David Munrow

[MrGongGong]

If you want to make a radio programme that's about music for youngsters that they will want to listen to then making it 'genre based' is exactly the wrong way to go IMV.
What works is people who are passionate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable talking about and playing a wide variety of musics including music composed by the audience you are aiming at.

It's a bit amusing that some folks who complain about how R3 is too much about 'personalities' wax lyrical about David Munrow and what a great broadcast 'personality' the was.

[doversoul1]

If you want to make a radio programme that's about music for youngsters that they will want to listen to then making it 'genre based' is exactly the wrong way to go IMV.
What works is people who are passionate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable talking about and playing a wide variety of musics including music composed by the audience you are aiming at.

It's a bit amusing that some folks who complain about how R3 is too much about 'personalities' wax lyrical about David Munrow and what a great broadcast 'personality' the was.

Oh, I don’t know. Some young people/children do like to know what (type, kind, sort etc.) they are listening to rather than being given what seems to be an arbitrary collection. And not all children, especially older ones, approve of being told ‘you can do it, too’ or ‘let’s all compose music like this’ sort of activities.

I don’t think anybody would call David Munrow a personality. He was a great radio presenter which is a different thing all together.

What works is people who are passionate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable talking about and playing a wide variety of music

This was what David Munrow did. And in a way we are hoping that a programme could be produced that is based on this very idea. Not necessarily by one presenter, as I think a charismatic individual is a thing of the past.

[french frank]

If you want to make a radio programme that's about music for youngsters that they will want to listen to then making it 'genre based' is exactly the wrong way to go IMV.
What works is people who are passionate, enthusiastic and knowledgeable talking about and playing a wide variety of musics including music composed by the audience you are aiming at.

It's a bit amusing that some folks who complain about how R3 is too much about 'personalities' wax lyrical about David Munrow and what a great broadcast 'personality' the was.

That's one way to do it. I think there's a difference between waxing lyrical over personalities and recognising how successful they are at achieving some goal. The personality may contribute to that success but that's all: it's not about the personalities per se.

[MrGongGong]

Oh, I don’t know. Some young people/children do like to know what (type, kind, sort etc.) they are listening to rather than being given what seems to be an arbitrary collection.

I wasn't suggesting anything 'arbitrary' or even that you don't use genre descriptions.

And not all children, especially older ones, approve of being told ‘you can do it, too’ or ‘let’s all compose music like this’ sort of activities.

I wasn't suggesting this either, pastiche isn't necessarily a good way of encouraging composition in young musicians.
What does work is having ways of people connecting the musicking they do with the music they listen to, which is not to do with style of genre

That's one way to do it. I think there's a difference between waxing lyrical over personalities and recognising how successful they are at achieving some goal. The personality may contribute to that success but that's all: it's not about the personalities per se.

Indeed not.

[oddoneout]

It's a bit amusing that some folks who complain about how R3 is too much about 'personalities' wax lyrical about David Munrow and what a great broadcast 'personality' the was.

I'm not convinced that expressing appreciation of and admiration for his presenting of Pied Piper constitutes waxing lyrical about him as a broadcast personality. He was enthusiastic about music of all kinds, periods and geographic origins, and was able to communicate that enthusiasm to a very wide audience. On occasion Pied Piper was more like a whistlestop world tour showing musical similarities in far flung places, and there was something to be learnt in every programme.
IMO being a 'personality' does not require much , if anything, in the way of subject knowledge, intellectual capability or practical talents, and being a good presenter and/or broadcaster does not require a person to be a 'personality', although that term may get attached to the person concerned.
Given the knots that the Beeb ties itself into regarding the accessibility and appeal of 'classical' music, it will be interesting to see what a modern day Pied Piper might sound like.

[MrGongGong]

I never heard it, my comment was just a passing thought, that's all. Nothing to do with what I think a 'personality' is or was (or an analysis of what the word means or meant). Tony Pappano is a great broadcast personality.

[teamsaint]

I'm not convinced that expressing appreciation of and admiration for his presenting of Pied Piper constitutes waxing lyrical about him as a broadcast personality. He was enthusiastic about music of all kinds, periods and geographic origins, and was able to communicate that enthusiasm to a very wide audience. On occasion Pied Piper was more like a whistlestop world tour showing musical similarities in far flung places, and there was something to be learnt in every programme.
IMO being a 'personality' does not require much , if anything, in the way of subject knowledge, intellectual capability or practical talents, and being a good presenter and/or broadcaster does not require a person to be a 'personality', although that term may get attached to the person concerned.
Given the knots that the Beeb ties itself into regarding the accessibility and appeal of 'classical' music, it will be interesting to see what a modern day Pied Piper might sound like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc-Andr%C3%A9_Hamelin

Groan/coat thing.

actually might not be the worst idea ever, given his CV.

[BBMmk2]

It was with great shock, when I heard about the passing of David Munrow. I think that Early Music, most certainly wouldn't be where it is today, without him.

[Barbirollians]

I had heard of him obviously but was too young to have heard any of his programmes - Radio 3 never being on in my house when I was a child.

