ERIC PINKETT AND THE LEICESTERSHIRE COUNTY SCHOOL OF
MUSIC
An Appreciation by a Former Student
Eric Pinkett, once the lone, self-styled wandering minstrel
of Leicestershire and now assured of a prominent and permanent
place among the world's pioneers of music education retired
from his post as the county’s first Music Adviser in 1976. It
was a job he had done ceaselessly and enormously well for 28
years. Progress by misadventure was his own colourful
summing up of his distinguished career - an allusion to the
odd quirks of fate which often helped to choose his path forward
right from the very beginning when he moved to Leicestershire
in the first place. His energy, stamina and resourcefulness
were legendary.
Born in Nottinghamshire he went on to study violin at London's
Royal Academy of Music. There are, of course, many people who
know of his work as founder of the Leicestershire County School
of Music and conductor of the Leicestershire Schools Symphony
Orchestra. Very few are also aware of his ability as an artist
("My painting had a bit of influence on my appointment
as Music Adviser" in Eric’s own words) or the success he
had as a dog breeder and international judge. In his early years
in Leicestershire he was better known on the Continent as a
judge of terriers than he was as a musician. That would change
dramatically in the late 1960s as his own creation, the Leicestershire
schools symphony orchestra (LSSO),
took its place in the top rank of international youth orchestras.
Eric Pinkett's interest in and enthusiasm for music education
began in a Nottinghamshire school before the Second World War.
By the time he was called up to the forces he had established
a school orchestra there good enough to win for three years
in succession the top award at an annual competition held at
the old Queen's Hall in London. The Royal Air Force's
original intention was that Eric would teach radio location
but as it happened he soon gravitated to Cranwell and, thence-forward,
spent most of his six years as an airman conducting R.A.F. bands.
He probably did not realise it at the time but this experience
was invaluable for his future in music education in that it
enabled him to expand his knowledge of instruments. When he
re-entered civilian life he was the perfect one-man peripatetic
teacher of the complete orchestral line-up of strings, woodwind,
brass and percussion.
Returning to his Nottinghamshire school after the war was over
he then successfully applied for the job of music master at
Melton Mowbray Grammar School in Leicestershire. The head teacher
at Melton was very interested in sport and was rather impressed
with Eric’s games record, which was discussed during the job
interview. For the two years he was in post at Melton, Eric
was to devote at least half of his time to sports tuition. Sport
and music lived very happily alongside each other. Indeed, as
a teenager in the late 1960s I still recall Eric giving us all
the run-around when we had a game of football during LSSO rehearsal
breaks. It was just the same when we attempted to play cricket.
He was a very able, natural sportsman and also a keen follower
of Nottingham Forest football club. His son, Nigel (a cellist
with the RPO for many years and now with the BBC Concert Orchestra)
told me quite recently how thrilled his Dad was when the legendary
Brian Clough phoned him and requested a meeting in order to
discover how he had built up the music education system in Leicestershire.
Mr. Clough clearly put some of Eric’s management practices to
good use as he took Forest on a glory trail through Europe during
his tenure at the City Ground. Most LSSO players were followers
of Leicester City but we forgave Eric for his sins.
In November 1947, Melton Mowbray Grammar School received a visit
from the newly-appointed Director of Education for Leicestershire,
Stewart Mason, an art connoisseur as well as an educationalist.
Pinkett canvasses hanging on the classroom walls of Melton Mowbray
Grammar School made an impact on the young Director and E.P.
(the initials soon became the virtually exclusive mode of identification)
maintained that those paintings smoothed the way to the County
Offices in Grey Friars where, in April 1948, he presented himself
as the Adviser for Music. So much for fate - he became a music
teacher because he could play games and was appointed as Music
Adviser for Leicestershire because he could paint. His relocation
from Nottinghamshire to Leicestershire was certainly Leicestershire’s
gain.
Advisers, particularly in specialist subjects, were an immediate
post-war development in education. New and unskilled teachers
were being rapidly enlisted from all walks of life and the Training
Colleges were turning out students, often with only one year's
training. Thus there was an urgent need for help and advice
in almost every school. The majority of schools’ music immediately
after the war was choral work. Singing lessons were the norm.
