A Woman’s Hour item on temperance brought back memories of the Music Festivals of my youth.
These competitions, popular at least in Lancashire & the North West, included classes for reciters of poetry as well as singers & instrumentalists. They formed a particularly important part of the life of the Methodist church – hence the jog to my memory, for they included competitions (one adult, one for youngsters) for the best Essay which presented arguments for total abstinence from the demon drink.
I never entered that section but made by debut at the age of 6 in the ‘verse speaking from memory’ class. Green smocked cotton dress, white cardigan & ankle socks, shiny shoes, ribbons in my hair.
The set text was from AA Milne:
Has anybody seen my mouse?
I opened his box for half a minute
Just to make sure he was really in it –
But while I was looking he jumped outside.
I tried to catch him.
I tried, I tried.
[Sharp one-eighth turn to the left, feet together]
Uncle John, have you seen my mouse?
At which point my memory fades away.
When I was a bit older (9, I think) I had my first go at sight-reading. For this the competitors were taken into a room backstage & given a shortish paragraph of prose to peruse, until your turn came to go out on stage & read it out loud. I came second at this first attempt (at a passage from Wind in the Willows) – the adjudicators said they admired my honesty in simply stopping at one point to say that I did not know how to pronounce the next word, which was both French & italicised.
In trying, without much success, to find a web history of such festivals I discovered that the Buxton Music, Speech and Drama Festival – Founded 1907 is still going strong with a wide range of classes for verse speaking from memory. I wonder if Michael Gove knows about this.
Too late for this year’s event, but I hope to be able to go to the one next May.
