Richard Campbell was one of the outstanding instrumentalists in the world of early music. As well as being a superb exponent of the baroque cello, he was a founder member of Fretwork, the viol consort which, in the 25 years since its foundation, brought the consort music of the 16th and 17th centuries to audiences all over the world.
When Fretwork gave its first concert in 1985, there was nothing quite like it in Britain: a viol ensemble, appearing without a conductor and performing music which had originally been written for amateur groups in a domestic setting.
Despite the group’s initial misgivings, the enterprise was an enormous success: international tours and a record deal quickly followed. Campbell played the treble (later tenor) viol in the group. His considerable expertise in the music of the period and its performance practices was also a significant influence, and his learned programme notes were often a feature of Fretwork concerts.
Richard John Campbell was born in West London in 1956. His parents, both teachers, were keen amateur musicians, and in his teens Campbell took up the cello. After school in Sheen and at Marlborough College he went to Peterhouse, Cambridge, to read classics. His intention at first was to be a teacher, and although his love of Latin never waned it was music which finally won his full attention.
After graduating in 1976 Campbell took a teacher-training qualification; but rather than use it he opted instead to study at the International Cello Centre, a grandiosely named but tiny institution (it usually had no more than eight students) in the Scottish Borders presided over by the school’s founder, Jane Cowan. She was an inspirational but eccentric figure, described by a contemporary of Campbell’s, Steven Isserlis, as “a mad genius”.
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Campbell continued his studies at the Guildhall School of Music, where he enrolled on the Early Music course. He was particularly interested in studying and playing the works of the great 16th-century polyphonists, whose work he had first encountered when singing in the chapel choir at Marlborough. Postgraduate studies at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague followed, and Campbell also studied privately with the eminent viola da gamba player Wieland Kuijken.
On his return to London Campbell became a member of Jakob Lindberg’s group the Dowland Ensemble. He was also much in demand as a cello continuo player, appearing with groups such as John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists and Andrew Parrott’s Taverner Consort.
It was on a Spanish tour with the latter group that Fretwork was first conceived. Campbell and two colleagues, Bill Hunt and Richard Boothby, found themselves in Barcelona at a loose end and, with time on their hands, got together to play through some consort repertoire. The following summer, and now numbering six, they gave their first public concert in Richmond; in June 1986 their London debut at the Wigmore Hall announced an exciting new group.
At first Fretwork was heard almost exclusively in the consort music in which it excels: the masterpieces of Elizabethan polyphonists such as Gibbons, Byrd and Tye, the Fantasias and In Nomines of Purcell and the consort songs of Dowland. But in 1990 the British composer George Benjamin, who had been entranced by the group’s playing, offered to write them a work. The resulting song, Upon Silence, a brief but exquisite setting of W. B. Yeats, was unlike anything the ensemble had attempted before. Mastering its difficulties took some time, but the triumphant success of the work led to their commissioning much more contemporary music; to date they have premiered more than 30 new pieces for viols, including music by Sir John Tavener, Michael Nyman and Sally Beamish.
Although Fretwork tours and teaching duties at the Royal Academy of Music (where he was professor of viola d’amore) took up much of Campbell’s time, he remained busy both as a continuo cellist and also in other groups, including the Dufay Collective, in which he also sometimes played the guitar and lirone (a forerunner of the cello). In the 1980s and 1990s he was also the artistic director of a small music festival at Tregye in Cornwall, not far from where he had spent the latter part of his childhood. In recent years he also regularly played with the baroque flautist Martin Feinstein at St John’s Smith Square, but also in his popular Bach series at the South Bank Centre.
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In rehearsal Campbell could be passionately combative (particularly in Fretwork, an ensemble once described by one of its members as “dangerously democratic”) — but his friends are more likely to recall the laid-back figure who before concerts could often be found sitting in a quiet spot, fag in hand, completing a crossword at improbable speed.
He had many passions in life, ranging from Bach and brewing to sailing and motorcycles; but throughout his life he struggled with depression, which eventually claimed him.
Campbell married Henrietta Wayne in 1987; they separated in 2005. She, a son and a daughter survive him.
Richard Campbell, musician, was born on February 21, 1956. He died on March 8, 2011, aged 55