Julian Bream (1933-2020)

LATE TUESDAY UPDATE: After I attempted some fixing and updating and amplifying of this post, which I'd thought had otherwise come out surprisingly okay, I discovered that important parts of it had gotten mangled or simply lost. So I went back in and repaired it as best I could, and while I was at it attempted some additional fixing and updating and amplifying. Goodness only knows what more has gone wrong now. Note: We've now got our own Django Reinhardt audio clip! -- Ken


Julian plays one of his Spanish staples, "Sevilla" from Isaac Albéniz's Suite española. (You can hear "Granada" here.)

by Ken

We'll be back to Beethoven next week, I expect. But since I got word that Julian Bream died at home in Wiltshire on August 14 at 87, it's been on my mind, and even though I'm poorly equipped for a proper commemoration, as I'll explain in a bit, I decided I didn't want to let another week go by without doing something.

During my college years (I'm horrified to have to note that we're talking about more than 50 years ago) Julian came to town and gave a recital that I imagine was very much like countless other recitals he gave in countless other places: He played the guitar, played the lute, and talked. My goodness, did he talk! His knowledge and passion reached out directly and grabbed at least this audience member, and I was hooked. As I must have mentioned here before, I'm not exactly a guitar enthusiast -- I don't mind it, but I don't go out of my way to hear it, except in the hands of a select few guitarists, starting with the greatest of them all, the Spaniard Andrès Segovia, and continuing with the other master, Julian B. (Whenever I say this, I also like to put in a good word for the guitar-playing Romero I know best, Angel R.)


SO YOU WANT TO PLAY A FUGUE -- ON A GUITAR?

Here's a case in point. Playing Bach on the guitar had been one of Segovia's great passions, and it became one of Julian's too. If you can play a fugue on a violin, why not on a guitar?




THE DIFFERENCE FOR ME BETWEEN ANDRÈS AND
JULIAN (AND ANGEL) vs. MOST OTHER GUITARISTS . . .

. . . is that when I listen to all those other guitarists, I'm always thinking about the fact that they're playing the guitar, some better than others, but still "just" the guitar. When I listen to Andrès and Julian (and Angel), I hardly think about the guitar; I'm caught up in the vast ragne of musical expressivity. Later in this post we're going to hear from Julian about his excitement at the discovery of the guitar playing of Django Reinhardt, who "seemed to hold within his grasp the whole gamut of human expression." This is what I've pretty much always heard with Julian -- and in his case it's not just with the guitar but with the lute and any of the other related instruments he brought back to life.

Which sounds like a great cue to hear Julian play the lute -- actually, a very special sort of lute.


Julian plays Dowland's "Semper Dowland semper dolens," as poster Paul Nash notes, on "a 10-course lute." Paul adds: "Notice the wonderful control of sound that Julian gets playing with fingernails. He is able to control the articulation and timbre more precisely."


THE LUTE WAS VITAL TO JULIAN'S SENSE OF MUSICAL SELF

We know this because the importance he attached to the lute had to withstand about as serious a challenge as any guitarist could face.

We're not going to hear the relevant quote from Julian about the impact hearing Segovia had on him. Let's just stipulate that it was immense, clearly life-defining. And there came a time when Segovia, recognizing the extent of Julian's talent, more or less adopted him as his protégé. That came to an abrupt end, and I believe both parties acknowledged that the rupture developed over Julian's lute playing, which Segovia insisted he had to stop, on the ground that he couldn't achieve true mastery of the guitar while splitting his time and mental and physical development between instruments, while Julian insisted he couldn't stop playing the lute, on the ground that the instrument and the repertory (not to mention musical collaborations) it opened were too important a part of his musical makeup.

I imagine that anyone who heard Julian play the lute -- with the exception of Segovia (assuming, that is, that Segovia ever actually heard him play, that he didn't refuse to do so simply as a matter of principle) -- is immeasurably glad he stuck to his guns about the lute. Just as I'm about as far as you can get from a guitar aficionado, I'm not much of a Renaissance-music listener. But it was another story when it was Julian playing -- either solo or in the company of the many fine musicians he got to perform with, not least his own Julian Bream Consort.


More Dowland: The Julian Bream Consort, joined by tenor Robert Tear, performs "The Earl of Sussex's Galliard."


JULIAN ON DVD: IN THE FAST LANE AND THE SLOW

In his early 70s, after retiring from performing, Julian was able to recall, at leisure, his life in music, in Paul Balmer's two-hour-plus film Julian Bream: My Life in Music, which you can watch on YouTube.

I mentioned early on in this post that I came "poorly equipped" to the task of doing some sort of remembrance of Julian, by which I meant that I have hardly anything of his on CD, which I would need for making audio clips. As you've noticed, I've turned to YouTube, where there's lots more to check out, though I do worry about the sound quality -- and the sounds Julian produced are such an important part of his playing. Not that they're any more help to me for blog purposes, but I do have two Bream DVDs, one of which I happened to be watching/listening may through just a few months ago:

¡Guitarra!: A Musical Journey Through Spain (released by Kultur) gives us the whole of a 1985-ish TV series: eight nearly-half-hour episodes, for a total of nearly four hours, proceeding pretty much chronologically, that give us a personal overview of the evolution of Spanish music -- and culture generally, since no culture has been as infused with the guitar as Spain's. Each episode is so packed, with both musical samples and pointed commentary, and moves at such a bracing pace, that it feels more like eight hours' worth of material. (I wonder if the considerable run time has anything to do with the technical obstinacy I've encountered in the later episodes with my copy of the DVD.) Interestingly, for the program on flamenco (there would have to be a program on flamenco, wouldn't there?), although we're confident that Julian could play flamenco as believably and evocatively as he plays everything else, he brought in an authentically flamenco-trained guitarist, Paco Peña. I have to admit, it's a pretty exciting encounter.

