Unsung No Longer

We are all familar with being told that such and such a person is the best at what they do. Why are we told this? The implication is that they are a model to follow. Do as they do and you will achieve what they have. Ha ha. Jack Nicklaus once claimed that the key to his success as a golfer was his physical strength. Plenty of people can lift as many weights as him. Can they play golf just as well?

Of course we all saw through this long ago. Ordinary exponents of any activity are more likely to adopt less exalted figures as models. These do not have the stellar reputations and critical acclaim of acknowledged masters. But for generations they have proved a more appropriate inspiration for creative endeavours which have defined our culture and brought pleasure and profit to many. It is time they were properly celebrated.

Chessplayers are always seeking advice from someone greater than themselves. Chess grandmasters are all but unanimous in their opinion that the immortal Bobby Fischer was the greatest chessplayer of all. The trouble is that in order to match the genius he demonstrated around 1972 you have to be Bobby Fischer yourself. Only he could do what he did. So for many years a little known Dutch player has been the dominant model for the player of average standard. Mr. Bugher Doep of Nijmegen played a few games in the 1840s and quickly realised that in any given position some pieces are stronger than others. All an opponent needs to do to attack you is pressurise your weaker pieces. He therefore developed his eponymous defensive system in which each of your own pieces is made as weak as possible. With no obvious centre of attack the opponent has no obvious move even if he has a greater variety of them. The system was later refined by his brother Bols who stripped it down to its logical essentials by defending solely with the king. Despite their antiquity the two systems remain popular. Average players frequently state that they have a Bugherdoep or Bolsdoep defence to this day.

Professional billiards was once a big deal. In its golden age it was dominated by the Australian Walter Lindrum who could score over 1,000 points at will with incredible speed. He was so good that the average player could not go to his club and try to reproduce what he saw Lindrum do. The average player instead looked to a model familiar to modern readers. Mr. Jack Shotty was a pumping engineer from Tipton in the West Midlands. He spent his working days driving long rods backwards and forwards through the pumping engines to maintain their speed. This conditioned his reflexes to repeat the same action all the time. On his way home one evening he stopped off at his local billiard hall and found that the only shot he could play was to line up behind a ball and hit it with the same action that he drove his rods. He saw no future in this and was about to walk out. It was then pointed out to him that there was an uncivilized game called snooker which worked on the same principle. It dispensed with all the subtelty and science of billiards and was in effect a version of tiddlywinks with balls instead of counters. Shotty was still not interested but others used his technique to play snooker. This became the refuge for those no good at billiards and has now supplanted it as the major table game due to the dumbing down policy of the BBC which broadcasts both games.

But perhaps the most deserving but least celebrated of unsung heroes was C.P.E. Grammerworth Marques of the Imperial Austrian Court in 1791. Mr. Marques had arrived in Austria as an English tutor to a member of the Frankenfurter family in 1780. He had worked his way up to a similar position in the Habsburg Court and supplemented his English language tutoring by giving music lessons to lady courtiers. Naturally he also composed a few pieces. Unfortunately they vanished into oblivion as soon as they were performed. There was only one composer in town and that was Mozart. In a flash of inspiration Marques ensured his place in history by creating a revolutionary new musical form. He simply removed his wig. From henceforth his music was not expected to be refined, cultured, tasteful or anything else of any distinction. It was quickly forgotten in itself but the principle behind it has remained as an inspiration for composers of all kinds throughout the intervening two centuries and a bit. No longer does music have to have a tune or any perceivable quality at all. How many know that the work of C.P.E. Grammerworth Marques is the ultimate progenitor of all we nowadays get the chance to hear? It is a pity his followers still claim that they are more influenced by others although it is easy to understand why.

There are models and there are suitable models. Most of us are better off with a lesser model than a greater. We stand less chance of being accused of failing to live up to them. We also stand less chance of being compared to unsung heroes. Is this the real reason the critics who have ignored them for so long want them to remain hidden from public view? Hard news. It is in the common interest if the leaders of the majority are undervalued no longer.