SPOTLIGHT ON... Dr Harry Bramma - our distinguished Patron

Please note - Anne completed this Spotlight interview with Harry just three days before his death, and we offer it as a tribute to his life and great work.

It was fascinating to read in your autobiography ‘Not Half Bad’* about your career, your colleagues and the society in which you worked. Your memory is astonishing ... or did you keep detailed diaries throughout your life?

The only diaries I kept were appointment diaries. They cover a long and diverse career, first as teacher in 1961 in East Retford, Notts, then (1963) Assistant Organist at Worcester Cathedral and Director of Music at the King’s School. From 1976 to 1989 I was Organist and Director of Music at Southwark Cathedral, then in 1989 I became Director of the Royal School of Church Music at Addington Palace, Croydon. That appointment overlapped with my appointment Organist and Director of Music at All Saints, Margaret Street, London W1 from April 1989 to 2004. But my memories of early childhood, schooling, and my years at Pembroke College, Oxford (where I read both music and theology), are also vivid …

… as the book shows! You certainly describe a very different era from today. Do you come from a musical family?

My musical vocation was at odds with over 250 years of family history, as the Brammas had always been technological, involved in the machinery used in textile mills. My grandmother had trouble understanding my chosen path: when I was Assistant Organist of Worcester Cathedral she said ‘I do wish our Harry would get a proper job!’.

Which part of your career was most enjoyable?

Undoubtedly, my time at Southwark Cathedral. It was not easy at the start with financial, political and musical matters to address, but building up the choir and restoring the organ brought much satisfaction. I enjoyed the open and inclusive society at Southwark, too, which was especially welcome after the closeted atmosphere of Worcester. My work there enabled me to develop as a musician and as a person.

And which part was most challenging?

My years at the RSCM were full of challenges. From the start I had to address the relationship between the RSCM and Evangelical churches, the necessity of moving the RSCM from Addington Palace and the place of girls and women in church music after a long tradition of promoting only boys and men in church music.

That was 36 years ago, when supporting women in church music was deeply controversial. Had you encountered women in church music before then?

Yes, there were brilliant women organists around in my youth. One of the most notable was Edith Butterfield, Organist at Temple Street Wesleyan Church in Keighley (a church with a wonderful interior!). She had that post for 50 years and accompanied an annual performance of Messiah every year. She was a real virtuoso. Having heard her, aged 10, made a lasting impression – I can still hear her playing the fine Binns organ. (A policeman in the choir said, when we got to Why do the nations ‘Don’t worry about how loud the organ is, I can still drown it!’.) There were other fine women organists – one I actually knew in Skipton. As the above shows, male supremacy was not a factor then in Yorkshire! In my youth, the Assistant Organist of Chichester Cathedral was a woman, too. She was Anne Maddocks. In fact, she gave the first performance of the Poulenc Organ Concerto there under Horace Hawkins, who was a great francophile and a friend of Widor.

We are proud that SWO's membership includes many men who support our work. You are supreme among them as a distinguished musician and one of our patrons. Did you have any qualms about putting your head above the parapet when you joined us?

No, I had no qualms. When I began as Director of the RSCM back in 1989 I immediately added a girls’ section to the three cathedral singers’ groups in the north, the south and the Midlands and west of England. I gave my full support to Dr Richard Seal when he started the first cathedral girls’ choir at Salisbury Cathedral in 1990; my article in Church Music Quarterly entitled ‘Male and Female created He them’ provoked much criticism. So no-one would have been surprised by my support for SWO!

What advice do you give to a 16-year old hoping for a career in music?

Practise your instrument. And get to know all music – particularly Bach. But also Wagner, Byrd, Britten, Mendelssohn and Walton – and so on.

Thank you for being a SWO patron since 2019 and for attending SWO events. Has SWO developed in the way you hoped and imagined?

It certainly has. What you have hugely achieved was to make an exceptional example a universal aspiration.

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*Not Half Bad

Harry’s book, “Not Half Bad”: A lifetime of Musical Development and Other Stories, is available from the RSCM Music Shop: https://www.rscmshop.com/books/9781068766114/bramma-not-half-bad