Instruments of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

When he died in May 1976 at the age of thirty-three, David Munrow left a recorded legacy that, in its breath, depth and importance, rivalled and even surpassed that of many more senior figures.

David Munrow's passion for early music and musical instruments commenced in 1960 when he was 18. Teaching in Peru under the British Council Overseas Voluntary Scheme, he became interested in South American folk music and took back to England with him Bolivian flutes, Peruvian pipes, and dozens of other obscure instruments. The following year he entered Cambridge as an English major. There a crumhorn hanging off a friend's wall aroused his interest and led him to delve deeply into an independent study of Renaissance and Medieval music.

Munrow's previous musical training had consisted of tuition in piano and bassoon. He had also been a chorister at Birmingham Cathedral. Early instruments now absorbed him, and he commenced to collect them in great numbers. Instructors in the field being scarce, he mastered alone the techniques of playing his finds, by reading intensively in the field and by endless practice and experiment. After a year's research at Birmingham University, he spent the years 1965 to 1968 in consolidating his ideas and technique. During that time, he was asked by Guy Woolfendon to join the Royal Shakespeare Company in order to play "authentic" instruments for their productions. With his wife Gillian Reid, he also toured music clubs and schools to lecture on early music. Due to other time commitments, he soon left the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In 1967 Munrow became a lecturer at Leicester University in early music history. The same year saw the London debut of his Early Music Consort of London. This excellent ensemble of virtuosos was basically a five-man group capable of touring, but with other singers and instrumentalists in association for concerts requiring larger forces.

In 1968, the Consort made its first foreign tour, launching Munrow and the group upon their path to international acclaim. During their travels, Munrow ransacked foreign marketplaces for exotic instruments of old origins. He also commissioned careful reconstructions of otherwise unobtainable antiquities from such instrumental families as the cornett, rackett, kortholt and others.

Worldwide recognition and popularity came to Munrow when he created the scores for the outstanding BBC TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R, widely televised abroad. The soundtrack for the former became a bestselling album which won still greater audiences for the early music Munrow loved.

One of his final and most ambitious projects was this recorded survey of the medieval and renaissance eras, originally accompanied by a lavishly illustrated book researched with all his typical thoroughness. In each period the instuments are organised according to type: woodwind, keyboard, brass and strings. Within these sections are further subdivisions.