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Len Mullenger - 2015
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In the late 1970s (16th July 1977) the BBC
broadcast Alwyn's opera Miss Julie. William Alwyn's
name was unknown to me so I wrote to the BBC expressing my
enjoyment of the opera and seeking more information on the
composer. I waited many months for a reply during which time
I read Francis Routh's chapter in Contemporary
British Music (Macdonald 1972) and started to explore
the symphonies on the Lyrita recordings that were then emerging.
Eventually my letter did elicit a reply - from the composer!
He informed me that the opera had been recorded by Lyrita
with the same cast. He went on to say how his music was much
more appreciated abroad than at home and from other sources
I became aware of the way the BBC had actively suppressed
broadcasts of music by British composers of that generation
rather than promoting them. He also mentioned that it was
to be his 75th birthday that November and he hoped that the
BBC would allow him a talk feature on his life. This spurred
me to write to all the magazines and the BBC to try and ensure
there was some sort of celebration to mark the event. Gramophone
promised an article, which did not emerge, but the BBC did
broadcast the 5th symphony from Croydon. My local Recorded
Music Society sent a birthday card with a Rossetti drawing
as Alwyn was an early collector of the Pre-Raphaelites. He
was delighted and an even longer letter arrived. This was
all very exciting for me because I had never had contact with
a composer before. My only regret is that I never met him;
although I did eventually meet Mary Alwyn at the premiere
performance of Miss Julie at the Norwich Theatre Royal in
1997. In 1995, ten years after the death of William Alwyn,
Andrew Palmer founded the Alwyn Society with the aim of deepening
the knowledge and appreciation of his work and encouraging
live performances. I offered to create a web
site for the Society using the experience gained from
creating a website in my role as a University Biology admissions
officer. I approached Chandos for permission to copy all the
booklet notes to their recordings and, with the help of Rob
Barnett of the British Music Society, we added biographical
material. This was placed on the University Biology server.
MusicWeb stems from that.
[The Alwyn Society became inactive following
the death of Mary Alwyn]
The Alwyn site was successful in attracting
attention and even praise. Hunting round the web showed very
few sites devoted to British composers. Two that stood out
at the time were the Elgar and Delius Societies. It seemed
an obvious move therefore, to extend from the Alwyn site and
include other composers. Clearly this could not be done unofficially
on the Biology Server. Fortunately it was at that time that
the Coventry Performing Arts Centre amalgamated with the University
and, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the staff of the
Educational Development Unit (EDU), I was able to persuade
the Performing Arts Centre that a British composer site would
be of great assistance to their students and be useful for
any part-time courses run for Coventrians. Hence the site
became official ( by which I mean that it was tolerated
by the University administration - there was never any finance
made available for development although I was able to use
University notepaper which lent authority) and was
located on an EDU server. In 1997 a press release announced
a free service to any composer Society or Trust wishing to
have a web presence. For the next couple of years there was
a steady flow of enquiries and many Composer Societies ended
up being represented on MusicWeb.
Whilst researching Humphrey Searle I discovered
a biography written by David Wright and sought his permission
to republish it alongside the composer's memoir which had
not been able to find a publisher. It transpired that David
had a large and growing collection of such biographies and
they became the mainstay of MusicWeb. I had long been a member
of a Recorded Music Society and had witnessed the common problem
of the membership dropping away - many dying without being
replaced by new younger members. My own society had, in a
period of only 12 years, dropped from a regular turnout of
40 to only 8. I suggested to the Federation
of Recorded Music Societies that a web presence would
enable the affiliates to advertise their programmes and perhaps
attract new and younger members. This became a flourishing
part of the site looked after by Reg Williamson who finally
persuaded me to join the FRMS committee. Eventually Reg retired
and the FRMS decided in 2003 to run the website themselves.
