Mr Charles (Chuck) Sellars

Mr Charles Sellars was our music teacher. For some reason he didn’t like me. This sometimes happens and I don’t remember the phenomenon mentioned in any of my further education teaching manuals when I eventually became one myself. I really tried to get myself liked but it was no use and I dropped music as soon as was possible. A shame really because I desperately wanted to be able to play bassoon like one of my friends Mike Smith – it would never have been practical as I lived too far away  from Xavs anyway.

He raised his voice a lot I seem to remember but his love of music can’t be denied. Once he played ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ for us on the music room gramophone. He introduced it by saying that this piece tended to ‘send’ people. I am not quite sure what he meant but I did love it. Once he appeared with his family at a garden party and we were amazed at how many children were in tow, each one smaller than the other. They looked for all the world like the intervals in a scale.

Mr Sellars used to organise the school concerts which became more and more grandiose. Gilbert and Sullivan (Iolanthe)  gave way to Mozart and The Magic Flute was enacted on our somewhat cramped gym stage. The school orchestra manfully struggled through the score and it was judged to be a masterpiece. I have a vision of a diminutive boy with soprano voice (I think his surname was Thornley) dressed in a feathered costume and the whispered comments among the boys when he had to kiss the male lead. The rumours abounded. I can also remember a rather large class mate, John Doyle, banging his heart out on the kettle drums, totally caught up in the excitement. Heady stuff.

13 thoughts on “Mr Charles (Chuck) Sellars”

  1. I attended Xavs from 1959 until 1964, and also remember music with Charles Sellars. Charles and his daughters have until very recently attended Mass at St Mary’s Denton.

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  2. John Thornley from Didsbury was the lad in Iolanthe. A good number of otherwise robust males in the lower forms were transformed for a few nights in 1961 into rather fetching fairies (have they ever lived it down?) and sixth former called Constantine gave a bravura performance as the Lord Chancellor with a flff free repition of the nightmare song each nighg. Chuck got a gong (CBE?) for his contribution to musical education. He was still alive well into his nineties but I can’t find a death notics or an obituary.

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  3. Corrected for typos due to failing keyboard!
    John Thornley from Didsbury was the lad in Iolanthe. A good number of otherwise robust males in the lower forms were transformed for a few nights in 1961 into rather fetching fairies (have they ever lived it down?) and sixth former called Constantine gave a bravura performance as the Lord Chancellor with a fluff free repetition of the nightmare song each night. Chuck got a gong (CBE?) for his contribution to musical education. He was still alive well into his nineties but I can’t find a death notice or an obituary.

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      • I think Anthony Constantine is on the speech day photo from about 1960. I think he is sitting behind the row of teachers which include Mr.Dooley, Mr. Arkless and Mr Connolly. Anthony is sitting in the aisle seat and is looking at the photographer.

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  4. Does anyone know if this is the same chap who used to run an evening class in muic in Hanley (Potteries)? I lived there between 1967 and 1971 and attended his weekly classes for the whole time. They were almost like a club, about a dozen people with an interest in learning ore about music and how it was put together: very informative.

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  5. Yeah, Chuck had his favourites. I transferred from Illtydds ( Cardiff ) where Edgar Watkins had the _First_ year kids constructing scales, chords, any root from day one. The first question I asked Chuck, explain the difference between A Sharp and B Flat, Hh esmirked and turned it over to his fave, a pupil who took violin : “Well, Sir, they’re the same but they’re different !” Throaty chortles from both.
    Thanks, Chuck, it only took me forty years to get back to a subject I once loved.

    By the way, I visited Cyril a few years back, near Boston. I’m very happy to have completed the circle with him, he was a fair, able, class act who had respect for his charges ( Br Guy, too) . I wish I had the same clear memories for another of the Brothers with whom I re-acquainted that day.

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    • Interesting info Wally! I admire your discretion… Does anyone remember Br Plunket? A large guy who came on the Paris trip but I don’t remember him after that. Rumour was that he spent rather a lot of time in the local tabac…

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      • Bro Plunket became headmaster at Mayfield College in Sussex in the mid-60s. In the early 70s he left the Congregation. I believe that he went on to work for the Catholic Truth Society. He died not long after leaving the Brothers. I can confirm that he was a chain smoker and that he was a larger than life character!

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        • Thanks Frank. Brothers tended to disappear without warning and we were never kept informed as to their fate! I had an uncle who worked for the CTS and left when he joined the Communist party!

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  6. Rarely met anyone since with such a lack of inspirational ability and failure to motivate all but his little favourites.
    Definitely more drain than radiator…should have been a musical traffic warden,not a wannabe teacher.

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