The Early Music Legend

Home › Link to The Gramophone magazine. Though Munrow died back in 1976 he is still remembered not only in the world of Early Music, but also in the world of Classical Music. Robert Searle/piedpiper. Conductors ABBADO Claudio ANCERL Karel ANSERMET Ernest ASHKENAZY Vladimir BARBIROLLI John BARENBOIM Daniel BARSHAI Rudolf BEECHAM Thomas VAN BEINUM Eduard BERNSTEIN Leonard BOHM Karl BOULEZ  Pierre BOULT  Adrian BUSCH  Fritz CHAILLY  Riccardo CHRISTIE  William CLUYTENS  André DAVIS  Colin DORATI  Antal DUTOIT  Charles ELDER  Mark FRICSAY  Ferenc FURTWANGLER  Wilhelm GARDINER  John Eliot GIELEN  Michael GIULINI  Carlo Maria GUI  Vittorio HAITINK  Bernard HANDLEY  Vernon HARNONCOURT  Nikolaus HICKOX  Richard HOGWOOD  Christopher JACOBS  René JARVI  Neeme JANSONS  Mariss JOCHUM  Eugen KAJ...

April 14, 2010 by Norman Lebrecht Last September, there appeared on the market an unusual tribute to the music of the French medieval composer, Guillaume de Machaut. It was the work of Robert Sadin, a Grammy winning producer, and the artists included the Brazilian guitarist and songwriter Milton Nascimento and the jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux. A limelight project from Deutsche Grammophon, once the pre-eminent classical label, it came from the fertile brain of Universal’s president of classics and jazz, Chris Roberts. Here is Sadin on its conception: Our conversation turned to David Munrow, whose early death was a great loss to this world. Munrow had a tremendous vitality – he mastered an astonishing array of instruments and devoted himself to bringing the treasures of medieval and Renaissance music to the awareness of today’s listeners. His recordings have a vibrancy and a sense of adventure which no one who has heard them will ever forget. Chris raised th...

The following two reviews appear to be reasonably informed reviews on DMs classic Music of the Crusades. They emanate from Amazon.  Marvelous recreations of music from the time of the Crusades, 6 July 2004 By  Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)  This review is from: Music of the Crusades (Audio CD) Of the "Music of the Crusades" collected on this very interesting album, several actually deal with the Crusades. I am always on the look out for interesting bits of music and film that can be used in history classes to bring the period alive for students and this certainly qualifies. This album contains examples of different types of songs, sung mostly in French and Latin. The lyrics alone are fascinating ("The French are degenerate if they refuse to support God, for I have warned them") and one song, "Ja nus hons pris," is attributed to Richard the Lion-Heart. Teachers covering the Middle Ages can certainly find a song or two to share wit...

Michael Praetorius: Dances from Terpsichore / Motets from Musae Sioniae (1973) David Munrow & The Early Music Consort of London http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/emi3761.htm Lado A Dances From Terpsichore 1612 1 Passameze (CCLXXXVI) 1:32 2 Spagnoletta (XXVII) 1:20 3 La Boureé (XXXII) 2:15 4 Pavane De Spaigne (XXX) 2:24 5 Courante M. M. Wustrow (CL) 2:30 6 Suite De Ballets 2:45 7 (Galliard) Reprinse Secundam Inferioren (CCCX) 2:38 8 La Sarabande (XXXIV) 2:16 9 Suite De Voltes 3:56 Lado B Motets From Musae Sionae & Other Collections 10 Resonet In Laudibus 2:42 11 Erhalt Uns, Herr Bei Deinem Wort 8:41 12 Gott Der Vater Wohn Uns Bei 4:13 13 Aus Tiefer Not Schrei Ich Zu Dir 4:15 14 Allein Gott In Der Höh Sei Ehr 3:09 15 Christus, Der Uns Selig Macht 7:36 This LP is separated into two parts: the first is dedicated to instrumental dances taken from Terpsichore, the huge compilation of dances made or collected by the compo...

Philip Pickett was a well-respected musician. However, in After Munrow a radio broadcast he tended to be "over-critical" about the achievements of David Munrow. This re-appears in an interview with him in Goldberg from which brief relevant extracts are presented here.     .....Pickett ofcourse went to the Guildhall School of Music there studying both the modern, and baroque trumpet. However, he also spent time "....moonlighting to the Royal Academy, where David Munrow was giving classes". It was there that he "...was playing with people like Don Smithers in Munrows Early Music Consort." Apparently at the end of his first year at the Guildhall he got severely attacked on the underground, and this became a "big story" that made him well-known. Due to injuries to his mouth he was unable to play the trumpet which seems to have been his favourite instrument. However, he still attended music classes, and had a number of friends who like him (at...

