thea Musgrave35:38

because there are some very good games of patience to play. But I need two packs. Am I allowed two packs? Absolutely. I have one patience that I was taught as a kid, and I forget who taught it to me, Aunt Maisie's patience.

Thea Musgrave35:51

And very good one. I've never seen it anywhere in any book or anything, so I would play that a lot.

Presenter35:58

Fabulous game of patience, definitely doable. And finally, perhaps this is the most difficult for you. If the waves were to wash away all of these disks but one, which would you save?

Presenter36:12

I think I would have to say Mary, Queen of Scots. Thea Musgrave, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Thea Musgrave36:20

Great pleasure to be here.

Presenter36:34

Hello, I hope you really enjoyed that podcast with Thea Musgrave. We have cast away many other composers to our island and you can hear their programmes in our archive at bbc.co.uk slash desertisland discs. They include Sir James Macmillan, Debbie Wiseman and the very same Richard Rodney Bennett who composed the viola elegy as a wedding present for Thea and her husband Peter. Here he is talking to Sue back in 1997.

Presenter37:01

You apparently started composing at the age of five, Richard. That was very precocious.

Speaker 137:05

Well, you know what, I think composers don't actually s start. People say, When did you write your first piece? That's like asking a child, when did you do your first drawing?

Speaker 137:12

You mess around, you know. You finger paint or whatever, and then gradually something comes out which looks like something.

Presenter37:13

Oh f

Presenter37:17

So you wrote notes on a page. Yes, and my mother was good.

Speaker 137:19

Yes, and my mother had been a composer and was a very good pianist and I used to pretend I was writing music by drawing dots and lines and giving them titles. I was much more into titles than the actual notes.

Thea Musgrave37:30

What sort of titles?

Speaker 137:31

Well I remember I wrote a piece my first existing piece is from when I was about five I suppose and it's called From Neptune's Caverns, which I thought was the most lovely title possible. Um and it was all very romantic. Um and then gradually, gradually I started actually to be able to write tunes down. So it was a slow process.

Presenter37:49

And you used to harmonize nursery rhymes.

Speaker 137:51

I used to harmonize nursing homes. I I was sent to the pictures quite a lot with one or other of my sisters to get me out of the house, stop me playing the piano,'cause I was always banging away and trying to play the Warsaw concerto or whatever it was.

Presenter38:03

But your mother your mother apparently thought you were too romantic. She sort of poured cold water on you.

Speaker 138:03

In those days.

Speaker 138:07

And my mother was a rather inhibiting lady. But I started to, um, hear music at the movies. I mean, Gershwin and and, you know, with music of nineteen forties musicals.

Speaker 138:17

And um since I didn't really know the tunes I used to try and harmonize nursery rhymes like like popular tunes. It sounds a bit bizarre now, but it's true.

Presenter38:25

And you listen to jazz?

Speaker 138:26

In those days there wasn't that that this huge gulf between jazz and pop music that there is now. And I mean I remember Ella Fitzchild, for example, having hit songs during the war.

Speaker 138:36

So there wasn't the great divide.

Presenter38:39

But but again, your your parents apparently poured cold water on this because they thought that listening to jazz on the radio was a bad habit you'd grow out of.

Speaker 138:45

Quite right. And you must admit, it's slightly odd for a little boy in the depths of Devonshire not having been told that this was worth listening to, just being avidly listening to Elephant Shoal or whatever on the radio.

Presenter38:58

My guest next week is another musician, Chic Supremo and Super producer Niall Rogers. Get your dancing shoes on and join us then.

Speaker 139:15

Uh

Presenter39:16

This is the BBC.

Speaker 339:18

Hello, I'm Donald McLeod, and I want to tell you about a special edition of the Composer of the Week podcast, marking the ninetieth birthday of Thea Musgrave, a truly remarkable person.

Thea Musgrave39:30

I thought that I would go into medicine, I was going to discover the cures for everything, you know, for can

Speaker 339:35

Software TB In the end, it was music that benefited from her extraordinary drive and creativity. And at the age of 90, Thea Musgrave is still composing and inspiring everyone who meets her. I'd love you to meet her, too. You can hear our whole conversation by subscribing to The Composer of the Week podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.