My route into early music
Perhaps with other people too, there is a chicken-and-egg element to this. As a church chorister I encountered a few pieces (by the likes of Byrd, Victoria and Viadana mainly) which were clearly examples of ‘early’ music; but these encounters occurred in the late 1950s when I was definitely in the autumn of my days as a boy treble. After my voice changed and I was singing alto, I also sang some Palestrina, notably his Missa Aeterna Christi munera.
I was fortunate indeed to secure a choral exhibition at Clare College, Cambridge, where I read music (1963-6) and sung in the chapel choir. In those days the colleges were single-sex, so we had a pretty rough-and-ready choral ensemble whose repertoire included a handful of early pieces, some of which ended up in the OUP anthologies Anthems for Men’s Voices. The music course introduced me, at the outset, to palaeography, where we learnt to transcribe some sacred and secular 16th-century pieces, so these exercises brought me into contact with pieces by Dowland and Campian as well as (more) Byrd. But Clare College is next door to King’s, whose chapel choir was already world-famous, and was in the process of issuing a number of distinguished LP recordings (Byrd was well represented, including the Mass for Five Voices and the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis from his Great Service). I attended Choral Evensong in King’s when not on duty at Clare, and so was introduced to other early music composers, including Tallis and Orlando Gibbons. Later I discovered the chapel choir of St John’s College, which was building up its own reputation as a fine choir, and whose choir director, George Guest, ventured more widely into early-music repertories (Lassus became a major discovery there). But all this was ‘music which was early in date’; the label ‘early music’ never became attached to it. In my third year, however, the music course included, within the history programme, a choice between ‘1550-1750’ and ‘1750-1950’; and I found it easy to opt for 1550-1750. Monteverdi was a set composer, and his Vespers of 1610 a prescribed work. This, for me, was a landmark discovery, and I fell in love with Monteverdi’s music at once.
After graduating I became a music librarian in Nottingham, and there was a timely vacancy for an alto lay clerk in the choir of Southwell Minster (Cathedral) some fourteen miles distant. I spent three-and-a half happy years there before feeling the need for further study (an external degree at London University), prompting a move back to East Anglia where I became a lay clerk at Ely Cathedral. The Ely repertoire was loaded with early music, including Palestrina and Victoria to be sure, but also many English composers; home-grown figures included the likes of George Barcrofte and the excellent John Amner (1579-1641), whose Christmas piece O ye little flock is, I feel, one of the finest consort anthems which you will encounter. Meanwhile, in addition to some school teaching, I became involved in evening classes for both the local authority and the WEA. I taught recorder classes, and became a dab hand at producing simple arrangements and editions of pieces by Michael Praetorius, and Tielman Susato, as well as directing a recorder ensemble at one of the village colleges near Cambridge. My knowledge of instrumental repertoire grew hugely through this work, and usefully prepared me for my entry into full-time adult education, at Manchester’s College of Adult Education, in January 1974. Aided by a supportive Principal – an important antidote to an indifferent local education authority – I set about establishing a brand-new music department. Building on what I had learnt in previous years, the department included classes in recorder tuition, also what was an excellent recorder ensemble class, for which I was able to provide a reasonably wide-ranging repertoire. We also had a College choir, which developed a varied repertoire which included some 16th- and 17th-century pieces. Meanwhile Peter Syrus, who had recently joined the staff of the nearby Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), also found us, and joined my departmental staff. He was the natural person to direct a newly-formed Renaissance Music class – some of whose members remain as invaluable members of NWEMF. Against this background, it was for me important to discover who else was performing ‘early music’ ‘out there’; and this led to us convening a one-day conference in November 1977. I was most helpfully advised by Peter and by Dr David Fallows (whom I had known at Cambridge; he was now a music lecturer at the University of Manchester) as to who might address the conference, and how it was to be advertised. The rest, as they say, is history; but it is a matter of particular pride to me to look back on the College of Adult Education (CAE) as the birthplace of NWEMF, the earliest of the regional EMFs.
Roger Wilkes
Published in the November 2025 Newsletter
