Four years ago I wrote a blog Wicked Magician, Fly about a song I’d remembered since childhood. I knew I had sung it as a child in class at primary school and, every now and then, would find myself singing it as an adult. Despite remembering the words and music I couldn’t recall what it was from, but eventually, I tracked it down to a radio programme broadcast for schools in 1978. The song was from a cantata Alvida and the Magician’s Cape written by composer Michael Plaskett.
Despite searching, I couldn’t find any more information or any decent recordings of the programme, only a very poor quality one I bought on eBay. Nevertheless, despite the quality, it was amazing to hear the song again; the words and tune exactly as I’d remembered them.
Fast forward four years to a couple of days ago when I received an email via my website. The sender had read my blog Wicked Magician, Fly and had some interesting things to send me regarding Alvida and the Magician’s Cape. That sender was none other than the composer of the cantata, Mike Plaskett. To say I was surprised would be an understatement, and to receive from him high quality copies of the original tapes was wonderful. Mike also sent me PDFs of the original programme for children which brought back so many wonderful memories, not only of that 6 year old boy in Mrs Allen’s class almost 50 years ago, but of my childhood, including my mum, who I’d lost not long after I wrote the first blog in 2022.
Having replied to thank him for the files, Mike then told me his story.
Mike composed Alvida in 1977 and with it won the BBC Schools Radio Time and Tune competition. Mike had found the story The Magician’s Cape by Anna Wahlenberg in a book of Swedish Folk Tales in the local library and could sense that it was perfect for the competition. Sure enough his cantata won and was broadcast during Spring Term 1978, followed by 2 concerts in Fairfield Halls, Croydon.
At this time, Mike was experiencing intermittent problems with his hearing. He carried on teaching and composing for another 12 years, but the progressive hearing loss eventually affected his ability to hear music. In 1989, Mike moved into a career in computer software, working in the development and support of financial applications until he retired in 2009. The music and tapes of Alvida were stored away in the attic. Then, after turning 80 and wondering whether anyone still remembered the music, Mike began searching online to see what traces of it remained.
That was when he found my blog.
As creatives, the one thing we can hope for with our work is that it will come to mean something to someone; that it will touch someone and be remembered, at least for a time. So it was lovely for me to know that by writing my blog, I had let the composer know directly that his music, written almost half a century ago, and heard by me as a 6 year old boy, had remained with me throughout my life. What struck me most, however, was that for almost fifty years my memory of the song had contained only one person: the six-year-old boy hearing it. Now, when I hear it, I also think of the young composer writing it. The memory has somehow become larger.
As I told Mike, it was as if back in 1978, he had put his music out into the world where a small boy had heard it in school, that the music had remained with that boy until in 2022, at the age of 51, he had finally tried to find out what it was. The subsequent blog was like an echo of that original broadcast, translated into text; an echo that returned to the composer almost 50 years later.
So here is the song that has remained with me since 1978.
It’s always interesting to wonder why certain things remain with us. Why do we remember this and forget that? As regards this song, it is no doubt the quality of the tune, but also the words – one line in particular.
The wicked magician flies through the night
With strong wings to take him far out of sight
When you are safe in bed, he’s flying overhead
Wicked magician, fly!
The line which stood out to me as a boy was this: When you are safe in bed, he’s flying overhead. Suddenly, this story about a wicked magician stealing children wasn’t confined to the pages of a book. The magician was out there, flying above the world – the real world – while we slept in our beds.
As a child – as with most children – the threshold or border between reality and imagination was extremely porous and the wicked magician had flown right across it. As an adult, he still does, albeit in the guise of other, less terrifying, things. The thresholds between reality and imagination, past and present etc. are lines I cross all the time. That is what helps me write and make art. Mike’s music, along with so many wonderful things I saw, heard and read as a child, was something which helped to nurture that.
What I didn’t expect, when I wrote a short blog about a remembered song in 2022, was that it would lead me back not only to the music, but to the person who created it. For years the song had existed only in memory. Now it has a name, a voice and a story. In some ways, that feels like the true ending to this tale of castles, forests and magic capes: the discovery that behind every fragment from the past lies another human being, and that sometimes, if we’re very lucky, they answer back.
So whatever we do creatively, however big or small, it has the potential to grow into something much bigger than itself. That is why we keep making things and sending them out into the world, never knowing where they might finally come to rest.