[Reg has since died]
Most of the British composers represented
on the site belong to the 'forgotten' generation composing
in the 50s and 60s. This was not by design - more a reflection
of my own taste and the lack of exposure offered to these
composers. In fact the site became much more comprehensive
although present day composers tend to have a well established
presence on the web - either through having their own sites
or being represented by their publishers. The site is not
restricted to British composers and I was soon approached
by the Dvorak Society and the
Respighi Society to see if
I would help them. There are now a goodly number of specialist
articles on non-British composers such as Leo
Brouwer (one of the most popular pages), Mahler
(the most popular pages), Luis de
Pablo, Egon Wellesz etc. Nevertheless
it is the British composers that have received the in-depth
treatment to date and where necessary articles have been commissioned
(Britten, Bridge,
Holst ). Future needs are for
similar studies of Arnold, Bliss and Gershwin. We also have
in-depth studies of Gundry and
Butterworth who were little
known and I was proud to be able to persuade Colin Touchin
at the Warwick Arts Centre to include Arthur Butterworth's
fourth symphony in one of their programmes as a 75th birthday
tribute (see review
by Paul Conway). Arthur came with his family and we cut a
cake in the interval. In one of those unfortunate coincidences
that dog us through life, it was that very day that ClassicO
chose to lay down the premiere
recording of the first symphony which Arthur was therefore
unable to attend.
Ian Lace and Rob Barnett already knew each
other and approached me with the idea of a supplementary site
specialising in Film Music. This started in early 1998 and
became a major, flourishing part of the site. Ian Lace was
appointed Honorary Editor for Film
Music on the Web. Ian was keen to edit a site that
treated film music with the respect it deserves. It embraced
responsible news coverage and comment, articles, composer
profiles, and most importantly, in-depth reviews of books
and CDs of current and historic film scores. Ian was also
keen to include coverage of concert and operatic music by
film music composers such as Korngold, Franz Waxman, Miklós
Rózsa, and George Antheil. A new classical music-orientated
innovation began on Film MusicWeb in March
with a regular feature entitled: If Only They Had Written
for Films, the first of which was devoted to the music
of Kurt Atterberg. Ian retired as Hon Ed in December 2002
handing that job over to Gary Dalkin and then Michael McLennon.
With Ian keen to include reviews of
CDs, we needed to link the reviews to on-line web-stores.
Accordingly, the site would clearly be defined as 'commercial'
and would be contrary to the University regulations for
web sites. There were other problems with the University
too. They would not permit me to support local events such
as the Coventry Jazz Festival and the Warwick Arts Society
even though I perceived that to be a service to the local
community, which the University was supposed to serve. It
became necessary to think about leaving the University.
In the end it was a technical reason that caused the site
to move entirely onto a commercial server. The Educational
Development Unit decided to use Microsoft Front Page to
administer their files. This was fine when I was working
in the University but impossible using a dial-up modem externally.
Hence the whole site migrated to the ISP Force9 and it was
months and months before the search engines caught up with
that move! The Force9 site was closed down on 2004.
