My friend James Griffett, the tenor and early music pioneer, who has died aged 80, was not given a promising start to his musical life.
He was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, to Rose (nee Mardlin), a pastry cook, and her husband, James Parsons, a maths teacher. They divorced when James was young and after Rose remarried, he took his stepfather’s surname, Griffett. His family had no interest in music so, aged seven, he joined his local church choir and visited his school music teacher’s house uninvited to talk about the subject.
After leaving Luton Technical College, he trained as an engineer (in accordance with his stepfather’s wishes) and continued to sing in church. He then got an engineering job in Peterborough and took up a lay clerk’s position at the cathedral. While there he was heard by a professor from the Royal College of Music (RCM), who advised him to apply, and he won a place.
In 1965 Colin Mawby, the master of music at Westminster Cathedral, asked him to join the choir, where he stayed until 1974. In 1968 James established the early music ensemble Pro Cantione Antiqua (PCA) with fellow RCM students Paul Esswood and Mark Brown, a group that was at the forefront of period performance and with whom he made dozens of recordings and toured extensively.
Unlike many ensembles, PCA chose never to have an exclusive contract, preferring to place their recordings with specific companies such as DGG Archiv, for which they won the Deutsche Schallplatten prize in 1973 with a 10-disc Franco- Flemish series, and Hyperion, for whom they recorded Spanish and Portuguese Renaissance music.
James met Cathy Scott when they were both singing at a wedding and they married in 1973. The following year, they moved to the village of Ben Rhydding in West Yorkshire. In later years James realised he could not perform at the highest level indefinitely and gradually took on teaching work both in the UK and abroad, particularly at the Prague Conservatoire and Bradford grammar school, where he prepared many of his students for university choral scholarships.
For 21 years he ran a series of charity fundraising concerts with his former pupils in the local church and with Cathy he ran singing courses for amateurs in the south of France and Yorkshire. This work came to an end only last year, when cancer prevented him from continuing.
James was an exceptional singer, tremendously loyal, a gifted teacher and generous to all around him. He leaves a legacy of 200 recordings as a soloist and in ensemble and a generation of professional and amateur singers who have been influenced by him.
He is survived by Cathy, their children, Tom and Annabel, and two granddaughters, Daisy and Poppy.
