Book Review 'Music-A Joy For Life' reviewed by Ken Bridge

A Review of Hampden Library’s “Music. A Joy For Life” by Edward Heath.

When Edward Heath was Prime Minister of Britain, I thought he was a pompous politician. This autobiography proves he was much more than that.

He started to learn piano at 9 and became a chorister at the local church. The chorister’s pay was a penny ha’penny for each practice and tuppence ha’penny on Sundays. At the time, every leading composer, conductor, organist or music administrator in England received his basic grounding in church music.

He remembers as a boy he wondered what “pearl streams were, ‘......Through gates of pearl, streams in the countless host’. He learnt the organ. He found the exercises for right hand, left hand and the feet - separately
and together, gave more satisfaction than practising scales and arpeggios on the piano.

At grammar school he studied music theory, harmony and counterpoint; and the history of music. He started to conduct the school orchestra.

As a young boy he listened to music through earphones on a crystal set.

He attended morning rehearsals of the Proms; and concerts at The Queen’s Hall, The Albert Hall, Westminster Cathedral and The Roundhouse.

He was elected organ scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, with a fee of £80.0.0 per year.

His love of music continued his whole life, including concerts at No 10 Downing Street, and at Chequers.

The book is filled with references to composers: Mahler, Sibelius, Bach, Beethoven, Britten, Chopin, Brahms, Bruckner, Elgar, Grieg, Handel, Haydn,  Liszt, Mozart, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Puccini, Rossini, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovitch, Strauss, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Vaughn Williams; and conductors: Malcolm Sargent, Henry Wood, Toscanini, Beecham, Barbirolli, von Karajan, Solti. Bernstein, Previn; and performers: Myra Hess, Kathleen Ferrier, Duke Ellington, Nureyev and Fonteyn, Curzon, Gina Bachauer, Isaac Stern, and Pinchas Zuckerman.

Edward Heath was President of the Oxford Union Debating Society, and began to conduct choirs and later orchestras. He recorded for EMI. He sang carols at Christmas, including in Germany in 1944 and 1945.

He recalls the first musical in Drury Lane in 1947 -‘Oklahoma!’ and the first visit to England of the Bolshoi Ballet in 1959.

The book contains sections on instruments of the orchestra, on conducting, on collecting records (with recommendations); notes on composers and a Glossary of Musical Terms.

Edward Heath believes music can work its miracle on each of us if we give it a chance. It can triumph over the conflict of mankind. Nobody can take it away from you.

Edward Heath’s “Music. A Joy For Life” has a wealth of memories and information that proves he is much, much more than a pompous politician.

Reviewed by Ken Bridge, Hampden.
“Music. A Joy For Life” by Edward Heath; Sidgewick & Jackson, 1976 ISBN 0 09 135231 2