The Hidden Musicians. Ruth Finnegan
Year’ of 1977, when they celebrated twenty-five years of active existence. A special ‘jubilee committee’ was set up including local businessmen who persuaded many local bodies to sponsor them. They put on a year’s programme of Babes in the Wood in February, Schubert’s Lilac Time in May, a variety show in the autumn and a Grand Finale in Bletchley Leisure Centre in October, with all proceeds going to a local hospital charity: ‘it is felt that after the Society’s 25 successful years in the area the adoption of the principal charity would be a most fitting way of saying “thank you” to the community as a whole for their loyal support during this period’. The year’s events brought great satisfaction to the committee and organisers who recalled how twenty-five years before, the society had started off with many young members: ‘many are still members and still looking young’ and, still with a large number of young members and a supporting list of fifty or so patrons, were already ‘looking forward to their Golden Jubilee in 2003’.
The Silver Jubilee was a specially grand event, but every year involved intensive effort and rehearsal by scores of participants. Preparations and rehearsals went on almost all year for the major annual productions, in a recognised cycle that started off with the enrolment and AGM evening in the autumn, then the start of the weekly or twice-weekly practices. As the time of the main public performances in April or May approached the pace of rehearsing increased. Even during the main part of the year ‘it took over my life’, as one member put it – attending regular rehearsals two nights a week for acting, one for singing and yet another for dancing; near the end this turned into every night of the week and weekends too.
Figure 14 Scene from the Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic Society’s pantomime Babes in the Wood, a sell-out at Stantonbury Theatre in January 1983
As with some other long-established clubs, the Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic Society was by the late 1970s and early 1980s a closely knit social group many of whose members knew each other well, in some cases also linked by kinship, love or marriage. A whole series of social activities as well as their joint musical production drew them together. In the summer and autumn of 1976, for example, during the ‘resting season’ between rehearsals, social occasions included a visit to Foscote Manor (the home of the society’s President, Dorian Williams), provision of stalls at both the Bletchley and Newport Pagnell Carnivals (August), a car ramble (August) and a visit to a local Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s Pirates of Penzance in September. As a long-established and economically stable society, the Amateur Operatic Society was undoubtedly one of the most flourishing local societies, drawing on a wide range of members, well connected with the local business and landed community and raising extensive funds for local causes.
There was more to this than just a financially effective business organisation, though, since for most active participants it was the music that was paramount. Under the guidance of a series of energetic and gifted musical directors, local soloists flourished and even the less skilled chorus and small-part singers expanded, steeped in music for hours on end, attending constant rehearsals, studying their parts in every odd moment they could snatch from work or family – small wonder that one concluded ‘I ate, slept and dreamt music.’ Some members had before had relatively little systematic musical experience, and for them such experience could be a revelation – as for the local plumber unable to read notated music who talked and talked of the joy of singing in operas and pantomimes and his discovery of the beauties of listening to music. For their regular audiences too, the public performances were not only grand occasions of theatrical display, marked by colour, movement, dance and dramatic enactment as well as musical expression, but also an opportunity to hear well-known tunes and arrangements which even after the end of that year’s performance could remain in the memory to evoke that special experience and lay the foundation for looking forward to the next year’s production.
The Amateur Operatic may have been the oldest and best connected of the operatic/dramatic musical societies, but it was not the only one. In the Milton Keynes area, as so widely in Britain, the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition also flourished. The Wolverton and District Gilbert and Sullivan Society was founded in 1974 and was still presenting its grand annual productions of, for example, The Mikado, Patience, The Yeomen of the Guard and The Pirates of Penzance some ten years later under its musical director, the well-known local personality Arnold Jones, who had followed his foreman father into the Wolverton Railway Works early in the century. A similar cycle of rehearsals and productions was also followed by the Bletchley-based Milton Keynes Gilbert and Sullivan Society, an offshoot from the Amateur Operatic Society in 1972. Once again there was a strong link with local churches, and in some cases a tradition of giving smaller-scale concerts during the year for charity.
The drama societies also often had a musical side, like the long-established Bletchco Players, the New City Players, the Longueville Little Theatre Company, the Woughton Theatre Workshop, and various drama groups based on the Stantonbury Campus which had developed a striking series of musical plays based on local history. They produced musical plays and pantomimes from time to time, or co-operated with the operatic groups’ productions by encouraging their own members to participate.
Pantomimes also played an important part in the musical and theatrical year. Most local dramatic societies put one on during the Christmas season, and for some, like the Bletchco Players, the Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic Society, and New City Players, it had become an annual obligation. Other groups who did not aspire to regular musical or theatrical productions also put on pantomimes at Christmas – Women’s Institute branches, for example, church or village groups, and schools. These were especially popular when, as often, they were specially written or adapted to include local and topical references, and built on a long local tradition of amateur Christmas pantomimes directed to ‘family entertainment’. Here again, however unpretentiously the pantomime was produced, a huge amount of work was always involved, not only in the many rehearsals but also in the co-ordination between large numbers of people exhibiting several art forms – dancing, speaking, acting, singing, playing.
One of the striking characteristics of the world of musical theatre was the amount of co-operation between the individuals and groups involved. There were joint occasions, for example, like the charity concert in December 1979 by the Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic Society and the Milton Keynes Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Singers and players from one society would also come along to help in productions by others: Amateur Operatic Society performances, for instance, included actors from the Bletchco Players and singers from the Gilbert and Sullivan Societies. Many of the same soloists appeared in the performances of several different groups during the yearly cycle, even though each society had a core of its ‘own’ leading singers who reappeared year after year, to the delight of the regular audiences.
Because of the complex of arts involved there was also contact with musical groups outside the theatrical world. This was partly due to overlapping membership, for many operatic singers also belonged to church choirs, and players in the accompanying orchestras often played in one or another of the local orchestral or instrumental groups. This could set up conflicts of loyalty, of course, when a musician had concurrent obligations which could not be met simultaneously, a situation that could and did lead to friction; alternatively it could be avoided by careful planning, as with the Wolverton and District Gilbert and Sullivan Society, which had extra rehearsals in the summer because the Wolverton Light Orchestra, which shared the same conductor and (in some cases) members, took a rest then. Other contacts were at a more formal level, as when the Newport Pagnell Singers joined the Stantonbury Drama Group in a production of The Pirates of Penzance. The local dancing schools too regularly co-operated in musical plays and pantomimes, adding a sparkle to the presentation that was much appreciated by local audiences (themselves swelled, of course, by parents and other relations of the dancers).
Besides the societies specifically formed to produce performances of musical theatre, this art form was also popular as one among a number of possible activities by groups such as churches, schools or community social clubs. The example of pantomimes at Christmas has already been mentioned, but the same pattern was also noticeable for many other kinds of musical. Many schools – especially those with