{"id":15109,"date":"2020-09-04T14:10:18","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T21:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=15109"},"modified":"2020-09-04T14:37:19","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T21:37:19","slug":"julian-bream-a-life-on-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/julian-bream-a-life-on-the-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Julian Bream: A Life on The Road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY GREGORY NEWTON | FROM THE MAY-JUNE 1983 ISSUE OF CLASSICAL GUITAR<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any book answers many questions, but by nature there are always some which are left, at least in part, unanswered. Recently I visited Julian Bream <\/a>at his home in Wiltshire, and we discussed a few such questions arising out of Tony Palmer’s book, Julian Bream: A Life on the Road<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

CLASSICAL GUITAR: What intentions lay behind the book? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JULIAN BREAM:<\/strong> Yes, well, I can tell you that. The\nprimary reason was that few people have very much of an idea of what it’s like\nto be an international concert artist. Many know a little of the procedure, in\nthat the artist has to practise, prepare his programme, put on his uniform and\nso forth, and then of course he has to get there. They are the logistics, so to\nspeak. However, very few people know what it’s really like to be a performer,\nand more so a performer \u201con tour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s that big \u201chowever\u201d there.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s right, yet nobody seems to have written a book about\nthat experience. But there were several reasons for doing it. For example, when\nI’m moving around socially or going to the local pub with friends, somebody may\nask something like “Where have you come back from?” or “Where\nare you going?” “Oh I’m just going off to Chile,” I might\nanswer. Well, I must say in a sense it is wonderful, but it is also a\ncommitment, a job of work, you see. And in describing it, I didn’t want to\ndeglamorise my profession at all, but I did want people to know what it’s like\u2014it’s\nnot a bed of roses, and there are occasions when it’s even worse than that. The\nsecond reason was that every year there are many young musicians who have\nfinished their studies at college and want to pursue a musical career, who\nmight want to know a little bit about the structure of the profession and how\nthings work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The business end.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2014but, more importantly, what actually happens, the nuts\nand bolts of it all, and hopefully that it’s realistic yet not too\ndiscouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They normally don’t address those subjects in college.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are quite right, because this experience is almost\nimpossible to teach. You can only celebrate or suffer it as an individual and\nthen, as I’ve tried to in this book, express your feelings about it. So they\nwere important reasons for the enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was also another. Having been a professional musician\nfor some 35 years, I have over those years formed opinions, attitudes.\nObviously I’ve developed; I might even have decayed. Yet my thoughts have\nevolved naturally through that time, and I felt that a book of this nature\nwould be a very good platform from which to offer my feelings and opinions in,\nI hope, a stimulating way. It could enable other people just to think about\ncertain things they may not have thought about, or had thought about but in\nfact treated them in a subconscious oblivion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also thought that here was a time in my life when I could\nsit back and look at what I’ve been doing, and then to try and understand a few\nthings that I didn’t try, or even want, to understand many years ago. When\nyou’re in the middle of a professional life, in the thick of it you might say,\nthere are many things you don’t even question, that you treat in a rather\nnonchalant way, so the book opened me up\u2014I thought: Well now, I must think\nwhat actually goes on, what I’m doing and why I’m doing it<\/em>. So it was, and\nin fact the writer, Tony Palmer, continually questioned me about it. I also\nthought about it enough to be able to suggest some questions to him so that, as\nit were, he “asked the right questions.” Of course, I’d already\nthought about the answers\u2014but then he asked a lot of other questions that were\nquite new to me. It made me think, I was pinned down, I couldn’t retract, and\nin a sense that was very good, very good. Because in fact you could write a\nbook of this sort yourself, but it’s having the other person who observes you\nat work, at play, or witnessing your concert performances, which adds another\ndimension. In fact, another person can see many things you can’t see, simply\nbecause you can’t visualise yourself. That’s why I asked Tony Palmer to be the\nauthor, and that’s how the book came about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got the impression that one of the intentions in the\nbook was to convey the strong dichotomy between the public life and the private\nlife.