Peter Walker
gone but not forgotten
Does anyone remember Miss Stephens She Miss was a legendary figure i nn her time. She had taught my mum around 1920, when she (Miss Stephens) must already have been in her middle age. and me from April 1941 to early 1944 - she was well past it by then. Although I was born not far away, in the Brooke Maternity Nursing Home at 33 Villa Road, my parents left Handsworth, where they had lived for the first year or so of their married life in Grasmere Road, to go to a brand new semi-detached house at 15 Hill Crest Grove, north of Witton Cemetery, three miles away.
I was not quite eight when I started there. I had already been going for a year or so to Miss Roberts, who lived at no. 12 opposite, but she was more for deportment and and politeness than music - but I did learn that "Music is written on five long lines", and memorised a number of phrases like "A cow eats grass", whose initials marked the notes in the spaces in the bottom clef. By contrast, Miss Stephens was brisk and highly organised. She was a little eccentric, but she got results.
I went twice a week - Thursday afternoons for a 30-minute piano lesson, and Saturday mornings for a longer section of about an hour and a half. During that time there would be a small group of children seated round the large table in the back kitchen, where her worthy assistant Edith Scattergood taught us the rudiments of musical theory. One by one we were called into the front sanctum, where Miss Stephens would listento us play our new piece. She had a baton or apencil in her hand, partly to beat time, but more frequently to rap our knuckles if we made a silly mistake. She also had a middle room with a piano. This was a eerie place with an evil-smelling piano wsith peeling ivories. I didn't like that room!
She tended to be the butt of the local kids' pranks - they would sometimes peep through the window or shout while we were playing, and she would rattle the bead curtains against the glass.
I learned a great deal from Miss Stephens and Edith, not just how to play pieces of music, but about the rudiments, and above all about the joy of making music.
Miss Stephens had a brother who was even more eccentric, although he was gifted in several useless ways. He was known to mus as "Old Copper Conk", becasue, rumour had it, he had been known to stand in the road to direct the traffic. He was well read and knowledgeable about many things, and he also wrote poetry. She tried to keep him out of the way, but I got on with him quite well, and I remember he gave me a book of sketches of Norway, with short verses which I think he had written himself.
After three years I moved on to the Birmigham and Midland Institute, where J M W (John Willy to us) Dunn gave piano lessons. By coincidence he was organist of the Baptist or Methodist Church in Lozells Road, close to Villa Road.
In 1950 my dad became organist of St Michael's C/E up the road, and I sang in the choir there for about eight years until I moved to London in 1959. I still play the organ for various local churches in London.
I hope these recollections will be of interest. What a great site this is! This is my first contribution, but I will probably do some more.
Best Wishes - Peter
I was not quite eight when I started there. I had already been going for a year or so to Miss Roberts, who lived at no. 12 opposite, but she was more for deportment and and politeness than music - but I did learn that "Music is written on five long lines", and memorised a number of phrases like "A cow eats grass", whose initials marked the notes in the spaces in the bottom clef. By contrast, Miss Stephens was brisk and highly organised. She was a little eccentric, but she got results.
I went twice a week - Thursday afternoons for a 30-minute piano lesson, and Saturday mornings for a longer section of about an hour and a half. During that time there would be a small group of children seated round the large table in the back kitchen, where her worthy assistant Edith Scattergood taught us the rudiments of musical theory. One by one we were called into the front sanctum, where Miss Stephens would listento us play our new piece. She had a baton or apencil in her hand, partly to beat time, but more frequently to rap our knuckles if we made a silly mistake. She also had a middle room with a piano. This was a eerie place with an evil-smelling piano wsith peeling ivories. I didn't like that room!
She tended to be the butt of the local kids' pranks - they would sometimes peep through the window or shout while we were playing, and she would rattle the bead curtains against the glass.
I learned a great deal from Miss Stephens and Edith, not just how to play pieces of music, but about the rudiments, and above all about the joy of making music.
Miss Stephens had a brother who was even more eccentric, although he was gifted in several useless ways. He was known to mus as "Old Copper Conk", becasue, rumour had it, he had been known to stand in the road to direct the traffic. He was well read and knowledgeable about many things, and he also wrote poetry. She tried to keep him out of the way, but I got on with him quite well, and I remember he gave me a book of sketches of Norway, with short verses which I think he had written himself.
After three years I moved on to the Birmigham and Midland Institute, where J M W (John Willy to us) Dunn gave piano lessons. By coincidence he was organist of the Baptist or Methodist Church in Lozells Road, close to Villa Road.
In 1950 my dad became organist of St Michael's C/E up the road, and I sang in the choir there for about eight years until I moved to London in 1959. I still play the organ for various local churches in London.
I hope these recollections will be of interest. What a great site this is! This is my first contribution, but I will probably do some more.
Best Wishes - Peter