How 'Fighter Command' came to be written
Bryan Kesselman and I (Philip Barnett) first met Eleanor Pulfer-Sharma, the Director of the Bentley Priory Museum in the Summer of 2014. We were exploring possible performance opportunities for our Tonic Choir as well as for our own cabaret act. After the meeting, Eleanor called to ask if we could write something for our choir to sing during the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
With our input, Eleanor wrote an application to Arts Council England for funding. This was submitted in November 2014 and we expected a reply just before Christmas. The rest of the schedule was developed around this date, with a launch in January. At this stage the project was a closely guarded secret.
The application was rejected, but resubmitted in January. As the first performance date of September 19 was fixed we scheduled a choir meeting for February 28. We did not tell the singers what it was about. We knew that if the funding had not come through by that date we would adopt Plan B, a concert of WW2 songs.
At the last minute, on February 27, a letter arrived saying that the funding was OK.
About 30 members of Tonic Choir met at the museum on the following day and after a brief tour were told why we had called the meeting. Understandably there was great excitement. My concern was that we were already two months behind schedule, and that was about to get worse.
Research and writing
With major Tonic concerts in March, serious work did not start until well into April. While Bryan started writing down some musical ideas, I watched video material, read around the subject and spent hours walking round the museum. Quite quickly I decided that the format would be a promenade performance, that is one where the show is performed in various parts of the venue with the audience walking between ‘scenes’.
The Museum tells the story of ‘The One’ (Hugh Dowding), ‘The Few’ (fighter pilots), and ‘The Many’ (all those who supported the fighter pilots). I decided to use the same structure in the piece.
I wrote a set of lyrics and linking narration by mid May and sat down with Bryan to see how his music might fit. His first piece, which I really liked, did not work with any of my words, so I undertook to write new lyrics to fit the music. This became the opening number and is a 3 minute overview of 18 months of 1939/40 history, leading up to the Battle of Britain.
Bryan had written an Eric Coates-like tune that was just perfect for the Finale. With some radical surgery, some of my lyrics were made to fit.
To represent the aircrew I wanted to use Churchill’s famous words, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’. Bryan set this quickly, but we had to get permission from the Churchill Estate to use the words. Emails to the London representative of the Churchill Estate eventually resulted in approval.
Bryan and I then spent a long time thinking about the Filter Room song. This was to be an atmospheric piece where the choir ‘channelled’ the voices of the operators who received information about enemy aircraft movements from around the country, making sufficient sense of it to enable RAF pilots to respond effectively. I had researched the actual language and Bryan worked out a simple, yet highly effective scoring.
At last we had the music we needed, though we had a feeling that we were one piece short. And we felt that the children needed a second piece to sing. We also realised that we had nothing about flying. On a memorable morning, I was standing by my piano with Bryan sitting at the keyboard. Suddenly I saw myself as a 10 year old and said, much as a child would, “I want ....... I want to be a pilot.” Bryan responded with, “Why?”. To which, almost without thinking, I said, “Because I want to win the war.”
We went into our own little worlds for 15 minutes at the end of which we had the first version of the song that went on to become my favourite. Here is the first verse:
I want, I want to be a pilot / Flying high up into the blue / I want to do my best / And to be one, to be one of The Few.
Rehearsals
The first adult rehearsal was scheduled for June 10 and we just finished the music in time. The reaction from the choir was highly reassuring - they loved it.
We had recruited three groups of children to share the 6 performances - Grimsdyke School, St John’s School in Stanmore and the Harrow Youth Choir. They all started looking at the music in late June, so at least the children were familiar with it before the holidays.
Stage Direction
I now started to turn my attention to actions that we could add to make the performance more interesting. The idea to line up the children in the shape of a Spitfire came to me at 2am in the morning; I got out of bed to write it down. Most of the ideas though came as I sat in the Museum and tried to picture the singers and audience in situ.
Final Stages
The children returned to school after the summer and had about ten days to learn the material before the dress rehearsal. On that morning we ran through the show three times, once with each group of children. It was the only time we had everyone together before the first performance.
