Music that Changed Me

Author

Author Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper began her career as a junior reporter for The Middlesex Independent before becoming a columnist for The Sunday Times Magazine and

The Mail on Sunday. She published her first book, How to Stay Married, in 1969 and has since produced a string of best-selling novels, including the ‘Rutshire Chronicles’ series, whose titles include Rivals, Riders and, with a musical theme, Appassionata.

Iused to play BEETHOVEN symphonies on the piano with my father – they must have been very easy duet versions – and my favourite was the Pastoral, with the cuckoo call. But we also loved playing the Ninth which was the only time I saw my father cry. We sang Schubert songs like The Miller and I’d play a bit. I took music for O-level and got quite a good grade but I was so lazy – I never practised. We had a beautiful Cramer grand piano at home; I’ve still got it but the grandchildren are the only ones who play it now.

Brahms for me wrote the most romantic music. Whilst working as a cub reporter in Chiswick and on my way to a court case, this faint-makingly good-looking man screamed to a halt in his E-type and asked me out for a drink. Always taught never to pick up men, I managed to resist him until after work, when he drove me back to his house in Kensington. There we had our first kiss to the ravishing accompaniment of BRAHMS’S Second Piano Concerto. He became a great love of my life and after all this time he is still a huge friend.

My husband Leo had a wonderful bass voice. He sang the bass solo ‘Lord God of Abraham’ in MENDELSSOHN’S Elijah

– just the most beautiful music – and I would sit there listening, faint with joy, to one aria after another. At Leo’s funeral we had that lovely chorus ‘He watching over Israel slumbers not’.

Musicians are the funniest people in the world – they’re so iconoclastic! When I was researching my novel Appassionata

I followed the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra all round the south of England, asking them questions like ‘Is it possible to bonk on top of a glockenspiel?’ (the answer is yes). They all entered into the spirit of it and were so helpful to me that the acknowledgements in Appassionata were almost longer than the book! Polygram brought out a CD with music mentioned in Appassionata and it contains many of my favourite pieces: Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony and, especially, STRAUSS’S Ein Heldenleben.

I love the way Strauss saw himself as the Hero… such hubris! It really is a picture of his married life, with the viola as his nagging wife Pauline, the dreadful critics and the wonderful way husband and wife are reunited, as all couples should be, with a beautiful piece of love music at the end.

The animals in my books are often named after real-life figures. My best joke was the office cat in Appassionata who was called John Drummond, named after the former controller of Radio 3 who had been very stuffy and refused to let me go backstage at a Prom to do research for the book. In the end, the cat wins the lottery and saves the orchestra. I don’t know what John Drummond would have made of that!

I’m bats about opera. I could have chosen Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro after going to a brilliant production by English Touring Opera recently. Instead I’ve gone for VERDI’S Don Carlos. In my book Score, the evil conductor Rannaldini is murdered during the filming of Don Carlos in a haunted abbey. A friend took me to my first Don Carlos in the 1970s and I just swooned. It is the most beautiful, dark Verdi – just listen to the death of Posa, ‘Ah, je meurs’. Posa is a Che Guevara character – I’m sure he was in love with Don Carlos although he could never say so. Also the duet between Elisabetta and Carlos is heavenly.

My next book is about football – I desperately want my darling Rupert (the legendary rider and racehorse owner Rupert Campbell-black) to become England manager! I’m looking for an amazing piece of music for the run-out – Liverpool has ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, so if anyone can give me one for the England team, that would be very useful.