In memory of Maggie Smith
By: Alumni Team
Margaret Lillias Smith (Maggie) MBE, 27 March 1930 - 6 June 2024
Music Secretary at the UEA Music Centre from January 1974 to July 1995.
UEA alumni remember Maggie who sadly passed away recently.
Judy Tryggvason (née Agar):
A lady of truly indomitable Scots spirit. She kept all us music students (and the staff!) in order. A bar of chocolate helped if you had something tricky to negotiate with her, but for the most part, you knew she was on your side. And on the side of the music. A member of the UEA Choir and Orchestra and awarded the MBE for services to Music in June 1994, she was much more than just the Music Secretary. She was a key player in Norwich's musical life, and a very real part of that UEA Music Centre heritage we all share.
Maggie stayed in Norwich after her retirement, and in her own home until her death at the grand old age of 94.
Paul Newis:
I always remember her with her binoculars looking out over the grass at a Redwing or Fieldfare or something, shortly followed by a reminder that some piece of work was late and Professor Peter Aston was on the warpath.
Steve Terry:
My first encounter with Maggie was arriving late for my audition for the UEA Chamber Choir with long hair, a grimy Belstaff jacket, and oily hands from repairing my old BSA motorbike! I explained I’d come for an audition and she looked at me and just said “Really?”. She later said: “Who’d have guessed that something looking like that could have such a lovely voice". Vindication!
Nicci Morgan:
“Write down some thoughts and memories about Maggie Smith,” they said.
Where to start?
A raw barely-eighteen-year-old, I must have looked lost and perhaps even a little vulnerable to her when I first turned up at the Music Centre the autumn of 1975. She didn’t know me at all of course – I wasn’t one of ‘hers’ after all, I was in EAS and just wanted to find out about the choir auditions. And so it began, this friendship that lasted nearly 50 years.
The formidable music secretary occupied the front office in the Music Centre in between those of Julian Webb (The Dean) and Professor Peter Aston as determined a gate-keeper as ever they could have wished for. Her big picture window was a constant source of pleasure for her as she was a committed bird-watcher, a small pair of binoculars ever present and within reach on her desk. Equally keen was her ability to see through the youthful insecurities of all of us, and to understand the quirks that each one of us displayed. Even in old age, she could amaze me by remembering names and incidents that the rest of us would have long forgotten. She certainly had a sharp tongue if you crossed her, and yet to me she also managed to blend her unwavering instinct for spotting phoney excuses and laziness at a hundred yards with a kindly nurturing of those students in need of it.
Indeed Maggie always showed me great kindness during my years at UEA. I remember sitting nervously with her in her office just before I went in to sit the exam which enabled me to change course at the end of my second term (there was no way that Peter was just going to trust my A level result!) And when I found myself walking on crutches for extended periods of my university days, she often ferried me to and from our concerts in St Andrew’s Hall.
After surgery at the end of my first year, I needed physio at the N and N hospital most mornings; she was so encouraging, always asking me how it had gone, and on one occasion I remember sitting on the floor of her office to show her the exercises I had been given – she laughed and said that I would have the strongest legs in the department!
I especially remember that she once invited me to have Sunday lunch with her and Frank at their bungalow in Brundell. This entailed Maggie driving all the way in to campus to fetch me on her day off, and then driving me back to Suffolk terrace again in the afternoon. She had left Frank to do the cooking, and it was lovely for me to meet him, and enjoy a Sunday lunch with them in their home. I think she had realised that I was struggling, and this was her way of offering me a little bit of respite, or normality. And it worked a treat: I’ve never forgotten it.
I think she studied singing with John Aplin for a while, and while she was preparing for a singing exam (maybe grade 7 or 8?) she bravely chose to do a lunchtime concert of her exam pieces in the Music Centre, obviously in front of lots of music students. Her performance of Crabbed Age and Youth (by Maud Valerie White) was amazing and brought the house down! It was one of the highlights of my student days!
She and Frank came to my wedding in 1979 of course, and I’m pleased to say that Maggie and I stayed in touch ever since. We have exchanged cards and emails aplenty over the years (hers often addressing me as Dear Knickers!) She was an entertaining and gregarious writer of letters and emails, and you could hear her true voice when she wrote. She was as great a lover of extreme punctuation as I was!!
I was pleased to have been able to arrange a little surprise party for her (with Frank’s collusion) at The Maid’s Head when she retired from UEA, and 30 of us had intended to celebrate her 90th birthday with her at The Assembly House in March 2020 …… but we all know what happened to that idea. Still, she seemed to take lockdown very much in her stride until her nasty fall in the garden while she was watering her beloved roses…
I am pleased to say that I managed to travel to Norwich to visit Maggie several times since then, and we spoke on the phone until her hearing made it impossible. Even though she was mostly bed-bound for her final years, she still loved to hear news of people form UEA and watch the birds through the window (especially the ‘friendly’ goose who visited frequently!) She loved singing bits of Elijah with me on a few occasions, especially Lift Thine Eyes and the subsequent Be Not Afraid chorus.
I loved Maggie and was glad to have been her friend in adulthood: I shall miss her.
Do you have memories of Maggie you’d like to share too? Get in touch.