My other Bream DVD is the above-mentioned film Julian Bream: My Life in Music, from which we saw above a still of Julian relaxing as he talks about, well, his life in music. Here he is, for example, recalling his excited discovery, via his father's records, of Django Reinhardt.

"My father had a number of very good jazz records, but the music that really interested me, and enthused me, was the Hot Club of France with Stéphane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt. And it was Reinhardt's guitar playing that so stimulated me musically that I was drawn to the guitar like a magnet. I felt his playing was so evocative, so powerful at times, so dramatic, and then at other times so lyrical, that he seemed to hold within his musical grasp the whole gamut of human expression."

"In the Still of the Night" is played in 1936 by Django Reinhardt (1910-1953) -- note the largely disabled-from-fire-damage left ring finger and pinky -- and the rest of the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, including legendary jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli.

Later in the film Julian talks even more vividly about his first hearing of Segovia playing. I apologize for being too lazy to transcribe that bit of the film; sometimes I just can't stand a moment's more video-talk transcribing. We should have had this, though -- maybe I'll feel more inspired (or just more guilty) in a day or two. Come to think of it, we should probably have video clips here of both Reinhardt and Segovia playing. I tried to embed a YouTube clip of Reinhardt, which embedded easily enough but then announced itself as forbidden treasure. (This annoys the heck out of me. If a clip isn't allowed to be shared, fine, but why the fuck do the shithead morons at YouTube provide embed code? Or did I just answer my own question?) You can watch the Reinhardt clip here -- and you can easily enough find Segovia clips to watch too. I wound up searching out and adding the above Reinhardt audio clip.

The pace of My Life in Music is worlds removed from that of the two-decades-earlier ¡Guitarra!, and as we'll see in a moment, the septuagenarian Julian appreciated "the time and space" allowed him by My Life in Music director and presenter Paul Balmer. In fact, I think the notes provided for the My Life DVD insert by both Julian and Paul (if we're going to be first-name-familiar with Julian, as I think he might have liked, we might as well do the same with Paul) are worth our attention:

As we settle, a little anxiously, into the 21st century, it appears to me that we have become obsessed with speed and various forms of electronically induced communication.

The performance of serious music on the other hand pursues its own natural rhythm, as its articulation unfolds organically in physical time. It was this natural and deeply expressive feature that drew me inexorably towards music as a young man, to become eventually the raison d'être of my life's work.

The history of my own particular passion for musical communication is not hard to divulge -- it is tangibly celebrated right here in this DVD, where the director generously allowed me all the necessary time and space for its resolution.

Julian Bream, Spring 2006

Despite the achievements of Andrès Segovia, in 1946 the classical guitar in England remained a musical curio. There were no guitar professors at the British Academies of Music, good guitars were difficult to find, and printed guitar music was scarce. But the thirteen-year-old Julian Bream was determined in his quest, and through his unstinting efforts that landscape has now been transformed.

Julian's legacy is a seat of music at every conservatoire and a repertoire rich in substantial music from Britten, Walton, Henze, Takemitsu, Tippett, Rawsthorne, Richard Rodney Bennett, Lennox Berkeley, and countless others. As if this were not enough, Julian redefined for us the Renaissance lute, drawing the world's attention to a glory of forgotten riches.

What impresses me most however is Julian's unnerving musicality, an alchemy he brings to the performance of the slightest 'toy'. Exploring Julian's formidable recordings (over 35 packed CDs), I discovered gems he'd forgotten he had recorded -- [Anthony Holborne's] 'Heigh Ho Holiday' amongst them.

Paul Balmer

For what it's worth, the DVD of My Life not only looks and especially sounds much better than the YouTube versions but includes, in addition to the film, an hour and a half's worth of bonus video, among which are recorded-for-DVD performances of Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal, written for Julian, and Manuel de Falla's Debussy-inspired Homenaje -- and of the new performances we're told: "Recorded with 2 cameras, an alternative 'edit' is available at any time during the performances by pressing 'angle' on your remote control." (An enthusiast has posted the supplementary video material on YouTube.) The DVD also features a director's commentary, and an on-screen "rare stills" montage and text-only material including a discography.


"JULIAN BREAM AT THE BBC"

Among the sizable quantity of Julian material on YouTube, including master classes that are bound to be interesting, there's an hour-long BBC retrospective, Julian Bream at the BBC, that draws on three decades' worth of BBC archival material. I haven't watched it yet, but it sounds pretty surefire.


NEXT TIME: Back to whether and how it matters if the Leonore Overture No. 1 in fact came after rather than before Leonore Nos. 2 and 3 -- and onward to the lesson of Fidelio.

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