by Andrew Mayes
Vice-Present of NWEMF and former Chair
On first consideration, having been asked by Elizabeth Dodd for a Newsletter contribution, I immediately realised that it wasn’t a ‘Road to Damascus’ event. When I began to think in detail, tracing how I discovered early music was a far more complex process than I had anticipated, with a number of very different strands. The realisation that I enjoyed listening to music came even before I started school. The radio was frequently on at home, and music (which I later came to realise was classical music) began to fascinate me. In the time before starting school, I had required a course of dental treatment during which, having been a good boy, my parents asked if there was something I would like – I immediately requested to attend an orchestral concert. The programme included Britten’s Young Person’s Guide… and Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat ballet suite – only a hint of early music in the Britten, but musical seeds had been sown.
I was among the post-war generations that encountered the recorder at school. My first instrument was a wooden Schott with a plastic mouthpiece (it cost 14s/6d). The name Dolmetsch frequently cropped up, and some of the tunes we played were certainly my first introduction to early music. Another important event was when I joined the local parish church choir. Farrant’s Lord, for thy tender mercy’s sake was probably the first piece of Tudor music in which I sang, and it did make an impression.
For some time my father, who until then had worked for ICI, realised a calling to the Anglican ministry, and was accepted for ordination training at Ely Theological College. On subsequent visits to Ely, I first heard the music of Tallis and Byrd (and Gregorian chant) sung by the cathedral choir – another important encounter. At about the same time that my father went to Ely, the counter tenor, lutanist and lute maker Ian Harwood (founder of the Lute Society) joined the cathedral choir. My father got to know him quite well and our family ‘house sat’ for the Harwoods for a couple of weeks during one summer. Being surrounded by lutes at various stages of construction, though not enticing me to play the instrument, was another experience that intensified my growing interest in early music.
During my father’s first curacy in Letchworth, a new parish church was built and consecrated. I was fascinated by the installation of the new organ, an instrument in classical style by Grant, Degens and Rippin on which I was offered lessons by the organist and choir master. I was never going to be much of an organist, but this led me to join GD&R (soon to become Grant, Degens and Bradbeer) and as Frank Bradbeer’s assistant I was involved in the design and construction of some important instruments, especially those at New College Oxford and the Lyons Concert Hall at York University: the classical organ revival was an integral part of the early music revival as a whole. It was at about this time that I bought a clavichord. Though not much of a keyboard player, ‘getting among the notes’ of works gives an insight to the music that simply listening can’t provide. The clavichord eventually went, but an oldish Dolmetsch spinet eventually took its place; the accompanimental ability of which adds to domestic music making possibilities.
Who could resist the playing of David Munrow? ** – yet it was not until my children started to play the recorder at school that I reconnected with the instrument. I joined NWEMF, went on workshops and courses and, almost certainly as a result of my ever-increasing interest and enthusiasm, was invited to edit The Recorder Magazine when, after Schotts gave up publication, Peacock Press took it over. Those were exciting years.
My appreciation of early music has gone hand in hand with a similar enthusiasm for contemporary music. I once commented that if in some dystopian nightmare an extreme regime banned all music, I would miss Bartók’s string quartets as much as Purcell’s Fantasias. For a number of years I have been a trustee and treasurer of the Rawsthorne Trust, an organisation that promotes the interest in and performance of the music of composer Alan Rawsthorne (1905-1971). His works, which sometimes embrace the chaconne and variation forms, reveal his own enthusiasm for music of earlier times – a vivid musical voice with which I particularly identify.
Andrew Mayes
** BBC Sounds early May 2026 – The Essay, broadcast on Radio 3 at 9.45 pm Monday to Friday was devoted to David Munrow – Ed
Published in the June 2026 Newsletter
