A Note from Andrew Ford, on the occasion of Luminescence’s 10th Birthday

Dear fellow friends of Luminescence,

I’m honoured to have been asked to say something to you today and only sorry I’m unable to say it in person.

I wonder when was the last time you read Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I first read it as a teenager – it’s one of those books teenagers read, isn't it – and I’ve read it at least twice since then, ever more impressed with it as a literary work, ever more chilled by the world it evokes. I picked it up again the other day but, this time, found I couldn’t get through it. The hatred, the confected outrage, the twisting of truth that Orwell describes: they've been overtaken by events.

Still, I got quite a long way into it before I put the book back on the shelf. I reached the part where Winston and Julia hear the prole woman singing as she hangs out her washing. The song, as you may recall, is not great art. It has been composed by a machine, a ‘versificator’. But the woman’s singing of the song is touching. Winston realises he’s never heard a Party member spontaneously sing. The woman has taken the wretched song and made it her own; she is in control of it. 

As she pegs out those nappies, she is happy in her own world, like Wordsworth’s ‘Solitary Reaper’. She doesn’t know she is being overheard, but her voice reaches out to another set of ears. In spite of the meaningless lyrics – machine-made drivel in Winston’s case, a foreign language for Wordsworth’s passing hiker – the song speaks to another human and remains with him ‘Long after it [is] heard no more'.

Is this the importance of singing? Is this why we love to hear it? Is it why we sing?

It’s certainly one of the reasons. 

But it’s also more than that. More fundamental.

Percy Grainger believed that music derives from screaming, and in one sense at least, it surely does.

The first howl of a baby as it tests its voice is a kind of music. And the more the baby becomes aware of what it's doing – the more it hears its own voice – the more like music it becomes. 

That howl finds its answer is the soft crooning of a parent. It might be a song from the parent's own childhood, but it's just as likely to be some improvised sounds that the mother or father makes up on the spot. Words are not the point of this singing.

The prole woman's words are gibberish, the reaper's are in Highland 'Erse' (of course it means something to the singer herself), the baby is pre-verbal and the parent is responding with goo-goos and gah-gahs. As we listen, we hear something deeper than words.

It's safe to say that language comes out of such vocalising. We need the precision of language for our survival, but music is also part of language. Because the way we speak – the rising and falling of our voices, the speed and tone of delivery, the relative loudness, the use of repetition, the music of our speech – is where meaning lies.

It's how we know, for instance, when someone isn't telling us the truth.

Once we start paying attention to the music of language, once we being to use these musical devices in our writing, we find ourselves edging towards poetry. And it's a short step from poetry back to song. This time with words.

In a song, there are always two things happening. We all recognise the way that music enhances the meaning of the words; but just as importantly, the words lend specific meaning to music. It's a kind of two-way alchemy. A kind of magic.

And – long after it is heard no more – it stays with us, whether as singers or listeners.

The great George Steiner, who as a child escaped the Nazis with his family, spoke about the importance of memorising poetry, because they can't take it away from you even if they burn your books. Music does half the job of memorising for us; as the poet Shelley wrote, it 'vibrates in the memory'. The music becomes us and we become it. And when we sing together, we create a community of music that invites in anyone who cares to listen.

Singing has seldom seemed more important than it does today, and the better we do it, the more it important it becomes. Luminescence Chamber Singers and the Luminescence Childrens' Choir do it exceptionally well. I want to wish the organisation a very happy tenth birthday and congratulations on having got this far. In particular, if you'll forgive a moment of indulgence, I want to express my deep gratitude for their bringing to life my own music. What an honour!

We must cherish Luminescence, and we must support them.

Music is where we store our collective memories and singing is how we reach out to one another.

And as we read the news the today – oh, boy!

. . . singing can seem like an act of defiance.

Andrew Ford, June 2025