I played my concert for the English Music Festival, in a small church in a small village called Sutton Courteney, quite close to Oxford. The weather was terrible, and many of the roads were flooded. Despite that, about 40 people turned up to hear a concert dedicated to the 'English Guitar'. I played the only repertoire I know - Oswald, Bremner and some Scottish manuscripts - and there were questions afterwards as to why I didn't play English music, considering it was an English music festival. Well, it is hard to put a programme together of concert pieces by English composers for the English Guitar. So much of it was by Scots, Italians and Germans. I gave a little speech stressing the point that we are in the early stages of examining the instrument and its repertoire, and hopefully someone will try to resurrect an English repertoire in the not too distant future. I play Scots music because that is what lay around me. I found six manuscripts for the instrument, all Scottish, all containing Scottish music. I'm convinced there must be a huge amount of English manuscripts waiting to be found. Anyway, I feel I've done my bit. I'm more proud of my Oswald recording than any of my other recordings. I feel he wrote superbly well for the instrument, always staying within its limitations, unlike other 'more advanced' composers. I wish more people would play the instrument rather than argue about it. As for whether it was English, Scots, German, Italian or Portuguese...over to you, my friends.
Robert Charles John MacShannon Rennie Phillips MacKillop (more names than the English Guitar!) -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