I was actually already running a dual site
at the time because of the Gerard
Hoffnung pages. When I was a teenager, Gerard Hoffnung
was much loved and his little books were sought-after Christmas
presents. He died very young and his memory gradually faded
and I realised that none of my students had ever heard of
him. Most of his books were also out of print. I took steps
to trace his widow, Annetta, and invited her to the University
where we designed a site to the memory of Gerard. Annetta
had a small cache of the little books so the site was created
and sales links
generated for the Oxford Union Bricklayer speech on a
BBC tape, the two CDs (EMI and DECCA), the remaining books
and delightful sets of postcards of the cartoons. We also
had detailed a range of Hoffnung jig-saws but that sole-trader
business folded just as the site got under way. The 
Hoffnung site has been immensely popular and sells the
Hoffnung artifacts to all parts of the globe. We may not make
much money out of it but we like to feel that we are helping
to keep these recordings in the catalogue. Gerard would have
been 75 in 2000. To celebrate that his cartoons were on display
at the British cartoon Centre and the little books were privately
republished by Annetta and may be purchased
from the website. ( Annetta died in July 2018)
Because of the wish to put CD reviews on
the Film Music site (and Ian was already well established
as a reviewer for Fanfare and BBC Music Magazine
- and he regularly contributes reviews to Rob Barnett's
Classical MusicWeb, more of which below) the decision was
made to mount the entire site with Force9. This was because
the site was clearly going to exceed the usual offers of
20Mbytes or even 50Mbytes (it is currently (March
04) approaching 800Mbytes with over 24000 pages)
and Force9 were the only UK ISP to offer unlimited webspace
with business use. We had severe problems with them at first
because they did not provide sufficient bandwidth and the
site was very slow and even unreachable at times. This markedly
improved once Force9 were taken over by Plusnet and the
unlimited web space offer still stands. What none of us
had appreciated was that there was a limitation on daily
downloads and with the burgeoning success of the site we
were beginning exceeding that limit fourfold so a more serious
solution had to be found. However, the move to Force9 did
allow me to represent the Warwick
Arts Society who have a large site now as well as the
Coventry Jazz Festival.
[Both now run their own websites-2003]
Rob Barnett was well known as a reviewer for
the British Music Society and editor of BMS News. With the
success of the CD reviews on the Film Music site he was appointed
honorary editor of Classical MusicWeb and Classical CD reviews
were started in late 98. We now review around 220 Classical
CDs each month with a smattering of middle of the road, jazz,
musicals etc. that Ian includes in what he refers to as his
Curio Corner.
The number of reviewers has gradually grown
to meet the demand and we currently list just over 140 contributors
to the site. There are usually around 40 reviewers active
at any time. We constantly seek new reviewers with specialist
interests so if that is you just send an email (Len@musicweb-international.com)
Summer 2000 I was sitting under my gazebo
chatting to Peter Grahame Woolf and his charming wife Alexa.
Like me, he was semi-retired but still practiced as a psychiatrist
and had travelled to Birmingham to see a patient, calling
on me on the way back to London. We both had converging ideas.
I thought that the site could be used to promote budding artists.
We could perhaps mount their CVs at little or no cost and
act as a contact point - I had already had a preliminary chat
with Diana Hirst along those lines. Peter's concern was that
such artists now had little exposure as most of the daily
Newspapers had stopped printing concert reviews and consequently
young artists did not have the previous opportunities of producing
a portfolio. Peter had been writing about music for more than
forty years. He had been a contributor to Strictly off the
Record which eventually failed through lack of support. The
result of that meeting was Seen&Heard
which presents reviews of live concerts as soon as possible
after the event. We started by presenting one or more new
reviews every day. Marc Bridle, Melanie Eskenazi and Bill
Kenny have all been editors of a greatly expanded Seen&Heard.
CD reviews had originally been presented monthly but often
a recording is of such great interest that we wished to draw
attention to it immediately. Consequently in November 1999
we started a Daily Review on the site. The first was Dracula
followed by the first of the Bostock Nielsen cycle in the
revised scoring. I had attended the Press launch in Liverpool
where Bostock also gave a live performance and I came away
clutching the CD. Live concert reviews also occasionally appeared
as a daily review if it was part of a continuing cycle. The
daily reviews attracted a small but dedicated following. Following
the success of that it was decided in May 2000 that all Classical
reviews would be posted as received to add a daily interest
to the site. Around ten a day are added - usually five days
a week. Each month between 150 and 200 classical CDs and DVDs
are reviewed.
