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Maurice Henry Cobbold F/Mc Married: 1941 Nancy Henshawc | |||||
| Sarah Ann Cobbold [CFT #10256] Born: 1952 |
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| b Chelmsford, Essex Sarah writes... Looking back at my childhood inevitably evokes memories of school. I didn't excel: the appreciation of English literature to the old O-level standard eluded me; in maths I was quite capable of making a lemon and an orange add up to three bananas; and sports I was dreadful at – I never learned to swim despite five years of compulsory lessons. O-level Latin was also compulsory; again I was not good at it but the grounding in it has been invaluable ever since. Then, at (old-style) A-level, history caught my interest: British and European history from Bosworth Field to the later 17th century. Not that I realised it at the time, but that era was to become a thread of gold running through my life. On Saturdays, as a Junior Exhibitioner, I also attended the Guildhall School of Music (then in John Carpenter Street EC4), receiving a broad musical education and ultimately taking the Guildhall’s LGSM diploma in piano performance. I studied the piano with W. Ieuan Roberts, recollections of whose inspiring teaching I still treasure. It was he also who suggested I apply for university rather than go straight to music college. Sage advice. The music syllabus at Oxford appealed, and following a written entrance examination and interviews conducted by candlelight during winter blackouts I was accepted. There I was bitten by the 'early music' bug - this was the era of David Munrow, of Musica Reservata and Jantina Noorman, of Christopher Hogwood, and countless - no less estimable - others. I'd never come across such music before: at high school anything before J S Bach had been pretty well a dark age; recordings were thin on the ground, as were editions, and my wherewithal to buy them even more slender. But in Oxford was the opportunity most days of the week in termtime to hear choral Evensong in the chapels of Magdalen College and New College, when I revelled especially in the sacred music of the 16th and 17th centuries: Sheppard, Byrd, Tallis, Gibbons, Pelham Humfrey, Tomkins, ... One of my tutors was David Wulstan of Magdalen College, an inspirational educator as well as a polymath; never to be called a musicologist. In the middle of a tutorial he asked me to sing for him and somehow as a result I ended up in his ground-breaking group the Clerkes of Oxenford. My worth there evolved after taking my degree into transcribing and editing music for the Clerkes’ performances, eventually publishing with Wulstan 16th-century sacred music, mostly though not exclusively for the Latin rite, by Sheppard, Tye, White, Tallis, Victoria, Byrd, Gibbons and so forth under the Oxenford Imprint, for which I also provided the music calligraphy. By that time I was assistant librarian at the Faculty of Music in Oxford. Retrenchment struck and I offered to take a cut in hours and, of course, in salary; this gave me a goodly period each summer in which to focus on producing the Oxenford Imprint editions. I also, belatedly, studied part-time at UCL for a postgraduate diploma in librarianship. There I became interested in 16th- and 17th-century antiquarianism and libraries. A while later, having just spent my last pennies buying and tanking a damp, Victorian, semi-basement studio flat, mortgage interest rates started climbing (I vaguely recall an ascent well into 2 figures) and I had to rethink my priorities and finances before ends stopped meeting. I moved to Jesus College, Oxford, becoming the full-time College Librarian there. After so many years of specialising in music it was quite a change. Responsible for the day-to-day running of the undergraduate library, I found myself renewing acquaintance with subjects last encountered, for better or for worse, at school decades earlier. An adjunct of the library was - still is - a superb Celtic Collection frequented by students and scholars alike. The college also boasts (there should be no other word for it) a wonderful, atmospheric, old library, primarily 16th-18th century in its content, and simple 17th-century Puritan in its design and character. A gem. I was fortunate – and delighted - eventually to be given responsibility also for its day-to-day running, and to be involved in its thorough-going restoration, completed in 2008. A couple of years later I retired and left Oxford. Now I delve far and wide into my families’ histories; and I read avidly (I am something of a magpie in my choices) - ‘proper’ books or e-books - to make up for a couple of decades when changing eyesight had made reading, not to mention music calligraphy, arduous: it’s settled down now. I garden enthusiastically, and take long coastal walks. And I am back playing the piano. After 45 years of living in accommodation where my tickling the ivories would have caused intense irritation to neighbours, I have treated myself to an all-singing all-dancing digital one, capable of replicating the sound of anything from chamber organ through to concert grand piano, and much else in between. With headphones on and outward sound muted, I can again play and practise for hours, annoying only myself. S A Cobbold 2016 |
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