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lead that sort of existence by design and choice. I enjoy\nthe public life, though naturally as it’s manifested today\u2014by that I mean with\nall the fast-travelling jets and so forth\u2014a lot more actual work and travel is\npacked into a shorter time. It is compressed. Because of this, I decided that\nif I’m going to get in on this treadmill, if I’m going to commit myself\nseriously to it, then I’ve got to have an alternative commitment that is just\nas serious and as strong, to balance the “sheer madness of it all!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book you’ve allowed people to have an insight\ninto you as a person\u2014your past, your private life, etc. You also give your\nhonest opinions about many things, musical and otherwise. Did you, during the\nproject, ever feel a bit apprehensive about that?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a sense I did, yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, you get down to the nitty-gritty.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I thought it was either going to be a complete\ncommitment, this book, or just a public relations veneer. I had to decide early\non how it was going to be, and I decided that I would commit myself to it. It’s\nvery much how I feel, and I think that it’s very good to commit yourself in\nthis sort of way. You’ve got to be careful. That is, you don’t want to cause unnecessary\npain, or unnecessary rudeness toward individuals whom you’re talking about. But\nafter all, one man’s opinion is only one man’s opinion, and there are plenty of\nother opinions that are perfectly valid; mine just happens to be one. The thing\nis, if you go ahead with a book of this nature, with a full commitment, you\nhave to be totally honest. And if you are, you’re naturally going to tread on\nsome rather tender toes. So really, my feeling was that, yes, I laid myself on\nthe block, but I felt that I have enough resilience, as a musician and as a\nperson, to be able to withstand criticism of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is most interesting in terms of some of your\nattitudes toward, and ideas about, music. You made some meaningful statements,\nand so possibly we could probe further into them. In one you talked about \u201cremaining\ninnocent after experience,\u201d with particular reference to early music and\ninterpretation. Now how does one, or how do you, strive for that goal in\nmusic\u00admaking? Or can it indeed be a goal?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it’s more a state of being than a goal. It is\nreally, I suppose, trying to find those initial intuitive reactions you had as\na child. We can all surely remember them, but they remain largely underground,\nunevoked. In terms of experience of life, it’s getting back to those pristine\nfeelings, when it was absolutely pure experience, that I think is often\nimportant. It’s something you find in yourself\u2014it’s not so much a goal you\nattain. In fact, you never could attain it, because attaining a goal is too\nmuch an evolving process. It is really like going back within yourself.\nHowever, sometimes through reading poetry or looking at a picture or\nexperiencing light on trees, you can regain those very first impressions you\nhad as a child. It is that innocence which is untainted and which, I think, is\na lovely, indeed heavenly thing to get a glimpse of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this connection in the book, referring to early music, it\nwas that I didn’t see how one could feel like a man in the period, say, of\n1650, having had in our genes and our experience all the intervening years of\nchange. So that even when somebody says, “Well this a totally authentic\nperformance,” you know, it cannot be. It’s physically impossible to do\nthat, and therefore it has to be contrived. And it’s \u201ccontrived contrivance\u201d and\n\u201cartfulness\u201d that can sometimes destroy or debilitate musical impulses which\nare natural to a person at this moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the way you see it, there must be some type of\nbalance.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think so, yes. I think that one should look at all music\nthat has been written: all styles of music that have come down to us, to absorb\nthem, and to understand why music has changed and continuously does\u2014try to\nunderstand a little bit the historical processes of that change, which\nsometimes have very little to do with music. They may have to do with politics,\nsociology, many other things. It’s that understanding which I think is very\nimportant. And it’s not just understanding a given period which you may be\nspecialising in, but understanding the period before that\u2014how that special\nperiod evolved from the period before, and how and why the succeeding period evolved\nfrom it. Then you look back at things and, with luck, you may learn a thing or\ntwo or three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was another very interesting statement in which\nyou said: “Music is at its best to my mind when it is a revelation of what\none might call, for want of a more apt phrase, a religious experience.”