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Rich
sounds The hallmark
of this male voice choir is their excellent ensemble. Both in tonal
quality and balance, the choir is arguably the best male voice choir
we have in this country. The Lionel
Wendt is undoubtedly the best concert hall for a group such as this,
and the sounds came through very well, even in the balcony. I am
glad that they decided to sing Sinhala and Tamil songs too, as these
were done well. The choice of having only a tabla accompaniment
gave and added charity to the harmonies of their rendition of Danno
Budunge. In this day and age when we are attempting to promote national
harmony by every means possible, the contribution made by groups
such as this to include Sinhala and Tamil songs in an otherwise
Western oriented programme should be commended. If the performance
could be faulted in any way, it was a certain lack of liveliness
in some of the items which deserved more momentum and life to be
really enjoyable. The accompanist, though competent, was at times
inadequate, especially in items such as Verdi's Pilgrim's Chorus
and Anvil Chorus and Wagner's Bridal Chorus. An electronic
piano or organ might have helped. The choir should make more use
of the sounds of countertenors, which I have no doubt they are capable
of doing and for this purpose, include in their repertoire works
by Purcell and Handel, and the madrigals by composers such as Monteverdi
and Morley. Their plainsong Gregorian-like chanting, which introduced
the first item could be used to good effect, especially if they
hope to perform in Church. While in Wales,
I had the privilege of listening to the famed Welsh Male Voice choirs
and attending rehearsals of the Treorchy Male Voice Choir which
tours extensively, and in many ways, the Choro Benedicte can compare
with the best of them. I hope they
will continue to prosper and keep up the traditions built over more
than half a century. Singing,
acting, dancing and studying Now over a
hundred years old, this school still bounces along in Wellawatte
with Mrs. C.G. Abeywickremasinghe as its Head. Its present name
is St. Clare's Balika Vidyalaya, an inheritance from 1962, when
the school was 'taken over' by a regulated school system. Ruth Marshall's
institution was first intended for the many Burghers who lived in
the Kollupitiya area but it did not debar students of other nationalities. A noteworthy
feature of her system of education was the granting of partial or
full scholarships to deserving girls who could not afford a secondary
education. One of these
scholarship students was Constance Jansen, who studied at St. Clare's
Kollupitiya up to the Senior Cambridge Examination which she passed
with distinction. Financial constraints hindered her from enrolling
at the Government Teacher Training College or the University of
Ceylon. Instead she
passed the Teacher's Certificate Examination of the Department of
Education and taught at St. Clare's until her marriage to Shelton
Blacker, when she settled down in Nugegoda. With the encouragement
of her husband, she worked on the idea of a many faceted private
school for girls based closely on the ideas she had gathered from
Ruth Marshall. However, the
first pupil who came to her on June 1, 1924 was not a girl but a
little boy named Sydney Jansz. This was in order, because boys were
to be admitted to her school up to the primary level. Very shortly
more and more children joined the school. Soon she had enough pupils
and teachers to qualify for registering it with the Department of
Education, so creating Girton School which became a grant -in- aid
-institution. Typically,
she chose the name Girton after the distinguished women's college
in Cambridge hitching her school to a star from its inception. She
herself did not leave this country until she had retired many many
years later and her daughter, Ursula Ebert took her on a tour of
England that included the dreamed of Cambridge and Girton College. Learning became
a delight at Girton. It was still in its inception housed partly
in Mr. & Mrs. Blacker's sprawling bungalow and partly a mud-
walled thatchroofed building in the large garden at the back of
their home. But the school room was quite often wherever the teachers
wanted it to be - the park, the beach, the post office, the railway
station or the garden. Memorable are
those garden lessons. Sometimes rain drove us in and we ran under
the thatch of our school; and so flexible and free was our time
table that we switched our history lesson for poetry. We listened
to the rain outside, recited sea poems and sang sea-shanties. Imagination
made us drunken sailors tossed in a barbarous sea. Mrs. Blacker
had got round to amalgamating the Education Department syllabus
with an exciting syllabus where theatre figured prominently. It
gave freedom to the individual learner and took her away from the
boredom of too great a dependence on text books. There was no learning
by rote and reproducing lecture notes given by teachers. History
and Literature were often taught through drama. A subject called
individual work on the time table was a challenging way of offering
the student opportunities for self discovery and self realization.
