Every starry-eyed young
musician who aspires to become a professional
orchestral-player should be required
to read this excellent book - surely
destined to become a classic of its
kind - for it reveals just what life
is really like as a member of a first-class
orchestra.
The author, acutely aware of her own
early struggles to achieve her ambition,
which she overcame with immense determination,
captures the reader's attention not
only by the elegance of her literary
skill, but with captivating humour too.
Many books written about the stars of
the musical firmament are full of adulation,
but this is far more truthful, so that
Maggie Cotton's down-to-earth account
rings with far more conviction than
all those sycophantic, ghost-written
coffee-table biographies. Yet this is
not just about a hermetically-sealed,
idealised life-style of sophisticated
concert giving, it is about domestic
responsibilities, the joys, fulfilment
- and often the anxieties - of family
life; a truly human book, immensely
stimulating and inspiring.
Arthur Butterworth - December 2006
Now retired and no longer silenced
by a contract, Maggie Cotton presents
an honest and long-overdue player’s
perspective of life inside a professional
symphony orchestra, describing how she
became the first female percussionist
in what was initially a staunchly male-dominated
world.
Now retired after forty years with
the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra,
Maggie gives a fascinating and humorous
insight into every aspect of her working
life, including tours, conductors, composers,
soloists, colleagues, recording contracts
and educational work, as well as her
own family life and the social conditions
of wartime England and post-war Eastern
Europe.
Bolstered by her gritty Yorkshire roots,
and naively undeterred by overwhelming
odds, Maggie overcame many hurdles in
pursuit of her ambition to play percussion
in a professional symphony orchestra,
in so doing transforming the face of
women in that field from one of novelty
circus performer to respected professional
and colleague.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author: Maggie Cotton was
born in Yorkshire in 1937 and has devoured
music since her very early pianistic
beginnings as a child. In the late 1950s,
three years after leaving school, she
trail-blazed her way into the male-dominated
profession of symphony orchestra musician,
landing herself a contract as a percussionist
with the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra. Since retirement, having
played for the orchestra for forty years
(eighteen with Simon Rattle), she has
also worked as a music critic, and has
at last gathered her experiences, from
a player’s perspective, of the
colourful and deeply satisfying world
of the professional symphony orchestra
in her autobiography Wrong Sex, Wrong
Instrument.
Sample page
Music (-z-),
n. Art of combining sounds with a view
to beauty of form and expression of
emotion; sounds so produced; pleasant
sound e.g. song of a bird. Written or
printed score of musical composition.
(Concise Oxford Dictionaiy)
We were rehearsing
Symphony No. 4 by Humphrey Searle (commissioned
by Birmingham’s Feeney Trust) for the
first time.
"You’ve written
a glissando, which can’t be played to
a note that isn’t on the instrument!"
yelled an irate trumpet player, standing
and waving his trumpet in the air. This
was from one of the mildest-tempered
people in the whole orchestra, never
known to lose his composure, and certainly
NEVER known to shout across the orchestra
to anyone. At one point in the same
piece, one of the bassoons in sheer
frustration turned his music upside
down and played a whole page from bottom
to top - an exercise in lese-majesty,
which amazingly drew no comment from
the composer-conductor. I found myself
muttering that my part was physically
impossible, although I suppose that
two or more percussionists could have
tangled together and played the intermittent
xylophone and vibraphone parts between
them. This was an obvious case, yet
again, of someone writing for such instruments
from a piano keyboard with five fingers
per hand instead of for one beater per
hand, or two in extremis. The only solution
seemed to be to scatter notes around
like confetti, but to be careful to
stop when necessary, hopefully on the
correct note. Written in a disjointed
twelve-tone style, the theme we were
told was a silent bar: "One! Two!"
This was announced by the composer with
stolid, uncompromising emphasis. Naturally,
most of us saw the silly side to all
of this and were hard-pressed to remain
serious. Consequently, each time the
theme appeared there was a faint, ghostly
"One! Two!" in the air from
the players during rehearsals, and we
had the utmost difficulty in remaining
silent during the intense presentation
of the premiere performance.
At the concert, I felt
very self-conscious, as I had been placed
alone with my two large instruments
opposite to the rest of the percussion
gang, beyond the timpani. Luckily, everything
went by without any perceivable hitch,
but during the interval I was summoned
to see the composer. My heart sank as
I entered his room; however, I was astonished
as he proceeded to give me a bear hug
and profusely thank me for my wonderful
interpretation of his piece. Oh dear,
what a fraud one felt, but then we have
all learnt to keep our counsel we are
drawn into such apparent nonsenses.
Who played and who heard the previous
three symphonies, we wondered, and would
our current effort be yet another first/last
performance?
