Our Friend From The North
One of many remarkable things about David Nield is that, in an age of increasing job and career mobility (not to mention job insecurity), he spent the years from university to retirement in one job. In this one post he encouraged the talents of children, had scope to pursue his own talents and had fun. This career in a million was as Director of Music at Tiffin School in Kingston from 1965 to 2002.
David was born in the gritty Lancashire town of Bury the day after Pearl Harbour. Times were hard. His father was a member of a local amateur operatic society, 'a big bass', as David recalls, and great fan of Gilbert and Sullivan. The family house was rarely quiet. There was much music around in those days with brass marching bands, but David's first muse came from listening to, and singing along with the local church organ; so his father was persuaded to start David on piano lessons at the age of eight.
Starting at Bury Grammar School in 1953 he was mortified to find there were no music lessons on the syllabus. But his obvious talents and enthusiasm earned him lessons with the organist of Manchester Cathedral. He became an Associate of the Royal College of Organists and, at the age of eighteen, won an Organ Scholarship to Durham University, studied under Professor Arthur Hutchings and graduated with Honours in 1965.
This success put him on the road south in the swinging sixties, when the times already were a-changing. David first had to overcome the incomprehension shown by new Tiffin pupils at his strange mix of northern accents (halfway between broad Lancastrian and Wearside Geordie) by speaking loudly and faster, then laughing even more loudly, and then by playing whatever he felt suited the mood of the classroom at that time. He implanted a real interest in music of all kinds in his pupils, in other staff, governors and parents, so that music at Tiffin is now nationally celebrated. Each year, over 100 boys study music at GCSE and A Level and most boys in the school play an instrument. All can take part in concerts staged throughout the year that include singing, orchestral and jazz ensembles. This lasting success bears out David's conviction that teachers do more good by staying in one school than by frequently changing places.
For David, music is not just a subject to be taught. It also needs to be played and performed, preferably with gusto. He complemented his teaching in two widely different musical directions - religiously, by becoming the organist at All Saints Kingston Parish Church from 1966 to 1994, where, amongst other achievements, he oversaw the installation of the celebrated Frobenius organ in 1988; and, dramatically, in pursuing a collaboration with friends and kindred spirits, Jeremy James Taylor and Frank Whately, composing and producing musical plays to be performed by children. They were pivotal in founding and developing the National Youth Music Theatre with a host of productions at Sadlers Wells, Bergen, Edinburgh, Glyndebourne, New York, Hong Kong and the Rose Theatre in Kingston. In April this year, their production of The Ragged Child, with David as composer and musical director, was a successful part of the rebirth of The Rose.
David and wife Jane, a retired History teacher at Tiffin, live in Thames Ditton where David walks the dog on Giggs Hill Green in all weathers. From time to time he plays the organ for services at St. Nicholas Church. David believes that church music has supported his Christian faith: 'music is inexplicable and transcends the rationality and ecstasy of religious belief.' A different side of David's musicality has been nourished in Thames Ditton. He was a great fan of his fellow northerner, the late Dick Charlesworth, whose clarinet playing, if not always his singing, provided great entertainment to jazz aficionados every Tuesday evening at The George & Dragon. His marvellous funeral procession through the village with New Orleans style marching band reminded David of those childhood processions through the narrow streets of his Lancashire cotton towns.
So that's the score of David's life. How does he perform it as an ordinary man? Well, he's as forthright as northerners are renowned to be, and rarely calls a spade a shovel. He admits to having had differences of opinion with some local officials, something to do with wrong postcodes, wrong sort of bus passes, that sort of thing, but he's not just another grumpy old man. There's a strong sense of humour there. When I resort to the hackneyed 'question and answer' formula for interviews and ask him: "If you were not talking to me now, what would you be doing?" he fires back: "None of your business" and roars with laughter.
Now that's the man.
Terry Bygraves