If you could take anyone in the cathedral music world to dinner, who would it be?

[Magnificat]

There is the story concerning a rather traditionalist Dean who, when interviewing a prospective Organist/Master of the Choristers who was a bachelor, said "Of course, our organists have always been married men". Whereupon he was asked in reply " Why,did their wives take choir practice? "

VCC

[Vile Consort]

No but do tell us. (It isn't about wooden legs, is it?)

It is!.

Having welcomed the candidate, Patrick Hadley asked his co-examiners, to their considerable surprise, if any of them had a drawing pin. None of them had, but one was eventually discovered on the mantlepiece, whereupon to the astonishment of his colleagues and the particular horror of the candidate, he pulled up his trouser leg and sock, and thrust the drawing pin with great force into his leg in order to prevent his sock from slipping.

[BBMmk2]

Quite a hard choice this. I would say Sir David Willcocks. He is about the same age as my dad!

[ardcarp]

My version of the story is slightly different. PH was generally known to be unhappy about the admission of women undergraduates, and when one passed him in a Gonville & Caius court he would stab himself in the leg with a pen-knife. But it's probably apocryphal.

[decantor]

Mention of Willcocks........back in my Cantab days, there was a rumour floating around CUMS that DW had sat at the organ at King's and sight-read his way through the full score of some big Berlioz number. Impressive, but never substantiated.

Another rumour from the same period. When the Swingle Singers produced their first record, Thurston Dart (then Prof) was said to have tucked the LP under his arm and marched around every member of his department, insisting they listen and declaring it to be the best illustration of Bach's counterpoint he'd ever encountered. He wanted it used as a teaching aid.

[ardcarp]

Thurston Dart (then Prof)

I thought he was prof at Kings College, London...where he apparently banned pianos from his music department. He just hated them.

[decantor]

I thought he was prof at Kings College, London...where he apparently banned pianos from his music department. He just hated them.

He held the Chair of Music at Cambridge 1962-64 - following Hadley and before he went off to London. I didn't know about the pianos - though of course he preferred the clavichord.

[ardcarp]

Thanks for that, decantor.