John Forsyth MBE - A life with music

About the music

John was brought up in the North East of England, in a mining community called Washington. In actual fact, the ancestral home of George Washington, the Father of the American Constitution. John was born in 1947 in the post-war period. His Father, also John ( known as Jack) was a teacher but also a fine Tenor and Cornet player in a local Brass band. His Mother, Lillian was a very fine pianist, singing teacher and choral conductor. John’s Uncle, John George Brown, his Mother’s brother, was a fine church organist and pianist. So, without realising it, John was born into a very musical environment. However, as a young boy, brought up in the North East of England, football was his top priority. However, the early musical training happened by a process of osmosis. John remembers lying in bed as a young boy and listening to his mother teaching piano or singing. He would leave his bed, against his parent’s wishes and sit on the upstairs landing, with his legs dangling between the bannister rails, listening to the songs his mother was teaching. He says that by the age of 8, he could sing all the solos from Messiah from memory and much else besides. He now understands that this regular aural ‘musical education’ had a profound affect on him.

At the age of 8 he was given his first violin by another uncle. Lessons from a local teacher began and John loved the instrument. Practise was never a chore but a delight.

And so his early life continued with singing and violin playing fitted in with football , school work and other things.

By the age of 12 he was at Washington Grammer School, doing very well with the violin and still singing. It was then that he heard a nylon strung guitar for the first time, played by his French teacher, Mr Barry Canham. This was used to accompany songs, which were used as ‘collective music making’ to soak up endless evenings, when John’s class went to Switzerland on a European visit. The portability and sound of the guitar inspired him. He’d tried the piano but he and his Mum didn’t quite see eye to eye so the piano never really happened for him. A great regret throughout his life.

The guitar was different and in 1960 it was all the rage. John’s Father didn’t want him to have a guitar. The ‘pop’ phenomenon was already in swing. John wasn’t interested in the ‘pop’ guitar. He knew he wanted that nylon string sound.

Uncle John George obliged and gave him a guitar and tutor for his Christmas present in 1960. With his violin playing background and ability to read music, John applied himself to the instrument for the whole of Christmas Day and by the evening could get through 90% of the pieces in the book. Only one piece eluded him. It was the hardest in the book and an arrangement of the Russian Tune, “Black Eyes”. It took John 2 weeks to master it.

In the late 50’s/ early 1960’s there were no Classical Guitar teachers in the North East so John, for the next year he taught himself. Looking back he says that he displayed a relentless efficiency but his guitar was not a particularly good instrument and was hard to play. He did not understand technique but applied violin technique to his Left Hand and did the best he could with his right hand. He discovered a Music Shop in Newcastle. “Windows Music” had guitar music and he bought all he could afford, using his violin music as a comparative for the standard of piece. Still no teacher. Then his cousin, Robert, a merchant seaman, brought him a ‘Torres’ guitar from Spain and suddenly his playing took off. Still no teacher and self-taught he learned 3 sonatas by Francesco Molino and then an E Minor |Study by Napoleon Coste. Where other people had ‘pop’ musicians as posters on their bedroom walls, John had a poster of Segovia. He tried to copy his Right Hand position. He had no record player and would search the radio in the hope of hearing a guitar being played. He had no role model on which to base his playing except a picture of Segovia and a couple of pieces arranged by Segovia, one of which was “Variations on ‘La Frescobalda'” by Frescobaldi. he could play it from memory.

When he was 14 and had been playing for 18 months, a young John Williams came to give a weekend master class for guitar enthusiasts. it was organised by the WEA, the Workers Education Association. John was actually too young but there were very few guitarists in the North East at the time and he was given a place, probably to make the numbers up. He remembers the whole weekend as a spellbinding experience and was totally captivated by John William’s playing of the E major Violin Partita. This had another effect! John realised that violin music could be played on the guitar, so he managed to find a copy of the A Minor Partita and learned the fugue, which he couldn’t play on the violin because the double-stopping was so difficult. The guitar had it!

