Chris Green and Sophie Matthews gave a fast moving and fascinating brief history of Music on Tuesday evening. They had been due to come to us in March but had to cancel. We were delighted to welcome them to the Grammar School.
The instruments that were played were very interesting and some were unusual. For instance, there were two types of mandolin played by Chris, the smallest – a mandolino and a larger mandola. Chris also played a gittern, a lute and a guitar as well as a piano accordion. Sophie’s instruments were equally interesting, recorders, a shawm (the ancestor of the oboe), a crumhorn a very odd-looking reed instrument which is curved at the bottom, a rauschpfeife (this is German for “rush” or “reed” pipe) and the bagpipes. Sophie told us that the UK has ten different kinds of bagpipes! Sophie’s bagpipes looked like the Medieval type.
The concert began in the Middle Ages with “Summer is icumen in, Llyod sing cuccu”, this is the oldest English song and Chris and Sophie accompanied themselves on the mandolino and shawm respectively. There then followed a dance played on the bagpipes and called a Brawl!, this dates from the 15th century We then travelled in time to the 16th century for Pastime in Good Company written by that famous musician Henry VIII accompanied by the crumhorn and gittern. This was followed by a 16th/17th century dance called a Maggot, this seems to be a generic term and the modern equivalent would be an earworm. This was fast and furiously played by Sophie on shawm and Chris on gittern. It was followed by that lovely John Dowland song “Come again sweet love” from his First Book of Airs with Chris accompanying on the lute.
Still in the early 1600s, accompanied by the red pipe – a Waite’s instrument according to Sophie, (the City Waites patrolled the streets at night) – we heard the Boys of Bedlam nonsense song “Who’s the fool now?” We joined in the chorus – Thou hast well drunken man, who’s the fool now?
Into the 18th Century with bagpipes and gittern and a song Shepherd and Shepherdess from 1799. This was followed by Pills to Purge Melancholy by Thomas Sturgeon and then the Tale of the Sovay, which is about a female highwayman. Into the 19th century with a moral Ballad, “Billy don’t you speak to me” and of course the Victorian Music Hall “When father papered the parlour”; this brought us to the last two songs from the First World War, Ivor Novello’s “Keep the Home Fires Burning” and the comic song “Goodbye-ee!” The concert ended with an encore, “The Somerset Wassail”.
What a wonderful concert this was and a splendid beginning to the 2024/2025 season.
CM