A MUSICAL PILGRIMAGE

Finding myself free to come and go as I pleased this summer, I thought I would rediscover an old delight, and go to the Proms at the Albert Hall. Not just one or two, but as many as I wanted. I bought a season ticket for the Gallery promenade.  I’d last done this six years ago, when Penny and I had a very musical year (we decided afterwards we had musical indigestion!), and then we only bought a half season ticket. But this year, being, for better or worse a free agent, and not being away on holiday very much, I went for the lot!

This year the organisers were celebrating the anniversaries of Mozart (250th birthday), Shostakovitch (100th birthday) and Schumann (150th of his death).  They omitted Gerald Finzi (a personal favourite of mine – 50 years since his death), and probably others, but the selected composers were fine.  To “prom” in the Gallery costs £5.00, if you queue. A season ticket costs £135.00, but you don’t have to queue.  And if you have a full time job, that’s worth a lot.  But I reckoned that, to get value, I’d have to go to 27 concerts to make each cost £5.00 for my season ticket.  And I actually did. In fact, if they hadn’t cancelled one because of a fire (and it would have been Beethoven’s Ninth – ah well!), it would have been 28! I also bought tickets for one other concert, and for two of the Monday chamber music concerts at the Cadogan Hall in Sloane Square.  So the BBC did quite well out of me. But then, I think I did quite well out of the BBC, who put on all this marvellous music.

Early on, I met a couple, about my age, who had also bought season tickets, and when I apologised for taking a place I’d identified as their preferred position, they said that the spirit of “promming” was “first come, first served”, and I was welcome to that patch. (In case you don’t know, there are very few seats in the “prom” areas, Arena or Gallery: you stand throughout, or lie, or sit on the floor, or even walk about, providing you do it silently.  The Arena is highly visible, but the Gallery is much more informal, and I’ve seen people take sleeping bags up there!).  After several concerts I got to know them a bit, and they asked me where I came from. When I said “South Mimms”, one of them said she had lived in Frowycke Crescent in the 1960’s! What a small world!

So why do I call going to 27 concerts a pilgrimage?  Well, a pilgrimage  is a journey, but not necessarily a journey from one fixed point to another (though mediaeval pilgrimages were generally to the shrine of a special saint, like St Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, or St James at Santiago de Compostela in Spain). In my case it was a spiritual journey, to listen to the music I specially loved, or played by musicians I wanted to hear, or music by favourite composers, which I had not yet heard. Perhaps each concert was its own pilgrimage.  And as the season progressed, I became hooked, and found myself deciding to go to concerts I had previously rejected.  The concerts became an end in themselves, bathing my soul in live music, which is a great joy to many and to me.

Another thing about pilgrimages is that, as you journey, you meet people by the way. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are told by pilgrims journeying to St Thomas’ shrine: whether they all started and finished together, he does not say. The tales they told are the important part.  So, among the “prommers”, acquaintances occur.  People meet again, having “prommed” in previous years. Or like me, they are new to it, and make new friends, and exchange tales with them (like my friend who lived in Frowycke Crescent 40 years ago).  I made other chance acquaintances too: a lad from North Yorkshire, who agreed that the performance of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony by the Berlin Phil under Simon Rattle had been “real” (a peculiarly Yorkshire term, understood best when heard – “By, that were real!”).


A scientist from Imperial College (just across the road), who was deeply into Shostakovitch, and wanted to know how Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony had gone the previous night.  People I will never see again, but, being fellow travellers on the road, shared so much, and were instantly open to communication and friendship.

I hope to do another pilgrimage next year, a regular one this time, to Santiago. It will take two months walking across France and Spain, and I hope to use it to raise money for Cancer Research and for St Giles.  A friend of mine did it three years ago (and he did the Seville to Santiago route this year).  There is a goal, but there’s also the journey, and the chance acquaintances. Someone asked me whether I was going to do this alone, and I said, yes, but you aren’t alone: you meet people. Sometimes they walk at your pace, sometimes not, but you meet again at the end of the day.  This is what life is about: making contact, travelling in hope, drawing strength from the beauty you see (and in a musical pilgrimage, hear), being alive in the world. God speed!

William Marsterson, September 2006