Music for the Lute

Tombeau for
Julian Bream

For Dm Lute

Brian Wright
Foreword
The practice of commemorating a lute player with a personalised
tombeau is well established in the lute repertory. Amongst the
many extant tributes are the two masterpieces by Sylvius Leopold
Weiss, for Losy and for Hartig, as well as some splendid examples
by Robert de Visée for several of the luthistes. This tradition,
instigated perhaps by Ennemond Gautier in his Tombeau de
Mézangeau, has served as a template for many lute composers to
pay tribute to the passing of a major practitioner of their art such
as Julian Bream (1933-2020).
Quintessentially, the tombeau is an instrumental tradition and its
abstract form differentiates it from, for example, the setting by
Heinrich Isaac of Angelo Poliziano’s text Quis dabit capiti meo
aquam, commemorating the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Moreover, in reviving the tombeau during the second decade of
the twentieth century, Maurice Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin
captures the spirit of Ennemond Gautier et al and presents it to a
new and wider audience.
Julian Bream’s admiration for the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt
(1910-53) was well known, and the influence of these two guitarists
on Brian Wright was the stimulus for the present tombeau which
includes fragments of Reinhardt’s most famous work, Nuages.
Wilfred Foxe, Durham, September 2020
Tombeau for Julian Bream Brian Wright
 = 55

 dolente e    
liberamente
   
     
     
   
 

mf cresc.

            

5
//
     
      
     
  
  
 

          
   // 
9
//
        
      
  
 
 
 cresc.   

            
     // 
13 //
         
     
  
  
   mf molto liberamente

       
    
17
//
        
      
 
 







             
    //        //
20
       
    

 
   

      
           
24 // // //
         
         
 

 
      

© 2020 Brian Wright

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     
    
28
       
        
    

     
cresc. rit.  mp

  molto liberamente
     
     
32 // // //
              
      
 


  


cresc.          dim. 

 
         tempo giusto

      //  
36
          
             
  
 





a tempo molto espressivo 

  
  
40
//
      
           
            
      
 
   sim.  p  

  
     
43
                
                

   
   
mf 

  
         
46
//
             
         
    
  
 cresc.    dim. sempre

  
     
49 // //
           
            
     
 
    
 rit.

© 2020 Brian Wright

-3-
    
   
52 // a tempo
        
         
     
      
cresc.               

       
     
56 //
           
             
  



     p cresc. e molto liberamente

      
 
60
        
       
 




 
  

 

         
      
64
      
     harmonics

  natural

 dim. 

Tuning 
 
  
   
   
 
    

The sign // indicates the end of a phrase.

© 2020 Brian Wright

-4-