by Clive Walkley
My entry into the sound world of early music came fairly late in my life. I didn’t begin piano lessons until about the age of 10 because my parents couldn’t afford them. However, there was music in our home. My mother was a rather mediocre amateur pianist but my father was an excellent amateur tenor; his repertoire was mainly made up of Victorian ballads, arias from Handel’s Messiah and Stainer’s Crucifixion. When I went to secondary school, I began lessons on the cello and – in my teens – on the organ; by the time I left school I was acquainted with the Bach Cello Suites and many of Bach’s easier organ works. I sang in the school choir and I can remember singing the Tudor anthem ‘Lord, for thy tender mercy’s sake’ and Wilbye’s madrigal ‘Adieu, sweet Amaryllis’. I came across more madrigals when I attended a concert at Hull Chamber Music Club when Alfred Deller’s Deller Consort visited. I was quite bowled over by this: the fact that four or five people could sit round a table and sing such beautiful music unaccompanied amazed me. About the age of 14, I found that our local library had a copy of An Elizabethan Songbook (edited by Noah Greenberg and published by Faber) and I can remember playing these songs on the piano. At school we had the Columbia History of Music records (vinyl on 78s) which may have had some influence on me. My teachers must have known of my awakening interest in music history because, on leaving school, I was awarded as a music prize Parrish and Ohl’s Masterpieces of Music before 1750. I moved on to Trinity College of Music in London, and was introduced to counterpoint, through rather boring exercises! We had lectures on the history of music of course, but early music really came alive in the sight singing class when we sang Tudor anthems; in the musical analysis classes, I can remember looking at the ‘Agnus Dei’ from Byrd’s Mass for four voices and studying Palestrina’s is Missa Aeterna Christi Munera. I joined the optional plainsong class run by our aged but distinguished choral director, Charles Kennedy Scott; this introduction stood me in good stead for future years. At Trinity, we were encouraged in our final year to write a dissertation on some aspect of music pre-Bach and for some reason I chose to write about the music of Giovanni Gabrieli, although I have to confess that I had heard little if any of his music at this time; most of my knowledge came for looking at his music in old Dās Chorwerk editions and reading abut Venetian music in text books like Reese’s monumental tome, Music in the Renaissance.
When I started teaching in Bradford, I had no contact with early music whatsoever and it wasn’t until I moved to Cumbria, to take up a post as Lecturer in Music at the then Charlotte Mason College in Ambleside, I had a chance to get involved. Outside college. I was asked to direct a small madrigal group (which, much expanded, eventually became a chamber choir – the Pro Nobis Singers). We met weekly and sang through the Penguin Book of English Madrigals, and the above-mentioned masses of Palestrina and Byrd. This was the time when David Munrow first came into prominence. (Readers of a certain age may remember his 78 vinyl recording entitled The Mediaeval Sound). I bought a set of crumhorns for the college, built a spinet from a poorly designed kit (a disaster!); with students and friends, early music became a major part of my music making at this time. Not having had any introduction to palaeography as a student, I set about self-directed study using Willi Apel’s The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600 as a textbook and enjoyed the challenge of turning the notation of mediaeval and renaissance music into modern notation. In 1974, I was working at Reading University on an educational research project just a year before Anthony Rooley set up the Early Music Centre in London. When I heard about this, I took Mondays off to attend the centre. Tony suggested I might like to produce an edition of Walter Porter’s Madrigals and Ayres of 1632 which I did; later I provided liner notes for his recording of some of Porter’s madrigals. At that time, the university choral society was preparing for a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 and I was one of the cellists. It would not now pass as a ‘period performance’ but we string players were encouraged by the conductor to play without vibrato and with light bow strokes, to be achieved by holding the bow away from the heel. I also began lessons on the viol in Reading and can remember attending a course on In Nomines run by Francis Baines and, after only a fortnight, proudly holding my own on the In Nomine line! Returning to Cumbria again in 1977, I discovered that NWEMF was interested in starting a summer school. I had long thought that the college in Ambleside would be a good centre for an early music course and hearing of NWEMF’s interest, I contacted Roger Wilkes and, together with Peter Syrus, Joan Wess and Ef Segerman, we established the summer school which, of course, ran in Ambleside for many years.
About this time, I discovered Mapa Mundi editions of Spanish music and made contact with the founder, Bruno Turner. That was a light bulb moment for me! I remember spending a day with Bruno at his home in London when, with enormous enthusiasm, he told me about his discoveries in Spanish music and the editions he produced; at the end of the day he sent me away with six microfilms of music by Guerrero, Lobo and Esquivel, pointing out that little work had been done on Esquivel. That set me off on a journey, exploring his life and music, which eventually resulted in the publication of editions of Esquivel’s works and my book on the composer, published in 2010. Bruno’s generosity and helpful advice is something I have treasured over a period of many years. Early music has been at the heart of my music making now for many years: it forms part of the core repertoire of the Pro Nobis Singers and, of course, it has been a delight to share my enthusiasm with so many members of NWEMF.
Clive Walkley
Published in the February 2026 Newsletter