Curtain, lights, ..
All 6 shows went very well. The audience reaction was terrific and the Watford Observer gave us 5 stars (the top rating).
Mission completed!
With our input, Eleanor wrote an application to Arts Council England for funding. This was submitted in November 2014 and we expected a reply just before Christmas. The rest of the schedule was developed around this date, with a launch in January. At this stage the project was a closely guarded secret.
The application was rejected, but resubmitted in January. As the first performance date of September 19 was fixed we scheduled a choir meeting for February 28. We did not tell the singers what it was about. We knew that if the funding had not come through by that date we would adopt Plan B, a concert of WW2 songs.
At the last minute, on February 27, a letter arrived saying that the funding was OK.
About 30 members of Tonic Choir met at the museum on the following day and after a brief tour were told why we had called the meeting. Understandably there was great excitement. My concern was that we were already two months behind schedule, and that was about to get worse.
Research and writing
With major Tonic concerts in March, serious work did not start until well into April. While Bryan started writing down some musical ideas, I watched video material, read around the subject and spent hours walking round the museum. Quite quickly I decided that the format would be a promenade performance, that is one where the show is performed in various parts of the venue with the audience walking between ‘scenes’.
The Museum tells the story of ‘The One’ (Hugh Dowding), ‘The Few’ (fighter pilots), and ‘The Many’ (all those who supported the fighter pilots). I decided to use the same structure in the piece.
I wrote a set of lyrics and linking narration by mid May and sat down with Bryan to see how his music might fit. His first piece, which I really liked, did not work with any of my words, so I undertook to write new lyrics to fit the music. This became the opening number and is a 3 minute overview of 18 months of 1939/40 history, leading up to the Battle of Britain.
Bryan had written an Eric Coates-like tune that was just perfect for the Finale. With some radical surgery, some of my lyrics were made to fit.
To represent the aircrew I wanted to use Churchill’s famous words, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’. Bryan set this quickly, but we had to get permission from the Churchill Estate to use the words. Emails to the London representative of the Churchill Estate eventually resulted in approval.
Bryan and I then spent a long time thinking about the Filter Room song. This was to be an atmospheric piece where the choir ‘channelled’ the voices of the operators who received information about enemy aircraft movements from around the country, making sufficient sense of it to enable RAF pilots to respond effectively. I had researched the actual language and Bryan worked out a simple, yet highly effective scoring.
At last we had the music we needed, though we had a feeling that we were one piece short. And we felt that the children needed a second piece to sing. We also realised that we had nothing about flying. On a memorable morning, I was standing by my piano with Bryan sitting at the keyboard. Suddenly I saw myself as a 10 year old and said, much as a child would, “I want ....... I want to be a pilot.” Bryan responded with, “Why?”. To which, almost without thinking, I said, “Because I want to win the war.”
We went into our own little worlds for 15 minutes at the end of which we had the first version of the song that went on to become my favourite. Here is the first verse:
I want, I want to be a pilot / Flying high up into the blue / I want to do my best / And to be one, to be one of The Few.
Rehearsals
The first adult rehearsal was scheduled for June 10 and we just finished the music in time. The reaction from the choir was highly reassuring - they loved it.
We had recruited three groups of children to share the 6 performances - Grimsdyke School, St John’s School in Stanmore and the Harrow Youth Choir. They all started looking at the music in late June, so at least the children were familiar with it before the holidays.
Stage Direction
I now started to turn my attention to actions that we could add to make the performance more interesting. The idea to line up the children in the shape of a Spitfire came to me at 2am in the morning; I got out of bed to write it down. Most of the ideas though came as I sat in the Museum and tried to picture the singers and audience in situ.
Final Stages
The children returned to school after the summer and had about ten days to learn the material before the dress rehearsal. On that morning we ran through the show three times, once with each group of children. It was the only time we had everyone together before the first performance.
Curtain, lights, ..
All 6 shows went very well. The audience reaction was terrific and the Watford Observer gave us 5 stars (the top rating).
Mission completed!