Pro-Chancellor, Distinguished Guests,
Vice-Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am delighted to be here
today, and greatly honoured to be receiving such a distinction from
this University.
You have been extremely generous in the words of the citation
of conferment, and I thank you most sincerely. No doubt
this will be the first time many of you have actually seen an organist
in person, since we are often hidden away in an organ loft hanging
like a gargoyle from the rafters. Recently an attempt was made to
rectify that situation in a cathedral in Europe, and a closed circuit
television camera and screen were set up so that the audience could
see the organist play. Unfortunately they did not think to tell the
performer. It was a warm night, and after the first piece he removed
his jacket. After the second piece – it was very warm – he took
off his tie. He then had a uniquely attentive audience when, after the
third piece, he took out his teeth and placed them on the console.
But I am very glad to be able to appear before
you all, as it gives me the opportunity to say how grateful I am not
only to the University but to music itself. I am grateful not only for
the pleasure it gives me to make music but also for the way it has
enriched everything I do. Today we tend to specialise so much in our
subjects that if we are not careful we develop tunnel vision. It is
the nature of tunnels to be black and gloomy, but life should be lived
in vivid colour. An understanding of the classical arts supplies that
colour: gradually we see more beauty in everything, and we feel more
deeply, understand other people at a more instinctive level, and, in
short, live more intensely and more fully. The writer Kingsley Amis
famously said “We don't have education any more; we just have work
training”. That is not so true of you, who have been lucky enough to
be educated genuinely in such a place of learning as this
Conservatoire. But if you consider that real education begins with a
diploma rather than ends, and is the process that ultimately forms
your true personality and being, then Amis's words are worth
remembering.
I've been pondering some of the qualities of
music. It has for example SUBTLETY – subtle changes of tempo,
dynamic and phrasing. Acquiring a sensitivity to nuance gives the
utmost pleasure – as wine lovers will readily agree, or gourmets!
And perceiving subtleties in music, or in the choice of words, or in
the smile on the face of the Mona Lisa, leads to sensitivity in other
situations, and to communication at a deeper level.
And music has FORM: the progression of a
large-scale work is a journey, involving the discussion of ideas and
the resolution of conflicts; this is what gives the listener his
feelings of satisfaction and fulfilment. To follow the argument is to
experience a thrilling roller coaster ride of emotions and ideas, and
enriches our ability to think organically – a train of thought
opening out like a flower from the seed of the idea. We learn to
discriminate, to reason in abstract terms, to discern shades of
meaning – qualities not cultivated by taking a stab at one of three
multiple-choice answers in an examination.
Then music has COLOUR – vivid flashes of
colour coming from contrasts in the timbres of the instruments or the
harmonies used. Colour is life-enhancing: it lifts the spirits or
soothes the soul or energises the faculties. Allied to this is
DECORATION, such as the swirl of ornamentation in early music. The
dispiriting grey concrete of the '60s and '70s tower blocks is now
seen to be not merely unlovely but actively destructive, encouraging
crime and fostering in those obliged to live in or among such
buildings the harshness and hopelessness implicit in their hard, bare
and ugly lines. And music has MELODY – the graceful inflection of
line that parallels the gentle rise and fall of a
beautifully-modulated voice, or suggests the curve of a garland of
flowers in a Fragonard painting.
It's interesting to think: if I were a piece of
music, what would I sound like? What song would my being sing, what
harmonies- or harmony – would I express? I have found in my
experience with students that when I hear them play I hear not just
what they are doing but what they ARE. That is what we who are
performers express in our playing or singing, who and what
we really are. It is not too fanciful to think of our whole being as
music, and the Sufi musician and writer Hazrat Inayat Khan comments:
“What ultimately pleases us in any of the arts, whether drawing,
painting, carving, sculpture, architecture or poetry, is the harmony
behind it: the music. The world needs harmony today more than ever
before. When a person learns music, he need not necessarily learn to
be a musician; but by playing, loving and listening to music he will
develop music in his personality. The true use of music is to become
musical in one's thoughts, words and actions.”
I will never cease to be grateful for the joy
music has brought me, both in itself and by its awakening in me an
awareness of a world teeming with delights I would not otherwise have
known. Music is not a career: it is a way of life. I wish you great
success, and as much happiness in that life as I have been fortunate
enough to enjoy.
Thank you again.
Gillian Weir DBE, DUniv