From about 1957 I was enrolled at the Guildhall School of Music, and had the great priviledge of attending Alfred Nieman’s classes in history and in musical form. Right from the start, I knew that here at last was a teacher open to the exciting new directions in music that had arisen during the twentieth century. His fascination with new music gave Nieman’s assessment of the great historical figures a freshness not to be found in many a plodding, conventional approach.
On one occasion he gave the history class an assignment to write a short essay on Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge, offering a small prize for the best essay. I remember that mine concentrated mainly on structural matters and the striking originality of its form; but the prize went to a quite different essay that stressed Beethoven’s state of mind as he struggled musically to overcome deafness, illness, and isolation. It was so typical of Nieman that he should choose an essay that got to the heart of the composer’s creative process rather than (like mine) dealing more academically with formal matters.
Nieman’s teaching was always iconoclastic. You never knew what to expect. What, he asked in one of the early classes in form, is a cadence? We remained silent, perhaps having grasped by then that the conventional ‘a dominant or subdominant chord followed by the tonic’ would bring upon us nothing but scorn. Sure enough, Nieman’s derisive answer was ‘any chord followed by any chord!’—thus bringing home to us the simple truth that a cadence is whatever, in the context, results in a satisfying close.
At a later stage I was thrilled when Nieman agreed to give me composition lessons. I remember taking along my first short sketch, and his immediate recognition that my main influence was BartÛk. Eventually, a few of us who were Nieman’s keen disciples formed the basis of his improvisation class, given one evening a week, I think to begin with at his house in Hampstead. On one of those occasions, no doubt after much urging from us, he played the haunting Sarabande from his Suite for Piano. This marvellous piece still has the power to transport me back to the atmosphere of those days.
My overall memory of Alfred Nieman is of the help, encouragement, and inspiration that flowed out of him at all times, directed to all students who came in contact with him. After I left the Guildhall and London I tried to keep in touch with him—I wish now I had done so more often. In spite of an overwhelmingly busy life, he never failed to answer a letter or postcard. I still keep and treasure several of these letters, together with some scores and LP records of his music.
Michael Whalley (received June 13th 2009)
back / list of pseudonyms / list of compositions / links / contribute something / contributions /