Quotes from Julian Bream

I think that Bach has a very nice sound on the lute. But I find that what I want to do with Bach is best revealed on the guitar.

I was passionately interested in Elizabethan history at school, so it was natural for me as a musician to take interest in the music of that period.

When I was 18, I went into the army as a payroll clerk because otherwise I was headed for Korea.

I went to college to study the piano and cello.

I practice more than ever ... mostly scales and arpeggios ... and anything I can't do.

Hearing Andres Segovia in person was quite a revelation ... It was a knockout.

I devoted my life to music for a reason, and the reason wasn't because I wanted to get on or make money, but to try to fulfil myself and also to give people pleasure. That's been my credo.

It takes a lifetime and a half to master the classical guitar.

My father started me off on the guitar, and we learned classical guitar together.

My father was a very clever man. My mother was not clever. An extraordinary woman, but simple.

It is difficult to understand the fortunes of an instrument. There was music written for the guitar until the mid-19th century. Then the instrument declined in popularity.

Guitar was just a hobby, but it seemed to me that the instrument had possibilities, not least of which was that there was no one else playing it. I could be, as it were, the best boy in an all-girls school.

I suppose that when I started to play the lute it was fairly esoteric.

You have to be serious, and you must have a constantly inquiring mind. But I find it's new music that really stretches me, both technically and as an interpreter.

When I began playing the lute, in 1950 there were not too many lutenists around. I had to work hard, writing out music in museums and libraries. It was before the days of photocopying. And I had just picked up the lute, adapted my guitar technique to it and went from there.

Using modern guitar techniques and modern methods on an early instrument is not a very clever thing to do, because it is the authentic spirit of the instrument that should dictate the quality and characteristic of the sound.

My father played one of the first electric guitars in England. He built his own in 1940, because you couldn't buy them in those days. He used three telephone pickups under the strings, which gave chronic distortion on chords but was quite good on single notes.

Ideally the performer has a special function. Which is to bring the listener to the edge of that experience and to open the doors of this perception in such a way that those who wish to enter can.

What do I think of digital recording? Well, it's all right. But those old thorn needles, now, that was a sound.

You have to get the attention of the audience. You have to make sure they know you are starting. You have to achieve a rapport with them on the very first chord.

Wanting to play the guitar was neither a wild dream nor a realistic ambition. It was simply inevitable.

I've had a lovely life. I've had a great life.

I was mostly self-taught on guitar and that had its benefits. It's a great thing to work through problems on your own.

I learned mainly by listening to Andres Segovia and that was a great inspiration. And also the gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.