Songs You Learned at School

[MrGongGong]

I loathed "Singing Lessons" at Primary School "infants": every Friday morning from Nine o'clock until Wednesday (it seemed like) all the first three years were bundled together to practise the week ahead's hymns, and then "songs", whose words were incomprehensible to my five-seven-year-old self, with the three teachers shouting at us to "sing up" and "sound as if you're enjoying yourself" and the teacher bashing out the notes in octaves on the forte (it sure as hell wasn't a Piano). I developed a deep-ingrained hatred of "Folk Songs" (less so Hymns: when the teachers shut up and let us belt out "Hills of the North Rejoice", it probably saved my developing love of Music - but the saccherine inanities of "Little Jesus sweetly sleep" were probably my first steps towards Atheism) which hasn't really left me.

It was better in "Junior" years (aged 8-11), when we had BBC-based Music activities involving instruments as well as songs written by people who knew what they were doing (I'm with Tom Lehrer; "the trouble with Folk Songs is that they were written by 'the people'") - very fond memories of a version of Aladdin, even more so of an adaptation of the Ancient Marriner story called Lieutenant Cockatoo, with Music by Phyllis Tate. The opening D - A - D on chime bars: the first interval I learnt the name of and how to hear internally.

Even betterer, Secondary School - not so much the Music Lesson singing sessions (although they were much better than the Primary efforts) but the school choir ... and Handel, Purcell, Haydn (the Nelson Mass, the first Classical work I ever sang in - and my eleven-year-old self seeing the name "Haydn" on the cover of the sepia and burgandy vocal score cover, and wondering how that was pronounced. And the school orchestra ...

Years of therapy and medication have thankfully worked, and I can no longer remember the songs inflicted upon us as cruel and unnatural punishment - but I wish them all heartily to hell, and rejoice that kids today have better stuff to engage their minds and enthusiasms. For me, until aged 8, school singing was something to be dreaded (how we all longed for measles and an excuse to avoid the misery) and something completely different from the joy of singing at home, in the playground, or to ourselves.

I share your pain

I was chucked out of the school choir at primary school for "grunting" (and the recorder group for playing it using my nose )
but did sing in a church choir and so on


One of the best "choirs" I've encountered was in a special school in London where the inspired teacher realised that the natural voices of the children was closer to the sounds of contemporary music that the usual faux folk song stuff. So their "hello song" in the morning was a "singalong-a-Stimmung".... days of the week and all "ooooeeeeoooeeooee Mondaaaaaaay"

[Mary Chambers]

We didn’t do country dancing at school. I’d have loved it.

We didn't use the BBC music lessons either, but if I was off school for any reason I always listened to Singing Together. Before that I would listen to Music and Movement and Let’s Join In.

[MickyD]

We didn’t do country dancing at school. I’d have loved it.

We didn't use the BBC music lessons either, but if I was off school for any reason I always listened to Singing Together. Before that I would listen to Music and Movement and Let’s Join In.

Oh, Music and Movement, I'd forgotten that! Our teacher tuned in regularly to it on an ancient wireless - I loved it!

I've found an extract from 1948 - can you imagine the content being broadcast now? I love the story about Ernest Lush the pianist!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ve-93G9h10

[Dave2002]

Oh, Music and Movement, I'd forgotten that! Our teacher tuned in regularly to it on an ancient wireless - I loved it!

I've found an extract from 1948 - can you imagine the content being broadcast now? I love the story about Ernest Lush the pianist!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ve-93G9h10

Great extract - I think I've heard that, or a very similar extract elsewhere. Shouldn't that be on the joke thread?

Is the reference to Ernest Lush in the extract, or perhaps it's somewhere else in this thread?

