David Munrow - Biography and Career

Biography and Career

David Munrow did not just emerge into the field of medieval and renaissance music......he exploded into it.

~Tributes to David Munrow, Early Music Journal, 1976.~

Munrow was born in Birmingham and was the son of Birmingham University dance teacher Hilda Norman Munrow and Albert Davis "Dave" Munrow, a Birmingham University lecturer and physical education instructor who wrote a book on the subject. David Munrow attended King Edward's School, Birmingham until 1960. He excelled academically.

In 1960 David Munrow went to Peru, teaching English under the British Council student teacher scheme. He returned with Bolivian flutes and other obscure instruments. Studying English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he noticed a crumhorn on a friend's wall and threw himself into an independent study of early musical instruments. From his starting position as a pianist, singer and bassoonist he taught himself many old instruments. He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company as a bassoonist but soon played instruments of Shakespeare's time. Although he displayed talent on a wide variety of instruments, he had a particular lasting influence as a recorder player. His English style of discreet, controlled expression contrasts to the greater tonal flexibility of the Continental style espoused by the Dutch recorder player Frans Brüggen and others.

By 1967 he was a lecturer in early music at the University of Leicester and married to Gillian Reid. With Christopher Hogwood he formed the Early Music Consort, each of whose core members was an expert in his or her own right. Sometimes other professional musicians were employed when necessary, such as Nigel North and Robert Spencer, both highly regarded lutenists. Beginning in 1968, he toured the world, unearthing obscure instruments in every country he visited. He commissioned reconstructions of instruments related to the cornett and rackett from, amongst others, Otto Steinkopf. Two television programmes made him a household name: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and Elizabeth R (1971).

Munrow's two contributions to film music were for visionary British directors: Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and Zardoz (1974), written and directed by John Boorman. The latter included arrangements of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 for early music instruments.

In Munrow's relatively short life he released over fifty albums of which some are now available on CD. In addition to his recordings with the Early Music Consort, he recorded with Michael Morrow's Musica Reservata, Alfred Deller and the King's Singers. Munrow recorded Bach and Monteverdi many times, but his widest influence was in the Medieval and Renaissance periods. His three-record set with the Early Music Consort The Art of the Netherlands, issued in 1976 (EMI SLS5049), was particularly influential in popularising the genre.

On BBC Radio 3 he presented Pied Piper, a multi-ethnic, centuries-spanning spread of music from Monteverdi to the Electric Light Orchestra rock group. Munrow also had dealings notably with The Young Tradition and Shirley and Dolly Collins.

Apart from his regular radio slot and other programmes, he appeared on television, most notably on BBC 2 in a series entitled Ancestral Voices in a London studio, and on ITV Early Musical Instruments, filmed on location at Ordsall Hall in Salford. He also wrote one book entitled Instruments of the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Originally, this accompanied a record set of the same name.