At the age of 15 his Father found a Summer School at the Bristol Spanish Guitar Centre, run by a man called Michael Watson. It was near friends of his parents, so his parents had a holiday fortnight’s in Keynsham and John spent every minute of everyday at the guitar centre from the crack of dawn till it closed. He learned Right Hand technique and also discovered that he could sight-read, which for him was very natural, because of the violin, but which he discovered was not very well done by guitarists generally. The Spanish Guitar Centre was a ‘treasure trove’, with music and guitars, especially expensive guitar such a Manzanero, Rubio, Hauser and others.

John says, “In that 2 weeks I learned 2 years of repertoire and technique. I played every piece I could. I discovered Tarrega, Albeniz and Granados and learned a challenging piece called “Guitarreo” by Carlos Pdrell and began staggering through “El Colibri” ( The Humming Bird) which I had heard John Williams play. When I couldn’t afford music, I got manuscript paper and copied music out by hand. I heard Julian Bream for the first time and also Narcisso Yepes. My knowledge of the guitar was growing and i was infatuated with the instrument. I could not get enough of it. Michael Watson was the first teacher that I had ever had and had to make do without another teacher until the following year, when I returned to the Summer School at the Bristol Spanish Guitar Centre. I was 16 and that year was very important because i learned how to play Tremolo and taught myself “Recuerdos de la Alhambra”.

The impact of this intensive study and my natural propensity for music catapulted my playing forward incredibly. I spent hours playing and neglected my studies. The violin and sport in general were central to my life with the guitar. I had a skirmish with a ‘pop’ group but found the musical experience tedious. Same chords and highly repetitive. The experience lasted no more than 4 months. I was more interested in developing my repertoire and could play about 2 hours’ worth of music from memory. I gave a couple of recitals locally and was invited to perform on Local BBC Television as part of a North East News programme, with Mike Neville. I can still remember playing Granados, “Danza Espagnole” No. 5 in one end of the studio, live, whilst at the News Desk, out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mike doing the arm waving of a Flasmenco dancer from his seat. I found it amusing but had forgotten that this was ‘Live Television’ ….it was just fun!

Further recitals and a ‘Victor Ludorum’ for Sport at his school followed. He had applied for a place in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and at 15 was invited to the course, which in 1962 was help in Sunderland. He was not given a full place, but Dame Ruth Railton, who ran the NYO saw some potential and urged him to apply in the following year. The guitar came first however and the Spanish Guitar Centre in Bristol got first shout.

Aged 17, John’s Father, by now a Headmaster, said that before John went to University, he would like a tape of his playing so that he and John’s Mum could listen to him when he had gone. The tape was made at John’s Father’s school. What John didn’t know was that his Father, who was a strong Methodist, had seen in a Methodist Journal, that Julian Bream was giving International Master Classes at Dinton House, near Salisbury, Wiltshire. At the time, Dinton House was a Methodist College and retreat.

The story of listening while John was away at University was a ruse. The tape was made and unknown to John, sent to Julian Bream. Imagine John’s surprise when he received a reply inviting him to an audition. Aged 18, John auditioned, playing to Bream at his home. John says of the audition: “When I arrived, I was shown to his ‘guitar studio’, set away from the main house. Bream was Beagle Hunting and eventually arrived with muddy boots. He asked me to play, which I did and then asked me to play something else. This process went on for about 45 minutes. He said that he wanted to be sure that I had a repertoire and had not just prepared 2 or 3 pieces. I remember playing Prelude, Fugue and Allegro/JS Bach; Fandanguillo/Turina; The Mozart Variations / Sors; Caprichio Arabe / Tarrega and Serenata Espagnole / Joaqin Malats. They were all in my repertoire at the time.

My playing must have been OK because I received a letter asking me to attend the Master Class, for a month in duration, at Dinton House in the summer of 1965. That period of time, where I spent hours playing and listening to the guitar played by another 14 players from all over the world, changed my life. I remain indebted to my Father and Mother for their ‘cock and bull’ story about wanting to listen to me when I eventually went to University. Later in my life, I was awarded an Master of Arts Degree (Distinction) at the University of Leeds. Imagine my delight when I discovered that Julian Bream was being awarded an Honorary Doctorate at the same Convocation.”

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