A String Quartet playing in the Gothic Room
Anyway, on this occasion,
instead of people socialising, they treated our string quartet performance at a
concert performance and stood around our ensemble listening to each piece of
music and applauding after each piece. It was most unusual for a wedding, but a
very nice deviation from the norm for us, and they seem to thoroughly enjoy
having a formal concert as the prelude to the wedding ceremony.
When the bride is ready to
descend the stairs to make her grand entrance, the staff at the castle givers a
few minutes warning, so that we can bring the piece of music to stop and move
herself to the foot of the stairs. What happens at this point depends on whether
we are playing with a conventional string quartet of 2 violins, viola and cello,
or with a flute and string quartet where one of the violins is replaced by a
flautist. Normally we would play in the
great hall for half an hour before the bride makes her entrance, but as you know
it is traditionally the bride's prerogative to be late, and my goodness,
sometimes brides take full advantage of this. I think the longest delay has been
about an hour. You keep playing and thinking "when on earth is she going to be
ready?" And keep playing pieces music that are structured such that you can
bring it to a close quickly, (some pieces of music are written in lots of short
repeating sections, so that they can be drawn to a sensible conclusion within
about 20 or 30 seconds. Other pieces music are structured differently, typically
complete string quartets by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, where it can sometimes
be very very difficult to stop without a jarring jolt. Another couple of occasions
that I can think of where we had to keep playing for a long time was first
wedding, where the wedding cake was accidentally demolished by one of the
guests. We kept playing for about an hour extra while the staff and the kitchen
didn't amazingly good repair to the cake. I think the particular problem was
that the cutting of the cake was choreographed to be a central part of the
wedding day, which was a little unusual, so the accident with a cake was
particularly unfortunate. But the Eastnor catering staff did a wonderful job and
the Midsummer string quartet kept playing to entertain the guests. Another incident that comes to
mind was a corporate event, not a wedding ceremony. Guests were arriving in
coaches from Heathrow or Gatwick airport, I can't remember which. When the
coaches arrived on time and we were supposed to play with a string quartet for
about an hour before the banquet. The 2nd coach however, did not arrive. Nobody
knew what had happened to it, so reasonable Castle asked us to keep playing,
which we did. It eventually transpired that the driver of the other coach admits
read Herefordshire and interpreted it as Hertfordshire. He'd gone miles in the
wrong direction before he realised his mistake. I can't remember if it was one
or 2 hours extra that we played, but it was a long time. It was even worse for
the kitchen staff were preparing a lavish banquet where timing is of the
essence, but I think they coped with that in the inimitable style. What happens for the entrance
the bride depends on which kind of quartet has been booked. If it's a
conventional string quartet, the quartet moved to the foot of the stairs to play
as the bride and the bridesmaids, (anywhere between one and sometimes it seems
more like 1000), to send the stairs. Sometimes the stairs also descended by
fathers or mothers, depending on the traditions that are being followed. It's quite common for there to
be a delay when the bride reaches the bottom the stairs so that the photographer
can take some shots, and then the quartet play is the pride, groom and guests
process across the great Hall, past the Knight on his horse, into the Gothic
room. When most guests are out of earshot, the string quartet stop playing and
move into the Gothic room via the doors joining it to the octagon room, (i.e.
not the door the guests may still be passing through.) They would have set up a
new set of standards in the Gothic room complete with the music that is going to
be played for the wedding ceremony, so that the movement from one location to
the next can be done quickly and unobtrusively. An alternative scenario is
when the flute and string quartet have been booked to play. In this case the
violin, viola and cello move into the Gothic room whilst the flautist moves to
the foot of the stairs to play as bride, bridesmaids (however many there may be)
perhaps mothers, fathers, uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, descend the stairs. Once
photographs have been taken, the flautist leads bride, groom and guests across
the great Hall, and as before passed the night in armour, into the Gothic room,
rather in the manner of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. The flute is quite useful for
doing this, not just because of the connotations with Hans Christian Andersen
fairytale, but because it is quite possible to walk and play a flute. This,
together with the fact that a basic flute is a very simple instrument to make,
(I'm not meaning here concert flute), is why flutes have been used in religious
ceremonies back to the days of the Romans and ancient Greeks and before. There
is a lot of archaeological evidence for the use of the flute in this context, so
the Midsummer is continuing a tradition that has spanned many thousands of years
and many civilisations that have come and gone. (That's pretty good when I think
about it like this. I've never thought of the Midsummer flute and string quartet
being eternal and being a connection from our ancient past at the dawn of
civilisation. Well, there you go, what you know!)
The signing of the register
can take quite a long time, especially if there's a wedding photographer
photographer and perhaps a videographer who goes through a re-enactment of the
signing, after which the guests are usually invited to take their own
photographs, which can take a variable amount of time depending how enthusiastic
the photographers amongst them happen to be. The string quartet will always have
at least 2 pieces of music available for this point in the ceremony, as the time
taken is never known in advance. Sometimes they would play just one piece of
music, sometimes moving on to a 2nd piece and very occasionally even a 3rd base.
