Julian Bream - Semper Dowland Semper Dolens by John Dowland
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- A performance of Julian Bream on a 10-course lute. Notice the wonderful control of sound that Julian gets playing with fingernails. He is able to control the articulation and timbre more precisely.
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Always Dowland, always grieving. This is such a magnificent piece by one of the greatest composers. Few people knew of John Dowland, and the lute, when Bream began unveiling both in the first part of his concerts. In the second half of those programs, he astounded audiences with his guitar virtuosity often including the works of contemporary composers whom he had inspired to write for an instrument that was, at that time, still looked upon with suspicion in the world of classical music. There are so many first rate guitarists now. when Bream recorded and toured, there were only a handful of world renowned guitarists, and he was at the fore, which was all the more surprising since he was essentially an autodidact.
AS A BLACK MAN I NEVER THOUGHT MY GUITAR AND LUTE HERO WOULD BE A WHITE MAN NAME JULIAN BREAM. JULIAN BREAM IN A CLASS BY HIS SELF. NOW IM STUDYING THE CLASSICAL GUITAR AND LUTE. GROWING UP IN THE SLUMS OF CHICAGO FULL OF GANG VIOLENCE AND AND STUPITY. I NEVER HEARD OF GUITARIST LIKE. JULIAN BREAM. OR JOHN WILLIAMS. NOW I FELL LIKE I HAVE BEE ROB AT THE AGE OF 66. I WISH I COULD HAVE TAKEN UP THE CLASSICAL GUITAR AND THE LUTE
Good for you man! That's awesome!
What on earth does your skin color have to do with any of this
The lute was based upon the Oud brought into Spain in the Moorish invasion, and the Moors are kind of white and but not at all typical European Anglo Saxon or Caucasian white. Music is colorblind. It also transcends both languages and cultures, and that is why I love it so much.
That's fantastic. A moment arose when this music spoke to you- your ears opened to it and you heard the magic. Better late than never. A friend of mine grew up in a border town barrio- and as a child fumbling around on a trasistor radio, he found a faint signal of an opera, and was an instant convert, tuning in to the once per week concerts faithfully thereafter. Mostly where he lived, it was only conjunto music, and no opera music was available anywhere near him, nor were there any fans of it to support his interest, but it persisted. As an adult, he moved to a metropolitan city, and bacame really passionate about opera- but still enjoyed Tex Mex music too.
How can people post such sad nonsense about this performance. Julian has brought this music to life . Possibly many years before these "critics " were born. I'd love to listen to "Them"! . We owe him a great debt . I see Dowland nodding in approval. Wonderful ! .
Couldn't agree more... there are a lot of people below puffing out a lot of hot air which may be as musical as they can get.
Though this is not the state of the art anymore, we still need to value Julian Bream as one of the pioneers of lute playing. He has the same right to be valued as a Nikolaus Harnoncourt or especially Gustav Leonhardt.
Having said this I will be cautious of criticizing too much but I would like to say that it sounds interesting due to the fact that he played with fingernails, which lute players today don't do because they consider it ahistorical but this shows a development and HIP performance is all about development.
@@BluntofHwicce, thanks for correcting me on that issue.
Rest in peace Julian. Thank you for being you...
Rest well, Master Bream. And thank you.
Perfect words.
Maestro Julian Bream RIP.
Julian Bream, you were the best!
What is important is whether this music is brought to life - not whether he's using his fingernails or the pads of his fingers to pluck the strings. in this performance the music is very definitely alive.
Absolutely agree. Plus there are also voices (failing to find the source right now, sorry) stating modern believe that baroque lutenists used nails after all. Myself, I came here from Wikipedia's article about John Dowland. I had to listen to the piece he gave _that_ name. And lo, it is there on youtube, and IMHO in a wonderful performance, too! Never mind minutiae of technique, albeit they are invited by the description attached to the video.
He is the best lute player that has walked the planet since recordings started yes there are many good ones Hopkinson Smith, Paul R. O'Dette, Konrad Ragossnig, etc...BUT Bream is the best and by far most musical. His Dowland is the unmatched.
This IS the performance of Semper Dowland Semper Dolens
True musical and emotional depth, there are too many aspects to discuss here which make Bream such a great artist and musician.
He's gone before us now (14/8/2020) and is somewhere far above nit-picking comments about his string-picking techniques.
ah, there is no justice in the world only art
As a white man growing up in the Thames valley full of tennis courts and golf courses in the mid 1960s I never thought my guitar heroes would be elderly black men like John Lee Hooker; B B King; Albert King and Buddy Guy.
Rest in peace maestro 🌷
Breams lute sounds so much better than than all these "historically accurate" ones, which can barely project in a shoebox and soud like cardboard boxes strung with rubber bands.
the top "course" of any lute is a single string. It even has a name: chanterelle.
Julian played at my university (1974). He had a sign near the stage and in the program that said ABSOLUTELY NO PHOTOGRAPHS. Lon Cooper, our photojournalist, went right up to the stage and started to take a pic before a piece and Julian thought it was taking forever and he said, "are you going to take the goddamn photo or not?" Lon backed off and the audience applauded our artist of the evening.
Been in a piano recital by Sviatoslav Richter in Prague in early 1980s. A tourist in the audience defied the very clear, multilanguae "no photographing, no recording" signs and too a photo of Richter coming on the scene. He bowed, looked at the poor tourist and left. That was the recital.
What kinda weirdo gives this a thumbs down?
