Welcome to the new-look website, and a fresh start with a regular blog – something sorely missing from the website in recent years.
I’ve been sitting on a vast collection of material and now, looking to the 40th anniversary of Munrow’s untimely passing, I feel it’s a good time to be presenting and discussing it with a wider audience. What would you like to see in the way of marking such an anniversary?
If you have any relevant material or would like to join the discussion do get in touch – any ideas to improve and enhance the site are always much appreciated.
Hey Robert,
It’s great you’re still online with this site and earlymusiclegend blog. Amazing sources of information. I remember ordering the dvd disc from you – I still watch it from time to time. Keep well!
David Munrow has been a wonderful inspiration to all who have had the opportunity to see or hear him. I fell in love with his music on Ancestral Voices decades ago.
Long live his memory
Is there anywhere to hear any of the BBC Pied Piper radio shows?
Not currently, but the BBC has plans to make some available in the future – indeed, the Controller of BBC Radio 3 has said he wanted to commission another Pied Piper series.
I can’t express, how much I still miss David, now being almost 70 myself. What a lovely person he was. I love his music, since I bought my first record shortly after he passed away (Danserye that is). His loss is as painful as the untimely loss of the wonderful, aimable Barbara Thornton some years later on.
What would the world of “Early Music” have been like, if we could have him still playing to show us, how lively and animating music can be besides the academically dry Harnoncourt or Gardiner, who’s records I sorted out all together meanwhile.
But at least it makes me happy to see, that his presence on our ill-bred planet wasn’t bootless and that he isn’t forgotten as so many other wonderful musicians of their time (even Bach was for almost 100 years).
Thanks to the people, who are administering his commemoration.
P.S. My English is far from being perfect. I hope not to have used any wrong expression, which I had to look up in the dictionary.
Just stumbled across this site while looking up the Sean Connery movie Zardoz(?!?). What a great tribute to this remarkable man. Thank you very much.
I thought you might be interested to know that there is a plaque in the Munrow Sports Centre at the University of Birmingham (named after David’s father). It reads:
‘Dave Munrow – first Director of Physical Education at the University of Birmingham 1939-70
This Plaque commemorates his special contribution to the development of physical education in this country and abroad through his teaching writing and inspiring leadership’
This sports centre is due to close this year (2017) as it is being replaced by a new building. I wonder what will happen to this plaque?
Hello,
I wonder whether you may be able to help me? For ages I’ve tried to find David Munrow’s stunning version of the Allegretto from Beethoven’s 7th recorded for the film “Zardoz”. Is there a recorded version in existence?
I’m not aware of a soundtrack album ever being released, other than a reworked promotional record by a group called Zzebra, which features mainly psychedelic material (!). The website that hosted a ‘bootleg’ version has been taken down. I have a copy of this so if you’d like me to email you it just let me know. Regards, David.
Have only just found this. I bought several of DM’s albums in the 70s, and still treasure them. Living in New Zealand and then Israel, I never got to hear him live, or even see the tv series. I’m thrilled to see excerpts now on YouTube. His joyful passion for this wonderful music has continued to influence my approach to my own musical work for nearly fifty years, at this point. I will always be deeply grateful, and sorry that the respect and appreciation of people around the word was not enough to counterbalance what he was going through privately. For me, his light will always shine bright.
At King Edward’s School I remember how quickly David learnt the Bassoon and treated us to Mozart’s Concerto in the lunch-hour. He also performed Elgar’s Romance for Bassoon in a similar concert, and it was clear that having started by learning the recorder previously, he was adept at the Bassoon very speedily, and could perform on it very well. When he started at KES in 1953 ( we were contemporaries) he didn’t express much interest in music – history being his main interest, but he enjoyed acting, and it was apparently at a performance of ‘The Midsummer Night’s Dream’ where Mendellsohn’s music was played as entre-actes, that he ‘caught’ classical music. He loved Elgar and told me the one piece he would have wanted to conduct – was ‘Falstaff’.