They always have to be alert to what is happening in the room and particularly
alert to the registrar who at any point might look towards them and signal to
stop playing, particularly if the guests are taking an unreasonable time for
photographs and the registrar is keen to move on to the last part of the
ceremony. The final task of string
quartet is to play as the bride and groom exit the room through the double doors
into the octagon room, (not the double doors they came in by from the red Hall).
This needs to be a rousing piece of music, is typically the guests applaud and
cheer at this point, and it's important that they string quartet music is not
ground out. It also needs to be something that is easy for the couple to walk
to, preferably with a march type rhythm to it, (you don't want them to have to
hop skip and jump out of the room or walk solemnly as if it was a few norm
rather than wedding). A string quartet have got to be alert and ready to move
their music stands and themselves right into the corner so that they don't
obstruct the exit route for the happy couple. Waiters awaiting in the octagon
room with trays of drinks for the guests of they leave. The string quartet keep
playing until the last of the guests have left the octagon room, after which
they are ready to move location once again. In the summer, on those
occasions when the weather is good (though as we all know in this wonderful
climate of ours, the summer can be some of the worst weather and spring and
autumn are often the best), then guests may very quickly go out of the octagon
room onto the veranda that overlooks the lake. When the weather is bad, the
guests would normally linger in the octagon room and gradually drift into the
great Hall if the mood took them. Whatever the situation, the string quartet
follow. If moving outside, locating themselves central to the veranda so that
guests can hear the music wherever they may be. The brand of Eastnor Castle has
quite good acoustics, firstly because there are the flat, hard, sound reflecting
walls behind the quartet, and secondly because it forms a kind of parable
politic reflector, with the end terrace of the castle in effect curving the
stonework into an approximate parabola which reflect sound the centre of the
veranda. We have sometimes had jazz
bands playing here in a similar location to where the string quartet plays, and
for the evening reception, occasionally a marquee has been erected in which we
have played for a barn dance or
ceilidh. Sometimes the photographer
will march everyone down to the lawns below the veranda for photographs. Unless
it's definite bride, groom and guests are going to remain the for the whole of
the drinks reception, the string quartet don't follow. It takes a long time to
get all instruments down all the steps and one has to be very careful of the
instruments. In any case, the sound of the music does carry down onto the lawns. As I'm writing this, a very
amusing incident comes to mind that happened many years ago on the veranda.
There's a balustrade along the edge of the veranda with a very long drop down to
the gardens and lawns below. We were playing on the veranda when a helicopter
appeared and hovered above the grounds. (I think we were playing there before
the ceremony, the ceremony had taken place somewhere else, I can't quite
remember, but the bride was not there at that time.) Whatever the precise
circumstances, which are rather hazy in my memory, I do remember that the string
quartet got completely drowned out by the helicopter, so we stopped playing.
Then the helicopter started to drop down towards the lawns and was obviously
going to land on the lawn. Everybody in the veranda rushed the balustrade to
watch, as did the members of the string quartet. However, as a trained engineer
as well as musician, my mind turned the fluid dynamics of the air flows from the
helicopter blades, and it dawned on me what was going to happen before anybody
else realised. I just had time to grab the members of the quartet and tell to
get away from the balustrade, which fortunately they did. Moments later the
downdraught from the helicopter blades, which was forced out sideways by the
ground it was approaching, hit the garden wall and was reflected back upwards at
high speed, right past the faces of the watching guests. Hats flew, dust blew in
their faces, and ladies skirts rose. Everyone lept back in alarm. No one was
harmed, the whole event was taken in the best of heart, and it was generally
agreed that it was the most impressive arrival that had ever been witnessed.
Life is never dull as a string quartet player! Music ends after the last of
the guests have entered the dining room, and it's time for the string quartet to
pack away their instruments and music after another successful day's work. We
are very fortunate to have a working environment like Eastnor Castle. This is
our office in effect. Except for those corporate executives who may have offices
at the top of the gherkin building in London, few could have such a congenial
working environment. Thank you Eastnor Castle! 
Another, somewhat wackier
experience, was when we played for a wedding ceremony where half the guests were
Japanese. They were a delightfully enthusiastic group of people, as the Japanese
so often are, and as one would expect took thousands of photographs of us. But
some of them decided that it was unfair that they were eating canapés was we
were playing, so insisted on feeding us anything that was on a cocktail stick,
but whilst we were playing. I've never played a violin eaten canopies, and I
wouldn't recommend it as there is a severe danger of choking to death!
The flautist leads the bride,
groom and guests through the red Hall, passed the Knight in armour and in
through the double doors of the Gothic room. The flautist walks at a speed to
carefully time it, so that when they enter through the doors with the bride and
groom following close behind, it is it just the right moment in the music for
the rest of the quartet, (who are seated already in the Gothic room), to join
in. The sound level rises at this point and the couple make a grand entrance and
walk to the location where the ceremony will take place. The quartet continue to
play until all guests are seated, at which point they bring the music to a
close.