I have picked up a 2 CD set of Renaissance Dances on Virgin Veritas very cheaply - and what extraordinary fun they are . No wonder he blew so many cobwebs away from this music in the 1970s .

[Lat-Literal]

David Munrow was extraordinary. In an odd way I think of him alongside the likes of David Bedford in that there was a time, a drive and a spirit attached to the opening up of music. They made themselves known at least a little to people who would not ordinarily have had access to innovation. It is the spirit that all new programmes need to acquire.

[gurnemanz]

I well remember seeing him with the Early Music Consort at Durham when I was an undergraduate there in 1970. It was something quite new and exhilarating. If you tuned to R3 in the afternoon the Pied Piper would just appear and always be worth a listen.

[Richard Tarleton]

I think that Early Music, most certainly wouldn't be where it is today, without him.

He popularised, demystified, experimented - one of a great cohort of early music exponents in this country born in the early 1940s (Hogwood, Rooley etc.). An earlier generation of early music types in this country did their best to keep their art as exclusive and pure (as they saw it) as possible - for example resenting what they regarded as the inauthentic efforts of Julian Bream. On top of which none of them were very good. We shouldn't forget that things were much further forward on the continent - Paul Sacher had founded the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 1933.

In a fascinating article in the Lute Society Magazine no 119, lutenist Anthony Bailes tells how when the name of Eugen Dombois (1931-2014), the great German-Swiss lutenist and Basel alumnus (whom I saw in Oxford in 1969) came up at an English Lute Society meeting in 1968 as a possible summer school tutor, it was quickly dropped again as his use of octave stringing rendered him unsuitable (in spite of the fact that Hans Neusidler, 1531-1594, had used an octave-strung lute ). He was also told off by Diana Poulton for strumming his lute strings with his thumb, in spite of the fact that, er, Hans Neusidler had composed pieces requiring chords to be strummed by thumb alone. He gives these as examples of misguided purism based on incomplete information. There is an entertaining account of Bream's appearance, uninvited, at a lute colloque in Paris in 1957, in Thea Abbott's biog of Diana Poulton - he happened to be in town, sat at the back, took part in discussion and ended up playing. Although the official proceedings of the colloque record Bream's presence, the (English) Lute Society Journal coverage does not mention it, nor the recitals he gave, in spite of giving accounts of other recitals. It's all very different now of course, Bream and the Lute Soc are the best of friends these days.

So, yes, in this country Munrow did for things you blow, hit and scrape what Bream had done for plucked instruments (and through the two iterations of the Julian Bream Consort) some years earlier. Munrow brought a sense of experimentation and adventure to early music which it had been sadly lacking, in this country anyway.

[jean]

An earlier generation of early music types in this country did their best to keep their art as exclusive and pure (as they saw it) as possible...

Fascinating. Are you prepared to divulge any more names?

[Richard Tarleton]

Well....the picture which emerges of Dolmetsch from the pages of Abbott's biog of Diana Poulton is not a pretty one ("an inept teacher", to quote Bailes, "who reacted to any mistakes with the cry 'crétin')...".

Bream, in "A Life on the Road" (in conversaton with Tony Palmer), records how he was greatly helped in the early stages by Thurston Dart. "But it was through him that I first came across one of the biggest problems with old music. After a short while of helping me, he suddenly attacked my style of playing, saying it was not the sound which Dowland himself...would have made. ... His criticism came from the point of view of considerable scholarship. But there were also the nut-cracker purists who said that my string length was too long, the strings were too thick, and my lute too heavy, and that I shouldn't have used metal frets on the fingerboard. Only tied gut could give you the proper sounds. I ask you! I mean, here was I playing music which almost no-one had heard for nearly three hundred years, and suddenly out of the woodwork came all these clever dicks who knew so much more than I did...". The Lute Society, founded by Ian Harwood (player and luthier) in 1956, was strongly and publicly critical of what they thought of as Bream's guitar-based technique. Diana Poulton, it should be said, was friends with Bream, and discouraged this sort of thing in spite of her reservations about his style of playing. The next generation (Rooley, North etc.) freely acknowledge their debt to Bream. For a deeper insight into these years, we look forward to Thea Abbott's forthcoming biography of Bream

That's three names, not including Diana Poulton!

[gurnemanz]

He popularised, demystified, experimented - one of a great cohort of early music exponents in this country born in the early 1940s (Hogwood, Rooley etc.). An earlier generation of early music types in this country did their best to keep their art as exclusive and pure (as they saw it) as possible - for example resenting what they regarded as the inauthentic efforts of Julian Bream. On top of which none of them were very good. We shouldn't forget that things were much further forward on the continent - Paul Sacher had founded the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in 1933.

The first early band I saw (before Munrow and friends) was Musica Reservata in the late 60s in the very atmospheric setting of the Chapter House at Durham Cathedral. I remember really lapping it up it. Aged about 19, I was embarking on my post-pop era and had never heard anything quite like it before - more earthy than the Early Music Consort with diverse weird instruments, lots of percussion and pungent, striking vocals from Jantina Noorman. sample