"The Lutenist!": Anxieties, Ambiguities, and Deviations in Julian Bream’s Discography

Abstract

The recent passing of English guitarist Julian Bream (1933–2020) has prompted a reevaluation of his artistic legacy by critics around the world. In this article, I propose a way of reading Bream’s discography in relation to that of his predecessor, Andrés Segovia, utilizing Harold Bloom’s theory of influence, a methodology that I first proposed in application to music in 2006. After dividing Bream’s fifty albums into phases inspired by Bloomian categories, I examine the works that Bream chose to record more than once, with a focus on those to which he returned three or more times. This article was first published in Portuguese as "…the luthenist!’: Ambivalências e desvios nas regravações de Julian Bream,” Revista Vórtex (Curitiba) 8, no. 3 (2020). The translation is by Diogo Alvarez.