S C R A P B O O K
Revival of the Crumhorn

A T A TIME when rock musicians are pressing further into the realms of electronic instrumentation for the tools with which to pursue their own particular musical thing Gryphon are looking back to a time when a musician was called a minstrel and the penalty for playing a bum gig was - far from a critical panning - a few months in the castle dungeon.
          The four-piece band - Brian Gulland, Richard Harvey, David Oberle and Graeme Taylor - have just released their debut album on Transatlantic Records. A glance down the instrumental credits reveals (alongside such modern items as a Gibson J45 and a Martin D28) a harmonium, a keyboard glockenspiel, a harpsichord and four crumhorns. Richard Harvey (recorders, crumhorns, guitar, keyboards and mandolin) will also admit to an occasional flirtation with the joys of the cornett and shawm.
          Gryphon have played together for eight months, to sometimes puzzled but eventually enthusiastic audiences. Their music is inspired by tonalities and structures of medieval and renaissance music. It's been something of an uphill stuggle, says Harvey, but slowly they're winning through.

          "There's been a varied reaction, but things are improving," he explains. "We've had to make compromises a little, because you can't go on bashing your head up against a cultural brick wall. Audiences tend to be a little dazed by the set, but I think they finally go away on our side. It's been confusing, but I think it's going well now."
          Their choice of instrumentation reflects the timbre of their music. Interest - and the music - centres sharply around the strange shapes and sound of instruments like Brian Gulland's bass crumhorn or the shawm - an instrument with a conical bore rather like a "very loud oboe" - of Harvey.

          Harvey's interest in the instruments grew from a training in woodwind. His father first taught him the recorder from covering - about four years ago - the lost and almost forgotten sounds of medieval music.
          "My interest began as I realised the limitations of the clarinet, and the music I was playing. I saw in older instruments a complete range of sounds. They seemed more in my line."
          But few medieval instruments survive today; those early recorders and other woodwind family instruments that have withstood the passing of time are now safely preserved behind the glass eases of the world's museums. Gryphon's instruments - like all those still played today - are copies hand-made by instrument craftsmen who base their instruments on the medieval designs that survive. Their crumhorns, for example, were made in Germany. Two small companies there still preserve the old techniques, but the waiting lists are long and supply is very short.
          "They're not quite the same as the originals,2 Harvey admits. "modern copies tend to be of pear-wood, while the original instruments were made in box-wood and built to last. And our crumhorns have nylon reeds, because wooden reeds would be too difficult."

          Gryphon's intruments, says Harvey, are far more than musical novelties: "I think they're very much instruments to be taken seriously," he explains. "They have a very interesting sound - a lot of renaissance instruments had very good sounds which were forgotten during the romantic era. They could be very effective in rock music; they have a small range of about 1 1/3 octaves, and their simplicity fits in well with rock music. I can play, with a crumhorn, virtually all the Beatles songs."
          But their choice of instruments poses problems to Gryphon admit they still haven't resolved. Woodwind instruments , especially, and such delicate creatures as the harpsichord, aren't made for rigours of one-night-stands. And their sound system - particularly in the miking up of the instruments - has still not been fully resolved: "An instrument like guitar produces sound from all over its body," says Harvey. "But it's still possible to get a satisfactory sound from one microphone. Something like the bassoon also produces sound from its entire body - but one microphone, wherever you place it, won't produce a representative reproduction. It's a problem that only time and money will solve."

John Bagnall
(New Musical Express, June 9, 1973)

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