Richard Jones noted renaissance viol maker had this to say in an interview. How did you come upon early music ? Who inspired you ? In the 1970s I went to Dumfries to see one of Ashley Hutchings' groups ? I think it was the Albion Band ? and there was this wonderful mixture of folk music and rock music. I was listening to Radio 3 one morning and one of the tunes they played I recognised from the Ashley Hutchings concert. The announcer said it was a dance from Susato,'La Morisque', played by The Early Music Consort of London directed by David Munrow. There was this sound of shawms and sackbuts, I thought it was stunning, there was a texture there that was far more exciting, more colourful than any of the smooth classical sound of trombones and oboes. I caught the early music bug and was so lucky. Within weeks of hearing that record I met a man in Edinburgh who was making a set of regals for Christopher Hogwood who played on that record, so very quickly I was drawn into this e...

The following is a testimony from Robert King who played an important part in the promotion of early music before his tragic "downfall" which will not be discussed here. ............I did indeed (as a gawky teenager) appear on "Nationwide" with Sue Lawley (with whom I immediately fell passionately in love as I thought her to be utterly gorgeous!) in either 1977 or 78 (I forget exactly when, I'm afraid). I did a few other TV and radio appearances as well........... Yes, I was (and am still) a huge Munrow fan, and attended as many of his concerts as I could from about 1974 to 1976 (I even went to the Monteverdi and his Contemporaries concert at the QEH a few days before Munrow's death). I was only a schoolboy then, but I loved his radio shows, loved his recordings (I think I have all of them!), thought his book was a magnificent work (though I have a signed copy it was autographed, since I was at Boarding School, in my absence) - in short he was my total hero....

Legendary countertenor gives last London recital Martin Cullingford 4:32pm GMT 23rd May 2011 On Saturday the countertenor James Bowman took his leave of the London stage for the final time, with a Wigmore Hall recital that drew to a close more than four decades of performance. Bowman had said he didn’t want it to be an emotional occasion, and such was his self-deprecating chat between performances (a masterclass in endearing stage informality) that the tone was one of levity rather than a dwelling on the passing of an era. But what an era closed with his final bow. Bowman first graced the Wigmore stage in 1967, as part of an audition with David Munrow’s Early Music Consort for the influential agent Emmie Tillett. In subsequent years Munrow went on to transform perceptions of early music, while Bowman would go on to pick up Alfred Deller’s mantle and elevate a voice type only really then preserved in the English choral tradition, into a central part of the vocal music world. In d...

From the Independent ref The Compact Collection (Rated 5/ 5 ) Rob Cowan on this week's releases, March 28, 2005. ....the period-instrument lobby will likely offer a rather different perspective of Bach's Fugues. When it comes to period "ear-cleansing", no British musician did more to revitalise our interest in old instruments than David Munrow, who died in 1976. The David Munrow Recorder Consort takes centre stage for The Art of the Recorder (Testament SBT2 1368, two discs ). This justly famous collection takes us from the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, early Baroque and late Baroque, and on to the 20th century (a Britten Scherzo, a Hindemith Trio and an imaginative quarter-hour dialogue for recorder and pre-recorded tape by the English composer Peter Dickinson). The range of music and textures on offer not only educates but edifies, especially the Bach items, principally the opening duet Sonatina from Cantata 106, surely the loveliest recorder music of all, in...

Artist: The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Label:    BBC Country: UK Catalogue: RESL 1 Date: 1970 Format: EP Title: The Six Wives Of Henry VIII Chart Position: 49 Collection: Community: Track Artist Title Composer Producer Rating A1 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Fanfare, Passomezo Du Roy, Gaillarde D'Escosse Rate A2 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Pavane "Mille Ducats" Rate A3 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Larocque Gaillarde Rate B1 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Allemande Rate B2 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Wedding March "La Mourisque" Rate B3 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow If Love Now Reigned Henry VIII Rate B4 The Early Music Consort Directed By David Munrow Ronde "Pourquoi" Rate Notes Picture sleeve. Theme music and dances from the BBC TV series The Six Wives Of Henry VIII , starring Keith ...

Artist: The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow Label:    BBC Country: UK Catalogue: RESL 4 Date: 1971 Format: EP Title: Music From The BBC Television Series Elizabeth R Collection: Community: Track Artist Title Composer Producer Arranger Rating A1 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow The Leaves Be Green - Version 1 (Opening Music) David Munrow David Munrow Rate A2 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow Coranto David Munrow David Munrow Rate A3 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow Pavan David Munrow David Munrow Rate A4 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow Volta David Munrow David Munrow Rate A5 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow The Nightingale David Munrow David Munrow Rate B1 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed By David Munrow Masque Song David Munrow David Munrow Rate B2 The Early Music Consort Of London Directed B...

