Course in Instrumental Music

Fancy revisiting some of the familiar treasures as well as exploring the more unusual aspects of early music? This may be just the opportunity you need!

Led by lute/hurdy-gurdy player Matthew Spring, instrumental music is offered as a principal study, and players of renaissance instruments (recorders, viols, sackbuts, shawms, curtals, cornets, dulcimers, harps, hurdy-gurdys, guitars and other early or suitable modern instruments) are invited to come and explore our course for instrumental musicians. A limited number of early wind instruments – shawms, sackbuts, crumhorns, etc. - will be available for loan. We will use a standard pitch of A440.

Courses will be arranged to suit both beginners and advanced students and the programme will be devised to allow students to try out a variety of new skills or to follow their personal interests under the guidance of specialist tutors.

Whether it is dance & consort music, advice on the more arcane aspects of hurdy-gurdy playing (Matthew Spring), medieval and renaissance improvisation techniques, pipe & tabor playing (Bill Tuck and Atsufumi Ujiie), or song accompaniment, our course is bound to have something to interest you!

This year will feature a week-long workshop for waits instruments (shawm, sackbut, curtal, etc.) led by well-known performer and teacher Tim Bayley.

There will also be a natural trumpet workshop led by Katie Hodges (Friday to Sunday). Applicants may enrol for either or both of these courses (and although you are encouraged to stay for the full week, you are not obliged to do so).

Additional workshops open to instrumentalists will include theatre songs, dances, commedia skills and period costume making. We shall also be exploring some of the history of English 18th century theatre, including the origins of Pantomime and its links to the 16th century Italian Commedia dell’ Arte and the French Commedie-Ballet.