<<  -- 6 --  Jennifer I Paull    CATHY BERBERIAN: LEGACY

Cathy's brain was her computer. She filed and classified paper scores and information, but carried everything in her head. Everlasting hours were spent in physically researching (no Google) as she strove to quench her thirst for the rare, the beautiful, the unknown and the funny. She dusted down her gem finds, added passion and sensuality to Monteverdi (a truly avant-garde concept at the time) and then -- she simply dared. Her love of 19th century repertoire also shone in her Second Hand Songs recital, in which there were many surprises. Words had been set to Beethoven's 5th Symphony -- 'don't worry, just a small part' -- and Lieder ohne Worte at a time when salon singing was the only way to spread music. 'Here is a Song Without Words -- but somebody has set words to it (wicked grin).' Danse Macabre by Saint-Saëns was originally the song she performed, which its composer had subsequently transformed into a symphonic poem. She could unearth every little-known detail; discover every secret.

On 30 October 1965, Jean Shrimpton triggered an international controversy by attending Derby Day at Melbourne's Flemington Racecourse wearing a miniskirt, and was almost immediately returned to the Tower of London for a speedy beheading. Ultra-conservative, Australian society had not yet awoken to the liberation of the woman, and her freedom to express herself in codes other than the conventional. As the world's first super model, Ms Shrimpton was paid 2,000 pounds (a seriously colossal sum of money at the time) for her two weeks of promotional tour for dresses made in the new fabric, 'Orlon'. Conventionally dressed with well-groomed hair, the Beatles were initially 'shocking'. With time they became global currency, honoured by the Queen; one tragically murdered, one knighted. They were voted 'Icons of The (20th) Century' by the United States' magazine, Variety, from within the grandstand and retrospection of the 21st. Interestingly, the 'King of Pop', Elvis Presley, limped past the finishing post in a rather surprising 10th place.

The Beatles' collective, Australian tour fee, the year previous to Ms Shrimpton's unwarranted scandal, had been 1,500 pounds. This serves well to illustrate the proportional fame of Jean Shrimpton in those salad days. 'The Miniskirt Affair' converted skirt lengths into a barometer for 'The Permissive Society'. How totally simplistic and surreal that sounds today, when one can dress, wear one's hair and sing as one chooses! Yet this was the corseted ambiance into which Cathy first launched her outrageously provocative originality. Daring would indeed be le mot juste, although it is hard, today, to imagine why. The closeted, stilted shell out of which life, as we now know it, was being shaken loose (for better or for worse), is something no longer conceivable. It is easy therefore, for a 21st century scholar of Cathy Berberian's artistry to be totally unaware of the daring she not only needed, but possessed in abundance!

With the emergence of The Beatles less than twenty years after World War II, Britain avoided the French mini revolution of May '68 in which Parisian youth was tearing up paving stones. 'The Fab Four' became a national, then global catalyst for change. Liberated by sexual revolution, the generation of the 1960s altered the planet's course. Cathy was not of that youth -- but she listened to it and instinctively, she understood it. Cathy Berberian, the star, had so far to fall -- and yet her skill was such that she never did.

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