From a paper on Authenticity, and Early Music, (page 3) by Nicholas Kenyon plus link      http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&docId=9546594 In 1968 the work of David Munrow's Early Music Consort of London was taking on an international dimension with its first tours and recordings, and over the next few years it succeeded in galvanizing audiences with its highly professionalized skills and invigorating performance style. Munrow had burst upon an unsuspecting world in May 1965, when he first assembled a Renaissance dance band to play Susato Danserye at Birming- ham University, and from then on his professional career, powered by driving enthusiasm and hard work, made remark- able strides. It is chronicled in the recordings he made for EMI--first of Morley and Susato, and then Ecco la primavera in 1969, Music of the Crusades in 1971, The Triumphs of Maximilian I in 1973, The Art of Courtly Love, and, as vocal music became more important to him, two major projects which ap...

The following is a programme of the Early Music Consort of London, directed by David Munrow.  http://media.aadl.org/documents/pdf/ums/programs_19740413e.pdf

The Sound of Zardoz, 31st  August 2011 John Boorman commissioned David Munrow to compose the score, no doubt having been impressed by his groundbreaking work reviving early music with his outfit, The Early Music Consort, and period soundtrack projects such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elisabeth R for the BBC, and Ken Russell's film adaptation of Huxley's The Devils of Loudon. The soundtrack for Zardoz uses a sprinkling of electronic noises woven into early chamber instrumentation, renaissance and Ligeti-modernist choral passages, Debussy flute suggesting Zed's affinity with Pan and Tibetan tingsha cymbals to top it off. On paper this looks rather confusing but the score works seamlessly with the sound effects and serves to enhance Boorman's visuals without dominating, possessing an almost timeless quality as it folds together styles from different periods to create the sound of futures past, as is only appropriate for the Eternals in AD 2293. The film ends as it b...

Machaut seems a poet and a musician in equal measure, one of only a handful of figures to show equal mastery of these arts. I first heard his works attending a concert given by David Munrow in the seventies. It was a bleak winter day; the cold was bitter. And somehow the virelai music and poetry of Machaut seemed perfect and timeless. It had a somber bittersweet feeling to it. The music was haunting. On the surface it seemed simple and song-like, but listening to it again (and especially to a purely instrumental performance), the amazing geometric complexities of the works unfolded. Machaut regularly used a novel mirror approach in which a strophe proceeds A-B-C-D, and is then followed by a reversal, D-C-B-A. The effect is striking and introspective. The poetry follows courtly themes of his time, and the image of Douce dame jolie is a wonderful, easily approachable example. For our age, this will seem a simple love song. But to Machaut?s contemporaries it would have been understood to...

Some record cover link pics of good quality http://www.musicbay.co.kr/default/product_zoom.php?imgNo=2&goods_data=aWR4PTg4OTkyJl8mcGFydF9pZHg9NA== || http://www.musicbay.co.kr/default/product_zoom.php?imgNo=0&goods_data=aWR4PTg4OTkyJl8mcGFydF9pZHg9NA== || http://www.musicbay.co.kr/default/product_zoom.php?imgNo=0&goods_data=aWR4PTcxMzk1Jl8mcGFydF9pZHg9NA== || http://www.musicbay.co.kr/default/product_zoom.php?imgNo=0&goods_data=aWR4PTY0NTkzJl8mcGFydF9pZHg9NA== || http://www.musicbay.co.kr/default/product_zoom.php?imgNo=0&goods_data=aWR4PTY0NzUxJl8mcGFydF9pZHg9NA== || Site Source http://www.musicbay.co.kr/default/product_search.php?search_item=1&search=david+munrow

Sunday, 6 March 2011  - High Praise for High Notes James Bowman is one of my favourite counter-tenors. In recent times, thanks largely to Alfred Deller spreading awareness of the early-music repertoire of the counter-tenor in the 50s and 60s, the counter-tenor has found a new and growing audience. James Bowman has helped that progress. In many ways it is a very English singing voice, which harks back to the minstrel days of John Dowland, and James Bowman is a very English counter-tenor. His recordings, particularly for Hyperion Records , have brought me immeasurable pleasure over the years. There is something about the high range that connects with me. I eventually managed to see him live in a small church in deepest Somerset, performing an intimate recital of song including Dowland and Purcell, and I am grateful for having done so. On May the 21st, James will perform his last London recital at the Wigmore Hall with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani...