During this time budding artists painted, book worms read silently
in the reading room and wouldbe writers whose mentor was Cora Abrahams
set off on their adventures of the imagination and sent their effort
to the children's pages of the Sunday papers. Another novel
subject was musical appreciation - listening to music under the
guidance of the singing teacher - in this case the lovable but unpredictable
Mrs. Spencer Sheppard. Starting with Gregorian chants and the classics
we moved on to folk songs of the American deep south. Incidentally
that first Girton primary school boy Sydney Jansz retired as Deputy
Governor of the Central Bank. And another notable primary pupil
Wilhelm Woutersz is well known as a senior diplomat. The extra curricular
activities that Girton had did not interfere with the syllabus.
Examination results were always good. The rapidly
growing school population consisted mainly of Burghers from Nugegoda
and the surrounding suburbs with a fair representation of Europeans
from the planting and business communities. The school's
registers throughout its existence recorded such surnames as Kreltszheim,
Collette, O'Connor, Keegal, Van Twest, Risser de Hoedt, Mayo Smith,
Ebert Kroon, Bulner, Bevan, Kellar, Kelaart, Shockman, Overlunde,
Ferdinand, Ponlier, Rode, Decker, Drieberg, Raymond, McCready and
Malinsen among a list of others. There was a
fair sprinkling of Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims and we integrated
well with the rest. Many of the
Burgher students and their families returned to the lands of their
origin or sought new pastures when Sinhala was made compulsory as
the language of instruction for students of this country in the
late nineteen fifties. They fulfilled themselves in their chosen
spheres as doctors, teachers, business women, librarians, architects
and home-makers. Several made their mark in TV, music, radio and
theatre. The school's many theatrical productions and Shelton Blacker's
performances as an amateur actor, ventroliquist and as Martin the
Magician, during his time off from regular work at the Colombo Commercial
Company,entertained large and delighted audiences of children and
adults, and raised much needed funds for the building of the new
school. Mr. Blacker
was the school's far sighted manager, a benign presence, seldom
seen except on special occasions. It was not
long before we left the thatch- roofed, mudwalled makeshift building
to occupy our new school built like a theatre. It had been growing
slowly in the extended premises. It consisted
of a large auditorium and a well equipped stage almost as large,
its excess space meant to be screened off as classrooms in term-time
and dressing rooms on theatre nights. Conscious that
she had no tertiary education, Mrs. Blacker took every opportunity
of attending educational seminars, lectures and discussions at the
Government Training College and the University of Ceylon and other
venues taking her teachers with her. There were highly qualified
and hand picked talks by distinguished visitors, both local and
foreign looked forward to by us all. Girton School
ceased to exist in the early sixties. Rather than change its lifestyle
by accepting a totally different pattern imposed on the educational
system at the time she closed it down. Constance Blacker's greatest contribution to education was to give a whole new meaning to learning, freeing it from its shackles and making it a continuing pleasurable exercise, a total and life long experience. Previn
weds Anne-Sophie Mutter The 39-year-old
violinist, whose first husband Detlef Wunderlich died of cancer
in 1995, is to move to Munich in the south of Germany with the 73-year-old.
The two were married earlier this month. Mutter is one
of the world's most celebrated violinists. Mutter and Previn have
performed extensively together in the last 12 months. In March this
year, Mutter premiered the Previn Violin Concerto, which the composer
wrote for the violinist. Mutter was also part of the London Symphony
Orchestra Previn directed in June and July. Born in Germany,
Mutter began her career in 1977 under the direction of the then
head of Berlin's Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan, before
travelling widely in Europe and North America. |
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