For those (like this reviewer) who were still in short pants when the first of these recordings appeared, David Munrow’s work has acquired something close to mythical status, akin perhaps to that of Jimi Hendrix in the realm of pop music. Like Hendrix, Munrow was a charismatic figure, a self-taught virtuoso whose public performances frequently caught fire; like Hendrix, he died tragically young; and like Hendrix, Munrow was a trail-blazer with a difference, in that many different schools of Britain’s early music scene can legitimately claim him as an inspiration, if not a direct mentor. The list of young talent Munrow banded round him reads like a roll-call of today’s most influential musicians: James Bowman, Charles Brett, Rogers Covey-Crump, Martin Hill, Christopher Hogwood, Philip Pickett to name but a few. Towards the end of his life, Munrow began to concentrate on fifteenth-century sacred polyphony, with a cappella, one-to-a-part performances (in “The Art of the Netherlands” HMV, 11/76 – reissued at mid-price on EMI). In this, he anticipated the emergence of groups like the Hilliard Ensemble; but one need only listen to the disc of dance suites, most of which was recorded earlier in his career, to sense the debt owed by the instrumental groups that emerged even later, like the New London Consort. When David Munrow named his series of radio broadcasts after the Pied Piper, he was describing himself.
All these recordings were made in the astonishingly short period between January 1971 and the end of 1975. They fall into two broad groups, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (“The Art of Courtly Love” and Dufay’s Mass), and the sixteenth and early seventeenth (“Monteverdi’s Contemporaries”, Praetorius and the dance music on Testament). The earlier discs were recorded in 1972-3, a couple of years before “the Art of the Netherlands”. The latter is in some ways the more polished collection, but there is such tremendous excitement on so many tracks of “Courtly Love” (listen to the progressively more Hendrixian inflexions of the Istampitta Tre fontane) that one happily overlooks the occasional wrinkle; besides, Munrow’s experiments with instrumental combinations turn out some real gems. The ‘fourteenth-century avant-garde’ section is especially fine in this respect (the combination of tenor and two crumhorns in the ‘Phiton’ pieces, for example). Although much has been re-recorded since, a good number of Munrow’s first performances remain unsurpassed. I would single out Dufay’s Mass Se la face ay pale in this regard. Nowadays, tempos might be slightly brisker, and voices used in preference to instruments on the lower parts; but only compare the serene tranquillity of the Kyrie I with the exhilaration at the end of the Credo: here are poetry and variety in abundance. For this, one of the most significant of fifteenth-century Mass cycles, there is still no convincing alternative performance on CD.
The discs of the later period have perhaps aged slightly less well, because all the repertories concerned have been more plentifully and convincingly served since. The polychoral pieces of the Praetorius set in particular suffer from the lack of resonance of the Abbey Road Studios. Such broadly conceived music demands breadth of acoustic presentation and besides, the technology for reproducing spatial effects has very audibly moved on in the last 20 years. On the level of performance, one could single out the uncharacteristically strait-laced approach to the Italian solo motets: fine though the singing is, these pieces fail to catch fire (though Grandi’s elaborately scored O beate Benedicte rounds off the collection in style). Here again, though, Munrow’s pioneering role cannot be overstated: in the mid-1970s, the sacred music of Monteverdi himself (the 1610 Vespers aside) was little recorded, let alone that of his contemporaries! In contrast, the instrumental music on all three discs is full of Munrow’s verve and (one guesses) slightly mischievous sense of humour. Who today would dare use a xylophone on the top line of a Renaissance dance? No one, I suspect; and more’s the pity.
Since these are reissues, a word is in order about sound quality. The remastering is very clear and faithful to the original, though inevitably the original blemishes are preserved as well; thankfully, these are few and far between. Collectors should note that the purely instrumental tracks on “Monteverdi’s Contemporaries”, about half an hour in all, are reproduced in a slightly more deeply focused remastering on the Testament disc. But the accompanying dance-suites by Susato and Morley are most engaging, and far outweigh the drawback of duplication.
It is a real joy to welcome these essential recordings to the CD repertory. Had David Munrow lived (he would have been only 54 this year), there would have been more, so much more. That he himself chose otherwise is all the more poignant and sadly ironic, for joy in making music of any period, beyond the exotic instruments and the scholarship, is the overriding message of these discs. What more can one say?'