I’d missed the news about Julian Bream’s death. When this great figure of classical guitar, who had done so much to champion the instrument at a time when it was far from fashionable, died, I was in rural Scotland. After many months surrounded by concrete and the background buzz of a city never truly quiet regardless of what lockdown threw at it, it was a calming joy to be reconnected with the rhythms of the day, the space of the surrounding countryside and the expansive sky.

There was no phone or Wi-Fi signal – which swiftly reminded me how dependent I’d become on instant-access streaming services (though rather movingly in hindsight, of the only two albums I gratefully found downloaded on my phone, one was Dreams & Fancies, Sean Shibe’s beautiful 2017 recording of works commissioned by Bream).

But this perhaps wasn’t inappropriate. Bream had long balanced the exhausting life of touring with extended periods at home in the countryside, spent gardening, simply being settled. I visited him in 2013, when we gave him our Lifetime Achievement Award. Collecting me from the local station, he talked as he drove of the history of the lanes, anticipated every pothole it seemed, and later, just a ticking clock and the rustle of the breeze through the window as background for our interview, he at one point quietly reflected on the view outside, on how it changed through the day and seasons.

Though he could no longer play as he once could, he talked movingly of the rewards to be found on turning from player to listener. ‘The older you get, the more things you find out, that you concentrate on. Something entices you – a phrase, a little rhythmic whatever – and you hear it repeated, an echo of something. I listen in a more acute way now.’

When a German ambassador, having heard him play, once insisted Bream must have Spanish heritage, the Battersea boy replied he was ‘born between the Power Station and the Dog’s Home’. These days that would potentially put you in a Frank Gehry penthouse, but for his era that reminds us of both Bream’s down-to-earth connection to this country, and also that whatever its origins, great music transcends nationality. Thanks to Bream, his advocacy, his commissioning of British composers and his love of Elizabethan music, the Spanish guitar now feels just as much at home in Albion as in Iberia. 

Bream was largely self-taught – and when it came to the lute some people, as he readily admitted, were ‘suspect of his pedigree on it’. However, ‘I was quite happy to be suspect,’ he said, ‘because I loved playing the instrument so much my way that to be honest I didn’t really give a damn about anyone else. I knew that I was doing it for myself, and the interesting thing is that when you do things for yourself you stand a good chance of making other people happy.’

There are some useful lessons in here for all of us: slow down, reflect more, listen closer, and do what feels right to you regardless of what others say. And at a time when travel is restricted, remember that the international nature of music lies not in our ability to hop on a plane, but to journey in our minds and hearts.

This article appears in the October issue of Gramophone, which is available now