Memories of Jane Cowan and the ICC by Emma Campbell:
I came to Jane through the Mrs
Pringle route. I think it was after one intermediate Saturday
afternoon masterclass on a Marcello sonata that she suggested that I
should come to her for lessons. My brother Richard would have been
away at school learning with Graham Smallbone by then and having
sessions with John Gwilt when back in London. I would have been about
10 I suppose and was with Jane until the ICC relocated fully to
Edrom. Life revolved around the wonderful flat on Ladbroke Grove with
its lift and timer light switches and the glorious communal garden.
My sister Sally, mother Jennet and I were all there for Chamber Music
on a Saturday morning often extending into a masterclass in the
afternoon. Tuesday night was my lesson and a History and Theory
class; a chance for Jane to regale us with stories of great musicians
and arm us with her lightly held views. Then came my favourite; Cello
Club on a Thursday night playing Jane’s arrangements of Schubert’s
Gott in der Natur Motet with Cynthia Isserlis on the piano, Caldara,
Isaacs and of course Casals’ Les Rois Mages.
During the time I had lessons with
her, I broke my left arm and assumed this would mean no ’cello. Oh
no. My hour long lessons were devoted entirely to bowing. The
miners’ action in the winter of discontent meant scheduled one hour
power cuts. My lesson was in the hour preceding a cut. Jane was
concerned that I had not learnt Faure’s Berceuse from memory. The
lights went out. We continued in the dark. We were still working in
the dark when the lights came on an hour later.
At the Spring courses at Edrom in
the early 70s there was more chamber music but singing was important
too. We decamped to Chirnside hotel for our meals where we sang Aller
Augen in German as grace at every meal. We sang at the Kirk –
getting as much roll into our ‘r’s in ‘Surely’ from the
Messiah as we could as soft southerners. Whenever I hear ‘Low born
clods of brute earth’ from Dream of Gerontius I remember Jane
telling us how ludicrous it sounded to her ears the first time she
heard it performed with Received Pronunciation. Listening to the
whole of Missa Solemnis lying on the floor in the music room was a
yearly education. Each evening we gathered around the fire to sing
Madrigals and to take us up to bed, with one of us lucky enough to be
piggyback on Aunt Jane’s back leading the crocodile we sang Bona
Nox round and round from every floor and corridor.
I remember clearly in one Saturday
afternoon master class Jane telling a confident and precocious young
cellist how envious she was of her as she still had so many years
ahead of her to try to make sense of the particular movement of a
Bach suite the girl had just trampled through. The remark, delivered
with consummate charm, was lost on its hearer but not to those of us
who had listened intently, almost religiously, to John Gwilt
performing all six suites at Edrom or to recordings of Casals of
course.
Jane inspired
complete devotion. I don’t think she wanted to set herself up as a
guru but for many there was something almost cultish about following
her. She couldn’t help it – her energy and charisma were
boundless but it was the music she cared about, not her own glory.
For those without other strong role models (my father quite
deliberately maintained a little distance) she could almost be
dangerous. But she and Christopher and her family were immensely generous
and knowing them enriched my family’s musical, moral and cultural
life immeasurably.