Early music, late musician

Almost single-handedly, David Munrow established the modern tradition of performing early music. He founded and directed The Early Music Consort, and was its most brilliant performer on every imaginable wind instrument. He was a natural broadcaster and a gifted writer.  As well as records, books and a television series, he created a music radio programme for children which remains a model of its kind and without a successor to this day.  Ten years ago he took his own life at the age of 34.

To mark this sad event, the Crafts Council has taken the opportunity of displaying some of his collection of musical instruments alongside its current exhibition of contemporary musical instrument manufacturers.  In one small case, there is a group of obscure South American pipes collected by Munrow before he went up to Cambridge. But as well as these melancholy because mute testaments to his enormous facility, there is an even more moving record of the man upstairs.

In the corner of the long room housing the Craft Council's studiedly elegant café, there is a video cassette recorder and TV. During the current exhibition an episode from Munrow's TV series on medieval instruments is being shown.

In his short action-packed life, Munrow dispensed and radiated huge amounts of energy.  Aside from the sheer quantity of work which he achieved, the video shows that he lived every minute with the same febrile intensity.  This impression is reinforced by his cherubic, boyish appearance. His rosy, chubby cheeks and mop of rich-brown tousled hair make him look like some precocious schoolboy; which he was.  A schoolboy almost oblivious of his powers, simply exulting in the excitement and pleasure of what he was doing. 

This is clear in his introductions to the instruments, and in his performances on them. He clearly loves them all, loves them for their idiosyncratic shapes, their impossible names; and he has a schoolboy's rude delight in their raucous, almost flatulent noises.  When he plays them, he plays with the air of a delirious jazz saxophonist, inventing anew the frenzied notes, making music of and for today.

It was this sense of discovery, this lack of dry academicism which endeared him to his huge following. That and the almost palpable throb of his energy. The same was true of his Pied Piper programmes for children.  Again, his sheer unforced love of the music was immediately apparent.  And there was no question of patronising, no Uncle David humouring the kiddies. As an eternal child himself, he felt with the same directness as they did; one of his greatest gifts was that he could communicate that.

Watching the videotape of his programme there is one small, almost insignificant detail which is the most poignant.  It is not the smiling little leprechaun, not even the eternal twinkle in his eye; it his hands, and their effortless mastery of instrument after instrument.  It is this which brings home the tragic squandering of talent which had so much to offer and was so rich. Perhaps almost too rich; whom the gods love…

(9.8.86)

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