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The Boot Camp Experience

I sometimes find myself on a concert platform gazing into a chattering hall, wondering how it is that our public comes to be there, and whether after two hundred and thirty years of existence, the string quartet still has any relevance to people's lives.

During the five years that I have been a member of the Schidlof Quartet, I had never knowingly played and presented music in front of 200 murderers, rapists, and drug offenders before. While I had an extremely good idea of how this audience had come to be here, I was less certain of how they would react to the music we were going to play.

Amongst the quartet's engagements on our debut US tour, were concerts in Washington's Corcoran Gallery, NY State, Alabama, Florida, as well as a 5-day residency in LA to do some education outreach work, an important part of our work as a string quartet. The LA experience was perhaps one of the most revelatory series of projects in which I have ever participated.

We had been asked by the coordinator of the Da Camera music society to go into a young offenders prison, some way from downtown LA. With the help of the entire quartet's navigationally challenged abilities (besides which Californian freeways are notoriously difficult to negotiate), we arrived at the prison car park, located between the railway track and the institution itself. The first thing that struck me about the car park was the sheer volume of wrecked 'seventies cars in the long-term section. Obviously this was a "drive-thru" prison. The second was a couple making out on the bonnet of a rusty Buick.

We surrendered our passports on entering the building, and having been met at the first of three security doors, we proceeded to a large modern chapel, built like an aircraft hangar laid out with 200 empty plastic chairs. A distant drone of "boot camp chanting" broke the eerie silence, the question and answer sort you hear on US military films. In marched our audience, now in total silence, and sat to attention. Young men with shaven heads and miserable expressions and numbers, not names.On the command of "relax" our presentation commenced.

We started off with some Mozart - the first movement of the Hunt Quartet. It is cheerful, positive, and conversationally lively. They clapped politely at the end, whereupon I started a discussion. "What's going on in this music - what's the character etc?" "Why, it's sad music" came the reply. My first reaction was surprise; we had never had this response before from this piece. Were we doing something wrong-or were the dismal circumstances surrounding us affecting their concept of the music?

We then played the prisoners some Beethoven, the opening of the second Rasumovsky quartet. It begins with two loud, angry chords, like someone banging his fist on a table. Then follows a contemplative silence, and a scurrying musical phrase. The response - an outbreak of nervous laughter, and remarks like "a head being cut off-and then a feeling of remorse."  This music was relevant to the prisoners.

Some excerpts from Shostakovich's 7th Quartet were next on the menu. The slow movement starts with an eerie rolling wave-like figure on the second violin, the first violin joins in shortly afterwards with a deathly-still but haunting melody. Later on in the movement there is a repeating rhythm, which binds together the ghostly sounds emanating from the  'cello and viola.

"It's like the voice of authority always there" said one of the inmates. This movement runs on into a brutal fugue, starting on the viola. "It's like someone is running away from a killer, running and running," said another breathlessly. "Does any one recognize the tune in the last movement?" I asked. It had taken us as an ensemble eight months for the penny to drop on this one. "Yeah" piped up someone near the back. It's like the tune you played right at the beginning.

I could hardly hide my amazement. Every so often in an education project, someone hits you with an insight like a bolt from the blue.  The man who got this one, went on correctly to identify all our rhythm quiz questions, where we play just the rhythm of a well-known TV theme tune, and they have to name the tune.

 As a performer, I am acutely aware of the levels of involvement of an audience. I cannot remember such a feeling of rapt stillness, as was the case during the Shostakovich. They left, the way they had arrived, in military formation. I felt a real sense of achievement, as well as elation.

On the last day, we visited a school for children with severe learning difficulties.  I have found that when words are not easily understood, physical movement can help children to understand the music better.

We illustrated a Mendelssohn Scherzo by dancing around like overgrown fairies, and the last movement of the Beethoven second Rasumovsky by galloping while we were playing. They seemed to like that. We also demonstrated the rapid-fire conversation in the last movement, by hiding behind our stands and popping up like jacks-in-the-box.

The next group was more advanced, so I thought I'd try them out on some conducting. "Who's good at Math"? A forest of hands went up." Okay" I said, what's seven plus seven?" "Eight!" they chorused in unison. "No it's not," shouted one puzzled-looking kid, "it's fourteen." He came out to conduct. I showed him how to draw a triangle in the air, handed him a baton and we played a Minuet from a Mozart Quartet. He started counting aloud intently while he was drawing triangles, and by the time we had finished the excerpt, he had reached forty-two!

I explained that once you reach the third beat in a bar, you go back to the beginning again. He had however absorbed the concept that the faster he beat-the faster we played and was beginning to experiment creatively, with a grin on his face of newly discovered power! Later the children guessed correctly their fair share of TV theme tunes.

As we packed up our instruments, we were surrounded by a sea of eager-faced children wanting to touch the instruments, shake our hands, and thank us.  It was touching.

I often wonder what the relevance of the string quartet is as the new millennium approaches. It was a form invented by Haydn in the mid-18th century and which developed through intense cross-fertilisation until Beethoven died in 1827, whereupon it suffered a lull of activity. It had traditionally been the preserve of the rich, intellectually curious amateurs who sponsored and nurtured it. Today, people often come to appreciate it later on in life.

 What surprised me most about this project was to see how Beethoven's isolated world of anger, uncertainty and idealism could captivate people with no familiarity of his musical language nearly two hundred years after he was composing. Shostakovich's anxiety and terror could shock and stun the most violent members of society. This is surely proof enough that the  string quartet will continue to  speak across cultures, backgrounds and age groups for generations to come.

Published in The Spectator 19th February 2000