REWIND WITH…

Pictured: Mr Tod Piekos in 1972. Photo by Max Dupain

You’re American. How did you come to work at Grammar?

While in Chicago on vacation from my first teaching position in my home state of Massachusetts, I was captivated by an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune placed by the NSW Department of Education. I responded and learned the offer was run in three countries to recruit English, Canadian and American graduates to fill teacher supply gaps in the New South Wales Department of Education. The enticements included airfare, a substantial settling-in allowance and a year’s teaching contract with the Department in a broad range of locations.

My placement was to a new high school in Green Valley near Liverpool. Every Sunday I took the train to Sydney to attend concerts and plays. I began scoping the Saturday employment section of The Sydney Morning Herald. An ad placed by Sydney Grammar School piqued my attention. The location was the clincher: concert halls, surf beaches, museums, mighty Victorian architecture and the almost-finished Sydney Opera House within walking distance. This was for me!

What were your first impressions of the School?

The Headmaster was the legendary Mr Alastair Mackerras. He and Mr Peter Seymour, Senior Music Master, interviewed me, gave me piano music to sight read and outlined their intentions to bolster the Music programme at Grammar. Here were two men in academic gowns, cracking jokes and humming snippets of music from Mozart’s The Magic Flute. These exchanges were perhaps intended to put me at ease but had exactly the opposite effect.

The Headmaster was liked and admired by staff and boys for his intellectual prowess, his empathy with boys at every stage of school life and his extraordinary recall for minutiae. His vision of the School was solidly based in the humanities and music was his great passion. He was determined, with the two headmasters of the preparatory schools and Mr Peter Seymour, to make music one of the beacons of Grammar’s excellence, achievement and place in the wider community.

Pictured: Head of Music Mr Peter Seymour with Musicians by Max Dupain 1970

What was it like to work with the Head of Music, Mr Peter Seymour?

Inspiring and revelatory. He had an extraordinary rapport with the boys and an instinctive ability to lead by example. His determination, boundless energy and irresistible persuasiveness were used to establish a common policy in the three schools: sourcing the best teachers, making violin a compulsory study at St Ives and Edgecliff and expanding the range of musical activities. There was resistance from various subject masters to this new emphasis on Music, but Mackerras and Seymour were determined to prevail. It was well into the 1980s before the fruits of all this groundwork became evident. The first full-fee music scholarships in Sydney were offered in 1979 and have proved to be a model for other schools to emulate.

As for me, I had quite a good grounding in general music practice and theory. One of Peter’s gifts was a contagious enthusiasm for the structures within music beyond the immediate appeal of the melody and bass lines. Boys (and colleagues) were encouraged to listen vertically and be responsive to the rhythmic and harmonic roles within the fabric of the music. This way of listening hugely informed my own teaching and it is probably this legacy from Peter for which I am most thankful.

Peter’s professional involvement in Sydney’s musical life as Musical Director of the Sydney Philharmonia Society led to several engagements for Grammar choristers with organisations like the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the ABC and Opera Australia. I was often drawn into these activities as musical tutor, chaperone and assistant conductor, expanding my experience working in professional circles. Performances took place in the Sydney Town Hall and the Sydney Opera House and included the occasional direct broadcasts on the ABC. These were noted by the public, reviewed in the press and gave the boys extraordinary opportunities. As a young, green teacher this was a musical world far beyond anything I could have foreseen.

Pictured: Members of the USA Choir Tour in front of the Vermont State Capital in 1998

You have also been involved in choirs outside of Grammar. Can you please tell us about your experiences?

Because Mr Peter Seymour was the Music Director of Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and the former conductor of the Sydney University Musical Society (SUMS) I was given work with the former and offered the post of conductor of SUMS in 1974. Over the next five years, SUMS concerts were presented in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney and one direct live broadcast on the ABC.

For several years in the 1970s, Grammar was asked to prepare boys for on-stage roles with Opera Australia. My Music department colleagues and I trained boys for parts in operas. The many hours spent backstage with international stars, stage rehearsals and exhilarating performances were as much a part of my own musical development as it provided unique experiences for the boys.

Pictured: Extract from the 1982ABC Radio Guide promoting one of the many public performances by Grammar choristers

Pictured: Conducting from the harmonium in 2000

You taught HSC music for twenty-five years. What were your experiences in the classroom and the amazing young musicians that you helped?

Boys who study for HSC music are not usually contemplating music as a career or even studying it formally at the tertiary level. What they do have in common is a profound interest in the subject, a love of performing, healthy curiosity and the intellectual capacity to grasp complex concepts of history and construction. The challenges for me, especially in my formative years as a teacher, were attuning my particular musical strengths to the boys’ requirements and giving the correct guidance and assistance. My largest class was eleven boys, the smallest was three. Without naming individuals I have taught there are at least seven professional singers, two composers of renown, five conductors of international orchestras and/or opera/ballet companies, jazz and mainstream popular musicians as well as members of several Australian and European orchestras.