Subject: RE: History - BBC's 'Singing Together'
From:
GUEST,Tony Orman
Date: 23 May 11 - 01:30 PM
I am writing this in May 2011. A couple of nights ago I woke up and suddenly asked myself "Are there any mentions on the Internet for William Appleby?" I checked and found this site. I figured you might be interested in my memories of this man who was so much to me in my childhood.
I am now 76 and went to Doncaster Grammar School (as it was then called) in 1946 at age 11, leaving in the summer of 1953 at age 18. In 1946 William ("Pip") Appleby was the school's music teacher. He always auditioned new students to check their musical skills. I didn't play an instrument but I had a fairly good soprano singing voice, and he put me in the school choir. I served in the choir the whole time I was at the school, naturally changing in due course from soprano to baritone.
While I was still a soprano, Pip asked me to join the Doncaster Schools Choir, which drew from a number of schools in the town (girls and boys schools) and I remained in that until I went to University. We rehearsed every Monday evening during term time, and Pip organized a number of concerts for us to perform each year, some of them outside Doncaster and a number of them in churches. Then he asked me if I would join his small choir which he used for broadcasts on the BBC in the Educational programme "Singing Together". He put out this show every week during term-time, often with soloists. But one week in three we would be shipped to Leeds in a coach to the BBC Studios in Leeds. There he would lecture on the various songs that he wanted to teach the listeners. The latter, of course, were schoolchildren all over the country who would hear it in their classrooms. We would demonstrate singing a few bars at a time of each song, then we would perform the whole song. The BBC studio was a large two-storey room which I think must have been converted from an old Methodist church. Naturally we had rehearsed all these songs back in Doncaster, maybe a couple of times. So I spent a good deal of time in Pip's company over the whole seven years of my secondary education.
We sang near a grand piano on the ground floor with Pip conducting from the piano. On the upper floor of the Studio the BBC operatives could see and hear us through a glass window. The programme was broadcast through Post Office landlines to the BBC in London where the show was actually recorded. The big event of the day for us, of course, was not just the singing but the huge tea party with large sugary cakes afterwards, courtesy of the BBC.
Some time during these years Pip left the employment of DGS to take up the post of Doncaster Schools Music Advisor — a post that was specially created for him so that he could impart his charismatic talents throughout the whole community.
Pip lived in a large three-storey townhouse in Christchurch Road immediately across from the main school entrance. He was a single man. It was not until I was in my 20s that I found out that he personally funded one boy's living expenses so that he was able to attend the school. That student eventually became Head Boy of DGS. Alas his name now escapes me.
And what was Pip like? He was small of stature, relatively slim and quite neat to look at. He was a very kindly man whom boys took to as soon as they met him. He was a genius at retaining the interest of children in music of all kinds. A bit of a pied piper you might say. He might seem shy and retiring, but he commanded huge respect from all who knew him. I remember that on three or four occasions at the BBC shows, we worked together with a man who was very handsome and had a fabulous high baritone voice. This man (name forgotten I'm afraid) was clearly a well-known soloist whom Pip had persuaded to sing some songs along with us. This man was almost as much in awe of Pip as we always were as kids.
This is not to say that we didn't have other great schoolmasters at DGS, but Pip was a great mentor and we always felt he was a great friend to have in the older generation.
I was always proud to be counted among the chosen few whom he took under his wing as a singer. He also created a very small select group, male and female singers, whom he thought worthy not only to sing in programmes with the rest of us, but whom he pushed to go for choral scholarships in Oxford and Cambridge. I was always sad that my voice did not have that degree of quality but it was thrilling to be a small cog in his musical scheme of things. It felt — and still does — like being a member of a very exclusive club: there were never more than about thirteen of us in the BBC choir, for instance, and during my seven years of participation there were very few changes in personnel.
I still miss him.
Tony Orman
Florida, USA
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