CHARLES
CAMILLERI REMEMBERED
~
1931-2009 ~
'The
important thing in life is the journey, not the destination'
I
first met Charles Camilleri in the sixties when he was living in
London. That British music was ruled then by Glock, Keller and Boulez
at the BBC, that Birtwistle, Goehr and Max Davies were the lions of
the Establishment, that the press largely understated his voice,
didn't bother him. ‘When they’re all gone, we’ll still be
here,’ he'd impishly quip.
Self-effacement wasn't a
Charles trait, any more than casual socialising. Forever promoting
his ideas and music, scheming with publishers, getting commissions,
talking to the media, being seen, he voyaged the world – from
Europe to the Far East, the USA to the Soviet Union - expending vast
amounts of energy attending premieres of even the smallest works.
Sometimes, I used to think, he lived only for how many performances
he could chalk up.
Talk to any London musician a
generation ago and it wouldn’t be long before ‘Charlie boy’
came into the conversation. The archetypal networker, he had the
greatest address book in town. Getting together wasn't easy, though.
You needed a reason, and you had to book well in advance,
particularly after he moved back to Malta in 1983. Visits to London
were bustling, tightly scheduled affairs. A rapid hour at a fish
restaurant, a Soho steak-house, a café, pursuing a quick-fire
agenda, was his style. Cursory courtesies, facts on the table,
proposition, deal? … that’s how he worked.
How he
found time to compose I never knew. Scores, proofs, manuscripts,
loose sketches littered his Bechstein. Maybe he kept drawers full of
rhythms, Western chords and Eastern modes which unseen hands would
cobble together into patchworks as long or short, difficult or
simple, dissonant or consonant as occasion demanded ... ? He could
take a joke.
Teilhard de Chardin, Oriental mysticism,
Africa, India, the cosmos were Charles's inspirations. Stravinsky,
Bartók and Messiaen came often into our conversation He wasn't a
stereotypical 'intellectual', however. Generalisation,
simplification, couching his thoughts in the broadest of brush
strokes, using shock tactics to impress and provoke, was more his
modus operandi. He left it to others to objectify the message – in
particular Richard England the architect-poet and Peter Serracino
Inglott.
'There is so much I could say, but I haven't
got enough silence to say it all'. Quotable quotes came naturally to
Charles. His letters were littered with them, some finding their way
later into articles and books. 'When I am in the dark I try to see.
When I don't see I imagine ... then I listen'. 'The artist does not
impose order in chaos but rather discovers the order already present
in that chaos'. 'Music is like truth; and truth is like rain. It does
not concern itself with who gets wet when it pours'. 'Music is a way
to reach the Supreme Being'.
'World traveller in time
and music', Charles was the supreme eclectic, journeying from light
entertainer to esoteric fantasist to faculty professor, jazzing a
'break' one moment, running through 'atomised' rhythms the next, body
language in fifth gear. His hunting ground was open, his
'trans-cultural cross-fertilisation of musical languages' (Serracino
Inglott) global. So long as your passport was stamped 'music' you had
his attention - from Frank Sinatra, Hoagy Carmichael and Art Tatum,
through Malcolm Arnold and Johnny Dankworth to Orff, Cage, Feldman,
de Leeuw, Stockhausen ... from street busker to concert luminary ...
child to old man … Other people's raised eyebrows weren't his
problem.
Typically, Charles's schedule encompassed
anything. Evenings at the Royal Festival Hall ... high philosophy ...
pantomime in Worthing ... Sailor Beware! ... Edward de Bono ... the
UK festival circuit ... BBC Radio 3 ... the Eurovision Song Contest
... Accordion Times photo-shoots ... lecture tours ... conferences
(most historically, the Mediterranean gathering in Valletta in
November 1989) ... tin-pan alley ... Camilleri's Musical Terms ...
films ... metaphysics ... The Camilleri Complete Modern Accordion
Method ... the Unesco Foundation of International Studies ...
Warm
and optimistic, always smiling, a raconteur with a touch of the
nomad, Charles never short-changed his friends. Through him came my
first credits as a record producer, my first orchestral production
(with the Royal Philharmonic at Abbey Road), and my public début as
a composer. Recording his music was interesting. As a composer he
rarely intervened in my decisions. As a conductor who'd been
apprenticed to the pit/wireless trade in post-war London and Toronto
(Harold Fielding vintage), he was the quintessential studio man –
disciplined, tight beat, eye on the clock, economical with words,
headphones on.
Charles Camilleri, New Age Argonaut, was
an irrepressible adventurer. Music for him was about affirmations,
excitations and contradictions of silence and heartbeat, about
sound-scapes circling distant points, free-wheeling through time,
coming home to rest. No 20th century figure bridged so many styles or
disciplines nor engaged such a wide cross-section of society. I'm
glad to have known him.