"Get Beethoven!" , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Cassidy Paul

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118 pages

English

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A comic book character is born, the youngest of sixteen, into a war torn country. Facing extreme brutality at school and on the streets, not to mention the oppression of the Catholic Church, he finds music. Armed with a violin and a burning passion, he escapes the madness and sets off to pursue his dreams."Get Beethoven!" is the inspirational story of Paul Cassidy's life. Overcoming adversity in his younger years, Paul recounts tragedy, joy, horror and humour. Informative and entertaining, the book charts his journey up to joining the Brodsky Quartet in 1982.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Memoir

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	11 février 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838598204
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

About the Author
Paul Cassidy was born in Derry in 1959. He has spent his entire working life with the Brodsky Quartet. Together they have played over 3000 concerts in more than 60 countries and made in excess of 70 recordings. Paul is a prolific arranger. In addition to his countless works for strings, he has collaborated with Elvis Costello, Bjork, Sting and many other eminent composers. Examples of these can be found on Brodsky albums such as; Petits Fours, Moodswings and The Juliet Letters, also on Bjork’s Family Tree.
“Get Beethoven!” is Paul’s first book, though a second, a fun-filled account of his forty years in the Brodsky Quartet, is due for release in autumn 2021 to coincide with that group’s 50th anniversary. He lives in London with his wife, Jacqueline (cellist and founder member of the Brodsky Quartet) and their two daughters, Holly and Celia.
For further information, including a selection of photographs to accompany this book, please visit; www.paulcassidy.eu

Copyright © 2020 Paul Cassidy

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 97818385982041

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Contents
Altnagelvin
Mum and Dad
The Family
Russell
Brendan
Pennyburn
First Notes
Coulterditz
The Church
War
First Night
Late Nights
Youth Orchestra
The Early Quartets
The Middle Period
The Lates
Homelife
Daily life
London
RCM
Salou
Employment
Ben’s Viola
Three 5s and a Sandwich
Giuranna
A Fishy Tale
National Symphony Orchestra
The Molitor Cocktail
Slava
The Brodsky Quartet
Becoming a Brod
The Ulster Orchestra
Summer of ’82
Quartet Life
ECO
Love
Jacky Meets the Lads
The Girls
Doire Revisited
Acknowledgements

1
Altnagelvin
I have no memory pre-Altnagelvin.
Alt na nGealbhan or ‘height of the sparrows’ is the impossibly romantic name given to Derry’s very own… house of fear. No doubt the original village of the same name was worthy of such an evocative title, standing as it did, pride of place, overlooking lovely Derry on the banks of the Foyle but the high-rise brick and glass cuckoo which installed itself there in the spring of 1960 certainly was not. Gorging itself on the poor, unsuspecting local community, it grew to an unhealthy eleven stories, an out-and-out skyscraper by Derry standards. It remains to this day the city’s tallest building, perched there aloft, keeping its beady eyes peeled for any folk showing signs of weakness, who might help satisfy its insatiable appetite.

