Malcolm Mac Donald (music Critic)

Malcolm Mac Donald (music Critic)

Malcolm MacDonald (also known by the alias Calum MacDonald) is a British author, mainly writing about music. He was born in Nairn, Scotland in 1948 and educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge; he has lived in England since 1971, first in London and since 1992 in Gloucestershire.

He has written several books, notably volumes on Brahms, Schoenberg, John Foulds, Edgard Varèse, the Scottish composer-pianist Ronald Stevenson and a three-volume study of the 32 symphonies of Havergal Brian. Other books include a tourist guidebook to the city of Edinburgh and an ongoing multi-volume edition of the musical journalism of Havergal Brian. He has contributed chapters to symposia on Brahms, Alan Bush, Erik Bergman, Shostakovich, Bernard Stevens, Ronald Stevenson, Varèse, an essay on Czesław Marek to a symposium on Swiss Composers and another on Scottish composers to a symposium on Musical Nationalism in Great Britain and Finland. He has also compiled catalogues of the works of John Foulds, Shostakovich, Luigi Dallapiccola and Antal Doráti and contributed articles to many musical encyclopedias such as the New Grove. He is editor of the modern-music journal Tempo, which he joined in 1972 as assistant to the then editor David Drew, and has been a copious contributor to other English-language music-journals and magazines. For these and other journalistic purposes he has used the nom-de-plume Calum MacDonald because at the outset of his writing career, which began with record reviewing for the journal Records & Recording, confusion arose between him and the composer Malcolm MacDonald, who was a long-established record reviewer for The Gramophone. As Calum MacDonald he also reviews regularly for BBC Music Magazine.

MacDonald has been a prime mover in the revival of interest in the music of John Foulds.