The site looks better and navigates better
than it did. Unusually for web sites we maintain an archive
of previous incarnations so the early front page can still
be seen. Early visitors to the site may recall that 'headless
witch' spinning a web on the front page. Reg Williamson
hated it and it was soon replaced by the Hoffnung Drumming
Turtles. New front pages were developed in-house (i.e. by
me in my house) but we were precipitated into a redesign
when we learned that Internet Magazine was proposing a site-survey
of Film MusicWeb. I had always admired the presentation
of Helen San's Film Music site www.cinemusic.net and she
kindly offered to rebuild the Film Music front page for
us around some ideas that had been floating around in my
mind. [Helen has now retired] We got a kind review from
Internet Magazine but with some adverse comments about site
navigation which we hope have now been addressed. We were
so impressed with Helen's work I commissioned a new front
page for the classical site. I should add that Film MusicWeb
has been greatly admired and is the preferred site of many
search engines, including Yahoo.
All this talk of commissions and sales makes
the site sound like a thriving commercial enterprise. Sadly,
like Amazon, it is not. We were receiving in excess of 75,000
unique visitors each month (current
figures may be seen here), but they did
not buy enough CDs and site did not cover its cost and
had survived through a combination of donations and the editors
putting their hands deeply into their pockets. All the contributors
work for nothing although the reviewers do get to keep the
discs which do not cost the site anything although I have
to cover the postage costs.. It was my desire to be in a position
to pay the reviewers for their hard work and travel expenses
and particularly to reward the editors. It is sheer obsession
that has got us where we are. We have a questionnaire on the
site and from the returns there are indications that some
people would be willing to pay a subscription to visit the
site but that is a road I would rather not follow.
In September 2000 I contacted Len Dight
who ran the Classical music section of Vavo.com. It was interesting
that there were two of us called Len (a comparatively rare
name) running music sites and I asked him to look over mine
with a view to a link to the site being placed on Vavo.com.
Vavo.com was a portal site marketing to those aged 45 or over.
The result of this innocent enquiry was that we were invited
to join Vavo.com. This gave us the opportunity to be placed
on a fast American server, attract advertising and have access
to e-commerce facilities. The move was controversial because
the site now carried banner advertising and many would wish
it did not. For obscure technical reasons some previous visitors
have been disenfranchised because they can no longer access
the site. In many cases this is because they needed to upgrade
their browser to a later version that supported JavaScript
but solving access for some others has not proved possible.
For the first time the site had a real potential income which
will not only support the "staff" but will allow all sorts
of possibilities from overhauling the site design (not easy
with thousands of pages) to promoting concerts. You may hear
more Butterworth yet!
Len Mullenger
written in February 2001 and gradually updated
FOOTNOTE
Dec2001
Our Association with Vavo.com ran for ten
months and was financially successful but was then terminated
as Vavo hit the same buffers as other dot.coms. We are currently
on our own again and pursuing other avenues.
Dec 2002
Ian Lace retires as Ho Ed for Film Music
on the Web and Gary Dalkin picks up the reins.
Sept 2003
Through the good offices of Simon Foster (of
Avie) I was put in touch with the Classical Network Ltd who
ran the website Ludwigvanweb.com This site supported independent
classical labels whose disc are offered for sale or download.
In return for a monthly payment we reviewed discs from their
associated labels and these reviews appeared on both MusicWeb
and Ludwigvanweb, accessible to MusicWeb's 50,000 weekly visitors
to their site. They had a hands-off policy so did not try
to influence the MusicWeb reviews. They agreed the reviews
would be meaningless if that were not the case and have put
up with some stinkers (although not all those were published
on their website). Regrettably, although both sides have held
to their bargain our visitors did not play ball. They did
not even sell enough discs to cover what MusicWeb was costing
them. So as we headed towards 10 years old the future of MusicWeb
is still uncertain.
March 2004
MusicWeb published its 10,000th classical review.
However MusicWeb has always suffered from Server down-time
and these have a devastating effect on visitor numbers. In
March and June 2004 there were two periods of over a fortnight
when MusicWeb was not available. As a result of this we were
offered a new home with Harold Moore's Record shop and visitor
figures slowly climbed again. An attempt was made at making
the site more commercial and adverts were accepted for the
first time in some years. We also commenced a makeover process
with Seen and Heard being the first section to benefit from
the designer hands of Bill Kenny.
