21-05-2025
John Gladwin obituary: Medieval-style musician
They dressed like extras from a film about Robin Hood and his merry men and made acoustic music on period instruments including lutes, citterns, shawms and crumhorns. Their songs were based on madrigals and antique ballads with titles such as Pavan and Lady Marion's Galliard. Even their name, Amazing Blondel, was borrowed from Blondel de Nesle, a medieval musician in the court of Richard the Lionheart.
'We perpetuated Blondel in how we dressed and how we looked — it was a time of magic harking back to when there were no cars and no streetlights,' John Gladwin, the group's founder and main songwriter, said. Electric instruments or indeed almost any manifestation of the post-industrial world was strictly forbidden. Gladwin's bucolic songs, many of them