Brain dead?
Since Bream was primarily a guitarist, he had no choice but to pluck lute strings with his fingernails, as guitarists do.
But it definitely changes the sound from the traditional one of players who plucked the strings with the pads of their finger tips. Personally, I prefer the traditional sound. (BTW, I consider Bream possibly the greatest classical guitarist of the 20th century.)
Well, Bream could have done what some lutenists/guitarists do, which is concentrate for periods of time on just lute, and cut off nails for playing during those times (then regrow later for guitar). I can't blame him, though for just using nails.
In addition to a mellower tone, playing without nails probably helped preserve softer lute gut strings better, compared to modern nylon/wire wrapped strings. I don't play lute, but I've also heard that playing without nails helps make it easier to sound both strings of the dual lute courses simutaneously.
By the way, to some extent all contemporary lute playing is a recreation/approximation, because no playable lutes from Dowlands era have survived. All contemporary lutes, including Bream's, are modern replicas based on study of historical lute depictions/descriptions and some comparison to authentic instruments in bad disrepair. How period-accurate some of these instruments are, is debatable.
Also, many (though certainly not all) contemporary lutenists use nylon (rather than gut) strings and metallic (rather than tied on-gut string) frets. Neither of these things are really period-accurate, but they certainly facilitate playing the instrument. Gut strings, in particular, are relatively expensive, notoriously difficult to maintain in tune, and not particularly durable.
+jgrossma Thanks for your informative, interesting comments.
thank you for detail reply , JB did not use double strings on top 2 courses maybe he bridged the music for us slowpokes
Aquila has nyl-gut strings if you play renaissance music your right hand will become accustom to plucking the lower action etc. Julian was a hybrid
thumb over technique
As advocated in a "Varietie of Lute Lessons" by Dowlands son, Robert, in 1610.
A Renaissance lute is not supposed to be played with the fingernails like a guitar, but with the finger pads. He makes the lute have no depth and a very thin sound. Clearly a classical guitarist and not a lutenist. His version is sad and needed lots of work, primarily with how to actually play the instrument. A guitarist cannot simply pick up the lute, they have to learn the technical aspects of it first. Even if he played it with a plucktrum, it still would've sounded better than his fingernails. Not to mention, Renaissance lute is played with the thumb-in style, not thumb-out like a guitar. He technique was all wrong.
I am old enough to remember when there was a quotation being bandied around in the 1970's from a 'contemporary' 16th century source to the effect that to play the lute, 'the nailes must scraepe the strings' or some such. Unfortunately I can't locate the source at the moment. If you read the sources frequently quoted from Paul Odette's post grad study on playing techniques of the renaissance, the quotations he has translated... I'm not an Italian speaker, but my German is good enough to deal with those sources, shows that whilst the translation is ok, the possible interpretations are multiple, really, it is by no means clear what technique is being described... at all. I'm not a musicologist, so what do I know? But what I am, is a reasonably well trained art historian and when we look at the painted sources from the renaissance period and the even the early baroque (or what we used to like to call 'mannerist' painters) and indeed the printed sources which circulated for about 150 years, the support for the 'thumb in' technique is really very thin indeed.
Styles of playing come and go in and out of fashion, even for early music purists. The recordings made in the 70's of the last century are not the same as those made in the last decade of the 20th century and they're different again now and the one thing which is absolutely certain is that they will definitely change again. Bream was one of the only recording artists playing a Lute when I was a kid in the 70's and he did a lot to promote the instrument. His performance style is a bit muscular and robust for our ears now, but at the time, I at least, thought his interpretations rather exciting. at that time you could, more or less only hear Dowland or Da Milano on a classical guitar. That thing he's playing wouldn't be anyone's idea of a lute now either, but from what I remember you could buy a very good, very recently second hand car for what it cost, which is one of the reasons I'm not a lute player now.
Yeah it sounds shit I agree.
I urge you to post a video of yourself playing the lute. If you think you are in the position to critique the technique and sound of Julian Bream, you must be a hell of a player.
you want a technician, not a musician
I agree that lute generally sounds better without nails, but it is worth remembering that Bream played 'heavy' lutes with a tighter string tension which allowed him to use guitar technique. These instruments were not at all authentic lutes (perhaps a parallel would be the harpsichords used by George Malcolm) but it made it possible for that masterful musician to bring the wonderful lute music of the 16th century to a very large audience and inspire many of the younger, more 'authentic', lutenists to take up the instrument in the first place (if you google the quote by Bream about Nigel North, you will see he readily acknowledges the incredible standards which that younger generation attained). Besides, the 'Bream treatments of a piece is always something unique and worth hearing, regardless of his instrument or technical choices. Regarding the 'thumb-under' vs. 'thumb-over' technique, the latter apparently began to replace the former at the end of the 16th/beginning of the 17th centuries, or so I'm told.
I study American original Fingerstylist and clacicalist Ed McTier a.k.a Blind McTell ,with so few pop and rock Fingerstylists , as the late Toy Caldwell of marshall tucker , those who have as Lindsay Buckingham of fleetwood mac , and the late John Winter as well as St William or , in life rock guitarist Rory Gallagher , are really advance the solo, group,band and concert orchestras of the indefinite future . Again ,Julian Bream himself with a 'fancy", by J.Dowland himself,makes the listeners wonder who as well as what are the harmonic source images of the ' tone poems' Old Chris , a fiddler of Albuquerque NM,at chrisyoungdoesmctell.RUclips.com also.