This is where I found myself, aged three. Oh, how heavenly my first three years of life must have been. You see, unusually for a baby, I was apparently the apple of everyone’s eye, the centre of attention. I’m afraid there’s no denying it, according to my family folklore, rather like the cuckoo over in the Waterside, I came along and ousted my big brother from his number-one spot, effectively ruining his life for evermore. I went and got born for goodness’ sake, an appallingly devious plan never before hatched in the history of mankind, all designed with the sole purpose of destroying his utopian existence. Imagine the shock then of, from one day to the next, being ripped from that adored, mollycoddled, cotton-wool existence and finding oneself in a rotting environment where cotton-wool took on a very different aspect. Suddenly, life was completely alien; the lights, sounds, surfaces, people… one’s very being, both physically and mentally, was thrown into shock. The fear factor was overwhelming… and that smell!!
Sixth floor, right-hand corner window of Altnagelvin Hospital, that was me. You could see it clearly from the road. No one could have prepared me for that trauma. My sister Joan took me there and left me. Mum couldn’t do it.
“Sure, your daddy called every day,” they always say.
In reality, he used to show up very late on the odd Sunday night causing a bit of a commotion with the staff, stay for a brief moment, then be gone.
I had inherited a hip condition known as Perthes. The only real treatment in those days was complete rest, no problem for a three-year-old boy, right! I found myself in the polio ward and in time befriended another unfortunate waif by the name of Martin Rush. We quickly became firm friends and partners in crime, wreaking as much havoc as we possibly could, wandering off round the hospital, playing games. We’d often be found in the canteen seeing what goodies we could scrounge, or if we had the stomach for it, in A&E to see the bloodied drunks being wheeled in after a night on the town. Once we were caught in the ladies’ ward in the middle of the night. We were only four years old remember, yet on this occasion, the charming ward matron decided to teach us a lesson. I’m not sure what happened to Martin, but I was thrown into an electricity generator room whereupon the lights were switched off and the door locked shut. The noise in there was overpowering and terrifying. It was pitch black. My efforts to open the door were in vain, my tiny fists banging on that huge iron wedge, futile. Cried out, I sunk to the floor and covered my ears. I’d say I was left alone in there for a good hour.
When I was finally retrieved, I was marched back to my bed where a traction device had been erected and I was duly strapped in. Our few innocent distractions had been suspended indefinitely. Imagine if, instead of crouching in fear, I had gone blindly searching for a light switch, I could have electrocuted myself, set fire to the whole building, or both.
I consider myself very fortunate in that during my time there, there were no operations or unpleasant procedures, just countless X-rays and enforced bed rest. The whole experience drove me crazy however and after eighteen months or so I was literally climbing the walls. My mum and the staff finally agreed on a plan to take me home, on condition that a bed be placed in the kitchen for me. The kitchen was the hub of the house and a place where I could be monitored. This would have seemed like heaven but for the fact that they nevertheless insisted on encasing me, all the way from my chest to the toes of my left foot, in plaster of Paris. Oh, the itching!!
This lasted a year, at which point I was deemed well enough to move onto the next step, a rather fetching calliper/boot arrangement. Though uncomfortable and unsightly, this meant I could begin my life again. I’ll never forget the feeling of freedom, getting rid of that infernal plaster and letting the fresh air at my body. I ran round and round our house laughing and singing, as happy as the day’s long. The day of my final release would be another year hence. I lost touch with my mate Martin but I’m sorry to relate that his bad luck continued. I heard he was shot dead, up in Creggan in the early ‘70s.

2
Mum and Dad
My dad, like so many Irish men of that era, boarded a ship bound for New York, aged twenty. The youngest of ten, he started life in a two-room cottage with earthen floors, in a place called the Bankhead, which overlooked the Swilly Port of Buncrana. Unfortunately, he could not have arrived in the Big Apple at a worse time. He used to tell a story of walking along one of the avenues to work early one morning and hearing a terrifying crashing sound. There followed some commotion up ahead, and gradually, as he approached the scene, he realised that the noise had been some poor man throwing himself off a tall building, his body ripping through one of those characteristic awnings before exploding on the pavement below. It was 1929.
In the half a dozen years he spent there, in what must have been an extremely alien environment for him, he did what he could to survive. He worked in bars, hotels and as a bellhop in apartment buildings. He got involved in the whole prohibition scene and even gained his licence as a boxing promoter, one of his great lifelong passions, the other being horses.
Perhaps it was this brush with prohibition that influenced the rather extraordinary decision he took immediately upon his return to Ireland in 1933. The ship pulled into Derry at the foot of Baronet Street. At the top of Baronet Street on the Strand Road, Derry’s main drag, stood a most inconsequential hostelry with a ‘For Sale’ sign. It consisted of one small room selling only whiskey, and stout from clay bottles. It had no toilet… he bought it!
It proved to be a pretty shrewd move. Bit by bit he added to it, buying the next house and then the next. In the Second World War, Derry became the number one port in the Battle of the Atlantic (the German Navy would subsequently surrender on the Foyle not a mile from the pub door). Navies from all over parked their crafts at the end of Baronet Street. Sea legs found dry land;