Remembering David Fowler

I met David on our first evening at Caius in 1955. Introductions were not difficult because his elder brother, John, had been one of my best friends at school and I was looking out for him. We became friends at once and remained so throughout the rest of his life. Of all the many memories I have of him I choose to record the way he passed on to me his love of classical music.

John Fowler had kindled my interest in jazz by repeated playings of Sister Rosetta Tharp (‘My Daddy Rocks Me’) and Muggsy Spanier’s ‘Relaxin’ at the Touro’. Now it was David’s turn. In our second year he took over the room immediately below mine in College, installed an upright piano and began by thumping out the first movement of Beethoven’s last piano sonata. It made a great impression on me, musically illiterate as I was, but David was very modest about his abilities as a pianist and insisted on playing me Julius Katchen’s recording of the work (despite describing Katchen as ‘another flashy American music-maker’, a dismissive phrase he had spotted in a review somewhere and liked the sound of). I was captivated, not least by the passage in the Arietta and Variations where in one of the variations Beethoven syncopates the main theme. Beethoven inventing boogie-woogie, I wondered? When I acquired a primitive home-made gramophone the first record I bought was the Katchen. I played it many times and have never listened to any musical work with such concentration before or since…

David also took me to concerts of harpsichord music by another American instrumentalist and of Indian ragas played by Ravi Shankar. After those experiences I was on my own, with wireless and records, moving on to late 19th and early 20th Century music. David seemed to listen more and more to J S Bach, perhaps finding a link between fugue and his love of mathematics. He was enthusiastic about the American pianist and Bach specialist, Rosalyn Tureck, who became a pin-up of his. I couldn’t share this interest, but I was always grateful to him for stimulating a love of music and a desire to experiment with less familiar composers.

John Dudley Taylor