ghost : eighty-four

In conversation with david ashworth for new music café - March 2021

Despite barely being able to play a tune, I have long been fascinated by the piano, and the starring role it occupies within western classical music. Whilst it seems obvious now that many composers don’t have keyboard skills, the immortal image of powdered wig, manuscript and piano-forte is hard to shake for many, including my younger self. When I first began to consider a path in music, I hit a wall – “you’ll need to play piano, if you want to do this”. I was fourteen and head-over-heels for the singing lessons I’d just started, but my single-parent couldn’t really afford. I’d been making fast progress, but music seemed to be the only subject at my state-school where improvement meant extra-curricular expense and further financial worry. Despite early intrigue, the piano was never an option; I’d been limited to precious pockets of time at family friends’ houses, left alone at parties with crooked and friendly uprights. The well-loved wood and German gold lettering felt homely, inviting you to meet their quirks, broken strings and forgiving sustain pedal. There was something worn and resolute about the scores that would rest on them; a secret graphic language that I wanted so desperately to understand. When I would eventually learn to read music in my mid-teens, I fell deeply for notation. Scurrying away every moment possible, I’d carefully hide my theory books under my work in other lessons. Written music would no longer be an unknown cipher; I finally had the key and was cracking the code to a new musical world.

When I learnt what a composer was at sixteen, I heard myself articulated for the first time; the yearning to be within sound and endless lunchtimes spent ‘being on Sibelius’ suddenly made sense. I decided to pursue music, but at the time, many higher-education courses still had a prohibitive keyboard skill requirement. Systematically, I went through every composition course in the UK, discounting those who specified the dreaded ‘Piano at Grade V or above’. Among musical friends, it was not uncommon to hear each other ask “why didn’t you apply to x?”, a question simply answered by “I don’t play piano.” This was a cyclic part-truth, part-un-truth perpetuated by the emphasis on virtuosity and graded exams in my musical education, where a lack of skill was so often seen as a question of ability, rather than opportunity. On finer research, I found that many institutions did allow non-pianists, but this was often veiled in an understanding that you would be at a significant disadvantage during the course. In some circumstances, it was even expected that you would forfeit a second-study for basic piano lessons, or would need to reach a Grade V standard in your first term as a condition of continued study. Despite sad feelings of exclusion during my applications, my love for the traditional endured, manifesting in a wide-eyed obsession for miniature study scores, notation and composer of the week podcasts. It was as though the absence of the piano, and everything it represented, only made me want it more.