“Next!” That was my dismissal. He’d asked me if I’d ever sung in a choir. I hadn’t and I told him so.
“Here endeth the lesson” a phrase that comes to mind in an unguarded moment, when I wander back to that audition, sixty-five years ago. Week three, the school chaplain had one hundred new, eleven-year-old boys yarded, drafting speedily, hopeful that somewhere in the flock he might come across a choired prodigy.
He had a prestigious reputation as a Choir Master, relocating from Kings College, Cambridge. Some nights I still wrestle with my failure to remonstrate. Maybe he might have reassessed my dismissal if I had just broken out with a few lines from a G&S operetta or a “Please Sir, I’d like…”. But of course, I didn’t. I meekly left the room.
I was aware that I was from the other side of the tracks. I perceived this private boarding school, afforded because of a dramatic change in family fortunes, would forever pin me to the bottom of a pre-ordained pecking order. I was from Rosebud, they all seemed to live in Toorak and beachside holidays were at Barwon Heads. The mismatch was crushing.
My social acceptability was not being helped by newspaper headlines reporting my uncle for his villainous, anti-Australian activities. His vociferous opposition to our involvement in the Vietnam conflict was gaining national traction, but not among my fellow students. Menzies was suggesting treason, the tabloids were having a field day, and me, desperate for admission, fell further into the mire.
My sister and I were both sopranos. We knew all the lyrics, and harmonies within the G&S repertoire, from South Pacific, Oklahoma, High Society, Fiddler on the Roof and any other stray musical exposures we came across. We even picked up and inserted harmonies against Dad’s breathy whistling of childhood-learned hymns and could entertain, me taking the upper registry of the 23rd Psalm.
I didn’t appreciate the significance of missed voice training, vital to taking my voice through puberty in any meaningful way. Rather, I just saw my exclusion from a wonderous four-part singing opportunity, that I badly wanted to be part of! But I still didn’t pluck up the courage to say anything.
In my last year, I finally had the sense, and self-worth, to approach the choirmaster and join. I was part of their chorale. Dio mio! Those wasted years! As a tenor, I revelled in that year.
Singing stayed with me as a favourite, but generally private pursuit. I joined regional choirs and musical repertory groups, the occasional solo performances from Mozart, Handel and Bizet, but more so, as a folk festival entertainer. I became a Rogers and Hammerstein bathroom singer, not Luciano at La Scala: more a pub performing Mario Lanza.
I was left with an unanswerable question. What if, as an 11-year-old, I had been more forthcoming? Dreams continued to titillate, to explore the what-ifs of a missed musical career. I still sing in the car, by myself.