November 2004: As a lead up to our 10th Birthday
celebrations the site name was changed to MusicWeb International
www.musicweb_international.com This reflected the diversity
of both our reviewers and of our audience.
2005-6: Eventually the relationship with Harold
Moores and Classicall.net ended. They were not paying us and
we were owed a great deal of money. This is a recurring refrain
of MusicWeb! We have found a new server and currently survive
on the money raised by the site and by donations.
Feb 2007
The site was given a makeover with a new
logo and much improved navigation.
April 2011
Seen and Heard, the live concert and opera
review site, was given a make-over. To make it more flexible
and easier for contributors to load their reviews, Bill
Kenny and his team spent several months developing a database-driven
site using WordPress. This also allows instant notification
of new reviews by e-mail to those who want it.
The new site can be seen here.
http://www.seenandheard-international.com/
Bill Kenny says
The
old Seen and Heard design has served us very well –
our readers seemed to like it – but it had three disadvantages
from our point of view. It was both inflexible and difficult
to adapt to our changing needs and it was awkward to maintain.
Its greatest disadvantage by far however was that it required
a huge amount of manual labour by our Webmasters simply
to keep it up to date.
With
often more than 20 new articles and reviews to add twice
weekly these days, and with having to index every new entry
manually, an average upload day with the old design could
take up to 6 hours to complete, a fact that could often
delay the publication of some reviews by as long as a week
– or longer if the review just happened to miss one
of our twice -weekly deadlines. We simply had no more time
available for updating.
So
enter our new shiny design which is built in WordPress and
which can be updated daily – or at the very least
on the five working weekdays anyhow. WordPress is an amazingly
flexible tool too and a typical review or article can now
be set up, then indexed automatically in several useful
ways and even emailed to our readers in less than a couple
of minutes after it has been edited. Readers in their turn
can add their comments to every piece that we publish now,
which the members of the reviewing team hope will become
a regular feature of our output.
We
are reasonably sure that most people will find the new design
an improvement on the old one but we would still be glad
to hear from anyone who doesn’t. And if readers tell
us why they don’t like the changes, we are also optimistic
that WordPress – and the Editorial team – will
be sufficiently flexible to overcome any snags that do show
up.
With
that proviso out of the way, we are looking forward to adding
new features to Seen and Heard, to reporting even greater
numbers of musically interesting venues and to making some
new friends in the process. We might even take up Tweeting
if our readers would like that. Let us know and we’ll
certainly look into it.
Bill
Kenny, Consulting Editor. March/April 2011
Bill Kenny retired from his role as S&H Editor and webmaster
in September 2011being replaced by Stan Metzger.
March 2012
Tony Duggan, the great Mahlerian, dies at the age of 58.
Obituary.
March 2013
By public demand we have redesigned the site yet again. It
was said to be too colourful and even garish. There were still
complaints that it was difficult to navigate (there are now
over 40,000 pages) so we have adopted drop-down menus for
the first time. The change met with approval!
By Dec 2014 we had published 40,000 classical CD reviews plus
thousands of Seen and Heard and Jazz reviews and various articles
are also published each month. As Klaus Heymann says :
2018 The Founding Editor, Rob Barnett had edited nearly all
the reviews that appeared on MusicWeb but he has now stepped
back to being just a reviewer and, as so often in these cases,
it has taken a team of new editors to complete the same work.
For Rob and myself MusicWeb had been virtually a full-time job.
I too have, at the age of 76, stepped back. The publication
of reviews after editing is now carried out by David Barker
in New Zealand and Jonathan Woolf co-ordinates the allocation
and distribution of review discs. I have now moved to much smaller
premises and no longer have the facilities for this. The indefatigable
John Quinn does everything else including overseeing the occasional
series of Listening Room reports and attending concerts as a
reviewer. And so we head for 2020 when we will be 25 by which
time we will have exceeded 50,000 CD reviews.
