Cornamuse or rebec?

By Peter Syrus

Which came first? No, I’m not talking about their place in the evolution of instruments. I’m talking about my student grant, and its depletion for the purchase thereof. I couldn’t answer the question without a careful check first, since we are after all going back over half a century. And it wasn’t quite the start of a lifelong interest in early music. My older brother had come home in university vacations keen to put on recitals of baroque music, their highlights a Bach cantata or two: I had already played the first movement of the A minor Violin Concerto and probably knew it by heart. There is an old adage that the route to understanding Bach is via Buxtehude rather than via Brahms. In other words, find what logically precedes rather than postdates your current obsession. [Actually, that may not be quite the whole story: Brahms’s interest in early music is fascinating in its own right, while maybe one route to Isaac is via Webern – discuss….]

Anyway, I must have felt sufficiently motivated to ‘discover’ pre-baroque music before setting off for my own first year at university to opt for one week at the Dartington Summer School. To be sure, I squeezed in a couple of violin lessons, and sang in the choir: Neville Marriner taking us through Vivaldi’s evergreen ‘Gloria’. There will have been a concert by his Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, predating the first genuinely period-instrument outfits in this country, but at that time easily the next best thing. Rafael Puyana was there with his harpsichord, the first time I’d heard skeletons copulating on a tin roof (no prizes for naming the originator of that little gem). But the most relevant visitor that week was David Munrow, and I guess there will have been a concert from his Early Music Consort of London. I went eagerly to a couple of afternoon practical workshops led by him. One jolly little number we essayed was ‘Pase el agoa’, from the Spanish Palace songbook of around 1500. Come on, you must know it, as ubiquitous then as a Susato dance, the stuff of all early music concerts. If you don’t know it, have a laugh and sample some of the countless versions on YouTube. And what may I have learned about the piece, over fifty years ago? Maybe I digested those magical terms that crop up at any self-respecting forum workshop, words you can throw out at a party when conversation flags: macaronic, or, God forbid, hemiola.

Well, that’s my entry level to a journey which really took flight at university. This was at York, so it really is a neat and happy coincidence for me that we’ll be returning there to celebrate the first 50 years of NWEMF in 2027. Meanwhile do share in these pages more of your own reminiscences of how you discovered, and what has continued to maintain, your love of this repertoire.

Peter Syrus

Published in September 2025 Newsletter