Mark Flinn
My first active musical experience was, as for many of my generation, playing the descant recorder at primary school. While the collective sounds would have been painful, the whole class did learn to play an instrument and to read music (at least in the treble clef). And on the way we absorbed traditional folk tunes and other melodies. I moved on to the flute, and I suppose that my first ‘early music’ experience was playing Gluck’s ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ (from Orfeo e Euridice) in a school concert in 1959. I had a lot of fun with the flute over the years, playing masses of Baroque music including lots of trio sonatas. I learnt the elements of Baroque performance practice and even tried (and failed) to master the Baroque Flute.
Alongside all of this was, of course, singing. Up to the 1980s this was mostly standard choral society repertoire, including (of course) the Bach Passions (probably painfully slow tempi by today’s standards). I joined a chamber choir in Oxford and had my first exposure to the Byrd Four part Mass and continental Renaissance music. I organised an informal performance of Tallis’s Spem in Alium to celebrate a certain birthday. I went to the huge Victorian church of St Barnabas to hear, for the first time, the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610, a life-changing experience.
At that time I started to go most years to the annual Music Summer School at Dartington Hall in Devon (it moved two years ago to Holt School in Norfolk). I recall memorable recitals by George Malcolm, Trevor Pinnock, Roger Norrington and the Schütz Consort, Andrew Parrott and many others. Anthony Rooley, Emma Kirkby and the Consort of Music were regulars for many years, and introduced us to English and Italian Madrigals, and the English Masques and dramas from the seventeenth century. More recently, Stile Antico did several summers of vocal consort workshops and some memorable concerts.
During that period I started to engage more seriously in ‘early music’. I joined Thames Valley EMF and made more contacts for consort singing, which remains a great source of pleasure. I purchased sets of Mapa Mundi music (lots of Victoria, Lobo and Guerrero). I got to know Harold Copeman, whose book Singing the Meaning has been a useful guide over the years. The Oxford books of English Madrigals, Tudor Anthems and Italian Madrigals became more and more battered over the years.
We moved to the North West in 1993, and for some time my main musical outlet was with the William Byrd Singers in Manchester (as it is to the present day). Stephen Wilkinson MBE directed the Byrds from its foundation in 1970 up to 2010. I learnt more from him about the interpretation and performance of choral music than from anyone else. He loved (and had a deep understanding of) the music of Byrd and his English contemporaries, and also Schütz and (of course) the motets of JS Bach. But he had a blind spot with the Spanish Renaissance school, so no Victoria et al.
Over the years I have attended many NWEMF workshops. There were so many memorable Saturdays over the years, but just to pick a few:
- David Allison’s Lopquebantur variis linguis, in Knutsford
- The late Michael Proctor’s Giovanni Croce Sacred Music, in Huddersfield (a joint event with NEEMF)
- Paul Spicer’s Bach Motets, in Knutsford
- Evelyn Tubb’s English Madrigals in Natland
- James Weeks’ Rosenmüller Vespers in Newcastle-under-Lyme
- John Hancorn’s King Arthur, in Didsbury
- Justin Doyle’s Choruses from Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, in Carnforth
- Andrew Griffith’s Schütz motets, in Chester …and many more….
My social life has been framed by music, and through it I have made many, even most, of my friends. NWEMF played a major part in that over the past thirty years, and I owe a lot to NWEMF members, from whom I learnt (and, I hope, continue to learn) much. Here’s to the next fifty years!
Mark Flinn
Published in September 2026 Newsletter