The following comes from the Independent.. In his enjoyable list of "lost" programmes, Chris Maume calls Pied Piper from the 1970s an "early music programme for children" ("Turn on, tune in...", 7 August). Although, as a musician my husband, David Munrow, specialised in early music, over the years his programme covered a different music-related topic each week. It was aimed at youngsters (teachers used it in class), but many of the audience were adults. The painting that won the poster competition to advertise the programme has pride of place in my kitchen.Gillian Munrow Amersham, Buckinghamshire  http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/iiosi-letters-emails-amp-online-postings-14-august-2011-2337151.html It would be nice if GM could contribute to this site anything interesting, and amusing about DM, and the Early Music Consort? I suppose this would be asking too much...? Maybe she might like to send a photo of the poster which advertized Pied Piper fo...

The following is from a book which has quite a number of references to David Munrow, and his life. Certain claims can be seen as controversial http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UD6FAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=david+munrow&source=bl&ots=6kLl3AebHu&sig=LKGOV4Pgt8RhqjX1uQoqOcAUHGQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XUoHU4PELIKXhQfF0oDYCw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=david%20munrow&f=false

Composer: David Munrow Released: 1974 (Film release: 1974) Label: Pathe Marconi Type: Movie Format: Vinyl  Source Ref Filmsite Subscribe now! Stay better informed and get access to collectors info! 1. Le Triomphe 2. Ils Sont Partis 3. L'Entrainement 4. En Route 5. Complainte 6. Dans Les Montagnes 7. Les Six Jours De Grenoble 8. Le Songe 9. La Course Contre Soi-Même 10. Pourquoi Souffrir 11. L'Effort 12. Conclusion: La Folie D'Espagne

Thursday, January 15, 2009 If you have never seen the magnificent 1974 sci-fi/fantasy classic "Zardoz", for God's sake drop whatever you're doing and get thee to the nearest video store (or computer, if your a Netflix-er) and rent this shit! John Boorman (who also directed the classics "Excalibur" and "Deliverance") really hit a home run here, bringing us not only a giant floating head, post-apocalyptic barbarians, and a telepathic secret society living on a creepy commune, but the image of Sean Connery in a diaper (see example above). I'm trying to think of a sci-fi movie from the 70's that I dig more than "Zardoz", but so far I've got nothing. David Munrow's psychedelic soundtrack is a perfect fit for this hippie-dippy tale of futuristic intrigue, and although there is no official release of this score, I found a sweet bootleg on the good ol' internet, recorded straight from the film with dialogue and soun...

         Broadcast « on: April 02, 2009, 02:26:47 PM » James Bowman gives some references to David Munrow  In search of a voice: James Bowman interviewed We met in an unusually empty bar in the rather posh Athanaeum Club, in the wake of the July 2005 London bombings. Usually, Bowman joked, ?it's full of sleeping Vicars, over in the other corner. The comment set the tone for the interview: he has a wonderful sense of humour, and humanity and humility. And loves talking. Determined to keep to musical matters, I vowed not to be sidetracked by his humorous anecdotes. But one, I have to say, is worth repeating. The time when in France, his billing as an alto meant that a group of viola enthusiasts turned up. How would he play the Schumann pieces, the Brahms or the Hindemith The venue for our interview, and the fact that I forgot to wear a tie dress-code for the club underlined one driving force of his care...

Pic Discogs From Wikipedia. Anthems in Eden is a 1969 album by Shirley and Dolly Collins, with the Early Music Consort of London, directed by David Munrow. The album originally consisted of a 28-minute set of folk songs plus 7 other individual pieces performed by the same group. The musical arrangements for these 8 pieces included early music instruments, such as viols, recorders, sackbuts and crumhorns. In 1976, 6 new songs were recorded with a different assortment of accompanists, to replace the original 7 individual songs. This 1976 album consisting of the 28-minute set plus the 6 new songs was released by Harvest Records under the title "Amaranth". Subsequent releases have combined all 14 pieces under the original title, "Anthems in Eden". Contents [hide] 1 Recording history 2 Musical content 3 Musicians 3.1 Original 1969 album 3.2 1993 CD 4 Track listing 4.1 Original 1969 tracks 4.2 Additional tracks recorded in 1976 [edit] Recording historyThe...

Report photo Double Grammy winning record producer Christopher Bishop talks about David Munrow on the record on my programme on Future Radio this Sunday (Dec 30) at 5.00pm UK time. The programme includes music from Munrow's first LP for EMI, Two Renaissance Dance Bands , which is seen above and which was produced by Christopher Bishop. Below is a page from Christopher's recording diary, the second entry down is the sessions for another classic David Munrow album, The Art of Courtly Love . Christopher Bishop worked with many great artists during historic times. Here is an excerpt from Michael Kennedy's 1971 biography of Sir John Barbirolli : 'It was Bishop with whom Barbirolli was working at the Abbey Road Studios on a day at the height of the Beatle's popularity. As John arrived he saw the famous four and their retinue. 'Is that the Fuzzy Wuzzies?' he asked Christopher, 'because we'd better close the door i...