Count started 3rd March 2010
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Count started 3rd March 2010
Jack Wolstenholme was an inspiring Director of Music at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, from 1948-1979.
At the time the school was a highly selective, boys only, direct grant establishment with a wide range of extracurricular activities. There were no fewer than 3 school symphony orchestras, plenty of choral opportunities, and even two full concerts each year devoted solely to classical chamber music.
Whilst the breadth of musical offerings at the school today is certainly broader, the quality back then is unlikely to be bettered. Many old boys from Jack’s era still play or sing as adults, and look back fondly to the start they were given at the RGS.
Jack himself, a gruff Lancastrian, was a fine organist and organ teacher as well as a patient and knowledgeable conductor. The school hall is dominated by the organ presented in memory of those old boys who fell in the Great War. In the 1950’s and 60’s the whole school would gather in the hall every morning for a brief religious ceremony. This always included the singing of at least one hymn, with Jack or one of his pupils accompanying on the organ.
In the absence of periodic maintenance the organ has fallen on leaner times, and is no longer seriously playable. One of Jack’s pupils, Brian Varley (a pupil at the school from 1955-63, and an Associate of the Royal College of Organists) would dearly like to see it restored. He was having a good look at the organ’s innards about 3 years ago with Mike Barlow (also a former Leader of the First Orchestra and organ pupil of Jack's), who gave him a pile of music that had clearly belonged to Jack. In amongst the printed volumes there were some sheets of manuscript, handwritten in pencil, which turned out to be a roughly worked score of one of Jack’s own compositions: a string quartet, no less.
Three of the movements were little more than sketches, with no clear idea of whether they were complete or indeed which ideas he had intended as his final thoughts. The Largo, however, although containing many second thoughts and bars crossed out, was 99% complete – and crucially the bars that remained were numbered. This was just enough for another old boy, Tom Banfield, to transcribe the score onto computer, “complete” the few missing viola bars, and add all the dynamics.
Tom was at the school from 1951-62, and was leader of the First Orchestra and of the School Quartet. He still plays in the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and other ensembles on Teesside, and fortunately is a member of the Mowbray Quartet which plays together privately every month in Yarm-on-Tees. He was thus able to print out separate performance parts for his friends, and in December 2009 they gave the Largo its world premiere (albeit with nobody else to hear it). The resultant recording is available for you to
listen to here.
Tom Banfield, March 2010
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