Poetry review – THE POINT OF THE STICK: Thomas Ovans enjoys Neil Fulwood’s poetic sketches of famous conductors
The Point of the Stick
Neil Fulwood
Shoestring Press
ISBN 978-1-915553-43-0
46pp £8
From a very young age I have enjoyed orchestral music. But I have mostly listened to it in recorded form, first on vinyl then on CDs, and haven’t paid as much attention to the (invisible and inaudible) conductor as perhaps I should have done. Neil Fulwood has obviously taken much more notice of the men with the baton and his pocket size book The Point of the Stick presents short poem portraits of 39 of these maestri (while also name-checking another dozen who deserved inclusion). In his introduction, Fulwood explains how the poems began as ‘a bit of fun’ for a group of classical music enthusiasts, the aim being for them to ‘guess the maestro’ whose personality and career were summed up in a handful of lines. By the time the Muse had deserted him, Fulwood had enough material for this slim volume. In keeping with their roots as a quiz for the musical aficionado, the poems are all untitled and the solution identities are listed at the back of the book. It is fair to say that I would only have guessed two of the subjects without help; and it must be for the benefit of people like me that Fulwood has provided further notes on significant episodes in the lives of ten of his chosen conductors. From my point of view he could usefully have given a potted bio of the other 29.
So how might the poems strike a reader who is not particularly knowledgeable about music? I can say first of all that they are all short, clear and informative and they sometimes speak to one another in interesting ways. The first poem identifies Arthur Nikisch as pioneering the image of the conductor that we are familiar with today. Previously the role seems to have been rather less subtle. As Fulwood puts it, a ‘periwigged tradition, staffs beaten on hard floors’ gave way to ‘economy of gesture’ and ‘score as holy writ’. Economy of gesture can be taken to extremes however and we are told that Fritz Reiner’s ‘movement of the baton is millimetric.‘ And then there are some who fall short as regards respect for the score enshrined in the second precept. The poem for Leopold Stokowski, for instance, reports that he was inclined to treat the score as ‘little more than a suggestion’. (As a matter of fact, Stokowski is one conductor who has made a strong impression on me by virtue of his involvement with Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Every so often during that film he appears on screen, mostly as a silhouette in a crouching pose with both arms raised as if casting a spell. Perhaps Fulwood had this in mind when he wrote that ‘in performance / eccentricities pile up.’)
The poems also reveal that conductors may have differing levels of enthusiasm for the work of the composers that they seek to bring to life. At the end of his career, Toscanini ‘will profess to dislike’ the piece he conducted for his most famous performance. Pierre Monteux prepared so thoroughly for the premiere of Rite of Spring that he kept the orchestra playing even when the shocked audience began protesting at the radical nature of the music, ‘because damned / if he’s wasting seventeen rehearsals’. Hans Knappertsbusch, by contrast, was evidently less scrupulous about rehearsing: ‘”You know the piece, I know it; / Why bother?”’
These short poems are made crisp and effective by Fulwood’s knack of suggesting a story or conveying a character in very few well-chosen words. Sir Thomas Beecham had ‘a jet-setting lifestyle, / before the jet-set even existed.’ Poor Otto Klemperer suffered from depression, ‘the black dog, always ready / for its paw-on-throat moment’. Valery Gergiev fell out of favour for political reasons and experienced ‘the falling dominos / of cancellation, meddling fingers / choking the music.’ The poem for André Previn comes closer to popular culture than most when it sums up his successfully varied career as ‘all the right moves made … in absolutely the right order’ neatly reminding us of his most famous comedic appearance on The Morecambe & Wise Show.
This clever and enjoyable little book would make an admirable and original birthday gift or Christmas-stocking filler for music lovers.
Sep 23 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Neil Fulwood
Poetry review – THE POINT OF THE STICK: Thomas Ovans enjoys Neil Fulwood’s poetic sketches of famous conductors
From a very young age I have enjoyed orchestral music. But I have mostly listened to it in recorded form, first on vinyl then on CDs, and haven’t paid as much attention to the (invisible and inaudible) conductor as perhaps I should have done. Neil Fulwood has obviously taken much more notice of the men with the baton and his pocket size book The Point of the Stick presents short poem portraits of 39 of these maestri (while also name-checking another dozen who deserved inclusion). In his introduction, Fulwood explains how the poems began as ‘a bit of fun’ for a group of classical music enthusiasts, the aim being for them to ‘guess the maestro’ whose personality and career were summed up in a handful of lines. By the time the Muse had deserted him, Fulwood had enough material for this slim volume. In keeping with their roots as a quiz for the musical aficionado, the poems are all untitled and the solution identities are listed at the back of the book. It is fair to say that I would only have guessed two of the subjects without help; and it must be for the benefit of people like me that Fulwood has provided further notes on significant episodes in the lives of ten of his chosen conductors. From my point of view he could usefully have given a potted bio of the other 29.
So how might the poems strike a reader who is not particularly knowledgeable about music? I can say first of all that they are all short, clear and informative and they sometimes speak to one another in interesting ways. The first poem identifies Arthur Nikisch as pioneering the image of the conductor that we are familiar with today. Previously the role seems to have been rather less subtle. As Fulwood puts it, a ‘periwigged tradition, staffs beaten on hard floors’ gave way to ‘economy of gesture’ and ‘score as holy writ’. Economy of gesture can be taken to extremes however and we are told that Fritz Reiner’s ‘movement of the baton is millimetric.‘ And then there are some who fall short as regards respect for the score enshrined in the second precept. The poem for Leopold Stokowski, for instance, reports that he was inclined to treat the score as ‘little more than a suggestion’. (As a matter of fact, Stokowski is one conductor who has made a strong impression on me by virtue of his involvement with Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Every so often during that film he appears on screen, mostly as a silhouette in a crouching pose with both arms raised as if casting a spell. Perhaps Fulwood had this in mind when he wrote that ‘in performance / eccentricities pile up.’)
The poems also reveal that conductors may have differing levels of enthusiasm for the work of the composers that they seek to bring to life. At the end of his career, Toscanini ‘will profess to dislike’ the piece he conducted for his most famous performance. Pierre Monteux prepared so thoroughly for the premiere of Rite of Spring that he kept the orchestra playing even when the shocked audience began protesting at the radical nature of the music, ‘because damned / if he’s wasting seventeen rehearsals’. Hans Knappertsbusch, by contrast, was evidently less scrupulous about rehearsing: ‘”You know the piece, I know it; / Why bother?”’
These short poems are made crisp and effective by Fulwood’s knack of suggesting a story or conveying a character in very few well-chosen words. Sir Thomas Beecham had ‘a jet-setting lifestyle, / before the jet-set even existed.’ Poor Otto Klemperer suffered from depression, ‘the black dog, always ready / for its paw-on-throat moment’. Valery Gergiev fell out of favour for political reasons and experienced ‘the falling dominos / of cancellation, meddling fingers / choking the music.’ The poem for André Previn comes closer to popular culture than most when it sums up his successfully varied career as ‘all the right moves made … in absolutely the right order’ neatly reminding us of his most famous comedic appearance on The Morecambe & Wise Show.
This clever and enjoyable little book would make an admirable and original birthday gift or Christmas-stocking filler for music lovers.