[Alain Maréchal]

I had no music at school! My early schooling was difficult, late 40s early 50s, we were a protestant francophone family living in a catholic german-speaking enclave (despised because of the recent events) within a catholic francophone province, where all children had to learn Flemish in addition. (This partly explains the Belgian national psyche). Anything "diverting" such as music or dance was something for the family, where fortunately there was a large collection of records; my earliest musical recollection is of Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald - I broke my mother's treasured 78. Poetry was learned by rote - light stuff such as Lamartine. I was astonished to discover, age 11 in an English school, that everybody in Das Land ohne Musik knew all these songs (and hated them, apparently. Boys did not like singing). I did not know (mentioned upthread) what a Froebel school was, and had to investigate. I had nothing remotely resembling that (think Les Quatre Cents Coups), and realise that it explains an awful lot about me. Too late.

[MickyD]

Great extract - I think I've heard that, or a very similar extract elsewhere. Shouldn't that be on the joke thread?

Is the reference to Ernest Lush in the extract, or perhaps it's somewhere else in this thread?

No, it's in the comments section just below the image on the YouTube page...just scroll down, Dave.

[cloughie]

We didn’t do country dancing at school. I’d have loved it.

We didn't use the BBC music lessons either, but if I was off school for any reason I always listened to Singing Together. Before that I would listen to Music and Movement and Let’s Join In.

Yes I remember country dancing and not being particularly good at it, I also very much preferred Singing Together much more than Music and Movement. There was also another programme, again I think William Appleby led, called Rhythm and Melody.

[Tevot]

Alas poor ferney.

You should have come to our school.

I spent a long time polishing this one on my own in my effort to impress a certain Anna! We all had to have a party piece, and this was mine. I must have been 10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4bUKf1GVFc

Crikey Charlie .... !!!

For some reason the picture of John McCormack is inverted. It is like hearing Satan Sing !! In this case regrettably I must conclude that despite the hype - the Devil on this occasion had the crappiest tune ...

[Padraig]

Crikey Charlie .... !!!

For some reason the picture of John McCormack is inverted. It is like hearing Satan Sing !! In this case regrettably I must conclude that despite the hype - the Devil on this occasion had the crappiest tune ...

Tevot, you didn't need to say 'regrettably'

[alywin]

I'm another Singing Together girl from the early 70s. And yes, I'm pretty sure I can still sing significant chunks of at least half the songs we learned - I feel a chorus of "Song of the Western Men" coming on!

We also did something, prior to that, which was more fairytale-based - I definitely remember Aladdin.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

We also did something, prior to that, which was more fairytale-based - I definitely remember Aladdin.

Late at night
Out of sight
Works a wizard with <tum-ti-tum>

From a pot
Piping hot
Steam is rising within the room

<tum-ti-tum>
<tum-ti-tum>
<tum-ti-tum-ti-tuuum>

As usual, I fear,
I've no idea
How good the result will be
BANG!!

... perhaps? (Began with a short intro on the bassoon: po-po-pee-po-po-pee pah--da-dee). It's about fifty years since I did this, so apologies for the missing words: the Music I remember vividly.

[cloughie]

I'm another Singing Together girl from the early 70s. And yes, I'm pretty sure I can still sing significant chunks of at least half the songs we learned - I feel a chorus of "Song of the Western Men" coming on

I don’t remember the song being in the Singing Together repertoire in the 50s but I’ve certainly made up for that since moving here and must by now have sung it over 100 times - not least last Monday evening when we sang it at the end of the Cornwall International Male Voice Festival in Truro Cathedral, and two weeks ago to the background of Steam Engines at Trevithick Day.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Demetrius]

Singing in school. Torture. Same thing really. Not much I remember from primary school, but in the later years our teacher chucked everything from inane folk songs to Schubert via the Beatles at us. The results were not altogether pleasing, most of us were basically tone-deaf. Anyone who could halfway hold his own she tried to press into service for the school choir. One of the problem was that she employed a keyboard which made everything, including Schuberts Heideröslein, "Auf der schwäbsche Eisenbahne" and Yesterday sound alike, while at the same time not sounding like any of them at all (more like El Condor Pasa than anything else, actually). She also had a thing for canons, which we absolutely weren't equal to.

[visualnickmos]

Great illustration; Is it attributed?