\nThe spiritual qualities of music are important to you…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not in all music, but in some music, yes. Some music is, in\na sense, largely entertainment music. There is other music of a more profound\nquality, which is important\u2014but it is by no means always essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spiritual aspects don’t seem, in general, to be\noften talked about or often appreciated to the fullest extent.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well there are, for example, what I call composers\u2019 composers.\nThat is, there are certain composers whose intimate gifts can only be really\nperceived by composers themselves to a large extent, though not entirely.\nThey’ve been through that experience themselves, and have had success or failed\nin varying degrees. For example, a lot of the chamber music of Faure is very,\nvery intimate. It doesn’t have an impact on people like the chamber music of\nShostakovich or Ravel, for example. But it’s simply that the composer didn’t\nwant that, that he was working with inspirations of a more withdrawn character.\nIt’s only those composers and musicians who really know what the composer is\ndoing, what he’s actually composing, who can really appreciate that. To some\nextent, when we’re talking about the spirit of music, it’s only those who have\nindeed been enlightened or felt the spirit of music who can know about it, but\nthere are many people who feel it instinctively. They cannot explain it but\nthey can feel it\u2014that’s the important thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Nerves and apprehension are not necessarily destructive; they can be very much the life\u00adblood of a performance.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On the lighter side, you mentioned how \u201cludicrous\u201d it\nis \u201cto dress up in front of all those people and go through all that nervous\nhee-haw in order to play a few tunes.\u201d I’m sure you’ve been asked this\nfrequently, but how do you deal with performance anxiety?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I don’t think I probably do deal with it\u2014I think it\ndeals with me. Then I have to cope, naturally. But I don’t think I deal with\nit. I just, hopefully at best, come to terms with it. Everyone who has to\nperform goes through a similar problem, I would think, but some more so than\nothers. In some people it can be acute, even to the point where they take\npills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve heard about one particular new drug designed to\ncombat the effects of nerves that is supposedly not addictive, hailed by some\nmusicians as a miracle. Now it seems to me that though it may not be physically\naddictive, psychologically it has to be, because after a while you begin\nthinking, “I have to have this in order to play a concert.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. It’s an awful thought, that. I think you just have to\ngo through it, and sometimes, because you’re going through it, something quite\nlovely can happen in the interpretation of the music, or in the way you are\nperforming it. Nerves and apprehension are not necessarily destructive; they\ncan be very much the life\u00adblood of a performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the book you discussed many aspects of the guitar\nrepertory, and you specifically mentioned that much of it is lightweight, which\ndoesn’t really serve to push it forward.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, I think that’s probably right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But on the other hand, isn’t it good in the sense that\nit draws the uninitiated to the guitar?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes it is. I think a lot of guitar music has a great deal of charm and attraction, and I think indeed it does bring a lot of uninitiated people towards the instrument. And I think that’s a perfectly valid reason for playing a prelude by T\u00e1rrega, for example. However, what is difficult or sometimes frustrating for the very serious student, once he is enticed with the guitar and its literature, is that as his general musical appreciation develops, how is he going to find the same stimulation from the guitar literature as he may find from orchestral music, the piano repertory, or chamber music? This is, I think, why there hasn’t been a really great artist\u2014I’m not talking about a good one, but a great one who has dedicated himself to the guitar. Because an artist with any greatness, for want of a better word, within himself could not tolerate living with the slender literature of the guitar for a lifetime. There just isn’t enough substance to sustain and develop the inquiring mind of a musician of that calibre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just the brute variety and volume would be enough to\nsustain for a while?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A good artist, certainly. But I’m talking about a great artist. I mean somebody of the order of a Menuhin, a Michelangeli, or a Rostropovich. That type of great artist would find the guitar literature very limiting in terms of his artistic development, let alone his enjoyment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Julian Bream\u2014The Contribution<\/a><\/blockquote>