My first recording – David Munrow
By Ralph Graves
We asked our volunteer announcers to talk about the first recording they purchased in their genre.
My first classical album purchase was the soundtrack to “Henry VIII and his Six Wives” by David Munrow.
I was in high school, and like most teenagers I’d been mostly buying rock albums and singles. While I enjoyed playing classical music (we had an outstanding band program), I was never moved to purchase any.
Then PBS ran the BBC mini-series “Henry VIII and his Six Wives.” To me, David Munrow’s score was electrifying. The elements I most loved in rock — modal harmonies, third relations, pulsing rhythms – was all condensed into Munrow’s arrangements.
Within days after the first installment had aired, I purchased the soundtrack. I was soon on the lookout for other David Munrow recordings (I eventually accumulated most of them), which lead to further exploration of early music. That lead to a purchase of Monteverdi madrigals on the Nonesuch label, which lead to further Nonesuch purchases, and things just grew from there.
What made this recording special?
The music of “Henry VIII and his Six Wives” is something of a hybrid. It is a collection of Tudor-period music given historically informed performances on authentic instruments. But it’s also a TV soundtrack. So the music was modified to set a scene or amplify an onscreen emotion, as well as provide backgrounds to courtly dance sequences.
At the time, most early music groups were composed of players who were music historians first and performers second. There was a dry, academic quality to many of the early music recordings of the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
David Munrow was never stodgy. Perhaps it was because of his interest in jazz, but his performances often seemed loose and improvised. Munrow was a scholar, but he was a musician first, and the tracks on this release fairly crackle with energy.
For me, coming to the music with no preconceptions as to how renaissance music should sound, “The Six Wives” soundtrack had immediate appeal. And to this day, it’s still not only one of my favorite recordings, but my favorite of the over 50 that David Munrow released.
Below are two selections Munrow used in the soundtrack for the series.
David Munrow – Henry VIII and his Six Wives
Testament
