Andy Green  Sat, 8 Jan 2000 21:43:24 -0000
----------

If you want to see me as I wish I was, try:

http://www.phoenixchoir.org/images/WhatIWant.jpg

In reality you will find me older, greyer, fatter, generally scruffier, and
ten times as tetchy.

I was born, in 1942, into an Atheistic Judeo-Marxist household.  I had a
scientific education (but in the days when one was still forced to learn a
little Latin and Greek).  After 35 years as a photographic scientist working
for Kodak, I retired.  My main claim to fame was the discovery that, if you
wear a smart suit people think you are much more important than you are. I
started off as a difficult child, and I still am.

I have never learned to drive a car.

I'd always wanted to play the guitar - and I took it up seriously at the age
of thirty.  Shortly afterwards I discovered Luys Milan, and that changed
everything.  Then there was the Consort of Musicke, and Dowland. Anthony
Rooley was more than influential, but we never seemed to see eye to eye.
That's just a lute thing, I suppose.  So to gain entrance to the Early Music
stuff in Holland Park I had to build a Harwood lute - which I played on the
seventh day.  There was no time to shave much wood off it, so it's pretty
solid.

But, you see, I love my guitar.  So the only person who would teach me lute
music, if only for a short time, was Chris Wilson.

I found myself in much demand teaching lute tablature to guitarists, and
about 25 years ago I began to write it all down.  Somehow I got on to the
subject of Orpheus (listening to Anthony Rooley again!), and I've just
continued.  It didn't take long to get involved with Pythagoras either.

It's not enough that Milan and Dowland do what they do.  I want to know how
and why, just like Pythagoras himself.  I know I should have abandoned
Science, and continued with the Greek, but I didn't.

Andy