Eric stayed away from any involvement with choral work and instead
decided to plough his own furrow by concentrating his efforts
on developing instrumental tuition. At the time there was no
precedent for the job. There was no advice to the adviser on
how to set about it. So, having found himself a table, a chair
and some office space, he quickly formulated the corner-cutting,
enterprising, risk-taking and frequently audacious methods that
characterised his working style for the best part of thirty
years. Eric Pinkett assembled around him a group of dedicated,
professional, enthusiastic people who harnessed the hidden musical
talent in school children and then set the County ablaze. If
he had not been a superman the whole affair could well have
been bogged down in mediocrity. In the early days he was a man
in a hurry, impatient for results and quite unwilling to fetter
his ankles with red tape. He became the bane of the "treasury
boys" because of his habit of short-circuiting the usual
channels. Musical instruments, desperately needed, could often
be obtained cheaply at the right place, at the right time and
with ready money. E.P. snapped up bargains with his own money
but the official feathers flew when he presented the receipts
and requests for reimbursement. Some head teachers, too, were
beginning to resent the effect this musical gadfly was having
on their orthodox calm and there was a time when it seemed that
his only friends were the children. Yet, on one historic May
Saturday morning in 1948 at Elbow Lane School in Leicester,
there began a weekly routine of orchestral rehearsals that has
continued unbroken ever since. Why Elbow Lane? This was the
nearest school to the bus station and all the members of the
orchestra, from the four corners of the county, were required
to make their own way from home to Elbow Lane and then back
again. Could that possibly happen in today’s modern world? I
doubt it. Quantity rather than quality was the first necessity,
but quantity is so much easier to achieve than quality and to
this problem there was no quick solution. Achieving quality
takes time. Parents regularly called in and smiled indulgently
at the orchestra’s efforts, schoolmasters looked in and some
offered advice.
In the early pioneering days E.P. had only his faith to keep
him going. He was once advised to rehearse for five years before
giving a concert and he ignored it. He knew that the children's
interest would have evaporated without the stimulus of playing
in public. Yet he was well aware of the sort of noise they made
and staged their first outings in village halls, well away from
large centres. The theory was that audiences there would be
tolerant enough or inexpert enough not to complain. As the playing
improved, so E.P. edged his way towards more densely populated
areas in the county and eventually to the county's principal
concert hall - the De Montfort Hall in Leicester.
Student numbers gradually increased and Elbow Lane became too
small to accommodate the children. The solution was to relocate
the School of Music to a campus of two adjoining schools in
Birstall, on the outskirts of Leicester. These schools, Stonehill
and Longslade, became the new home base for Saturday morning
rehearsals and by the early 1960s three symphony orchestras
were up and running - the Junior Orchestra, the Intermediate
Orchestra and the LSSO. This was a solid base on which to build
and the standard of excellence that was being achieved was also
noticed by musicians up and down the country. Saturday morning
rehearsals were only part of the story. Throughout the school
week, Eric and his peripatetic team would visit the key secondary
schools in the major towns in the county such as Loughborough,
Hinckley, Melton Mowbray and Ashby de la Zouch. Here, individual
tuition and group ensemble work took place - not to mention
talent-spotting - and the young people honed their skills further.
The students were also stimulated and motivated to continue
attending rehearsals by being offered regular trips away from
home. The Intermediates spent a week in a holiday resort every
July, sleeping on camp beds in a local school and rehearsing
every day. It was quite exciting travelling to those exotic
seaside resorts - Colwyn Bay, Filey and Lowestoft. Being away
from home without your parents at the age of 11 was an adventure.
The LSSO made (and still makes) annual visits to Europe, a tradition
that started with a trip to Essen in 1953.
My own childhood was spent in Hinckley and I first came into
contact with Eric during primary school. I started violin lessons
at the ripe old age of 8 and then two years later began attending
the weekly County School of Music rehearsals held in Birstall
every Saturday morning. The LSSO feeder groups gave its young
members some “real” music to play. Nothing was dumbed down and
I remember scraping my way through Pique Dame, Beethoven’s
Pastoral, Schubert’s Unfinished and pot-boilers
such as the Karelia Suite, Finlandia and Malcolm
Arnold’s Scottish Dances. It must have sounded pretty
basic but it was the beginning of a lifelong love of music.
