WHEN I joined The Herald, Malcolm Rayment was its music critic, and
for the two years or more until his retirement I got to know him as a
colleague and as a friend, though not well enough to be a close one.
When he left I tried to have the occasion marked by a performance of the
symphony he had written many years earlier, before he came to Glasgow.
In vain. Perhaps I didn't campaign aggressively or persuasively
enough. I can't truth-
fully say that I badgered the arts establishment and potential
sponsors but I did put the idea about and people reacted at least with
interest, and sometimes with enthusiasm.
Malcolm (who died this week) wrote the work for the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra -- he was a friend of its conductor Constantin
Silvestri -- and it was played in Bournemouth and also at the Royal
Festival Hall in London. It has not been played since, and I never heard
it. Among those who have are Sir Alexander Gibson and the composer Tom
Wilson, a good friend of Malcolm's. I remember seeing the first page of
the score framed and hanging in Malcolm's home in Glasgow.
When I got to know him he was no longer writing music, so far as I
know. He never spoke about it, although he did talk about settling down
to compose string quartets in his new home in the south of Spain, where
he retired. How serious that ambition was I can't tell. I suspect that a
modest share of lotus life in the Costa del Sol had siren charms which
lured him away from the serious business of composition, especially such
demanding work as writing string quartets. A late revival of interest in
golf, which came as a surprise to me and others, possibly had something
to do with this.
Malcom's writing on music was informed by wide knowledge and
illuminated by canny wisdom. Even when a review was written at speed --
as they often had to be -- it would be reasoned and lucid.
After a concert I have sat with him and friends in the Glasgow Society
of Musicians -- a favourite haunt of his -- and watched with admiration
while he wrote his review undistracted by the conversation around him.
He had a pint of beer at hand, of course, being a connoisseur of real
ale. On Saturday nights after concerts by the Scottish National
Orchestra (as it was then) at the City Hall, he would often be seen in
animated conversation -- not always about music -- with some of the
players at the local howff, the Mitre.
He was sometimes . . . well, let's say idiosyncratic. He seemed to
have a distinct reluctance to set foot in The Herald office (not being a
man who took kindly to office routine or office politics, though he had
his own shrewd way of dealing with the latter) except to collect his
expenses. Some of his colleagues claimed never to have met him, which
means -- if true -- that they missed out on good fellowship.
It has also been alleged that his journalistic skills did not extend
to mastery of a typewriter, then an essential tool of the business.
Longhand and a copy-taker at the end of a phone may have been good
enough for him. It was even rumoured that he had been spotted phoning a
review from the staff entrance of The Herald building, literally on the
doorstep -- but I can't vouch for that. The story may be apocryphal.
Malcolm's merits as a writer had not, I think, been sufficiently
appreciated during a spell when The Herald was not as committed to the
arts as it is today. I remember particularly the moving restraint of an
article he wrote recalling the the death of Bela Bartok in poverty in
the United States.
Music made up a great part of his life. I wish he had been able to
hear his own symphony played again. Is it too much to hope that someone
will promote a performance now? It would be a fitting memorial.
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