who’s about
The perfect pitch Chris Butler and Ann Barkway opened the Early Music Shop at Snape Maltings amidst the chaos of 2020. Now the doors are well and truly open, musicians, music lovers and enthusiasts of these ancient and traditional instruments are beginning to take note. Early music is generally defined as being pre-1800, and includes the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, and signals the start of the classical music movement across Europe. The names of the instruments themselves have a wonderful lyricism - crumhorn, viol, serpent, shawm, hurdy-gurdy – and they trip off the tongue with a musicality befitting their purpose. The shop has an astonishing display of these rare instruments which 4
are hand-crafted by some of the finest makers in the world. They are uniquely beautiful: the curve of the lute, the huge scale of the 6ft sub contrabass recorder, the exquisitely delicate inlaid work on the clavichord and the wonder of the snaking black leather serpent. Early music had a massive revival in the late sixties led by David Munrow, a prominent musician who travelled