Many of us were inspired by two of the teachers in particular
- conductors Malcolm Fletcher and Jim Haworth who coaxed and
cajoled the Intermediate Orchestra and then despatched us to
listen to the last half an hour of the LSSO rehearsing under
Eric, to see and hear for ourselves what the future could hold
for us. Malcolm and Jim were two key members of Eric’s staff
and like so many children before and since they helped me to
progress through the feeder orchestras until eventually reaching
the LSSO where I spent four happy years. Violin lessons were
given by a wonderful character called Lambert Wilson, a proud
Scot and former member of the Scottish National Orchestra. Lambert
guided many a young player through the ranks including his brilliantly
gifted son, Rolf, who is one of the country’s finest violinists.
Eric Pinkett chose his staff wisely but he was the real driving
force and without him at the helm the project almost certainly
would not have succeeded. The late 1960s and 1970s were exciting
times and the orchestra was fortunate enough to have made music
with Sir Michael Tippett, Sir Arthur Bliss and Andre Previn.
The LSSO has given concerts in many major concert halls in this
country and on the Continent and the list of eminent musicians
who have been associated with it has grown longer over the years.
Most distinguished of all was Sir Michael Tippett, who confirmed
his admiration of the work of Eric Pinkett and the County School
of Music by agreeing to be its patron and regular guest conductor
in 1965. This was a masterstroke by Eric Pinkett who knew deep
down that although he was the orchestra’s strength he could
also be its weakness. He was astute enough to realise that professional
musicians could add something beneficial to the orchestra and
help to accelerate the improvement in playing standards. The
roster of visiting guest conductors included George Weldon,
Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Malcolm Arnold, Rudolf Schwarz and the
wonderful orchestral trainer Norman Del Mar. Norman was a regular
visitor to Birstall for many years and it was his absolute insistence
on professionalism that took the playing standards to a new
high in 1968 when he conducted the orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein
and the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
The Pinkett/Tippett partnership really gathered momentum in
the late 1960s and this led to a series of regular TV and radio
appearances. There was also a superb concert given in the Berlin
Philharmonie in 1969 under Tippett’s direction that included
Brigg Fair, Putnam’s Camp and Quiet City played
by the orchestra’s brilliant trumpet player Jimmy Watson who
is sadly no longer with us. Numerous commercial gramophone recordings
were released, concentrating on repertoire that was not otherwise
available in the catalogues. Eric was a shrewd PR and marketing
man and he realised that LSSO recordings of standard classical
repertoire would offer nothing of real, lasting value. Such
recordings would also have limited appeal and sales potential.
The solution was to bring to the wider public the works of,
amongst others, Tippett, Bliss and Mathias. This also avoided
direct - and potentially cruel - comparison with the top professional
orchestras. The LSSO also achieved the distinction of being
first in the field with two recordings of the music of Havergal
Brian for the Unicorn and CBS labels.
Eric was always the first to give credit to his staff at the
County School of Music whose teaching had produced many young
players of a high enough quality to obtain places in most of
the leading British symphony orchestras. He acknowledged, too,
the part played by Stewart Mason in being such a supportive
Director of Education as well as helping to launch the LSSO
on its series of foreign tours. Stewart and his wife regularly
attended LSSO concerts overseas. Indeed, the couple’s two sons
were members of the orchestra - professional cellist Tim who
died at a tragically young age and viola player Benedict who
has made a name for himself as one of the country’s leading
composers. When all is said and done, the Leicestershire adventure
owes everything to the dream which Eric Pinkett cherished through
his difficult and taxing early days as Music Adviser. Eric wrote
his book Time to Remember in 1969 as a part of the
21st anniversary celebrations of the County School of Music
and it can be recommended wholeheartedly to anyone interested
in music or, for that matter, anyone who enjoys a good story.
Eric Pinkett, O.B.E. (the honour came in 1972) died in 1979
just 3 years after his retirement. He was a kind, charismatic
man who had almost entirely by his own vision and work ethic
made Leicestershire arguably the foremost education authority
in UK for music. His idea was that every child should eventually
come to love music as a result of playing a musical instrument.
He certainly succeeded in reaching this goal.
John Whitmore
Eric Pinkett’s book Time to Remember can be read online
here:
http://www.lsso.co.uk/ericsbook.html
Further information about the Eric Pinkett / LSSO era:
http://www.lsso.co.uk/
Eric Pinkett’s commercial and concert recordings with the orchestra:
http://www.lsso.co.uk/audiovisual.html
