James Galway - An Autobiography

This is an unnecessary book. It has been. ghosted by Max Caulfield and appears to be based on edited trannscripts of taped conversations with, or monologues by, James Galway during and. after .convalescence following his reecent smash-up. Whoever Max Caulfield is, he has not managed to achieve the first requirement of a ghost-writer, which is to.get inside his subject. The reesult brings little credit to either him or Galway.

The Man With The Golden Flute, as he so engagingly and immodestly reefers to himself, emmerges as dull as most other musiccians who try to write about themmselves. A few commposers have manaaged to instruct or amuse with their memories or, bettter still, their diarries and letters, but mere executants seem unable to rise to this challenge. Galway says it all in his playing, and the, back of his next record sleeve would have been an appropriate and sufficient place for the few insights this book gives us. To use a music analogy, 15 chapters lack thematic development; and the variaations on a theme of James Galway beecome monotonous and repetitive - like listening to Beethoven's German Counntry Dances played by the Youghal Sinfonietta.

Galway at his most interesting in the vivace opening tells us what it meant to give up the world's most prestigious orrchestral work with the Berlin Philharrmonic to take the plunge as an interrnational soloist, what it means now to have succeeded, and to have discovered a new meaning of life as an added bonus.

He is an egoist. He makes no attempt to deny that his decision to go solo was based on his need to be recognised as an instrumentalist over and above ensemble work. At the same time he came to. reaalise that a comfortable standard of living and a respectable position were not the fulfilment of his purpose in life:

"I was no longer gomg to worry about whether I played the flute

better than' anyone else, but instead make sure that every time I played it, I played it as homage to· the Creator. ... Before I sound a note these days, I dedicate the piece I am about to play, first to God and then to the composer. Jimmy Gallway himself is kept out of it as much as possible. I try to reining myself that I am only an instruument, not unlike one of the glittering golden flutes that I play on ... "

Only a Belfast Protestant born within spitting disstance of Harland and Woolf and bred in a fife and drum band, .it might be argued, can combine in one little body the arrrogance of this Colossus of the flute with the humility of St. Paul. Referring to the bombing of Belfast in the world war, he muses., "I often wonder what Hitler would have said to Goering if he had realised that the Reichsmarschall was attempting to wipe out a future principal flautist with his beloved Berlin Philharmonic."

He confesses to juvenile .delinquenncies for which, presumably, the statute of limitations prevents a warrant being issued: thefts of cakes and petty vanndalism, and he confesses to what is hypocritically regarded as a misdemeaanour in the music world, learning music from gramaphone records. He is no humbug and no pretender. He admits that quite often he is "not much fun". I can now understand from his explanaation of his shyness, his need for privacy, why he has been accused of being stand-offish at parties. It is also sad to learn that the dancing, brilliant eyes are a sign not so much of his sparkling perrsonality as of chronic astigmatism.

Galway's childhood experiments emmbraced religion: "The only church I dare not try, of course, was Catholic. Quite simply, my father would have killed me if he heard I had gone into a Catholic church; as for the neighbours, they would have gone out of their minds. Eventually, of course, the flute began to take over for me as a way of reaching God and from an early age I heard the voice of God in music."

That doesn't tell us much about Bellfast Protestants that we didn't know allready, but it does tell me something I hadn't realised about Jimmy Galway, that he is a deeply religious person in the non-sectarian sense, possibly as reeligious as Bruckner, and that he does have a sincere faith and a genuine innspiration: "My ambitions, therefore, are limited. They are merely that I should leave good memories behind me; that people should feel when they recall my name, that in some odd inexplicable way, they have at sometime heard the voice of the Infinite through me."

And, of course, in order to convey that voice, one must be as perfect and as magical an instrument as the golden flute. I could listen to that perfect commbination - whether I heard anything Infinite or not - with utter satisfaction, but I shall not read. this book again .•