| Description | An interview with Maggie COTTON, a Separated woman with one son, one daughter, who is a Retired CBSO percussion player, born in Yorkshire and now living in Birmingham. Maggie COTTON’s father was a Engineers Pattern Maker, born in U.K and her mother a Mill Worker born in U.K. In the interview, she talks about …
'MS2255/2/14 COTTON, Maggie Logged by Naomi Fowler
01
My name is Maggie Cotton and I was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire in 1937.
10 Cared for by her Grandmother for first 3 months, family, learned the piano.
3.23 …we certainly didn’t have a gramophone…the first method of playing records I got when I was about 15…1952…
3.58 My father was earning abysmal wages, we’re talking during the War…he was in the Home Guard…
02
4.31” Won prizes, lessons kept at low cost because she was a star pupil.
03
3” Story about playing in graveyard.
28 I also remember being very upset because I didn’t get a Mickey Mouse gas mask and other children got Mickey Mouse gas asks, and we always had to carry a gas mask…this would be 1945, 4…
47 Story about being impressed by school dinners and eating soup.
1.37 When I first came to the Midlands I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t snow in Winter, well not to the extent that there is in Yorkshire…
04
I was 11 in 1948 and I went to the local girl’s grammar school…
26” School memories, auditioned for the National Youth Orchestra and got in.
3.12” I didn’t get a grant because I was the wrong sex, the wrong instrument…
3.30” National Youth Orchestra, ‘spotted’ playing timpani, finally got to study.
05
1.07” Her mother died, difficulties in paying for her studies.
2.34” But I suppose I was just a ginger-haired, stubborn old bat…
3.25” Attitude of some men to her being in the orchestra.
06
All of this was going on in 1958 when I’d left the Academy, I was only there for a year…
6” …but looking back now…in retrospect I realise that I was something of a novelty…
34” First concert at Covent Garden.
3.16” Coming from Yorkshire in 1956 to the Royal Academy in London I came across all kinds of people from different backgrounds…in 1954, 55 and I’d never met people from boarding school before, I actually had no idea that real people lived in schools, I couldn’t believe it… but we all got on…all sorts of accents…
4.14” Wrote to her father to describe the first time she tried coleslaw.
07
I was 21 when I first heard about the job in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra…
17” Applied for the job, interviewed, got the job.
1.58” …it was at the time that Sir Adrian Boult did a… fill in year before they got a permanent conductor…he couldn’t cope with this, he’d look at the back and see the timpanist…and me…he’d have a little go…
2.47” Story about Adrian Boult making a sexist joke about her.
08
Always stopped by the police because she drove a van.
54” …it was April just before my 22nd birthday and I arrived and got on…the number 50 bus and went through Balsall Heath…Balsall Heath was very crowded and rather gritty then and then got to Moseley and I couldn’t believe all the garden, I couldn’t believe that this was the Birmingham I was dreading…
1.20” Description of Moseley gardens, flowers and trees.
09
Being the ‘ladies’ of the orchestra, used to have their own separate room, then they opened the room up into a communal room for all.
1.52” …I’d had it hammered into me at college that you didn’t speak to conductors and you didn’t speak to management, you knew your place…we were all known by our surnames…never by first names…
2.19” Memories of Harold Grey, conductor.
Travelled to schools to do concerts.
10
2.03” Orchestra played for Music Festivals.
11
Story about going into the roof of the Royal Albert Hall to do the explosions for the 1812 Overture with an electrician.
12
2” I got married in 1963 when I was 26…we had two children…
14” Working as a mother.
2.15” Louis Fremaux came to conduct the orchestra, many standing ovations.
Story about playing bells.
13
17” The building of the Symphony Hall, arrival of Simon Rattle at the age of 23.
1.16” …we watched them start it off …the first sod being turned, the orchestra watched this with fascination as the buildings were being pulled down. When I first came to Birmingham they were doing the Ring Road and you get little old Brummie ladies saying ‘I don’t know how to get across to Hurst St, could you tell me where to go?’ And every day would be different, you’d be going into town and you couldn’t find your way and it got like that in Broad Street.
1.45” Architects consulted the orchestra about their needs. Story about stage construction and their first view of the Symphony Hall: ‘We’d come home.’
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12” Arrival of Simon Rattle, description of working with him.
2.02” I have looked at that face now for 18 years, more than I’ve ever looked at my family…
2.30” Orchestra have learned to be ‘ambassadors,’ used to talking to ‘important’ people.
15
Story of when Simon Rattle left. ‘It was like the break up of a marriage.’
1.32” Arrival of Sakari Oromo.
16
Making recordings, strangeness of not playing to an audience.
17
Taking part in the first performance of Britten’s War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral before it was consecrated.
19” …incredibly moving, and I’d never seen such a huge score…piece of music…three conductors…when we did the first performance…Britten did not want applause at the end and there was no applause and there was this horrendous silence which went on for ten life times…
1.40” Performance of Mahler in Tokyo. ‘Mahler’s ghost was there.’
18
Question was asked about raising children in 1964…new track was marked to establish the year.
19
My son was born in 1964…they didn’t have the freedom that I did…
1.13” Didn’t have the same ‘partnership’ with her husband that her daughter has with her husband now.
2.30” Going on tour, leaving the children.
20
I got married in 1963…I was very sad when it happened and we actually separated in 1987.
25” …things were very different when we got married…the woman had a role and it was less of a partnership…than it is now.
39” Story about hiding what she did for a job.
2.00” Moved to Worcester, how she started addressing audiences.
4.06” I retired a year ago in 1999…
4.15”Enjoying doing other things since. |