by Elizabeth Dodd, Newsletter Editor
I didn’t have to come to early music – I was already in it without knowing that’s what it was.
It all started with my father (Gordon Dodd) wanting to play Bach on the proper instrument. He set about finding someone to advise on how to make a harpsichord (actually he made a clavichord first), this person introduced him and my mother to recorders. I remember my sister and I receiving one each for Christmas when I was about 9. The same friend went on to viols so that was next for us. Gordon couldn’t afford to buy four viols for the family so set about making them – functional rather than authentic or beautiful, with (horrors!) metal strings and machine heads but as instruments they worked and we all learned by attending summer schools run by Nathalie Dolmetsch and Layton Ring, playing regularly in our family consort and attending Viola da Gamba Society meetings. Though looking back with clear eyes (or ears!) I think we may have sounded dreadful. We all needed proper tuition on our technique, the lack of which I addressed for myself by taking lessons later on.
There was very little published viol music to play so next Gordon set about haunting the British Library, Bodleian Library and Cambridge University Library where he copied from manuscripts of composers such as Ferrabosco, Mico, Lawes, Jenkins and the rest and producing cottage-industry style publications for the Viola da Gamba Society in their Supplementary Publications range. We played through all the pieces ourselves during the editing and checking process. Later, when I began to take an interest in lyra viol music he furnished me with many of the pieces which are part of my repertoire today. He also had a number of pieces published by Faber.
During those early days I was excited by news that Nathalie Dolmetsch and her daughter Marie-Louise were to run an early dance summer school alongside the Lute Society summer school in York. I instantly enrolled and there met Joan Wess who was to have such a good impact on my musical life later on.
Fast forward many years, I was working as a music librarian at London University, playing with Peter Holman’s first group plus many other performing experiences, and part of the group who set up the Early Music Centre under the direction of Anthony Rooley. I decided to become a student for a second time. I got a place (and a good grant from the GLC) at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on the Early Music post-graduate course. Part of the course was early dance and that is where I really worked at it, alongside the viol. A new Licentiate for the teaching of early dance was set up and I became the first person to pass the exam. This led to joining an early dance group, performing in England, Italy and Belgium.
I had heard vaguely of NWEMF when Clive Walkley asked me to teach at the Ambleside summer school in 1985 and when in 1986 we moved up to Cumbria I joined and was instantly invited to join the committee. My first time around of editing the newsletter came at a committee meeting when the necessity of finding a new editor was flagged up at the same time as the need for a new chairman. Someone looked at me and to my horror asked if I could become the chairman. Fortunately no-one else heard her so I quickly opted for editor as the lesser of the two evils. I resigned some years later under pressure of other work but volunteered again at a Zoom meeting during Lockdown when it seemed as if NWEMF was going to struggle for lack of officers
Elizabeth Dodd
Published in November 2026 Newsletter
