BBC Music Magazine
August 2007
With all the talent in the highest echelons of the musical firmament you wouldn’t expect there to be any competition at the talentless end of the musical rainbow. But that’s what’s happening up in Edinburgh ever since the invasion of The Really Terrible Orchestra. The band of hopeless players has become so popular that they are having to stop recruiting new members of what amounts to title more than a group of musical illiterates.
All this awfulness began 12 years ago as a parents revenge. So fed up with their constant ferrying of talented children to and from music lessons, choirs, rehearsals and concerts, a group of parents decided to start up some music making of their own. The fact that they hadn’t touched an instrument in decades, and could only read music if it didn’t stray into the leger lines did not to deter them. ‘Had any of us been sufficiently good at music we probably would have found our way into a proper orchestra,’ says founder member Peter Stevenson. ‘But we thought, just because we are severely damaged musically, does that mean we aren’t allowed to play music?’
So they enlisted the help of their children’s choirmaster, the conductor Richard Neville-Towle. These days he spends much of his time conducting the leading Scottish ensemble Ludus Baroque, but even then he wasn’t convinced there was much merit to their plan: ‘I really didn’t want to do it. The idea is to make music beautifully and that clearly wasn’t going to be possible with them.’ The first gathering included the writer Alexander McCall Smith and his wife Elizabeth, whose musical children had foxed them. It turned out to be such good fun that they made it a regular meeting. The Really Terrible Orchestra was born.
Soon doctors, lawyers, bankers, and teachers around the city were dusting off instruments from the attic and to join. ‘There was a sheer delight in playing music with other people when by rights one should not be entitled to, not having the musicianship to justify it,’ says McCall Smith, who owns over 30 different wind instruments but can barely play any of them. Since auditions were not appropriate there was never going to be any balance in the orchestra - whatever instrument you played was welcome. ‘If I decided that I was giving up the piano and going to come in one day with an accordion, I could still sit somewhere and have a go,’ says the RTO pianist Margaret Anderson, a retired GP. The RTO now has 60 squawkers and Stevenson regrets turning away ten Terribles each month.
In the tradition of all esteemed conductors the players bestowed an honorary knighthood on their own leader, Neville-Towle. Sir Richard, as he is affectionately known, is key to their ‘success’. His sharp banter keeps everyone entertained and negotiates the fine line between nurturing the little skill they have, and letting them all enjoy the experience. ‘I’m not here to create anything beautiful. My job is to make it fun for the players,’ he says, adding wryly, ‘If you put pressure on them they get completely flustered and play even worse, so getting them to do something again is counter-productive.’
You only have to witness them in rehearsal to hear what a job he has on hiw hands. Tempos are decided by what they can play, not by the music: as Neville-Towle adds admits, ‘the score is merely a guide, it is by no means something we strictly adhere to.’
‘We’ve had other very good guest conductors, but the serious ones don’t work quite so well because they do get frustrated. We are indeed very frustrating,’ says Susie Stevenson, percussionist and wife of the chairman Peter. McCall Smith, for example, refuses to play anything which has a C-sharp in it, and it is not uncommon for members of the orchestra to be playing completely the wrong piece without noticing. Ever resourceful however, the orchestra have developed a system where players can sub-contract tricky bars to others in their section.
‘Sir Richard’s capacity to get into the brains of people of our limited talent and treat us the way we want to be treated is very skilful,’ says Peter Stevenson. There is, however, a serious point lurking behind the chairman’s words. ‘I don’t want to be humiliated and upset by being given music I can’t play,’ he says. ‘The problem with amateur groups is they often play music that is too difficult for them. The good amateur would like you to believe that you want to go and hear them for the pleasure of hearing music played well, but the trouble is they are offering a poor man’s version of a professional orchestra and it will inevitably be inferior.’ The RTO on the other hand makes no such pretension: ‘We can say that the RTO is simply the leading orchestra of its genre in the world.’
Finding the right music for the group has often been tricky but it’s not for lack of offers: eight different composers have been compelled to write works for the group, with varying success. “Competence is not a word in out vocabulary. If the music is too hard for us, we will just sulk,’ says Winnie Wood, maths teacher and RTO bassoonist. Composer and bandmaster, the late Douglas Mackay understood the group best, arranging huge swathes of music which forms RTO’s core repertoire. Concerts might include ‘Winter Wonderland’, Strauss’s Pizzicato Polka, and a favourite is the 1812 Overture (or the last 43 bars of it). Mackay’s own composition Mma Ramotswe written after McCall Smith’s literary heroine, is another signature piece.
McCall Smith admits that an orchestra would make a brilliant place to set a book and though he hasn’t yet been tempted, another of his heroines, Isabel Dalhousie, has been to an RTO concert in one of her books.
The concerts are major events in the Edinburgh calendar. They sell out in days and perform to packed houses. Crucially, all concerts are preceded by a free wine reception in which audience members are encouraged to drink as much as they can to numb the ears.
The sheer obstinacy of the players pays dividends in various ways, not least that they somehow manage to secure concert venues which would be the envy of many professional ensembles. Early concert highlights included the Village Hall in Pittenweem, but the group have since gone on to glory at The Queen’s Hall and Usher Hall in Edinburgh, and most recently Edinburgh Castle, where they miraculously managed to navigate the red tape of both Historic Scotland and the army in order to stage the event. Only 60 audience members were allowed in to the Great Hall and, to top it off, the RTO managed to convince major general Euan Loudon, the former general officer of the commanding division and now chief executive and producer of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, to take the lead role as soloist in Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘I am the very model of a modern Major General’ – complete with a wry, new text. Two Pipers in full battle dress of the Regiment of Scotland also joined them (looking bemused) for the orchestra’s version of ‘Highland Cathedral’.
Ten years on and with increasing press coverage, they are probably the best -known bad orchestra in the world. ‘We love all this press because it makes us feel more important than we really are,’ quips one player. ‘I’ve got some friends who are accomplished musicians and they are always amazed that we get more exposure than we do,’ says clarinettist Christine McKechnie. Their notoriety owes much to McCall-Smith, whose own fame has been great since the publication of his loveable No. 1 Private Ladies’ Detective Agency stories. During book tours he often talks of the RTO and this had led their CD to be broadcast on Radio CBC in Canada, ABC Radio in Australia and even the USA’s National Public Radio as part of McCall Smith interviews. Fan mail has come in from all corners. ‘In the US they find it funny and odd. Out there you don’t do anything to lose – the idea is that you should be a winner so the RTO is what they would describe as an orchestra of losers.’ McCall Smith prefers to describe the ensemble as ‘an orchestral Eddie the Eagle.’
You could think that the total breakdown of their performance of Mackay’s ‘All at Sea’ was a kind of staged theatrics, but you couldn’t invent the look of terror on most of the player’s faces. ‘Even if the sound did one day become better,’ McCall Smith muses, ‘we would still be a great study in concentration.’ Of course when things do go wrong the audience is delighted and Neville-Towle is quick to capitalise on it. ‘We know that if things go wrong we can make a joke of it and everyone loves that. You can twist the event from something that could be dull to being something that is a hoot to watch.’
However despite all the tongue-in-cheek joking this isn’t an orchestra playing for laughs. In work and home one has to be together’: there is no time for messing up when only the best will do. The RTO provides a haven where slipping up is the norm and where mistakes are given an encouraging pat on the back. ‘It’s very liberating to be allowed to do something badly, but still enjoy doing it,’ says McCall Smith. The real humour of the RTO comes from the face that these people, often from Edinburgh’s highest professional and academic circles, are trying their hardest to get it right…but almost never do. And that’s strangely comforting…